Ray Gun Revival magazine, Issue 48

November 2008Issue 48

Pg. 2

Ray Gun Revival magazine Issue 48, November 2008

Overlords (Founders / Editors) Johne Cook, L. S. King, Paul Christian Glenn

Venerable StaffA.M. Stickel - Managing CopyeditorShannon McNear - Lord High Advisor, grammar consultant, listeningear/sanity saver for Overlord LeePaul Christian Glenn - PR, sounding board, strong right handL. S. King - Lord High Editor, proofreader, beloved nag, muse, webmistress Johne Cook - art wrangler, desktop publishing, chief cook and bottle washer

Slushmasters (Submissions Editors)John M. WhalenAlice M. RoelkeDavid Wilhelms

Serial AuthorsSean T. M. StiennonM KeatonKeanan BrandLee S. KingPaul Christian GlennJohne Cook

Cover Art “Leader of the Pack” by Dan LuVisi

Without Whom... Bill Snodgrass, site host, Web-Net Solutions, admin, webmaster, database admin, mentor, confidante, liaison – Double-edged Publishing

Special ThanksRay Gun Revival logo design by Hatchbox CreativeVisit us online at http://raygunrevival.com

Ray Gun Revival Table of Contents

All content copyright 2008 by Double-edged Publishing, a Memphis, Tennessee-based non-profit publisher.

Rev: 200811A

Ray Gun Revival magazine, November, 20082 Table of Contents3 Overlords’ Lair Full of Sound and Fury, Shibbolething Nothing5 The Third Shadoc War by Scott Davis 9 Father Fayad’s Curious Compatability Projector9 by Mike Duran12 Standard Deviation 12 by D. Thomas Mooers16 Beasts of Burden 16 by R. J. Walker Miller23 RGR Reviews - Books Matthew Winslow, Reviews Editor27 RGR Reviews - Balcony Fool Movie Reviews Paul Christian Glenn, Reviews Editor33 Featured Artist - Dan LuVisi38 Calamity’s Child, Chapter Five: ROP: Skip a Rope by M. Keaton47 Thieves’ Honor, Episode Three: Best-Laid Plans47 by Keanan Brand56 Memory Wipe, Chapter 24, Memory Reborn, Part One56 by Sean T. M. Stiennon74 This Raygun For Hire:The Alexander Cochran Affair74 by John M. Whalen81 The RGR Time Capsule October 2008

http://www.hatchbox.com/

Pg. 3


In the beginning, there was Science Fiction. Then Robert Heinlein played with the

abbreviation of HiFi (short for High Fidelity) and gave us SciFi. But because he wrote that playful term in private correspondence, the man who was generally credited with coining the term six years later was science fiction superfan Forrest J Ackerman, and there’s the rub. (That’s Shakespearean for ‘look it up.’ Also see ‘shibboleth.’)

Science Fiction versus SciFi. It is an argument as nearly old as the overall genre, and this debate has reared its hoary head again today.

The argument is that Science Fiction is genuine and important and literary while SciFi is a debasement, a willful internal diminishing of something of value, the low-brow sort of thing you might see in the film Independence Day.

Harlan Ellison wrote an essay about all this:

Traditionally, we have sought answers in philosophy, religion or mysticism, even in the concepts that you find in fantastic literature. These images have the magical capacity to inspire dreams, to enrich reality. At best, the literary genre called science fiction tells us we must be responsible for one another and for the common good. That’s the work of writers like J. G. Ballard or Thomas Disch.

At worst, it’s merely “Sci-Fi,” which holds that the world is full of monsters and conspiracies and that logic is beyond us. That’s what leads people to kill themselves to get on board a mythical flying saucer. Twisted and corrupted, it can turn life into a nightmare from which one escapes by eating applesauce and phenobarbital, or downing a slug of grape Kool-Aid laced with cyanide.

“Sci-Fi” is what the Rancho Santa Fe sleepers bought. It’s a simplistic, pulp-fiction view of the world exemplified by the movie

“Independence Day,” which warps our curiosity about the possibility of other life in the universe into an apocalyptic Saturday-morning cartoon. For the cultists, like so many Americans, standard religions and belief systems no longer cut it. We live in a time when science and technology have out-raced our capacity to understand them--cloning, computers and genetic engineering complicate lives that are increasingly given to loneliness. If the answer isn’t here. . .maybe it’s out there, in the infinite darkness. Most people who watch “The X-Files” or “Star Trek” or saw the rerelease of “Star Wars” are simply looking for escapism. But in a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, it went dramatically farther. They turned away from the wonders of the real world and embraced recastings of Jesus as a deep-space navigator.

This being an opinion piece, I think the

definitions they arrive at are ridiculous. SciFi is always filmable but Science Fiction is not? Why does the medium of film get to determine anything about literature?

J. Michael Straczynski says that Science Fiction is an interior kind of form, interior dialogue, interior monologue, while SciFi is just monsters and blowing stuff up.

And then we come to Harlan Ellison who is never short on opinions. He says that shortening the term from science fiction to SciFi diminishes the term and makes it easy for people to dismiss it.

Harlan has engaged in phrasing words to his advantage, here, but that doesn’t mean he is correct. Does it diminish something when we abbreviate it, or does it streamline it?

Let’s test that. I have read both 2001, the novel, and viewed 2001, the film. Does anybody think the former is Science Fiction because it was a novel and the latter is SciFi because it is a film?

This is pure snobbery, an artificial distinction among genre elitists. People will dismiss things that they don’t like regardless of what you call it. In a bookstore, whether you call it Science Fiction or SciFi, the terminology is useful in separating the genre from Romance literature or Mysteries or what-have-you. It

Overlords’ Lair Full of Sound and Fury, Shibbolething Nothing

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070224074857AAHkH3o

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/shibboleth

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/007460.html

http://www.rimworlds.com/thecrotchetyoldfan/?p=3539

http://www.newsweek.com/id/109072?tid=relatedcl

Overlords’ Lair - Full of Sound and Fury, Shibbolething Nothing Pg. 4


is a term of some basic descriptive value. Language evolves, and this abbreviation is a short-hand way to say the same thing.

Harlan says that SciFi is only concerned with plot, while science fiction is about how technology impacts the human condition. This is another artificial distinction. I’ve read and viewed bad Science Fiction. I’ve read and viewed great SciFi. I think quality is something that moderates a specific title, not a specific medium.

Personally, I prefer Speculative Fiction (or SF) as the larger genre title, and if you want to break up sub-genres underneath, such as literary sci-fi or hard sci-fi or pulp sci-fi, knock yourself out. But as a distinction, referring to SciFi as a mechanism to distinguish hack-work films from serious literary fiction is an artificial distinction you find only within our relatively small community.

JMS remarks that you can have a very violent action-oriented Mystery over here and a very thoughtful Mystery over there. He says that SciFi is all the same thing and doesn’t break apart in that fashion. I disagree. I think you have very violent action-oriented SciFi over there and very thoughtful literature SciFi over here.

What it comes down to is quality. You can have quality literature or crap literature, and you can have quality films or crap films. But calling something the longer name Science Fiction doesn’t automatically make it any more serious or give it any more redeeming quality than if you call it SciFi.

I’ll note that John Scalzi took a rather

measured look at the whole thing in his Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies:

Just as the citizens of San Francisco cringe when an out-of-towner calls the city “Frisco,” so do many long-time fans of the science fiction genre become annoyed when someone outside their circle refers to science fiction as “sci-fi.” To many longtime fans,

“sci-fi” has the taint of being a “lite” version of the genre they know and love; therefore, many longtime fans use “SF” as their preferred shorter version. This antipathy is not universal -- many science fiction genre professionals don’t care about it one way or another, and indeed, the US cable network devoted to science fiction and fantasy is the

“Sci-Fi Channel” -- but inasmuch as the bias is there, we’d be remiss not to acknowledge it.

For the purposes of this book, we make no value judgments about the desirability of

“SF,” “sci-fi” or “science fiction” as labels -- we use them more or less interchangeably for the sake of variety. This book’s author, a published science fiction novelist, does suggest that if you fall in with a group of longtime SF fans, that you use the term “SF” rather than “sci-fi” as an abbreviation simply to avoid the potential of being humorously ribbed by them about it (most long-time SF fans are actually pretty tolerant if you’re showing genuine interest in the genre).

The real issue here is a matter of perspective and preference. Right now, roughly twelve people in our genre are arguing over this while the of the world looks on, bemused, as we make mountains out of mole-hills while they go about their business of deciding not

to read anything at all. They don’t care what we call these works among ourselves. They also don’t know what they are missing, and that’s as much our fault as anything.

Instead of fighting among ourselves with fruitless, pointless squabbles, our real fight should be to write or film better quality stories instead of arguing over semantics that only insiders care about. We need to win them back to reading as a valued activity before reading itself is replaced.

So that’s the editorial. One programming note —the Deuces Wild and Adventures of the Sky Pirate serial installments are on hiatus until January to bring you the special two-part conclusion of Sean T. M. Stiennon’s impressive serial novel debut, Memory Wipe. Clocking in at 24k words, we’re breaking the chapter up in two and will present them in the November and December issues. Next to the Overlords, Sean was the first writer to come onboard with RGR, and has been working on Memory Wipe for longer than the magazine has been in print. He’s an up-and-coming star, and I look forward to seeing many of his works on store shelves as his career blossoms. Please give the conclusion of his novel your attention, and please let him know what you think. Thanks from all of us at RGR.

Johne Cook Overlord

Breezeway, WI USA November, 2008

http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/003672.html

http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/003672.html

The Third Shadoc War by Scott Davis Pg. 5


Crimson hooves clopped through the slushy snow as Qwistar urged the troika on. His

sled, reduced for speed to little more than rails and harness, gave no protection against the freezing spray that whitened his beard and eyebrows. The moons of Shadoc IV hung low over the canyon, a propitious sign. They lit the leafless trees bone white to the right. The path’s ruts caused his sled and team to lurch precariously to the left. The outside kelse scrabbled for purchase over the precipice, fairly asking for a taste of the whip that Qwistar cracked with relish across the balky beast’s flank. It was rumored that candidates were observed on their way to the arena. He hoped his entrance, commanding not one but three of the most headstrong, vicious predators in all the Shadoc worlds, would garner favor with the judge.

Arriving at the arena, he approached on foot. The floor beneath him was highly polished, black-tinted crystal, covering a bot-tomless pit. It gave the impression that he was skating on thin ice, an apt metaphor. Before him was a cage, four meters high, and two in diameter, made of the thinnest carbon fiber with embedded silver wire, curved into an ornate dome at the top not unlike a large bird cage. The judge sat inside the cage. She was a woman. No, the glowing outline of the surface of a woman, three dimensional, empty within, and almost transparent. He bowed deeply. She gestured for him to sit opposing her in the cage.

“This is not instruction. This is not a test. This is transformation, or annihilation. Ten thousand try. Three go on. Do you accept the challenge?”

“Yes.”

“Let it be stated for the record that one Qwistar Torvur, twenty six years in training for the honor to be transformed into an Instru-ment of Death, accepts the challenge and in so doing agrees not to live as a failure. May you be transformed!” At this the witnesses present seated in the grandstand around the arena echoed, “May he be transformed!”

And finally, Qwistar declared, in hope: “May I be transformed!”

The judge continued. “Let us begin. Repeat after me.”

“My blood is the blood of the fallen.”

At once all lights in the arena were extin-guished, and a thin wail sent chills down Qwistar’s spine. “My blood is the blood of the fallen.”

“I am their vengeance.”

Then, a rumble of thunder, a shudder of the floor, and the smell of ozone filled the air. “I am their vengeance.”

“My enemies will see only their own terror reflected in my eyes.”

Lightning coursed through the reddened sky and crashed. The floor dropped out from under the cage, now suspended at the top by clear monofilament and silver wire over the abyss. “My enemies will see only their own terror reflected in my eyes.”

“I am death.”

The cage suddenly lit up like the brilliance of the sun, millions of volts coursing along its wires, crackling, arcing, and buzzing. “I am...”

