Free Clockwork Chaos by C.J. Henderson, Bernie Mozjes, James Daniel Ross, James Chambers, N.R. Brown, Angel Leigh McCoy, Patrick Thomas, Jeff Young

said, his huge muscles bulging out of his leathers. “Forty-two girls for forty-two men. I got shackles if you need ‘em.”
    My amazement turned to revulsion at the sudden realization of what was happening. I looked at my friends to see if any of them looked hesitant, and I was shocked at the eager, hooting anticipation.
    A conductor yelled something at the girls in Hellenic, and they sobbed and wailed. The major looked back at us and said, “Officers first,” as he unlocked the cage.
    I stood frozen as my fellow aviators surged past the laughing and protesting major. The wails of the women turned to high-pitched, panicked squeals as the men descended upon them.
    “Boris, come on ,” Negreeb said, the engineer for the Star Sledge . He grabbed my wrist and pulled me in. “You’re going to get stuck with an ugly one.”
    I felt sick. If I didn’t partake, the others would surely notice, and they’d think of me as a poof, or worse, anti-imperialist. Rumors like that would get me ejected from the air corps and tossed back in with the stokers.
    I closed my eyes, unsure of what to do. I remembered similar screams, from when I was a boy. We’d been absorbed into the empire almost a hundred years previous, but we’d been allowed to keep our villages, and sometimes they came at night, by the hundreds. I thought of my brother, dying of the Sickness and of my father’s shame, upon finally knowing for sure the boy was never his son.
    She saved me, and I saved her. I didn’t see where she came from, but she was suddenly on my arm, her fingers clutching my skin so tightly, it hurt. I could feel the rapid beat of her heart in her chest. A gunner from Purple Revolution ran up and looked at the two of us and cursed. He turned away, yelling, “Boris got her. Yong-Shi bastard.” He laughed and chased after another.
    “Take me from here,” she said in barely-discernable Gremlic. “I won’t fight. Take me from the screams.”
    I brushed the soot and mist off my goggles as I emerged from the cloud a hundred meters above the sprawling city. All around, the flak slingers hurled their exploding charges from flat rooftops. In a nearby clearing, a trebuchet launched a glider into the air.
    They would notice me in seconds. I had little control over the fast descent of my chute, and if the defenders didn’t blast me, I would slam into a small olive grove hidden between two, multi-level stone buildings.
    Shouting rose from a nearby street, and the distinctive drum-rap of a Hellenic flechette gun fired up at me. The poisoned needles didn’t strike me, but I knew the next round would. I had to do something. I was still twenty meters above ground. I pulled my knife from my ankle scabbard, and I hacked at one of the two lines holding me in the air. It snapped, and I curved, falling faster as the chute fluttered out of balance. I held onto the second line and cut it just as I passed above a building with a thick garden on the roof. I tumbled. My left arm snapped, an incredible, jolting pain, as I careened into the roof, upsetting a small fountain and crashing into a trellis.
    Shouting filled the street below. I sat up and gingerly touched my arm through my leather jacket. I’d never felt a hurt like this, and I cried out into the smoky air. I cried out with the pain of my arm, and the loss of my friends.
    A trap door opened, and several soldiers poured onto the roof.
    I held up my good arm and said in my best Hellenic, “You got me.”
    The lead soldier raised his arm, and he fired his wrist pistol. I felt the flechettes strike my chest, penetrating through the leather. I looked down in surprise at the three needles. I felt the warm, stinging poison surge through my body as the curtain fell.
    “Why?” the major asked, looking up from his desk. I stood at attention in his office in the back of the administrative car.
    “Sir, am I not allowed?” I asked. I tried to remain as still as possible, but my heart felt as if it would beat out