Who held them in its grasp

By will alone he added tech

To their otherwise harmless craft

Unbubbled into space and time

The ship popped into light

A hurried check confirmed they were

Themselves in weapon-sight

Though doubtful of imperatives

They lined up a quick shot

And with a nod from the bombardier

They cast their own lot

Somewhere a great beast chuckled

His will wrought once again

By selfish needs and stupid deeds

The work, of course, of men.

__________________________________

Bubbled down in time and space

The little ship was sundered

Marooned amongst another race

Their valuables were plundered...

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Hurk + Dav

Arthur Robinson

A one-time perpetual student and editor of Waikato University's Nexus magazine, Arthur has put his multiple degrees to good use by slaving away in darkness on multiple novellas, screenplays and short stories. He was roped into co-founding Breach after a particularly rough night of cheap beer and cigarettes.

"THERE'S places we go and there's places we don't go, Hurk. And this is one of the latter."

Hurk mulled it over in his head. Which one was the latter again? Was that the first one, where they got paid, or was it the second one where they spent three days digging for nothing?

"Don't burst your brain, Hurk. I'm saying we ain't going in that door and we're leaving as soon as possible," Dav said, easily seeing the intense concentration on his lanky partner's face.

"We dug three days, Dav. Wouldn't be right to leave it open for some other peckerwood to make bank on, and I'm sure as hell not burying it up again."

"Then let some peckerwood waste his own damn time. You can't even read and you can tell what that door says!"

Hurk looked at the door. Real old. Don't make them like this anymore, Dav had once said of a similar door, on account of everyone who knew how got blown up a long time ago. Hurk squinted at the word on the door. It was the word with a circle with three pie slices coming off of it. "Bombs," he said, carefully sounding out the word, just like Dav had shown him. He could read just fine, Hurk told himself, even if he could only read one word. Only word worth knowing, as far as not getting his arse blown off was concerned.

Then Hurk had a weird feeling in his normally quite numb brain.

"Think I'm having one of those things again, Dav."

"Well, I'll be damned. You're having one of your notions! That makes two this month alone!" Dav suddenly spun on his heel and fired off a shot from his pistol at a cluster of rocks. Two critters bolted from cover, fur as brown as mud and twice as nasty.

"Damn roos. Reckon we should hear this notion of yours before too many more of those things show up and start thinking hungry thoughts at us."

"I heard a yarn in a barn a while ago."