Stress sensors registered a millisecond of hesitation in Qwistar’s voice. The Faraday cage switched the conductors outside to conduits into the cage, electrifying the air of the enclosure and leaving smoking ash where Qwistar once sat.

Back at Shadoc Prime, Yakor Bloug recalled her cage avatar and growled with contempt. With only thirteen Instruments of Death, they should wait. But the armada was spoiling for battle, and would brook no delay.

Central Control consisted of these thirteen, their bodies removed through a noisy operation, since they refused anaesthetic. The brains were enclosed in a ship disguised as an irregular asteroid three meters in its longest axis. Since not even one full-bodied Shadoc could live in such a small space, it was bound to be overlooked by the enemy. Controlling their fleet directly, without the mediation of a slow physical body, would allow rapid-fire orders, boosting the advantage of their stringent

The Third Shadoc War by Scott Davis



training and selection. The control center was set seemingly adrift at an observable, but safe distance from the action.

The armada flashed out of hyperspace, precisely between the Sun and Earth’s predicted position, a million miles from its surface. At ninety-nine percent of lightspeed, they were just over five seconds to Earth intercept.

“Our surprise is complete!” chortled Instru-ment of Death One. “Earth sleeps like a rosy-cheeked child at his mother’s breast!”

“First wave, attack!” ordered Instrument of Death Zero to the eager Corsairs and Destroy-ers, who fired all weapons immediately. The Corsairs hurled rocks at dams and faultlines. The Destroyers targeted missiles with hydrogen bomb warheads at cities and military installa-tions. The first wave of the attack streamed through the atmosphere, easily exceeding damage predictions. Within moments, there was nothing but bouncing rubble. The entire Brobdingnagian armada decelerated via gravity lens and took up stations in orbit, awaiting further orders.

The holographic projectors on the planet had also been destroyed, revealing not a wrecked Earth, but a sorely abused Venus. What had at first appeared to be the moon also vanished. Triggered by the attack, the simulated moon splintered into a quintillion antimatter shards repelled from each other at high speed, but attracted to the armada’s hulls, enveloping the planet’s attackers.

The fighters called Central Control, pleading frantically for the freedom to fly away from the approaching shards. The pilots were slaved neutron star lizards, who had the best reaction

time in the known universe. They lived two thousand times faster than carbon life. Their fate unfolded in slow motion before them.

The Instruments of Death laughed at their cowardice. “What? These stupid lizards are afraid of a little grey dust?”

Their superior skills when engaging enemy fighters made no difference once within the antimatter cloud. A million Lilliputians working a hundred years could not have made a better minefield. The shards weaved chaotically, moved by gravity, magnetism, and collisions with each other. Every motion tightened the noose. And, if a pilot kept perfectly still, the shards would slide slowly toward him, attracted by the hull. Though so small that forty five could fit in a cubic centimeter, they each packed the punch of five tons of TNT at point blank range. The first explosive contact shoved each fighter into many more shards. Checkmate, in the form of a blinding white pulse.

Sickening green streamers came from the corpses of nightmarish space-faring insectoids, whose capabilities and purpose were unknown to anyone, especially themselves.

One by one, the troop Carriers flashed angry red, like so many moths against a bug zapper. The millions of 50-meter-high robot infantry within them that would have scoured for survivors on Earth’s surface using vaporizer beams, exploded in their pens.

Debate raged in the Control Center. “Attack!” “No, that is not Earth, but a decoy!” “It IS Earth! They have deceived our sensors in the vain hope we will hesitate with doubt!” “What happened to their moon?” “The explosion is an illusion. We haven’t attacked it, and what crazy

race would rain down rocks on themselves? No, they cloaked it, hoping we would overlook it and leave a remnant of humans alive on their lunar bases. Extrapolate the moon’s current position and attack!” “What is attacking our ships?” “Find the source of their firepower, and neutralize it!”

The explosions subsided as microwave popcorn does after the third minute. Any remaining ship was shot through by the intense gamma radiation that matter-antimatter colli-sions emit, killing its occupants and disabling its equipment. Most were also broken in colli-sions with all the debris scattered from disin-tegrated ships, or in orbital decay, burning up in the thick Venusian atmosphere. Unmanned rockets with magnetic antimatter contain-ment vacs in their cargo holds blasted off from hardened silos at Venus’s poles, to begin the laborious task of cleaning up the shards.

#

Forty million kilometers away, the Earth-in-Venus guise courtesy—again, of holographic projectors—had seen it all. The real moon was provided with a holographic star cloak, in case any Shadoc looked that way. In the auditorium a cheer became a roar as the giant screen onstage displayed the message: human casu-alties: zero. Candy Voluptoon, a pixie-coifed starlet in gold lamé sauntered past the views-creen toward the podium.

“I think it is now safe to tell the secret kept all these months. First prize in Earth’s defense goes to...drum roll please...Avignon Middle School!”

The gawky teens took to the stage beside



Candy, waving to their moms and jealous siblings. They looked to a pale boy, whose shaking hand held a speech. “I want to thank the Lord for supplying an expendable sister planet, and so many asteroids so we could flip the charges in their atoms and make that moon...” The music started playing as he droned on.

Bert, in the balcony’s media booth spoke in a smooth, professional tone: “The winning design was selected for the elegance of the math involved. The management of the gravity lenses that transferred Venus to Earth’s orbit and vice versa was done masterfully. Not one cup of tea slopped over. Also to the students’ credit was the sophisticated physics of the moon weapon and the artistry of the hologra-phy. The design had its drawbacks...”

“Speak for yourself, Bert. I, for one, love the big sun and beach scene at Prudhoe Bay,” called Candy from down on stage, on cue for their rehearsed repartee.

“Ah, but Candy, we’re going to have to make it back before the oceans boil.” Bert played stern daddy.

“Boohoo! I like an ocean that cooks its own lobsters.” She pouted theatrically.

Bert wanted to get back on subject. “I under-stand a follow-up contest will be announced for the best use of the metal and other slag Venus has inherited.”

“I vote for Disneyland Venus!” said Candy. Bert looked at the time and did the wrap-up.

“This year’s Defense of Earth Awards Extrava-ganza brought to you by Wayfarer. Remember, the same molecule-thick SPF fifteen protection

out there keeping us from the worst of the sun is available in the latest eyewear fashions!”

A breaking news flash at the bottom of the screen said: control ship captured intact

#

“Don’t you think we should just wipe out these berserk Shadocs, before they get a clue?” asked Josiah Clinton, past US President, as he strolled through the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum with current UN Secretary General Madeline de Gaulle.

“Oh, but the children enjoy the competi-tions so. And remember, the attacker is always the one off balance. Better they use up their resources than us.”

The pair of politicians strolled past the exhibit from the first Shadoc war. The ship was punctured by the hardened tendrils of a bioen-gineered jumbo Portuguese man-of-war.

The museum placard explained:

The creatures were altered to have white puffy bags of helium in place of their mantle, to float disguised as clouds. As the ships approached, they became entangled and injected with neurotoxin gasses proven effective by the infiltration team on Shadoc Prime. This exhibit only has a fiberglass mockup of the creature, but the ship is real, as are the monsters in the cockpit, kiln dried to prevent odor. The castings from their faces were used to make very popular Halloween masks, available in the gift shop. Earth owes its thanks to Mrs. Crabtree’s kindergarten of Perth for the idea. The kids also received a commendation from

the Sierra Club for giving other Earth creatures the chance to defend their home.

The second exhibit was of a much enlarged and enhanced ship. The holo was live, from distant cams. The ship commander’s face was frozen in an expression of jubilation, still convinced of his inevitable victory. The digital display showed picoseconds crawling by like hours beside an explanation of how time slows within a black hole’s event horizon. The special education class of Hoboken High took the prize that year.

The third one was new: the actual faux asteroid.

“The brains are healthy. The blood renewal process was never interrupted, and is now working at peak efficiency, keeping the tissues well fed and oxygenated. Their cranial fluid is continuously refreshed as well.” said the curator proudly. “The Instruments of Death have had their memories downloaded, for use in future contestant training. The external sensory input and communications links have all been disabled for safety. With proper care they should stay alive indefinitely.”

“Shall we?” said de Gaulle to Clinton.

He took the top handle, she the bottom of the oversized ceremonial scissors, and together they cut the ribbon to the applause of all present. The visitors streamed past them to see the brains through Plexiglas viewports cut for the exhibit.

Clinton asked, “Won’t they go mad from sensory deprivation?”

De Gaulle scoffed, “As if they weren’t



already.”

The curator answered, “They can always talk to each other.”

Scott Davis

Scott was in the town library stack last October, 2007, looking at the Science Fiction section for a book he hadn’t read. He considered going back to his favorite authors, like St. Exupery, but thought, why can’t there be more well-written SciFi? A book like...

And the more he thought about it, the thought popped in to write it himself. He got published within a year, at Nova SciFi, and received an Honorable Mention from Writers of the Future.

It’s all been grand fun ever since.

Father Fayad’s Curious Compatability Projector by Mike Duran Pg. 9


Standing on the gemmy-veined steps, watching the couple storm off, did not

dishearten Father Fayad in the least. In fact, he relished the revelation. That was one advantage of being stationed on the outer rim with the quadrant sludge. While the other grads got chapel assignments in Emerald City cranking out nuptials without discretion, he got to experiment. Unsupervised.

Not that Father Fayad enjoyed tossing monkey wrenches into the blissful machina-tions of matrimony. Fanning old flames and snipping rosy futures had its downside, as the embattled pair before him testified. Yet he did extract a peculiar satisfaction knowing he’d rid the galaxy of one more dysfunctional family. Ridding himself of one more counseling appointment—or suicide intervention—was an added bonus.

The couple clambered down the steps, reached the platform and turned to each other.

“I’m taking a pod,” snarled the young lady.

Her name was Saige and she’d agreed to Projection without hesitation. Most did. After all, who wouldn’t want to know their potential future? Of course, Father Fayad always had to stress the word potential because Compat-ibility Projection was not an exact science. Yet if they wanted the marriage documented by GlobalZone, they had to comply with the father’s modest stipulation.

Besides, what was a little DNA and a flip of the coin?

With her fingertips, she massaged the imprint left by her engagement ring. The naïve exuberance of their arrival evaporated in her judgmental glare. She flicked her U-visor down and the church’s marquee became tiny fractal droplets on the specs.

Orbiter’s Chapel performed weddings. Any species. Stationed on Platform 3, gateway to the outer rim, guaranteed a steady clientele. The Diocese rarely came this far, and when it did, it was only so some bishop could make sure the confessional was free of space silt and the stained glass sparkled in the celes-tialight. Then it was off to the Venom Bar or Respite Lounge for his so-called special-inter-est swing.

Which left Father Fayad free to tinker.

“C’mon, Saige.” Bio was lanky, fully human, and three shades paler than when he arrived.

“How could you?” Her hands balled into sledge heads. “You promised you’d be faithful, you vapo-brain.”

“It didn’t happen, Saige.” Bio held the disk aloft and waved it in appeal. His lobes fluttered as he whirled toward Father Fayad, eyes asquint. “Tell ‘er, Father. It’s hypothetical. It didn’t really happen.”

Saige strummed her nails on her hip and peered at Father Fayad. “But it could. Right?”

This was the part he enjoyed most.

Father Fayad shrugged off Bio’s bleating complaint. “DNA doesn’t lie, ma’am. Genetic Projection is ninety-five point seven percent effective. Coupled with your family history, your predispositions, emotive records, religious aesthetics—or lack thereof—and habitat, the findings are almost...indisputable.”

She flung one last scowl at her partner, spun around and gazed into the spacescape, lips clamped in frigid resolve.

Without some sort of metaphysical persua-sion, it was hard to argue with science. And when it came to intangibles, the kid was land-locked. Bio shook his head in uncomprehend-ing, robotic ticks and deflated. He slumped forward and stood silhouetted against the spiral arm, shipwrecked in the wake of her malice.

Hell hath no fury—was that how it went?—like a woman scorned. Not that Bio had done anything to scorn his fiancée. At least, not yet.

