The Peninsula

The Fiction and Poetry Archive of Liana Mir and scribblemyname

A Little Chat

Mar
25

Captain Mikral was rather pleased at how easily they’d slipped past their enemy’s border defense and how many parsecs into enemy space they’d gone. The target was fast approaching.

He should have saved his pleasure.

He barely saw the flash of blue in the ship’s viewer before he saw the hooked blades unsheathing from the tips of its wings, before the entire crew felt them puncture the hull as their velocity ground to zero.

Mikral swore.

The communications panel lit, then a woman appeared on-screen and her warm voice came through the intercom. “Let’s have a little chat.” She grinned.

Daily Drabble 2018, Drabble, Original Fiction, Riftspace , , , , 0 Comment

Dangerous Work

Mar
20

Nanere first picked up the knives when she was a little girl. She rammed one into the knee of her mother’s love. When he howled and swung, she slashed his arm.

When he was finally gone, still cursing her, she gently washed her mother’s face and applied salve to her bruises, then fixed her mother’s makeup for her.

“He was our next meal,” her mother slurred.

Nanere thought of the shipyards and dangerous work available for tiny bodies that could fit into the small spaces between mechanical parts. She hardened her face and stiffened her shoulders. “I’m our next meal.”

Daily Drabble 2018, Drabble, Original Fiction, Riftspace , , , , , , 0 Comment

Dancing through Riftspace

Mar
15

When most people first learn about integrates and the need for a entire spaceship computer to be able to calculate a safe trajectory through riftspace, they think of numbers and advanced math and a human enabled to think like a machine.

Cor doesn’t bother to correct them, but it’s not like that at all.

It doesn’t feel like numbers or cold calculations. It feels like diving and spinning and swimming through space, knowing with instinct and reflex how to follow the paths that match his affinity and capability. He can do anything, go anywhere, dancing in the headiness of space.

Daily Drabble 2018, Drabble, Original Fiction, Riftspace , , , 0 Comment

Watching and Waiting

Mar
06

Rhezere’s been staring after Cor from the moment he first saw him.

Kasuru never interfered beyond the reminder that future pilots shouldn’t interact with future integrates. It kept Rhezere from speaking and safeguarded him for the moment they might meet mind to mind.

But he never stopped staring at the way Cor threw himself over the wings and under the bellies of the spaceships he repaired, the way he streamed to practice flights, the way he honed his body in anticipation of his affinity for war.

Cor would be a warship one day, no doubt. Rhezere would be his pilot.

Daily Drabble 2018, Drabble, Original Fiction, Riftspace , , , , , , 0 Comment

Trusting

Feb
26

Her little brother was so small.

Zana stared at him, tucked away like a curled up kitten beneath the blanket in her narrow bunk. She barely remembered him, a newborn when she’d been forced to leave.

But here he was now, his breaths soft and even with sleep, his freckled face open and trusting. She wondered why he would trust when it was their own mother that had brought him to the training facility and abandoned him to his sister’s arms.

Zana sighed and shifted in the chair to gently kiss the top of his hair. “I won’t leave you.”

Daily Drabble 2018, Drabble, Original Fiction, Riftspace , , , , 0 Comment

Weapon

Feb
22

The girl’s golden brown skin was coated in blood. It had splattered across her arms, her heathered green tank top and trousers, and the military boots she wore.

Her grey eyes were grim, her mouth a straight slash, but she seemed to catalogue the bodies surrounding her with mechanical detachment. The troop captain stared at her in horror. He’d been sent to extract a thirteen-year-old girl—not this.

She shrugged her shoulders, and something silver and shimmery poured out of her skin, covering her before flowing across the pile of bodies. It vanished, and with it, the dead and the blood.

Daily Drabble 2018, Drabble, Kingdoms and Thorn, Original Fiction , , , 0 Comment

Let It Go

Feb
21

Cor knew it wasn’t a lack of trust that made Rhezere shy away from displaying any kind of vulnerability with his own integrate. There were enough issues bubbling between their minds that the filter couldn’t hide for Cor to know it wasn’t even personal. But it grated.

“You okay?” No matter how neutral and offhand the delivery…

“Aww, Cor, you were worried about me!” Rhezere always managed to brush it off with brilliant smiles, a light tone, deliberately changing the subject to something annoying. Anything to avoid letting Cor acknowledge there was vulnerability.

Never talked about the scars they both knew weren’t from accidents. Never talked about the people Rhezere wouldn’t admit to caring about. Never talked about the fact that Cor preferring to sleep in Rhezere’s room wasn’t only because they were synced.

