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"I smell the ammonia coming off the seaweed farm, and I feel the humidity in the air. And I remember the time I spent on the coral fields."
The Dominion brought coin and compass, and it took coral from the people. This is the scar they left behind.
Forthcoming in Aurealis.
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"Sasha flies through the dark of night and catalogues the stars."
A poem about yearning, astronavigation, bureaucratic ineptitude, and coffee.
Available in Haven Spec Issue 24.
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"A room carpeted with our bodies. A winterlark floor."
The Hundred-Eared Emperor paces atop the bodies of his avian captives while they plot a revolution of feathers and talons.
Available in Diabolical Plots.
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"There will be more days, and there will be more time to grow. The garden is endless."
Two-Magpie-Under-Sky seeks a soul-name for her daughter, and if she cannot find one, she will take one by force.
Available in CRUX 2026.
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"A sword is a promise of violence and victory, bound in steel and blood."
There are two ways of life in the uplands, and only one is going to endure. Zhurvoye must reckon with her past to secure a future in this new world.
Available in Dirty Magick Magazine #23.
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"Battle smells the same, boy. Blood and voided guts. You'll get used to it."
A young apprentice vizier discovers that war is nothing like he had expected, and that the work of scribe is a painful one.
Available in AUSTRAL 2025.
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"This was instinct. This was kill geometry, a perfect equation written in blood and sweat and carbon isotopes."
Breakneck high-gee interstellar combat, the interstice between technology and the human mind, and fast love in the theatre of war.
WINNER: 2024 Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Short Story
Available in Aurealis #167.
Reprinted (with audio) in Escape Pod #1009.
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"Alwyn knew then the inevitable struggle of every war ever fought, the carnage that stretched on from the primordial pools to the final cold darkness at the end of everything. That ebon-black abyss, a benthic expanse that pulled at the very fibres of his mind."
The oak-knower, the branch-bender, the vine-speaker: there are many words for Him, yet none prepare Alwyn for the darkness he faces at the Broken Spring.
Available in Tales from Coenydd.
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"Heng. Horizontal, left to right. The brush travels slowly across the parchment."
A shunned war mage turns to the Profane Word in his desperation to defeat an invincible enemy.
Available in Intrepidus Ink.
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"I paint your death in glittering calculations. The probabilities race through my circuits, my simulators twitching and firing in perfect unison. I winnow the possibilities."
Two starships dance in the cosmos. They are in love. They are also trying to kill each other.
Available in Heartlines #5.
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"In the tropical Balinese heat, my glitching neural lattice kicked into gear, digital thunder cutting through my cathinone haze. Target match: ninety-point two percent probability rating."
A deniable asset discovers just how deniable he is.
Available in AUSTRAL 2024.
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"SAR's directive is simple: identify the danger, repair the damage, save some lives. And the unspoken maxim: make tough choices."
Leyva is broken in the places no one can see. She holds lives in the astral glow of her laser cutter.
Available in Sci-fi Shorts.
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"There’s no way out now, for any of us. Our geothermal energy backups are eventually going to run dry...the impact broke plate tectonics and the physicists haven’t got a clue how to even begin fixing that...and once they go, we all freeze. Human popsicles at the end of the world. So how are things at your end?"
Two spooks on opposite sides exchange coded messages after the apocalypse.
Available in Escape Pod 959.
Reprinted in Triangulation: Bad Romance.
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"As a rule. Street-wise Shona did not follow fools’ crusades into the gaping jaws of death. And yet here she was, bleeding like a stuck pig."
A rebel without a cause gets into trouble, and she’s not sure she can get out of it.
Available in Neon Dystopia.
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"The smell of roasting meat always made Sam gag. It was not the scent itself, or the slightly acrid carbonisation that tickled the throat. It was the memory of flamethrowers in the bunker on Papua New Guinea."
Sam has come back from the front. He has brought the war back with him, and he's hungry.
Available in Andromeda Spaceways #97.
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