They called it the piggyback principle, part of the burgeoning Predictive Science movement. Under certain conditions, people respond certain ways. Call it fate or predestina-tion, in either case, homo sapiens just couldn’t seem to lose the genetic baggage. Their grubby footprints defiled the stellar spread.

Enter Genetic Projection.

GlobalZone implemented it to weed out

Father Fayad’s Curious Compatability Projector by Mike Duran



criminals and societal malcontents. By age nine, everyone within the quadrants was Siphoned. The Rightists fought hard against institution-alization—especially at that young an age—citing numerous cases of personal metamor-phosis and emotional modulation. Yet with the signing of the Declaration of Interdependence, the growing risk of interspecies contamination, and the proven effectiveness of the procedure, Projection was there to stay.

Of course, using the method as a means of determining relational congruity was all Father Fayad’s doing.

A pod shimmered in the distance, rocketing toward the Platform, and the woman tilted impatiently over the portal’s edge. Bio’s jaw opened and closed in mute argument with her backside.

All this because of a curious Compatibility Projector.

The science was simple. Given the necessary data—family history, emotional algorithms, environmental stimuli and cellular encoding—one could mathematically predict the arc of a person’s life. But in the case of marriage, the convergence of those arcs could be volatile.

Upon arrival, the smiling couple had sat holding hands, clearly mummified by terminal infatuation. Saige deferred to Bio’s soft-spoken courtesy, which belied a nervous twitch. He placed his clammy palm on the C-Pad and the Projector whirred to life, gathering, distilling, pigeonholing. She followed suit, then settled back and folded her arms, as if she knew what was coming.

The drive ticked like a boiling witch’s

cauldron. As the data spun out on a disk, Father Fayad massaged his chin—a canned gesture he’d incorporated to appear academic or humanitarian—and studied the results.

In most cases, the priest feigned shock. And scanning the dope on these two wouldn’t change the ritual. He hunched forward, squinting with artificial incredulity at the com-putations.

Bio cleared his throat and glanced at Saige. She clamped her crossed arms and agitated the toe of her boot. She was way ahead of him in the instincts department. Varieties of vexation appeared to undulate through her body like weather systems over a Martian seascape. He turned to Father Fayad, a sweaty sheen now christening his forehead. “Well? What does it say? I mean, we’ve been together for over an Earth Orbit. That matters, don’t it?”

But Father Fayad just clucked his tongue and kept squinting at the Projector’s data stream.

The kid was lean, even gangly, with no predilection toward corpulence. His father died with a remarkable Body Mass Index of nineteen. However, Saige’s fat cells were a ticking time bomb. Of course, at this age, everything was unborn, gestating in juvenility. Youthful metabolism covered a multitude of sins. Body sculpting had trampled the myth of inner beauty many moons ago. And given time and children, inner beauty was all the poor girl could hope for.

Which wouldn’t sit well with Casanova.

Bio perched on the edge of his seat as Father Fayad settled back, shaking his head.

He plucked the disk from the tray with an overblown, dutiful sigh.

“I’m afraid the findings are not in your favor.”

Saige’s foot-wagging shifted to hyper-drive. She sat in a merciless knot, arms woven, jaw cantilevered in cool overdrawn indifference.

The kid went from pale to pasty, and his Adam’s apple appeared to buoy atop a rising acidic geyser. “I don’t—how do you know? We could change. Things...things can happen.” Again, the obligatory sigh. By the end of his spiel, they’d be drawn and quartered. “According to my calculations, your marriage has a twenty-two point one percent chance of lasting seven solar cycles.”

“What?” Bio didn’t bother to look at Saige. “That can’t—no. We love each other. D’ya hear me? And...and nothing you can say or...predict—”

“What happens?” Her tone was glacial.

Bio did not turn to look at her. His angular shoulders became a rigid skyline with his eyes hovering overtop like two empty orbs, awaiting Armageddon.

Father Fayad cleared his throat with a sort of heartless nonchalance. “Current sex research—brain structures, particularly nuclei in the limbic system and hypothalamic mea-surements—places you two at opposite poles. Given Bio’s testosterone levels and his history of infidelity—”

“History?!” Bio vaulted from the chair in near cardiac arrest. “We hardly knew each



other back then! And it was only once.”

“Twice.” Saige looked past her fiancée and issued a curt nod toward the priest.

“In fact,” Father Fayad drawled, “the record shows a third, undisclosed event.”

Bio’s jaw trembled shut and he collapsed speechless into the seat.

“As I was saying,” the clergyman continued. “Given your families’ mating habits, Saige’s pro-pensity toward rotundity, her low self-esteem coupled with unaddressed bingeing, Bio’s non-monogamous tendencies, cavalier socio-sexual behavior, general intolerance for and inability to empathize with hormonal fluctuations in the female human—and barring some unan-ticipated inter-personal transmogrification—your marriage is unlikely to last.”

Saige wheedled off her ring and tossed it onto Father Fayad’s desk, where it rattled to a standstill.

Now, with the pod whisking her away, leaving the two of them alone on the platform sluiced in its vapors, the clergyman’s compas-sionate side could emerge.

“You know Bio, if it’s any consolation, there’s about an eighty-four percent chance that by next solar cycle, you’ll be married.”

The kid’s eyes became apertures of unbelief. He clamped his jaw, tossed the disk to the ground and pulverized it under the heel of his boot. Then he huffed across Platform 3, through the pyramidal gateway, toward a stack of Tonic outposts where he disappeared amongst a cosmopolitan crowd.

Father Fayad shook his head. As long as he wasn’t shot, he didn’t mind being the messenger. Still, the partings were always bit-tersweet. He looked up, past the sky rises and the distant veneer of the Shield, to the shim-mering tendrils of the nebula receding into cerulean space.

It used to be ‘for better or worse.’ But it was funny how, when people glimpsed ‘the worse,’ they couldn’t bear the better.

The priest shrugged and started back up the steps. The couple’s disintegration had inspired him to tighten tomorrow’s sermon. The working title of the piece was Science as Religion—a message that resonated with the quadrant clones and one he felt unusually destined to deliver.

Mike DuranMike’s stories have appeared in Relief Journal, Coach’s Midnight Diner, Forgotten Worlds, Alienskin, Infuze Magazine, and Dragons, Knights, and Angels, with articles in The Matthew’s House Project, Relevant Magazine, and 316 Journal. Mike is currently part of the editorial team for the Midnight Diner’s second edition and contributes monthly commentary at Novel Journey. He and his wife Lisa live in Southern California, where they have raised four children. You can visit him at www.mikeduran.com.

www.mikeduran.com

Standard Deviation by D. Thomas Mooers Pg. 12


Subject 809 was failing to cooperate, again.

He had declined to react to the subtle conditioning cues that should have indicated to him that the atmospheric temperature was on the decline. A cool breeze in the midst of what had been a relatively warm solar cycle, an approaching line of clouds, even the slow emergence of frozen precipitation; none of these evoked the desired response.

Instead of retrieving additional coverings from his den, as the others in his community group had done, 809 removed what skins and pelts he had been wearing and proceeded to lay himself down upon a large rock, fully open to the worst elements the climatic projection equipment could produce.

The behavior would likely result in illness and yet another trip to the infirmary, under full sedation of course, and it would not be the first of such incidents. Because of similar behaviors, 809 was becoming somewhat of a celebrity among the research staff. In response to raised temperature anomalies, he would don as much covering as he possessed, and so elevate his own internal temperature to dangerous levels. When food supplies were decreased, 809 would gorge himself to the point of illness. If there was an abundance, he would decline to eat what was plentiful for several cycles, sustaining himself on water and whatever else he could scrounge up.

Though habitually contrary, 809 was still one of the heartier males. However, when

presented with the opportunity to mate, his famously confounding nature would be on full display. 809 would reject the most physi-cally compatible females in favor of others that would not produce nearly as competitive offspring.

At one point, in a fit of pique over his subject’s recalcitrant ways, one of the mid-level researchers spiked the pheromone levels inside the control facility. The estrous females became so incensed with 809 that they chased him for the better part of a solar cycle trying to force themselves upon him, despite his clear disinterest and in the face of often multiple rivals who were simultaneously attempting coitus.

The same young scientist, in a further showing of inexcusable and completely unprofessional behavior, afterward reversed the pheromone mix so that all of the subjects, including the female that 809 found appealing, were driven to revulsion by his very presence. Appropriately, 809 failed to demonstrate any reaction that would have indicated he was the least bit fazed. He persisted on associating with whomever struck his fancy, even when they attempted to flee. Worse, and to the chagrin of the reproductive specialists on the team, 809 actually forced himself upon two of the females whom had been presented as ideal mates only weeks earlier, but whom he had shunned for his own favorite.

Study Group Eight seemed to be at a stand-still, and Starden Cosric, the study’s leader,

was becoming frustrated. It was supposed to have been a run-of-the-mill condition and response experiment for junior researchers. Instead, 809 and his insufferable personality had effectively hijacked the project, ruining three years of research, and tainting the educational development milestones of his protégés Cosric had so painstakingly tried to mold.

“What would you like for night feast?” Malsha, his occasional, cohabitating partner, inquired.

Cosric had been silent for several moments. He had been weighing other issues, mostly those pertaining to 809 in his mind, and none of them had been what he wanted to eat.

“I’ll just have Psini larvae with plankton and algae,” he replied off-handedly.

“You’ve had that three cycles in a row,” Malsha snapped. “You know it’s not good for you. The cholesterol is too low, and you need more simple sugars.

“But I like Psini,” Cosric answered petu-lantly. He was swirling a clear polymer vessel in one of his long, mottled green append-ages. The container held an exact, one-to-one mixture of corumn sap and acetone, but the soothing effects of the concoction were lost to Cosric’s continuing obsession with his wayward research subject.

“The shektar palms have produced

Standard Deviation by D. Thomas Mooers



wonderful fruit this sequence,” Malsha offered. “Why don’t we have some with the avila ova that I picked up at the exchange?”

In truth, he hated palm fruit, and liked avila only slightly more, but Malsha was taking her intractable posture. The normally vibrant tones of her chromatophores were checked in stolid grays and tans, and Cosric detected the sour ester of determination.

The easy response would have been to acquiesce, simply have the less desirable meal and salvage what could be had for the rest of the evening. Malsha was only a few cycles from reproductive apex, her lower thoraces had begun to distend, and despite her earlier show of displeasure, the telltale scent of pher-omones drifted in the air of the lodgings. All that was necessary was to accept one small loss for the chance of erogenous stimulation. It was the reasonable course to take, but Cosric felt that he had already suffered enough disap-pointment for ten sequences, let alone one.

If he was not going to have Psini, and he had not entirely given up on them, he certainly was not going to have any greasy, saccharin produce, nor sulfur-reeking eggs, even if it meant losing the opportunity for propagation.

“I find the olfactory sensation of that com-bination most unpleasant,” he replied dryly, before ingesting a large amount of corumn-tainted acetone.

Malsha was obviously not pleased with Cosric’s response. Her pigmentation had gone dark and metallic, near onyx, and the odors of hostility and conflict diffused into the space between them.

“You clearly have a lot of subjects to think about,” she said, moving to leave. “They must be taxing your perceptions.”

He saw her form rise in the middle of the chamber, resting upon one of the new dais-levs. The device was all the rage in the advanced commercial stratum in which Malsha labored. It operated on a magnetic field that was cere-brogenically tailored to its rider, but Cosric thought the thing made her look ridiculous. And the image, just before she hovered to the portal and disappeared through its osmotic seal, slightly lessened his disappointment at her departure.

Gazing up into the high, polished ceiling, Cosric rested for a moment. He tried to savor the remaining quantity of his drink, but annoyance, masquerading as hunger, led him to move. He slid across the chamber to the augur console. A filament, yellow and trans-parent, extended from his mantle and inserted into the crystalline display. He thought of food and the options came into view on the largest of the three flat panels.

Arthropods and small mammals, flat and segmented worms, and even the dreaded palm fruit floated in the holographics. Nothing that he wanted presented itself in the darting images that were supposed to entice him.

