Sci-Fi Signals

KULVIR SAKATA COUNTED his breaths the way he always did before a breach and board. Four in, four hold, four out. He’d learned it somewhere that no longer existed, in a life he no longer claimed. He did it now on principle, because the alternative was to stop counting and let something else take over. The boarding tunnel pressurized with a sound like a chest cavity being opened. “Thirty seconds,” C...

Candelas “Mustang” Camino stole ships for a living. And no one called her Candelas. If someone did, it did not end well for them. Mustang had rules about stealing ships. She broke most of them. But the one she kept was simple. Know who pays you, and know why. On Neonara, under a sky the color of rust and old copper, she had followed that rule exactly far enough to land herself on a rooftop across...

The Silt Dog Saloon sat at the dead end of a supply road on Vallara VII, a colony world that had been dying since the day colonists had founded it. The building was poured stone and scrap metal, patched where the wind had punched through, leaking where the rain found seams. It served miners, haulers, drifters, and anyone else stubborn enough to live on a rock that didn’t want them. Most nights, it...

Outrider Echo cooled on Landing Pad Nine like an old dog settling into a familiar spot. Her hull ticked and pinged as the metal contracted, shedding the heat of atmospheric entry. Around her, the Kaeloni Reach spaceport hummed with the low, steady noise of a place that never fully slept. Fuel haulers crawled between ships, and dockworkers shouted over the whine of cargo loaders. Beyond the floodli...

The Last Call smelled like every bar on every colony world Harper Flint had ever walked into: recycled air, spilled liquor, and the musky aroma of people who worked hard and washed when they remembered. Which wasn’t often. She stood in the doorway and let her eyes adjust. The place held a sizable crowd. Miners mostly, still in their dust-caked overalls, blowing shift pay on watered-down whiskey an...

Enemy fire had hit the port-side stabilizer again. Kango Galyx stood in Hangar 7 of Aster Station with his arms crossed and his jaw set, staring at the Torino like a man staring at a bar tab he couldn’t afford. The ship sat on the deck with her canopy up and her guts showing, fuel lines snaking across the floor, a diagnostic cart plugged into her starboard access panel, and a scorch mark along the...