Cor sighed in disgust and let it go.

Ficlet, Original Fiction, Riftspace , , , , , , 0 Comment

Define Lonely

Feb
21

She’d never kissed anyone’s mouth, or anyone at all but her little brother after he’d become the only family she’d ever keep. Zana ran the Ijeve pilot and integrate training program with iron will, turning out batch after batch of fleet-ready spaceships and pilots. It didn’t leave time for romance.

“Have you considered—”

“No, Hasu,” she ordered her fellow station head.

“You’ll be lonely,” he suggested quietly. She thought he’d married at some point, had children.

A ship sang in her mind, though anchored, her brother called frequently, and her students and staff filled her days. “I’m not lonely.”

Daily Drabble 2018, Drabble, Original Fiction, Riftspace , , 0 Comment

Stray Child

Feb
20

“Kasuru?”

Kasuru looked up from the ship plans he’d been poring over with Nanere for half the night. He was the designer; she was the builder ripping apart his every bad idea.

It was well past when Rhezere went to bed. The boy was getting longer, and he looked at Nanere like he was deciding how much vulnerability to show with someone else present.

He sighed and trailed over to the couch behind Kasuru’s worktable and flopped down with his blanket. In moments, his breath evened in sleep.

“You have a kid,” Nanere said.

Kasuru shook his head. “He’s not mine.”

She looked pointedly over at the boy curled into his blanket, choosing to sleep near Kasuru rather than in his own dark room and bed.

“He is.”

Ficlet, Original Fiction, Riftspace , , , , , , 0 Comment

Healing Moment

Feb
20

He knew it was a bad decision the moment he did it. It had been months since the last time Rhezere contemplated the knives in the drawer with more than clinical disinterest in slicing food. Now, the blood welled up over his fingers as he cradled his arm and stared down at it.

He felt nothing, then sudden overwhelming panic flooded into the spaces where his heart was numb.

He went without thinking, moving quickly into Kasuru’s office where he was meeting with the ship builder Nanere.

She stared.

Kasuru said nothing, just pulled Rhezere to the space beside him and took down the healing scanner, a steadying hand firm on Rhezere’s shoulder.

Nanere dropped her gaze back to the plans they’d been discussing. Kasuru patiently ran over the arm until the wound no longer gaped. The flesh still looked raw and blotchy, less severe but not fully healed.

Kasuru wrapped it in bandages, then tucked his fingers under Rhezere’s chin to draw his gaze up. “We’ll let it rest overnight then look at it again.”

Nothing could be healed in a moment.

Rhezere knew that. Something inside him eased at realizing he’d been willing to be healed at all.

Daily Drabble 2018, Double Drabble, Original Fiction, Riftspace , , , , , , 0 Comment

The Ships

Feb
19

The first time he sees the ships, he’s just a tiny thing at the edge of the wide open bay dropping out like an abyss before them. Cor is four years old and unafraid. Only his older sister’s hand keeps him from stepping too close to the edge.

He has eyes only for the ships, their graceful forms reflected in his bright blue eyes.

“Zana,” he breathes.

He’s pointing, eyes aglow, and something inside her forms into a heavy knot of dread. So young, and already he knows the riftspace singing in their family’s blood.

“Come.” She draws him away.

Daily Drabble 2018, Drabble, Original Fiction, Riftspace , , , , 0 Comment

Do It Again

Feb
19

Nanere isn’t interested in most men. They’re too high maintenance, interested in keeping her around, being there for her, and insinuating themselves into her life.

She doesn’t want that. She takes what she wants, builds the ships her queen asks of her, then moves on to the next port to bury herself anew in metal flesh.

Then there’s Kasuru.

She traces his scars at night, and he kisses her fingers without answering unspoken questions. They drink coffee, argue over designs and engineering, then separate to their work without a word or call.

It’s nice enough to do again. And again.

Daily Drabble 2018, Drabble, Original Fiction, Riftspace , , , , 0 Comment

Empty Sheets

Feb
19

Rhezere complains every single time Bhazaf takes major damage that he doesn’t act like a normal integrate and sleep in the cradle, where he can heal properly and the ship can finally shut down his extensive sensors.

It minimizes pain. It’s smart. Bhazaf never does it.

For once he has.

Rhezere remembers all the usual complaints—at having to share his bed, having to throw an arm across Bhazaf’s chest to remind him he has a human body and it’s not in critical condition.

Right now, the bed is achingly empty.

He sighs and goes to sleep by the cradle.