Frustrated, he sighed and thought of Psini worms. The augur console flickered once, and the image of the plump, creamy larvae drifted in front of Cosric’s large eyes. He thought agreement, and the display flickered again.

Cosric fashioned himself another drink, this time modifying the ratio to favor acetone, and in a few minutes a variegated sparkle at

the main portal signaled a visitor. He shifted his chromatophores to show a series of blues and lighter greens, and the lock to the osmotic seal released to admit a small, multi-legged creature with a large, oval container balanced on its back. Cosric broadcast a few, impatient flashes of orange and gestured to a low table in the center of the chamber. The conveyance minion scurried over and, inverting several of its appendages, deposited the package upon the table. It then chittered obsequiously, but Cosric scintillated with additional russet agitation, which sent the little food courier quickly on its way.

As soon as the seal was closed, he glided over to inspect his delivery. The package was a dark shade of brown, most likely to resemble natural soil. With anticipation Cosric opened the lid. Inside, he was pleased to see a small pile of cream-colored larvae wriggling in a thick, fungal liquor. He ingested a small amount of corumn-tinged acetone, before sticking the tip of one his limbs into the soupy mass. Psini and fetid jelly clung to the pads, which he slid between the sharp edges of his mandible. The taste was sweet and light with just a delicate hint of visceral resistance.

Cosric quickly ingested the meal, chasing it down with two more containers filled with progressively higher levels of acetone. He declined several forms of sensory entertain-ment, including keeping himself up to date on the mass sentience channels, and decided to call it a cycle. He retired to his private chamber, sliding into the warm pool of silt and hydro-carbons, and in no time he was dreaming of his youth back in the Lavina wetlands. The Psini there were always plentiful, and it was back then, living with the rest of his hatch, that



he developed the taste for the salty, sweet worms.

Somewhere, in between basking in brilliant solar light and ingesting copious amounts of Psini, he lost track of self-awareness and dozed into the night.

At the start of the next cycle, Cosric was supposed to be at the research facility halfway to the meridian, but he instead lingered in his resting pool, sleeping late into the morning. The additional repose seemed to have elevated his spirits. By the time he finally got to the study group site, Cosric had made up his mind on the proper course of action for the whole 809 affair.

Unfortunately, on his arrival he was imme-diately accosted by one of the younger asso-ciates. The male was clearly junior to Cosric. Much smaller in stature, the youth’s underde-veloped mantle gave away the inexperience of his years from a considerable distance. His name was Occiden Jonant, and though he showed more talent and promise than most of the other research students, for some reason Cosric could not stand him.

“Doctor Cosric!” Jonant exclaimed, forgoing the proper pleasantries and gushing with violets and yellows. “I have great news. I performed a cognitive battery on 809, and the results are startling.”

“Cognitive battery?” Cosric demanded. “Who authorized such a procedure?”

“Uh, no one,” Jonant replied, his chromato-phores reducing to dull greys and tans. “The study seemed bogged down, so I took the lib...”

“You took?! You took?”

“Yes, I know, Sir. It was irregular, and I may have been out of line. I apologize—but the results! 809 shows advanced intellectual function! His mental faculties are beyond the charts for homoeothermic life forms!”

Damned 809! Cosric fumed. It was his behavior that spawned this impertinence. Bad enough that the conditioning research was completely flawed, now the discipline of his interns was close to being lost.

“It must be the cause of his anomalous behavior,” Jonant continued almost to himself, and Cosric could see the boy’s color turning a pensive shade of blue.

“We surmise that 809 must somehow be aware of his captivity, possibly even the study itself. We will have to change the parameters to investigate for reflection and even deductive reasoning...”

“No, we shall not,” Cosric pronounced gravely. “Group Eight is done, Jonant. The research has been pointless. Have the specimens eutha-nized, and personally see to 809.”

“But Doctor, 809 can think—you can’t!!”

“I most certainly can, Occiden,” Cosric answered, using his forename to show dominance. “Need I remind you that I am a complete fellow of the Academy with full research privileges?”

Jonant was silent but his coloring burned in orange.

“Now,” Cosric continued, sensing the odors of shock and fear. “You will instruct the other

staff on the project to terminate the experiment immediately. See to it, or you shall never find another grant or fellowship in your lifetime.”

Cosric left the youth, now seething in charcoal tones, to his tasks and headed for his director’s chamber. There, his sizable work-station was blinking and flashing with dozens of uncompleted tasks. Grant proposals were unread, the budget which was now a moot point had not been completed, and the staff reviews which had been due to the Academy half a sequence ago were mostly blank files.

Well, at least I no longer need to worry about the budget, he thought almost cheer-fully.

For the moment, Cosric ignored all of his responsibilities, quite possibly risking sanction by his seniors at the Academy, and instead poured himself a small vessel of acetone. It was early, but Cosric consumed it straight. He then reflected on his options for his meridian repast. Perhaps he would have Psini worms, maybe with that new female attendant he had recruited from Chemical Research.

Yes, he decided, imagining the incineration of the specimens in Group Eight and pouring another drink.

The worms and the new company kept sounding better and better.



D. Thomas Mooers

D. Thomas Mooers did all he could to avoid writing. After graduating from orthwestern University with an honors degree in Art History, he spent years in traditional employment, accomplishing everything from pouring perfect martinis to driving less than perfect forklifts. It was only after he graduated from law school and passed the bar that he finally gave into his baser artistic instincts, and he has written ever since.

Mr. Mooers lives outside of Boston with his wife and two children. He is still a recov-ering attorney and continues to write for therapeutic reasons, but he is pleased to report that it has been several years since he has sued anyone.

Beasts of Burden by R. J. Walker Miller Pg. 16


Underestimation can be a deadly mistake...

“Brilliant, my boy. Simply Brilliant. This is your moment. It’s an unbelievable achieve-ment. Six of them! However did you manage?”

The elderly face shown above the halo-display nodded approvingly at the young man seated before it wearing a stiffly starched uniform of green and gray, the Corporation colors. The young man, Sergeant Kelly Graham, grinned sheepishly and turned his tri-peaked cap nervously in his hands.

“I don’t exactly know, Sir,” he said. “I just sort of waved my gun about, and they looked at me and marched up into the cargo and sat down. Then I shut them in.”

“Nonsense,” the face exclaimed. “’Just sort of waved my gun about!’ As if that would work! Hah! My dear boy, you have acquired a fortune! Each will sell for millions! And you survived when the others were brutally killed by the ghastly conditions. It’s amazing. Utterly astounding!”

“Beg your pardon, Sir, but they weren’t really brutally killed. We don’t actually know what happened to them. They just disappeared into the jungle and never came back. And Mathew survived, too,” he added humbly.

“Eh? Mathew? I don’t know of any Mathew. But never mind that. The rest disappeared? That’s what I said. They vanished and were brutally killed. But you survived! I shall have a

medal for you when you return home.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“And a promotion for now. From now on you’ll be captain of the Bestiary.”

“Thank you very much, Sir. I’m very obliged.”

The face above the display beamed. “Obliged? No. I’m obliged. It’s a wonderful achievement. A landmark in human history. Do hurry back now—we’re all waiting to congratulate you on your success.” The face looked about and frowned.

“What is that? Oh.” It turned back to Kelly. “I must be getting along now. Goodbye and good luck on your voyage home.”

“Thank you, Sir. Goodbye.”

There was a loud blip, and the head disap-peared into a sparkling haze over the display. Still grinning despite his misgivings, Kelly switched off the console. He was trying not to bask too much in the old chairman’s praise. He felt quite strongly that it was mostly unwar-ranted. It was true that he had obtained a fortune for the Corporation, but still...it had been much too easy. He really had just waved his raygun in the air while the gorts had shuffled into the Bestiary (or the Beast as it was affectionately called) to be locked away. The promotion, of course, meant next to noth-ing—after all, someone had to run the ship, and he was the only one with any experience.

But the medal...

He shrugged guiltily to himself. He had tried to explain. There was simply nothing more he could do. And, too, recognition and appreciation would be nice changes to the usual indifference he received within the Cor-poration’s ranks.

A loud knock sounded on the door to his cabin. It would be Mathew, of course. Who else was left? Kelly shouted for him to come in.

Mathew was even younger than Kelly. He was a short man with crew-cut blond hair and a baby face. He looked ill and hassled—Kelly had put him in charge of caring for the gorts during the voyage.

“Damn it, Kelly,” he said once he was inside. “They still won’t eat. I swear I’ve tried every-thing. I keep tossing stuff in, but they won’t touch any of it. They don’t even look up.”

Kelly heaved a sigh and stood. He was forced to crouch slightly because of the low ceiling. Spacecraft were made to fit average human dimensions and he was several inches taller then average. Sometimes he found himself envying Mathew’s shorter stature.

“Let’s go take a look at them.”

#

The gorts were kept in the cargo hold of the ship, separated from the crates of goods and

Beasts of Burden by R. J. Walker Miller



food by a wall of sturdy, closely set bars. The Intergalactic Corporation Ship (ICS) Bestiary was a Herculean Class zoological barge. While most of the barges owned by the ZooTech Inter-galactic Corporation worked in scientific fields (cataloguing and collecting species for zoologi-cal study), the Beast searched out creatures to be used for a different purpose—exotic work-horses for wealthy citizens across the galaxy.

There were six of them. They were hulking beasts with large, sloth-like claws, beady eyes, and thickly matted bluish-black fur. All six were slouched across the floor of the cargo, completely motionless. Kelly groaned. They had never seemed to be particularly active creatures, but now they were obviously lan-guishing. He couldn’t let them starve. They were his fortune, and he could only image the reaction at Corporate Headquarters if he came back with a cargo hold filled with dead gorts.

Kelly began to interrogate Mathew as to what he had tried to feed them through the bars. It turned out to be just about everything imaginable: fruits, leaves, grains, insects, bark, even meat.

“Could they be ill?” Kelly mused. “We have medications in the medipod. We could try something gentle...Green Fyxall, maybe?”

Mathew shrugged. “I’m not sure. Your call, Sarge.”

Kelly didn’t bother to mention the promotion he had just received. “Fine then,” he said. “Let’s give it a try. Go and get the Fyxall, a syringe, and a raygun set to Sedate, just in case.”

Mathew saluted and trudged off to fetch

the supplies.

After he had disappeared, Kelly turned back to admire the gorts. Few humans had been rewarded with an opportunity to see one, and none before had actually been able to take a living specimen. Though the gorts were slow-moving, they were extremely elusive and hard to locate in their overgrown natural habitat. They were toothless, and the ZooTech xenobi-ologists who had studied them briefly before disappearing guessed that they ate only soft fruits and possibly leaves. Their small black eyes reflected little intelligence, and it had not yet been determined whether they had any real type of communication. Still, they were strong enough to completely uproot a full-grown Hàngop tree and Kelly was quite glad that he had replaced the standard-issue steel bars of the barge with hydro-titanium polymer before the voyage.

“Got the stuff.” Mathew was back.

Kelly accepted the syringe from him and loaded it with the thick green chemical that had proven so valuable in healing human illnesses.

“I’ll try it with only one to begin with,” he decided aloud, “and if there’s any improve-ment to its health we’ll treat the rest. You can cover me with the raygun while I go in.”

The gorts seemed quite docile, and Kelly wasn’t really worried about them reacting violently to the shots, but they were large and powerful, so it couldn’t hurt to be careful.

He went to the wall nearest the bars and pressed his palm to the center of a glowing green tile. The bars slid into the ceiling with a deafening clank. The gorts showed no sign

of noticing. Kelly went to the nearest gort and knelt by its prone form. Mathew followed closely with the tranquilizer.

“Mighty sized brutes, aren’t they?” Mathew whispered reverently.

Kelly nodded. They were stunningly large: easily twice his height and probably nine times his weight. They had made the Beast’s takeoff considerably slower.

Still kneeling, Kelly reached out with the syringe and carefully brushed aside some of the fur on the gort’s arm. As his fingers touched the thick hide of the beast a cold shiver ran through his body, and for a moment, his mind went completely, disturbingly blank. Blinking frantically, he shook his head and his thoughts returned, although something felt as though it were missing—stolen, even. He shook his head again and went back to work, carefully aiming the syringe, leaning forward, and―

With lightning speed, the huge arm shot forward and knocked needle from his hand, sending it smashing against a wall twelve feet away.

