Dakota Rice
Bio
Writer of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and a little Horror. When not writing I spend my time reading, skiing, hiking, mountain biking, flying general aviation aircraft, and listening to heavy metal. @dakotaricebooks
Stories (25)
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The Other Side of the Solar System
I woke groggy and confused, momentarily forgetting where I was. The couch. Rubbing the bleariness from my eyes, I rose and stretched. Outside the wall sized window of my living room, the speckled lights of the vast metropolis painted me in their starlit glow. It was still dark, the never sleeping cityscape of Galactic Center bathed my living room in a calm indigo ambience.
By Dakota Rice2 years ago in Fiction
Anthropogenesis
The winter air was dry and hot, warm winds blew from the west, bringing with them smoke and ash. Seraphine sat in her tractor's cockpit looking down on a thousand acres of dying wheat. The tractor's twin turbine propellers blasted the decaying grain in circular drifts beneath the hovering rig, in the distance her family's massive automated combines sat idle, artificial intelligences each waiting eagerly to do their one purpose. Another harvest come and gone with nothing to show for it but empty pockets and shame.
By Dakota Rice2 years ago in Futurism
The Witch Queen of Altaer
Captain Brennar Houph stood proud at the helm of his dreadnought. Without the Slaughterer’s wide bridge viewport lay the blurring rainbow warp of interstellar lightskip. Star clusters blended into nebulae, entire star systems twisted before Brennar's eyes as the Slaughterer zipped through space at faster than light speeds. Admiral Hansel Ragnoros loomed next to him, the tall Nyven was lank of limb with sickly grey skin reminiscent of a corpse.
By Dakota Rice2 years ago in Fiction
Katabatic Winds
Pedaling viciously, I looked out beyond the wooden rods and canvas on which I sat, down at the end of the barren strip of land that I had just taken off of. The plateau was brushed smooth down the middle, meticulously picked clean of all rock, brush and weeds. Short torches burned along the eastern and western edges of the landing strip. Beyond the northern face of the plateau stone spires towered above the distance fogs, twice again as tall as the plateau home of my village. The wind was calm that morning, mist still hung along many the distant peaks, I hoped the wind would pick up only enough to blow off the low clouds, though the puffy cumulus that hung in the otherwise clear sky told me it wouldn’t.
By Dakota Rice3 years ago in Fiction
Dead Reckoning
I was twenty eight when the president announced we would be sending troops into Ukraine. The branches of the military had fought for nearly six months before the nukes started to fly over Europe, and suddenly what had been a war to save an invaded country became a war of survival. The draft had been reinstated, there had been protests and riots, though many young men and women had joined up willingly. I was twenty nine by then, older than the first round of drafties, but just yesterday the president had spoken to the nation, saying that it would be expanded to all qualifying young people below the age of thirty.
By Dakota Rice3 years ago in Fiction
Rigidity In Space
I woke before the rest of the crew just like I always did. The ion engines of the Deicide rumbled softly beneath my feet as I padded from the shuttle’s small kitchen, a boiling cup of coffee in hand, to the cockpit. Sitting in the left seat I didn’t bother strapping in, we wouldn’t be experiencing any high g maneuvers today, just the same old two g burn the Deicide had been cruising at for over a month now.
By Dakota Rice3 years ago in Fiction
The Top 10 Books of 2022
10. Starsight by Brandon Sanderson The second in Sanderson’s Skyward novels, Starsight follows Spensa as she leaves Detritus, discovers more about her cytonic abilities and the darker plots and creatures of the greater universe. I thought Starsight was better than Skyward and look forward to read the following novels in the series. A fun and short book, (by Sanderson’s standards) that I would highly recommend to anyone who’s a fan of the Star Wars: X-Wing novels or Ender’s Game.
By Dakota Rice3 years ago in Geeks
