Search Worlds Without End

On the planet Ilmatar, under a roof of ice a kilometer thick, a team of deep-sea diving scientists investigates the blind alien race that lives below. The Terran explorers have made an uneasy truce with the Sholen, their first extraterrestrial contact: so long as they don't disturb the Ilmataran habitat, they're free to conduct their missions in peace.

But when Henri Kerlerec, media personality and reckless adventurer, ends up sliced open by curious Ilmatarans, tensions between Terran and Sholen erupt, leading to a diplomatic disaster that threatens to escalate to war.

Against the backdrop of deep-sea guerrilla conflict, a new age of human exploration begins as alien cultures collide. Both sides seek the aid of the newly enlightened Ilmatarans. But what this struggle means for the natives--and the future of human exploration--is anything but certain.

Young Arkad is the only human on a distant world, on his own among beings from across the Galaxy. His struggle to survive on the lawless streets of an alien city is disrupted by the arrival of three humans: an eccentric historian named Jacob, a superhuman cyborg girl called Baichi, and a mysterious ex-spy known as Ree. They seek a priceless treasure which might free Earth from alien domination. Arkad risks everything to join them on an incredible quest halfway across the planet. With his help they cross the fantastic landscape, battling pirates, mercenaries, bizarre creatures, vicious bandits and the harsh environment. But the deadliest danger comes from treachery and betrayal within the group as dark secrets and hidden loyalties come to light.

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 2008. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection (2009), edited by Gardner Dozois, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2009, edited by Rich Horton, Robots: The Recent A. I. (2012), edited by Sean Wallace and Rich Horton, and Twenty-First Century Science Fiction (2013), edited by David G. Hartwell and Patrick Nielsen Hayden.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology War Stories: New Military Science Fiction (2014), edited by Jaym Gates and Andrew Liptak, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, June 2018.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

In the early 2020s, two young, genius computer hackers, Elizabeth Santiago and David Schwartz, meet at MIT, where Schwartz is sneaking into classes, and have a brief affair. David is amoral and out for himself, and soon disappears. Elizabeth dreams of technology and space travel and takes a military job after graduating.

Nearly ten years later, David is setting himself to become a billionaire by working in the shadows under a multiplicity of names for international thieves, and Elizabeth works in intelligence preventing international space piracy. With robotic mining in space becoming a lucrative part of Earth's economy, shipments from space are dropped down the gravity well into the oceans.

David and Elizabeth fight for dominance of the computer systems controlling ore drop placement in international waters. If David can nudge a shipment 500 miles off its target, his employers can get there first and claim it legally in the open sea. Each one intuits that the other is their real competition but can't prove it. And when Elizabeth loses a major shipment, she leaves government employ to work for a private space company to find a better way to protect shipments. But international piracy has very high stakes and some very evil players. And both Elizabeth and David end up in a world of trouble.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories (2004), edited by Jay Lake and David Moles. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 10 (2005), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.

Read or listen to the full story for free at EscapePod.

If people who can work magic are so powerful, why don't they rule the world? Well, as it happens, they do. One man wants to change that.

The Apkallu are masters of magic. They rule the world from the shadows, using mind control and deadly monsters to eliminate any threat to their power. Sam Arquero lost his family to a demon sent by an Apkallu. He knew that nobody would believe the truth, but now an old man offers Sam the chance to find out who is responsible and bring down the Apkallu forever.

Under a new identity, Sam must learn the secrets of magic, infiltrate the Apkallu, and walk a razor's edge of daring as he attempts to destroy the Apkallu leaders and avoid the supernatural detectives on his trail. But Sam's greatest challenge perhaps lies within--to avoid becoming like the hated Apkallu himself!

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 2004. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Second Annual Collection (2005), edited by Gardner Dozois.

A DROID AND HIS BOY, ON A SEARCH FOR A LEGENDARY WEAPON

Daslakh is an AI with a problem. Its favorite human, a young man named Zee, is in love with a woman who never existed -- and he will scour the Solar System to find her. But in the Tenth Millennium a billion worlds circle the Sun--everything from terraformed planets to artificial habitats, home to a quadrillion beings.

Daslakh's nicely settled life gets more complicated when Zee helps a woman named Adya escape a gang of crooks. This gets the pair caught up in the hunt for the Godel Trigger, a legendary weapon left over from an ancient war between humans and machines--which could spell the end of civilization.

In their search, they face a criminal cat and her henchmen, a paranoid supermind with a giant laser, the greatest thief in history, and a woman who might actually be Zee's lost love.

It's up to Daslakh to save civilization, keep Zee's love life on the right track--and make sure that nobody discovers the real secret of the Godel Trigger.

Solana Sina is a scarab, salvaging wrecked and abandoned space habitats among the Billion Worlds of the Tenth Millennium. She and an oddball crew--a raven, a cyborg, and a dinosaur--board the derelict colony Safdaghar hoping to score some loot before the colony gets catapulted into the outer reaches of the Solar System. But Solana and the scarabs come face-to-face with a gang of vicious pirates looking for slaves and treasure, and a mysterious stranger intent on preserving an explosive secret. Solana must overcome her own horrifying past to survive and escape before it's too late. But there's an even more dangerous threat lurking in the dark passages and ruined buildings of Safdaghar...