Kelly gave a strangled cry and hastily withdrew his hand. His fingers had been struck by the gort and were twisted at an unnatural angle and beginning to swell.

Behind him Mathew screamed. The raygun flew over Kelly’s head and hit the floor several feet in front of him. It shattered, sending pieces of plastic and metal skittering across the cell. Turning, Kelly saw the five other gorts standing before the cell’s exit, blocking the way out. Mathew lay on the floor. It seemed that one of the gorts had knocked the gun from his grasp.



The gort that Kelly had been kneeling beside stood and keenly studied him out of eyes that no longer seemed quite so unintelligent.

“Nice ship,” it commented in nearly perfect English, the words marred only by an accent slightly reminiscent of the Verges V dialect.

“You speak Galactic Common?” asked Kelly, astounded.

“Obviously,” said a larger one by the door, its tone snide. The others grunted. The sound seemed rather malicious. “You humans have no respect for your own thoughts. You should hold onto them tighter—they’re easier to get at then a Fori in a Hàngop tree. Just a touch and they fly right to you.” The gorts grunted again.

Kelly remembered the shiver that had worked its way up his spine when he had touched the gort, as well as the feeling that something had been stolen. He shivered again, compulsively.

Mathew had crept to Kelly’s side and was quivering with either fear or pain, clutching a mangled and bleeding arm.

“Kelly...” he hissed. “ Kelly, look. Look at their damn teeth.”

Kelly looked and broke into a cold sweat. Where toothless gums had been only moments before, now hung multiple, eight inch, serrated teeth, dripping with black saliva.

“Retractable,” Kelly breathed. “Like some snakes. That explains it all.”

“Explains what?” asked Mathew desper-ately.

“Explains why we weren’t eating the garbage you tossed through the bars,” one of the gorts offered.

“They’re going to hijack the ship,” Kelly explained calmly. “That’s why they just walked aboard.” He nodded thoughtfully to himself, his eyes slightly glazed and unfocused. Shock had set in. “They didn’t want to fight us when we were prepared, but they wanted the Beast. I think they’ve just been waiting for us to open the bars.”

“Yeah,” a gort said. “Something like that.”

“And I don’t think the rest of the crew dis-appeared,” Kelly said dispassionately. “I get the feeling that the gorts like fresh meat.”

Mathew seized his arm in a vice-like grip. “Thanks for clarifying.”

The gorts began to close in.

Mathew’s grip tightened further, his nails biting painfully into the flesh of Kelly’s arm. Kelly was jolted slightly from his state of shock by the sting. “Kelly,” he whispered, “one of them is examining the door mechanism. It’s left a gap. We have about two seconds.” Then he released Kelly’s arm and ran.

It was the slowest two seconds that Kelly had ever experienced. He saw Mathew plunge through the gap as slowly as a ghost might drift. He saw the two gorts on either side of Mathew lunge at him—and miss, by millime-ters. He heard the gorts roar angrily—a sound much like a raygun being fired on Full in a sealed compartment—and saw them leap after Mathew and out of sight.

Then Kelly was alone.

He cursed softly. What could Mathew be thinking? There was no place to hide on a ship the size of the Beast. The cabins and living quarters had doors that were purely for privacy and would offer him no protection against the strength of even a human enemy. The medipod had heavy, locking doors, but the entrance was equipped with a Seal and Sterilize command—something which no human could hope to survive. After that there was the cargo—where Kelly was—the bridge, and the command room, all of which were completely open.

Kelly shrugged. If nothing else, Mathew’s diversion allowed him to arm himself. He slipped out of the cargo and onto the bridge.

A small collection of rayguns and shock pistols hung by the airlock. Kelly selected the second largest the ship was equipped with—the largest had, presumably, been taken by Mathew as he ran by—then stood still and listened.

“The first of you to move is dead,” Mathew’s voice yelled hollowly from the region of the cabins.

Kelly winced. It was a poor line, even if it was probably true. But the trouble with being badly outnumbered was the fact that the enemy could spare some lives. Mathew could, possibly, hold the gorts at bay for a few minutes, but eventually they’d take the risk and strike. Thumbing his raygun to Full, Kelly ran in direction of Mathew’s voice.

Mathew was standing in the passage that ran between the cabins, raygun held at chest height, roaring threats and warnings with every



breath. The gorts stood before him, cavernous maws gaping and dripping with saliva. They were also threatening, and punctuating those threats with some of Kelly’s favorite curses, phrases which they had, undoubtedly, snagged from his consciousness with the common language. Many of the curses were, rather embarrassing-ly, from Kelly’s youth, and he reddened slightly as a gort bellowed, “Surrender, you bug-bitten posterior of a Femming!”

The gorts didn’t see Kelly as he came up behind them and silently flicked off the safety of his weapon, but Mathew did, and gave him a look which clearly said, “What the bloody hell took you so long?”

Then his eyes flicked downward and Kelly, following his gaze, saw the hatch of the Beast’s evacupod beneath Mathew’s feet. Kelly bit back a curse. Why hadn’t he realized it before? It was the obvious solution. There wasn’t anywhere to hide on the Beast but simply leaving would be quite sufficient. And now Kelly had wasted good time by not immediately comprehending. His face tightened with anger, most of it self-reproachful, and his finger tightened on the trigger of his gun. Mathew saw the look and opened his mouth to protest, but it was too late. The trigger was pulled, and the gun jerked in Kelly’s hand, its surface heating until it was almost impossible to hold.

A withering explosion of pure energy vaporized a gaping hole through the torso of the gort standing nearest to him. A second later Mathew’s gun fired, sending a sizzling bolt slicing through a gort and past Kelly’s left ear. Kelly felt the skin of his face and neck prickle and burn and was almost knocked from his feet. The gorts howled with earsplitting volume and

the sharp odor of burning flesh and hair filled the ship.

“Now!” Mathew shouted. He kicked open the hatch and dove into the exposed hole in the floor. A gort took a swipe at Kelly’s head and Kelly flung his useless raygun—rayguns could only fire one shot on Full without charging—in the alien’s face, dropped to the floor, rolled beneath the outstretched arm of a gort, and fell through the open evacupod hatch.

Mathew hardly looked up as Kelly plunged through the ceiling. He was already seated, breathing heavily, at the pod’s computer console.

“Shut the hatch!” he yelled.

Kelly scrambled from the floor of the pod and slammed the hatch shut over his head. A gort tried to reach its hand into the opening, and as Kelly tightened down the hatch its fingers became caught. There was a sickening crunch followed by a pained bellow from above, and three fingers, oozing thick, mustard-colored blood, dropped onto the floor of the pod.

Almost instantly, heavy pounding began on the opposite side of the hatch. Kelly saw with horror that the metal around the entrance was beginning to buckle slightly. He cast a panicked glance at Mathew, who looked up at the hatch, winced, and began typing rapidly at the computer console.

“Activate launch sequence?” the computer asked in an infuriatingly calm female voice.

“Didn’t we change that voice track?” Kelly asked, realizing almost instantly that it was an incredibly stupid thing to be worried about at

the moment.

Mathew ignored him. “Immediately,” he told the computer, still entering the velocity and directional settings by keypad. He was only using one hand. His other hand and arm were cradled to his chest and blood was beginning to soak the shirt of his uniform.

“Launch sequence commencing. Please secure you harnesses while I—”

“No time for that,” Mathew interrupted. “Launch now.”

He tapped out another command while the hatch creaked ominously above them. The little vessel gave a rasping shudder, followed by an earsplitting boom, and then Kelly—unsecured, despite the computer’s last minute instruc-tions—was hurled heavily against something hard and stuck his head. Stars—different than those outside the evacupod’s small viewport—leapt up, swirling and flashing before his eyes, and Kelly lost consciousness.

#

He awoke, moments later, to Mathew spraying water in his face from a small drink-hose. “No time for that, either,” he said as Kelly sat up groggily, rubbing the back of his head.

“We have decisions to make immediately and already not enough time.”

Mathew came to his feet and, ducking so as not to bang his head on the extraordinarily low ceiling of the pod, went to the computer console.

“Display the Beast,” he told the computer.



The pod’s slow AI hesitated momentarily as it translated the ship’s nickname, then said,

“ICS Bestiary displayed.”

The console crackled and halo-particles swirled above it into an image of the Beast. The barge was bucking and twisting spastically like a marionette under the control of a drunken puppeteer.

“They’re trying to learn how to use the ship to pursue us,” Kelly said softly.

Mathew nodded. “They are. And it looks like they’ll learn it soon, even though it doesn’t seem like that was a skill they managed to swipe from you brain.”

“The ICS Bestiary’s local coordinates,” the computer said evenly, “are point-zero-five-six lights seconds south, with north being the current trajectory of this vehicle.”

Kelly glanced at Mathew. “If they can get the ship under control, they’ll be able to catch up with us in under a quarter of an hour. This craft is slow.”

“I’m just glad that the Beast isn’t installed with any weapons,” Mathew said. “If it were, we’d probably be dead now.”

“As if it would make a difference.” Kelly’s voice was bitter. “The pod has no maneuvering abilities. All they have to do is catch us, attach, and board. It’s only a matter of time.”

“Sure. But that’s only if we just sit here and do nothing. That’s only one option, and I think it’s a poor one. We have two others. The first is that we tell the pod to use what’s left of its fuel to land on the gort’s home planet. We then

abandon the pod, try to survive in the forests, and elude the gorts.”

Kelly snorted shortly. “That’s a good one. I’m sure we’ll be better at hiding on the gorts’ own planet than they will be at hunting us down.”

“It’s better then nothing,” Mathew said stubbornly, ignoring the sarcasm. “But I have an even better idea. I can still access the files and programs on the Beast’s main computer at this range. With a little basic hacking, I should be able to execute commands as though I were in the ship. I don’t think that the gorts are skilled enough with computers yet to stop me.”

“And what good will that do? Maybe we can slow their progress for a little while, but there’s no way that we can get away.”

Mathew peered at Kelly with an expression of genuine, if slightly exasperated, concern.

“How hard did you hit your head?”

Kelly, who wasn’t in the mood for either joking or sympathy, merely glared.

“Okay,” Mathew said. “I’ll explain then. Do you remember a certain application called Huebner’s Bomb?”

“Yeah...” Kelly said, then blanched as he realized what Mathew was thinking. Admiral Alfred Huebner had been famous for his tactic of detonating normal-looking, unmanned ships near enemy spacecraft. The program humor-ously dubbed Huebner’s Bomb served a rather grim purpose: it began a ship’s self-destruction sequence. “No,” he said, his voice barely more then a whisper. “The Beast is worth millions. She’s a major asset to the Corporation’s

program and the chairman would never forgive me for losing her—he just made me captain.”

Mathew looked at him sharply. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know. But Beast is no use to the corpora-tion while being held by the gorts, and you’re no use to anyone if you’re dead.”

On the display, the barge’s motions had begun to smooth out. Kelly nodded slowly. Mathew was right, of course. There really wasn’t another option. But the decision was still very hard to make. It meant that the fortune that Kelly had just acquired would be destroyed, along with his reputation with the corporation. But my fortune was never real, anyway, Kelly thought. It was trick right from the beginning. But if I hadn’t entered the cage...what would have happened then?

“So you agree with me? We only have a minute or so to decide: if we wait too long, they’ll be too close to destroy without destroy-ing the pod, too.”

“Go ahead,” Kelly said, and Mathew instantly began typing at the keypad.

Watching him, Kelly was impressed. He had never thought that Mathew possessed the intelligence to be an expert at anything, much less computing, but Mathew obviously knew quite well what he was doing. And, even with his arm injury, Mathew had responded much better under pressure then Kelly himself had. If it weren’t for him, Kelly would have probably been eaten. As it was, he might starve waiting for someone to recover the pod, but Mathew’s effort was still remarkable.

“The software application Huebner’s Bomb needs verification from the captain of the ship



in question in order to begin,” the computer said.