Daily Drabble 2018, Drabble, Original Fiction, Riftspace , , , , 0 Comment

Mutual

Feb
19

“Big sister.”

Cor hesitated, enough to make Zana stop pouring tea to narrow her eyes at him.

He squirmed despite being a teenager. “You don’t—” He huffed, then forced the words out. “You don’t have to stay here for me. Anymore.”

She stopped breathing, topped off his cup, sat. A slow inhale of steam. “I’m head of this entire training program,” she said quietly, sipped. “I’m not suffering on your account.”

She’d promised not to leave him.

“Little brother.” Zana waited for him to look up. “I’m fine.”

Cor finally nodded. His shoulders relaxed as he reached for tea.

Daily Drabble 2018, Drabble, Original Fiction, Riftspace , , , , , 0 Comment

Sync

Feb
16

Sume curled up beside Konot on the sofa in the ship’s lounge. He didn’t do more than breathe in response, still staring at something in his own mind, his body remaining at rest.

She was a lot smaller (younger) than a normal pilot, and she wasn’t fitted like a normal pilot. She wasn’t a pilot at all.

For all that, she felt his welcome thrumming inside her bones, felt the way he settled into her presence, the way he felt her and it calmed the hyperactive thought processes spinning through his brain, feedback from the ship body around them.

Sync.

Daily Drabble 2018, Drabble, Original Fiction, Riftspace , , , 0 Comment

Like Raising a Kitten

Feb
16

Raising a little boy as rambunctious and eager as Cor was an exercise in the fine art of not screaming.

Zana took another deep breath. The four-year-old clung to the top of a teetering bookcase. Ijeve was a space station, occasionally subject to turbulence, and furniture was lashed to walls. Only that had saved Cor from crashing to the floor with the books.

“Little brother—”

“I’m sorry!” He whined as he scrabbled to maintain his grip.

She reached up and snatched him down, making him yelp, then held him tightly to her chest. “You are in so much trouble.”

Daily Drabble 2018, Drabble, Original Fiction, Riftspace , , , , 0 Comment

Don’t Go Away

Feb
16

The tiny boy hit Zana like a missile, waking her out of a sound sleep.

“Cor?” she demanded. “Little brother, what’s wrong?”

He was trembling, clinging to her, arms around her waist tight enough to hurt. He shook his head but said nothing.

Zana thought about turning on the light but didn’t. Instead she settled one hand on his back, the other his hair and stroked through the soft strands. “I’m here,” she whispered softly.

Her shirt was damp from his face, and he shuddered at the words. “Promise you won’t go away?”

Their mother had.

“Yes, Cor. I promise.”

Daily Drabble 2018, Drabble, Original Fiction, Riftspace , , , , 0 Comment

Crush

Dec
26

She told herself she absolutely, one hundred percent did not have a crush on her father’s best friend. Absolutely not at all.

He was only the most good-looking man she’d ever seen and had ignored her existence for her entire life and was the best fighter in the Guard, possibly even better than her father and he was legendary, and watching the two of them laugh and train together with spears and total mastery totally did not make her mouth go dry and make her wonder why boys her age didn’t look like that.

It wasn’t right.

She watched anyway.

Daily Drabble 2017, Drabble, Kingdoms and Thorn, Original Fiction , , , 0 Comment

A Way With Them

Dec
11

There’s nothing wrong with babies. Skylight likes them. When they aren’t hers and no one’s asking her when she’s going to produce one.

Her brother’s small daughter is sleeping in her arms, and Skylight’s busily going over reports for things her mother really doesn’t want to know the details of, whether or not she realizes it, when her brother walks in and pushes his glasses up to get a better look.

“You have a way with her.” He smiles. “You ever—?”

“No.” She doesn’t let him finish. She loves her husband, but they agree. They are not having kids.

Daily Drabble 2017, Drabble, Kingdoms and Thorn, Original Fiction , , 0 Comment

Volunteer

Nov
27

Joenna Janine Browning stood in front of a viewscreen staring at her five-year-old son. He was bound at the wrists humanely—small consolations—his whole body hunched over as he cried and railed in words that meant less than the intensity of the pain behind them.

“He’ll be a legend, Janenna.” The father’s voice practically glowed.

He had done this to their son. He had delivered him to the Projects without warning or consultation.

Janenna had heard of the Projects, decided not to volunteer herself as a potential supersoldier, never dreamed they were taking children.

She turned to her husband, soon to be ex. “One day, I will kill you for this.”

Daily Drabble 2017, Drabble, Kingdoms and Thorn, Original Fiction , , , , 0 Comment