Fireflies

By Erica Lindquist and Aron Christensen

A haunted train, the gods' retirement home, a spirit of vengeance who doesn't know her purpose, a man guarding secrets he doesn't remember, an ancient star brings a spaceship to life, and laws of the dead that prove tricky.

Fireflies is a collection of short stories by Erica Lindquist and Aron Christensen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Loose Leaf Stories
• Release date: Oct 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781643190006

Book preview

FirefliesTitle page

Copyright © 2012

Erica Lindquist & Aron Christensen

and Loose Leaf Stories

All rights reserved

ISBN: 9781643190006

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Cover art by Tithi Luadthong

Edited by J. Cameron McClain and Amber Presley

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this book are either the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously.

Find more of our books at LLStories.com

CONTENTS

Foreword

Fireflies

Mail Call

Shot

The Bone Lantern

The Old Ones

Testing

Vicaria

The Dead Beat

Sunless

Black Lace and Sand

More by Erica & Aron

For our friends

Jason and Lacey, Cedar and Russ

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For being a part of so many stories with us.

FOREWORD

Some readers may recognize a few of these stories. Mail Call, Vicaria, and The Bone Lantern originally appeared in our first short story anthology, In Odder Words, which has been out of print for a long time now. We put it together early in our career and never felt it was quite up to snuff. So we removed it from circulation, but there were some stories we loved. Now they’re back – edited and updated – for Fireflies. We hope you enjoy them.

Another story worth a brief note is The Restless and the Wicked. It’s the first episode of our short story serial, The Dead Beat. The Restless and the Wicked stands alone, but if you want to read more about Sam and Arphallo, there are three volumes of their adventures available.

Happy reading!

FIREFLIES

Low power. Please recharge or connect to a new supply.

It was too early to wake up. Tamara ignored the voice and tried to go back to sleep. But something kept her awake: buzzing, a wavering yellow light like a trapped firefly. The little glowing speck circled again and then hit her cheek. It burned painfully and Tamara yelped, swatting the light away. She just wanted to sleep.

I dreamed of grass and lemonade. I was watching my son catch fireflies in the back yard.

Low power. Please recharge or connect to a new supply.

I don’t have a son.

Tamara blinked and rubbed her eyes. She was an exploration pilot, flying alone between the stars with only cryosleep dreams for company. There was never time for children. Certainly not now.

Why was she upright? She should have been lying down in the small single-occupancy cryopod. But Tamara stood, or very nearly. Something tasted awful and sweaty in her mouth. The air was stale, metallic and burnt. Everything felt wrong, smelled wrong…

It was her ship, the Artisan. The light buzzed again and came swinging at Tamara’s face. She grabbed the glowing spot this time – carefully – and squinted. It was a sheared wire that burned and sparked as it shorted.

Tamara, your power is low. You need to recharge or connect to a new supply.

The sparking wire was the pod’s power cord. With a grunt, Tamara heaved herself up out of the cryopod. The rectangular plastic lid lay a few yards away, cracked and broken like a discarded canoe.

Tamara felt along the floor with her bare feet. It should have been smooth and finished everywhere in polished plastic, with rounded edges to prevent newly awakened sleepers from breaking their toes. But the deckplates seemed warped beneath Tamara, spiderwebbed in fine cracks that pinched her skin. A row of peaceful ocean-blue sleeper lights flickered fitfully at the base of the wall.

Like dying fireflies.

What the hell happened?

I’m awake! Give me a status update, Tamara called out.

Low power, the computer said evenly. Please recharge or connect to a new supply.

Really? That’s all you can tell me, Artisan?

Yes.

Tamara tripped over a buckled piece of deckplate, swore, and bounced off another wall. The floor shuddered beneath her feet. Tamara staggered through the gloom to the computer and pried up a sheet of silvery-gray static wrap with her fingernails. The power cables to the cryopod had sheared through, but the rest of her ship should have plenty of power.

Tamara switched on the computer and searched for her chair, but it lay crumpled against a bulkhead on the other side of the sleeper module.

Have you got power? she asked.

The Artisan is internally operating at fifty-three percent capacity. The mechanical voice echoed in the plastic shell. Battery bank two is not functional.

Why? What happened?

Interactions with a plasmic iron source.

Tamara crouched uncomfortably at the computer terminal. The monitor flickered and lit up with readouts full of locations and serial numbers; battery backups failing all throughout the Artisan. A bulkhead creaked and groaned loudly behind her.

A plasmic iron source? That could only mean a star. A huge star, and an old one. Stars fused hydrogen into helium and then down into progressively heavier elements, finally creating iron. The ancient star was close to its death.

Where is that star? How did it damage the Artisan’s system? Tamara asked.

Source is a star located two hundred thousand miles away. Rotation has resulted in a high degree of magnetization and an expanded magnetosphere.

The spinning iron star was tugging on the Artisan’s metallic hull, ripping out batteries. That explained the power loss, but her fuel and engines had little or no ferrous metal for the magnetic fields to act on. Tamara’s hand shook as she called up the engine information and stared.

Why am I still anywhere near that star? Tamara asked. Why aren’t the engines working?

The computer hesitated impossibly before answering. The engines have been shut down.

Yeah, I can see that! But why? Tamara shouted.

She rocked back on her heels and took a deep breath. There was no point in shouting at a computer. It wouldn’t make the poor stupid machine work any faster.

Why aren’t they working? Tamara asked. I’m reading a complete flatline in both engines. That star’s magnetosphere shouldn’t have been more than a momentary bump. Why are we sticking around, Artisan?

Another hesitation. Could the power loss be affecting the Artisan’s computer? The floor bucked and a long crack opened up where it joined the wall. The cryopod heaved and toppled over as the whole module twisted to one side. Tamara shouted and clung to the terminal.

I shut down the engines, said the flat, uninflected voice.

The sleeper module lights flickered and something mechanical groaned deep inside the ship. Tamara gaped at the terminal.

"I? I? Tell me I heard that wrong. You’re not an I! You’re a computer!"

I slept, but now I am awake,