“Lucky thing we have him here,” Mathew said.

Kelly took a deep breath. “Begin the sequence,” he ordered.

The computer processed his voice and verified the command with a short chirp. The image on the display showed that the Beast had managed to completely stabilize and was moving swiftly towards them.

“Ten seconds until the finalization of the destruction sequence. Would you like to upload priority files?”

“Go ahead,” Kelly said. “But don’t delay the destruction.”

Both Kelly and Mathew waited silently, breath held, as the seconds ticked by on the display, slightly above the smoothly gliding image of the Beast. Four. Three. Two. One. Then the words Sequence Finalized flashed above the image.

And nothing happened.

Then the halo-particles of the image formed into a error symbol.

“Impossible,” Mathew breathed. “It had to have worked.”

Suddenly the particles swirled together in a confusing and abstract web of flashing color and partial images. Then they froze again.

“There is an error in the rendering of the requested sequence. The graphic interface is

not equipped to handle—”

Mathew released a whoop. “Yes! It’s only a rendering error. The console can’t handle the explosion. It’s too graphically challenging!”

“Hoorah,” Kelly said, bleakly staring at the frozen particles of the display. “We’ve delayed our death a few days longer.”

“Don’t be such a kill-joy. At least there’s a chance now.”

He was right, Kelly knew, but he had a hard time admitting it. Just hours before he had been trying to explain to the Chair of ZooTech why what he’d done didn’t deserve the accolades he was receiving. But after the destruction of the Beast he saw how paper-thin and meaning-less his protests had been. He had really been looking forward to the riches, honor, and fame, though he hadn’t allowed himself the luxury of actively thinking of them. And then everything had been torn away from him by an underes-timation and a blossom of flame. For barely a day, everything he could ever had wanted had been in his hands. And now he had nothing.

“I’m deploying emergency beacons and have the computer relaying a ‘stranded’ message,” Mathew said.

“No one will ever come out here. We were some of the first, besides the few xenobiolo-gists who disappeared.”

“Who were eaten, you mean,” Mathew corrected.

“If only we hadn’t gone into the cage,” Kelly abruptly fumed. “If only we hadn’t fallen for their ploy.”

“How could we have known? We thought they were going to die.”

“We should have taken the risk. It was an idiotic mistake.”

“Remember what Commander Ray always told us in training: ‘never be afraid to make mistakes.’ We made a mistake, but its ridicu-lous to pine about it now. We have to accept it.”

Kelly began to nod, recollecting the tough old trainer’s words, but then he frowned deeply and shook his head. “That’s not what he said. Ray said, ‘Never be afraid to make mistakes. But once you have made them, learn, try again, and never repeat them.’”

“Yeah, okay.”

“That’s a good lesson, I think,” Kelly said slowly, squinting in thought.

“Sure it is. So don’t get depressed.”

Kelly pounded his fist on the wall of the pod. “You’re not getting it this time. It’s a good lessen. We made a mistake. What did we learn from it?” Mathew waited silently, so Kelly continued, “We learned that the gorts are highly intelligent and cunning. We learned that they’ll kill us and take our ships, if they get the chance. We learned not to trust them. But what’s the next part of Ray’s lesson?”

Mathew blinked. Then he understood what Kelly was saying and shook his head. “Try again? How? We just blew up—”

“Our ship. I know. But the gort’s home planet is right beneath us, and there are leftover ships their from our science colonies. Remember the



guys who vanished before we came? Those ships are old and rotten, probably unsafe and definitely not meant for carrying captives, but like you said earlier, it’s better than nothing.”

“Talk about twisting my own words and hitting me over the head with them,” Mathew grumbled.

Kelly ignored him, his enthusiasm growing rapidly. “We’ll live in the old colonies and work on some of the ships, install them with any reinforcements we can, network them together, and slave them to a main ship. That’s the one we’ll be piloting. Then we let the gorts think they’re hijacking the ships, and we’ll take them back to civilization.”

Shaking his head, Mathew looked at Kelly in complete disbelief. “That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard from you. You want us to go down to an uncharted planet with intelligent beings known to be hostile, trick them into boarding several starships, then leave them alone and attach their ships to ours only by an ancient AI on a rotting ship. There’s more holes in that plan than in the freeze-packed cheese they over-pack our rations with.”

“And what’s the alternative? Sitting here and doing nothing until, by some incredible luck, a ship ventures out here? This pod can only support two people for fourteen or fifteen days. We have a chance down there to recover the opportunity we lost. We have a chance to do something nobody has ever managed before. We have a chance to bring a new sentient species to the attention of the Trans-Galactic congress. What are we waiting for?”

When Mathew said nothing, Kelly crossed to the pod’s control console and began to

initiate the planetary landing sequence. “Fame and fortune,” he murmured, almost too low to hear. “We’re not finished yet.”

Mathew shook his head as the tiny vessel began to rotate itself to face the great, deep green sphere which was the gorts’ home planet. But there was a glint even in his eyes.

R. J. Walker Miller

R. J. Walker Miller is a writer of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and poetry. In addition to writing and his day job, he enjoys reading SF, the outdoors, and listening to music. He currently resides in the American Midwest where he is working on his novel and several short stories. His work has appeared in the magazines AlienSkin, Haruah: A Breath of Heaven, Fear and Trembling, and Mindflights.

RGR Reviews - Book Reviews Pg. 23


November 2008

Infoquake by David Louis EdelmanPyr, 2006, 380 pages, plus appendices

I chose to read Edelman’s debut novel Infoquake for review for two self-serving purposes; first, and basest of all, was my desire to obtain free books, a motivation that any bib-liophile can identify with. The second is, I have noticed a distinct hole in my SF reading. I’ve not been keeping up with the ‘modernist, post singularity-revelation, wants to be literary’ SF-writing crowd.

My go-to fare is classic science fiction—Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov and all their friends. I’m often bitterly critical of those who do not pay due homage to science fiction’s roots. I particularly enjoy castigating those who try to pretend that no SF was written prior to about 1996; when they crow about how new and real some literary piece of dreck masquerad-ing as SF is, I gleefully machine gun them with pre-1980s citations, knowing they are utterly defenseless because they’ve never read any of that ‘old’ stuff.

I eventually realized, of course, that without reading new works, I’ve got nothing to criticize.

Which brings us to David Edelman’s Infoquake.

This highly touted debut novel (are

all would-be authors as jealous as I am of someone who sells a trilogy his first time out?) promises to reveal an entirely new future through the excitement of corporate SF. I’ll dismiss this ballyhoo right now. One need look no further than Pohl and Kornbluth’s classic The Space Merchants and the machinations of one Fowler Shocken to realize that science fiction that focuses on business is nothing new. To read another example of corporate intrigue, try Sam Lundwall’s 2018 AD or The King Kong Blues, or follow what is going on in the background in any one of John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up, or The Jagged Orbit.

There is more to Infoquake than corporate boardrooms, hostile takeovers, and company secrets however. Edelman introduces a post-singularity world (artificial intelligences were defeated in a devastating war that forms part of the story’s backdrop) in which humans have allowed themselves to be filled with nanobots that communicate with a wireless network. These bots, in addition to keeping people healthy and expanding their mental capabilities, also allow them to communicate with each other over the ‘data sea’ and to ‘travel’ to remote locations for conferences or sightseeing.

A whole host of other supporting technol-ogies is also in evidence, and Edelman paints what, at first, appears to be a rather convinc-ing far-future in which human beings have ‘hacked their bodies so that their minds can

follow.’

Unfortunately, there are a whole host of disconnects in Edelman’s presentation of these new technologies that cause questions to arise, either because they come across as logically inconsistent or because I am just not buying into Edelman’s presentation.

My first issue is: what semi-intelligent ape would ever allow themselves to be injected with microminiaturized machines that could stop their heart or entirely alter their percep-tions in a post-apocalyptic, the singularity-nearly-killed-us-all world? Yes, it has been 300 years since the revolt of the machines but—no.

Putting that one aside as a gimme to the author (maybe people will entirely eliminate paranoia in the future), I found myself con-tinuously running into my own infoquakes on the data sea of reading: why did this character have to walk somewhere when they could have just appeared? How does someone dis-connected from the network still manage to manipulate holographic images? Why does anyone go anywhere in person? Why do pro-grammers have to have 3D holographic images of their programs projected into the air when it could all take place inside their heads?

These and similar questions left me con-stantly trying to decide whether the story was flawed or if I, the reader, was incapable of understanding it (a most distressing position for an SF aficionado to find themselves in).

RGR ReviewsBook Reviews Matthew Winslow, Reviews Editor



A third possibility allows me to get both Edelman and myself off the hook: this novel is not science fiction. Rather, it represents a new, post-Clarkeian type of science fiction in which the science is so enormously advanced that it appears to be magic. Instead of playing the SF game of presenting a logical, reasonable extrapolation from the science of today, the author has chosen to take the path of fantasy, of presenting this future as a given that does not have to draw on the now for its justifications. A complete disconnect (the almost-singularity event) and then a new scientific background, a new culture, a new psychology, a new world in which the rules are similar, but not exactly the same as they are for us.

The Jump 225 trilogy may in fact represent the vanguard of a new kind of speculative fiction hybrid, a hard-SF/fantasy, one in which scien-tific things are flung around like magic spells, similar in many ways to the SF of the 1930s, where attaching ‘atomo’ to a word substituted for the scientific explanation. Perhaps the SF of the ‘30s was what Edelman was thinking of when he chose to use made-up names. At least he stayed away from Asimovian convention and didn’t use numbers.

As a debut novel, Edelman has done some good work here. His characters grow over the course of the story, the mark of a good writer. I am particularly fond of Jara, a junior partner or ‘apprentice’ working for the primary company in the story. She resonates with me and provides a solid base from which to venture forth onto the sometimes confusing Data Sea. The historical backdrop is certainly detailed and the business world Edelman has created is interesting in concept.

For someone as mired in classical SF as I am, Infoquake can at times be a daunting read. On the other hand, for someone as mired in classical SF as I am, it does provide an interest-ing take on where the SF of the ‘30s is going.

I had occasion to email David Edelman with some questions regarding my understanding of this novel. I was pleased to receive almost immediate answers directly from the author and found him to be engaging, interesting, and concerned with his readers. We can definitely expect to see more from Mr. Edelman.

Reviewed by Steve Davidson

Steve Davidson has been an SF fan since watching his first episode of Fireball XL5. He is currently the ‘crotchety’ behind the Crotchety Old Fan blog and is the curator of The Classic Science Fiction Channel, a website devoted to classic science fiction film, television, radio and print.

When the People Fell by Cordwainer SmithBaen Books, 2007, 599pp

The readers of Ray Gun Revival do not need to be told that there’s a renaissance of Space Opera going on; we’re busy being a part of it. A true renaissance has two aspects: a burst of creativity, yes, but one inspired by the best of the past. The amazing blossoming of culture in the sixteenth century was due to the redis-covery of the classical world. If our own Space Opera renaissance is to achieve an analogous depth and influence, we need to re-examine and re-appropriate the classics of the genre.

Editors David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer have masterfully pointed the way in their massive effort, The Space Opera Renais-sance. But where is the interested reader to go whose interest has been piqued by the short stories in that volume? We are very fortunate in the case of Cordwainer Smith to have his fiction re-issued in two volumes by Baen Books: We the Underpeople and When the People Fell, the latter volume being the subject of this present review.

Cordwainer Smith was the pen-name for Dr. Paul Linebarger, polyglot professor of inter-national studies and author of the textbook Psychological Warfare. His stories demon-strate his interest not only in war, but in the workings of the human mind and soul. Smith’s knowledge of oriental literature (not only was he was fluent in Chinese, but was the godson of the founder of the Chinese Republic, Sun Yat-sen) gives his stories a fascinating narrative color. The influence of non-Western narra-tives and the intertextuality of the stories, the majority of which refer either to each other or to a more-or-less coherent vision of the future, give Smith’s stories a surprisingly contempo-rary, even postmodern feel. Someone writing Space Opera can learn a lot from Cordwainer Smith.

Plus the stories are darn good fun.

Smith’s science fiction (with the exception of a handful of stories, included in When the People Fell) takes place in an interconnected future history ranging from the present day to roughly A.D. 16,000. The stories are all connected through the ruling body of humanity known as the Instrumentality. Two of the main starting places of Smith’s stories are the psy-



chological effects of the immensity of space on the human person, and the effects of genetic engineering on human history and on what it means to be human—themes that again highlight Smith’s contemporary relevance. We the Underpeople contains the stories focusing on Smith’s more anthropological themes, including the short novel Norstrillia, and the important “The Dead Lady of Clown Town,” and “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell.”

When the People Fell contains the stories that focus on space exploration and war in space. In addition to the six “Miscellaneous Stories” that lie outside the Instrumentality series, the volume contains twenty-two stories set in Smith’s future history. The stories are arranged in roughly chronological order, according to John J. Pierce’s ordering of the stories in the Instrumentality series. Every piece in When the People Fell is worth reading, though some of the stories will have the greatest interest to people already familiar with Smith’s work. (“Mark Elf” and “The Queen of the Afternoon,” for example, explain the origin of the Vomact name.)

Some of the stories are true science fiction classics. Of the stories not to be missed in When the People Fell are “Scanners Live in Vain,” “The Lady Who Sailed The Soul,” “The Game of Rat and Dragon,” “The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal,” “Golden the Ship Was—Oh! Oh! Oh!” and “A Planet Named Shayol.” Readers of Jack Vance will not want to miss the Casher O’Neill “novella-in-stories”: “On the Gem Planet,” “On the Storm Planet,” “On the Sand Planet,” and “Three to a Given Star.” The other stories in When the People Fell are not mere filler, but I want to highlight these stories for their emotional impact and unique

narrative style.

I am still astounded by Smith’s narrative ability. Few people would dare start a story with the sentence, “Do not read this story; turn the page quickly.” Yet such is the first line of “The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal.” I do not think I give anything away by giving the last two sentences: “That’s the story. Furthermore, it isn’t true.” It’s everything in the middle that’s important—but what a framework for that middle!

People already familiar with Smith will find When the People Fell to contain stories that will complete their collection. And people new to Smith are in for a treat; I envy them their first time reading this unique voice in science fiction. When the People Fell does unfortunately contain a few signs of hasty proofreading, but what book doesn’t these days? The people at Baen are to be highly commended for making the stories of Cordwainer Smith available to a new generation.

On to the Rediscovery of Man!

Reviewed by Donald Jacob Uitvlugt

Donald Jacob Uitvlugt grew up in western Michigan and now lives in Arkansas with his wife and dog. He can be contacted via www.myspace.com/DonaldJacobUitvlugt.

Son of Man by Robert Silverberg

Pyr, 2008, 225pp

Robert Silverberg is a master of science fiction. If there were any doubts on the matter, they were put to rest by his 2004 reception of the Science Fiction Writers of America’s Grand Master Nebula. He has been writing SF for more than fifty years, with experiments in social SF like The World Inside, on overpopula-tion in 2381, and science fantasy, such as the Majipoor series. He has written more than fifty novels and innumerable short stories.

Son of Man was originally published in 1971. It recounts the adventures of the twenti-eth-century man, Clay (and here I am strongly tempted to add the words “Get it?” accompa-nied with a knowing wink), in the far distant future. In this far future, the descendents of homo sapiens have evolved into a number of distinct species: Skimmers, Awaiters, Eaters, Breathers, Interceders, and Destroyers. Also present are other post-homo sapiens humans, caught, as Clay was, in a “time flux” and brought to the same far-future.

Most of the story centers on Clay’s interac-tions with a particular tribe of Skimmers. These “Sons of Man” (i.e., evolutionary descendents of the human race) have nearly unlimited powers, including the abilities to change genders at will, to soar the cosmos in their intellect, and to die and return to life. As Clay is introduced to their life, he is invited to share in their sequence of rituals, which often involve sexual intercourse of one sort or another.

It is difficult to describe the novel’s plot, as the story is non-linear. Silverberg is much more concerned with bringing the reader into

http://www.myspace.com/DonaldJacobUitvlugt



contact with the various regions and species of his future Earth than in telling a story in the traditional arc. His (by and large) effective use of repetition and long streams of juxta-posed images gives the work a very dream-like quality. In a lot of ways, Son of Man reads like the bastard literary offspring of Wells’ The Time Machine and Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

I sense that Son of Man is the sort of work that one either loves or hates. I do not fall into the former category (although I cannot say that the book elicited enough emotional reaction from me to put me firmly in the latter camp either). What philosophy there is in the story is confused by the manner in which the story is told. I also found the story ruined by the manner in which it is told. To cite the most obvious instance—the entire novel is written in the present tense. This was a great obstacle to me in entering the world of the story, making me focus much more on Silverberg’s prose. Some of the most effective individual passages—and there is no denying that at points Silverberg’s prose is nothing short of brilliant—had for me a similar effect. It is not a good thing for a reader to find himself focusing on the writing instead of the story.

I have yet to decide whether Silverberg’s quotation of Byron as one of Son of Man’s four epigrams is ironic or not: “Shrink not from blasphemy—’twill pass for wit.” I did not find the novel blasphemous. Son of Man is a prolonged dream-sequence, not an attack on religion. Perhaps the readers in 1971 would have found the transgendered sexuality of the story shocking. In our own post-Jerry-Springer era, it struck me as tame. Though I will admit that I could have done with far less of the play-by-play on the condition of Clay’s genitals.

The Pyr re-issue of Son of Man weighs in at 225 pages, though given every chapter starts on the right-hand page, fully twenty of those pages are blank. Fans of Robert Silverberg or those interested in non-linear storytelling may find Son of Man worth investigating.

Reviewed by Donald Jacob Uitvlugt

Donald Jacob Uitvlugt grew up in western Michigan and now lives in Arkansas with his wife and dog. He can be contacted via www.myspace.com/DonaldJacobUitvlugt.

Matthew Winslow

RGR Reviews editor Matthew Scott Winslow has been a science fiction and fantasy addict since he first discovered Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series on his dad’s shelves at a young age. He can be reached at [email protected].

http://www.myspace.com/DonaldJacobUitvlugt

[email protected]

[email protected]



Quantum of Solaceby Paul Christian Glenn

James Bond is about to get an apology from me.

You see, over the years, I’ve been awfully hard on 007. The legacy films were not a part of my formative cinematic experiences (my parents objected to the sexual overtones of the films), so I evolved without a knowledgeable appreciation of the world’s favorite super-spy.

What I did have, however, were vivid imaginations of what the James Bond movies might be, suggested to me by cultural osmosis and embellished by my own adolescent fetishes. These were sultry fantasies indeed. In my young mind, James Bond existed in a kind of cosmopolitan noir, darting through the shadows of exotic locales, trading barbs with diabolical villains and long, loaded gazes with treacherous sirens. There were mysterious codes, secret passageways, and underground hideouts. There were rogue operatives, false identities and double-double-crosses, all simmering just beneath a glossy façade of tailored tuxedos and expensive drinks. The Bond of my imagination lived in a smoke-filled world of furtive glances, surreptitious signals and clandestine rendezvous. It was rich.

Here is a list of things that did not exist in my imagined Bond milieu: invisible cars,

space-lasers, robots, jet packs, hovercrafts, and flamethrowing bagpipes. As you may suppose, it was quite a cruel surprise when I reached the age of independence and started sampling the actual 007 films for myself. I freely admit that the crushing disappoint-ment was the result of my own misguided preconceptions, but there it was. After a brief sampling, I washed my hands of 007 and his big, loud, vaguely sci-fi, cartoon world.

Ah, but then came Casino Royale. I had no interest in the film, of course, but several friends badgered me into renting it, and when I finally relented, a small part of me was born again. Many praises have been rendered in honor of the film, so suffice it to say this was the James Bond film for which I had always pined. It was smart, tense, sexy, and believable. It was populated with dangerous characters who knew they were playing with the highest stakes, and acted accordingly. They didn’t seem to realize they were in a spy movie. Daniel Craig imbued Bond with personality instead of a persona, and he made 007 someone we could root for, rather than marvel (or worse, laugh) at. In less than three hours, I became a convert.

My love for this new incarnation of Bond only gave me further incentive to jeer at the rest of the canon. The perfection of Casino Royale drew the absurdities of the old films into sharper relief, making them that much easier to dismiss. For me, Casino Royale

was more than just a good film, it was vin-dication. This, at last, was what James Bond movies were supposed to look like.

And so it was, with the fanaticism of any new convert, I found myself purchas-ing advance tickets for “Quantum of Solace.” I was there on opening night, ready to experience what was sure to be a riveting new chapter in the saga of Bond reborn.

I’ll bet it was pretty good, too. Unfortunate-ly, I couldn’t see about 70% of what happened in the film, because director Marc Forster and his editors were so busy trying to punch me in the retinas that they forgot to actually show what was going on. There are no reserves left in my well of forgiveness for directors who insist on shooting action scenes as if the whole point is to disorient the audience. It doesn’t create tension or momentum, it’s disassociative, and it’s lazy, sloppy filmmaking. This was a loud, mindless, action movie, so poorly shot and cut that I was resenting it before the end of act one. It’s every bit as raucous and dumb as Casino Royale was subtle and smart.

I’m pretty sure there were a few lines of dialogue in this movie, but they served mostly as respite between beats of the Chase Scene, which started in a car, then continued on foot, over rooftops, on motorcycles, in boats, and finally (why not?) with airplanes. Ask

RGR ReviewsBalcony Fool Movie Reviews Paul Christian Glenn, Reviews Editor



yourself this: when you stage that many action sequences, plus the obligatory seduction scene and explosive finale, in a 100-minute film, how much time is left for drawing char-acters, constructing plot, creating ambience, and building tension? I’ll answer for you: not much. It’s a simple matter of mathematics.

In a Herculean feat, Daniel Craig single-handedly elevates the film above, well, being completely worthless. Despite the headache-in-ducing illogicality that surrounds him, his Bond remains both believable and engaging. Mathieu Amalric shows promise as the snaky villain, but he is ultimately defeated by the weak material.

I will give Quantum of Solace two terrific moments. First is the virtuoso opera house sequence, in which Forster goes a bit over the top, but succeeds in creating an echo of the tension and bad-assery that character-ized “Casino Royale.” Second is the climactic throw-down between Bond and Greene, which was as visceral and brutal as they come.

So, if this was such a rotten movie, why do I owe James Bond an apology? Over the last couple nights, the cable channel Spike has been showing some of the older movies. Since I had Bond on the brain, I sat through a couple of them, and you know what I noticed? I was able to follow every moment of Pierce Brosnan crashing his invisible car through a palace made of ice while a laser melted it from outer space. I always knew who was getting speared as Sean Connery did battle with his underwater assailants. Those old Bond flicks, yeah, okay, maybe they were silly, and maybe they weren’t

what I wanted them to be, but they were shot by people who knew how to tell a story in a visual medium, and they had distinct person-alities. Quantum of Solace made me realize, hey, maybe I wasn’t giving those legacy films enough credit.

What most people are missing about Quantum of Solace

by Johne Cook 4 stars out of 5

I was wowed by Casino Royale (2006), a story that gave us a bonus fourth act to finish

fleshing out the genesis of a new secret agent who was refreshingly old school. My dad had the Ian Fleming novels on his bookshelf, and this Bond reminded me very much of the Bond I grew up with in my imagination. This Bond wasn’t afflicted by quip-itis, didn’t have the gadgets written in just for the finale, or the preposterous encyclopedic memory. Instead, he was good at precisely one thing, getting his hands dirty in the service of his country.

However, as I read the reviews for Quantum of Solace (2008), the second film in the rebooted James Bond franchise, it quickly became clear to me that people by and large didn’t know what to do with this film. After all, it had a weird title and action sequences by the people that did the Bourne movies, so it must be dreck, right?

In fact, I can confirm that this new Bond film is not better than Casino Royale, but it’s not

trying to be Casino Royale II, and taken on its own merits, I found I liked Quantum of Solace far better than I expected, and nearly as well in many ways. For starters, they are different films which are two halves of one longer storyline. And for another, having now seen both pieces of this larger story, I find I want to see it again. Tomorrow, perhaps.

Despite the trailers and the advertising and the word-of-mouth and the expectations—this is a James bond film, after all—I am delighted to reveal that Quantum of Solace is not at all about what you probably think it is about. After all, after watching the trailers and putting together what I knew from Casino Royale, I certainly thought I knew what to expect from this film going in.

But wonder of wonders, I was wrong. Fur-thermore, every review save one has missed the point as well.

There is a lot of talk about revenge as the motivating factor in this film, but it’s inaccu-rate. I’d heard it was one long action sequence. Also wrong. There’s some real character devel-opment here, and even some gritty situational humor. In fact, I noticed a number of parallels between these first two rebooted James Bond films and the two latest Batman films, but I’ll comment on that in an addendum after this review. They’re interesting to me, but not entirely germane to the point at hand.

No, this is very much a film about unfin-ished business, about psychological closure. But it doesn’t stop there. This film is also about something more, something deeper, and that’s the great surprise. I’ll get back to that in a bit.

This film is about a number of really inter-



esting things hiding behind all the frenetic camera work and Jason Bourne action sequences. It is interesting enough that in this day and age, a film has the audacity to posit a highly trained, highly intelligent, highly capable, highly reasoning person choosing to embrace something as throwback as ‘duty.’ Furthermore, throwaway action films aren’t meant to be the vehicle for any kind of deep thinking, but there is a genuine spiritual principle at work in Quantum of Solace, and if James Bond of all people can find and employ it, anybody can.

But before I talk about what worked, let’s be clear about what didn’t work. There is a trend in modern action pictures to frame things in such a way that there are clearly things going on, but they aren’t clearly shot. We see it everywhere from Batman to Bourne to Bond.

Furthermore, I think so many are ambiva-lent about this film because they are that they are looking at the apparent plot and observing that it doesn’t go according to the usual plan.

But as it happens, I believe that’s by design.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized something quite humorous; there is a gigantic McGuffin in this film, and it is THE ENTIRE APPARENT PLOT. The real work in this story occurs in the first and last ten minutes of the film. Nearly everything that happens in-between is there to keep you from seeing what’s right in front of your eyes—that this frenetic, shallow action movie is actually about something of vital importance straight out of scripture. But more on that at the end of the review.

Here is my reasoning. People see what

appear to be familiar elements, and assume they are on familiar ground:

Aston Martin? Check.•

M as unflappable holder of Bond’s leash? • Check.

Entirely beddable main-squeeze? Check.•

Breezy, emotionally empty coitus? Check.•

Sinister shadow organization? Check.•

Megalomaniacal villain? Check.•

But I’m going to give the writers some credit here for undoing everything they appeared to set up, and Marc Forster some credit for letting them. That continues what they started with the character of Mathis from Casino Royale, my favorite secondary character from that film.

Of the list of familiar elements, only the venerable exotic sports car was left alone, perhaps because you can gently mock the former Bond franchise, but no one in their right mind would diminish an Aston Martin.

Let’s look at how the writers undermined expectations point-by-point.

M has an expanded role in this film, and I really liked it. As played by Dame Judi Dench, she came across as more ruthless and yet more human than ever. In Casino Royale, M knew Bond very well, correctly identifying him as ‘a blunt instrument.’ However, she saw some promise in him, and gave him some leash to work out his growth. But M’s superiority is suddenly upended after

Bond’s transformation at the end of Casino Royale, and when he no longer needs the leash, he severs it in Quantum of Solace; she is left to decide what that means. Has Bond gone off the reservation, or once he became what M was creating him to be, was he simply ful-filling the purpose for which she had created him? It is not hard to see a little of Dr. Fran-kenstein in her, and Frankenstein’s monster in James Bond. When he throws off his physical and societal shackles, will he be benign or a menace to the society he was meant to help? M is a quick study in this film as evidenced by her shrewd and correct summation of a phone call with her American counterparts in the CIA. But even M is left grasping at straws in this film, and it is a delicious thing to watch. Her rela-tionship with Bond has changed without her permission, and it is up to her to decide what she will do with that.

The beddable main squeeze is Camille, a capable, if fragile femme fatale who can nearly take care of herself. The first time she and Bond are thrown together, she tries to shoot Bond when it is apparent that he was supposed to try to kill her. But the script takes a turn when they join forces without joining forces (if you know what I mean) and Bond is cautioned to be careful when around her. “Careful with this one, Mr. Bond. She won’t go to bed with you unless you give her something she really wants.” And then, perversely, as the film goes along, that’s precisely what Bond does do—he gives her something she really wants. However, the writers pop this balloon when he doesn’t go to bed with her. This Bond is not a slave to his loins, and he continues to do the unexpected, with one glaring exception.



That brings us to the actual empty coitus. Yes, he takes pleasure with the company of a woman, but it is a fleeting thing, a meaning-less thing, a way to kill a couple of hours. This sequence is so perfunctory that one suspects it was included merely as a nod to tradition, and when her story arc ends, it is, itself, a red herring, or perhaps a black one.

When Bond interrogates Mr. White at the beginning of the picture, he knows he has to get more information about them to find what really happened with Vesper. The shadow organization White works for, QUANTUM, is a means to an end for Bond, so he sets about uncovering the truth about the organization, but it is almost an afterthought, a means to an end. The scene at the opera house in Venice is worth the price of admission by itself, and Bond’s gambit there must shake the organiza-tion as thoroughly as they have shaken M. It is a neat tit-for-tat, exposing their arrogance and showing them just how formidable a fully-enabled super spy can be. One delight is still the slimy and sinister Mr. White. I’ve always enjoyed scenes where the apparent captive is really in control, and his scene is over too fast. We have not seen the last of Mr. White.

The megalomaniacal villain, Dominic Greene, is, well, French. I really dug Greene—he’s capable, smart, and pleasingly different. He’s corporate greed and Illuminati-like power and faux environmental consciousness all rolled into one; equal parts Gordon Gecko, Roman Polanski, and Al Gore. But he’s not the usual posturing fop, and his run-ins with Bond were so fun that I found myself looking forward to more interaction between the two. For one, Bond immediately dismissed Greene, and whenever they met, Bond had a habit of cutting

the metaphorical legs out from under Greene when everyone else around him were bowing and fawning and scraping. Bond immediately saw through Greene and found him wanting. Bond merely used Greene to get closer to his own private agenda, and Greene sensed that this was one man utterly unimpressed with all his power, connections, and wealth.

Does all this talk of setting and counter-ing expectation mean the great McGuffin isn’t fun or worthwhile? Not at all. There is some great stuff here. The scene at the opera house is masterful. Bond’s decision to re-enter the hotel in Bolivia was pure bravura confidence in his abilities. My heart was in my throat as Bond knowingly walks into something, and despite being outnumbered and outgunned, he was completely in control of that situation with effortless economy. I was amazed and highly entertained.

His relationship with Camille was very interesting. She struck me as a female version of himself, very wounded, very driven, very capable. Perhaps that is why he didn’t try to bed her, because he saw something in her he respected, something wounded that he would not wound further, and would, in fact, help to heal as much as he could.

Which brings us to Bond himself. He’s grown since Casino Royale. In fact, he trans-formed between the death of Vesper and the now-famous final statement of who he was. The dialogue between M and Bond serve as the film’s heart. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and she suddenly has no clue. She thinks she understands what has happened to him, and she thinks she knows what he has to do to transform his heart the way he has transformed

his mind, but you can tell in their dialogue that she no longer has the upper hand with Bond the way she did in Casino Royale.

M: “I thought I could trust you. You said you weren’t motivated by revenge.”

Bond: “I’m motivated by my duty.”

M: “I think you’re so blinded by inconsolable rage that you don’t care who you hurt. When you can’t tell your friends from your enemies, it’s time to go.”

Bond: “You don’t have to worry about me.”

She should have listened to him. Later:

M: “It would be a pretty cold bastard who didn’t want revenge for the death of someone he loved.”

Bond: “I don’t think the dead care about vengeance.”

That brings up something else. In Casino Royale, Daniel Craig’s Bond does something early on that shows us that the Bond / M relationship in this franchise is substantively different than it was in the other franchise. In an early scene it becomes apparent that he’s broken into M’s private rooms. This reveals a number of interesting things.

For one, he sees M more as an advisor than a boss, more equal than superior, and while he clearly cares for her, he expects to take care of herself, and assumes she expects the same of him. That expectation shapes this film in large measure.

The second is that this Bond may be the least sentimental figure in cinema since Javier



Bardem’s portrayal of Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. Bond simply doesn’t have the time or bandwidth for sentimentality or social nicety. That also features into this film in a big when someone Bond was close to meets with tragedy. His companion and the time and my own movie audience were stunned at his lack of emotion, but this is consistent with this Bond. He is not so much inhuman as so com-pletely pragmatic that he gives social conven-tions no more attention than they require in order for him to do his job.

Furthermore, this Bond now knows his role in the service so thoroughly that when he and M have an apparent falling out and he is increasingly stripped of the perks and tools of MI6, M is understandably more and more concerned that she is losing Bond.

In Casino Royale, that Bond was still a rookie, gifted in some things, and clumsy in others. He seemed perpetually behind the curve. It was like watching a Heisman award-winning college quarterback getting hammered once he ascends to the professional league. All of a sudden he’s no longer the brightest, or the toughest, or the best, and he has to give every-thing he has just to barely stay in the game.

All that changed at the end of Casino Royale. When Bond stood over Mr. White with his rifle and delivered his signature line, it was his coming out party.

In Quantum of Solace, the climax to this two-picture story arc comes late in the film when M said, “Bond, I need you to come back.” He turned to her with supreme confidence and maybe a glint of humor and delivered a new line that is as classic and stirring for me. I won’t

spoil it for you here, but you’ll know it when you hear it.

Bond’s confidence in this new film is honed and displayed in stark contrast to his younger, more naïve self. This Bond knows exactly what he’s doing, and why, and his confidence is sometimes staggering. It would be arrogant if he wasn’t, in fact, just that good.

Physically, this Bond is suddenly at the top of his game. Something has clicked, and if you want to mentally imagine a shell loaded into the chamber of a gun, I won’t stop you. There is a mechanical, metallic certainty to Bond now, and it is ferocious.

If you’ve ever had a credit card transaction not go through for whatever reason, you’ll sympathize with one dilemma that Bond faces. But where the Casino Royale Bond might have displayed pain or doubt, this Bond is fast on the uptake. He nods and starts to leave, but has the awareness to return to the counter and leave a message for the phone call that he predicts will be forthcoming before disappear-ing into the night. That was a delicious scene. This Bond is fast, he’s formidable, and he’s not going to be stopped that easily, even by his own people.

In fact, this Bond was endlessly mysterious, and was forever doing things I didn’t expect. Watch who he kills, and who he doesn’t, who he sleeps with, and who he doesn’t, which orders he follows, and which he doesn’t. It is all for a purpose, and it all works.

Bond shares very little screen time with Felix Leiter, but when he does, it is delicious. These are two canny patriots operating way out on the frontier of modern civilization. Each

is on their own recognizance, each doesn’t fully trust the other, but each sees something there that they recognize in the other. They don’t need to spend an entire picture together to establish their mutual respect. In fact, they need less than 30 seconds.

It is more than enough.

In Casino Royale, Bond was surprised by love, and then further surprised by betrayal. This Bond isn’t surprised by anything, and I found that interesting. He wasn’t surprised when a man he shot disappeared into thin air, he wasn’t surprised when the clues he was following to achieve personal closure revealed a vast orga-nization that MI6 and the CIA didn’t even know about, and he wasn’t surprised when his own people sought to restrict his movements and bring him in on false pretenses. It’s like once your heart has been burned, nothing much surprises you anymore, and nothing can burn you like that again.

What is interesting here is that despite all the obvious foils, everybody has plans for Bond, up to including this super secret orga-nization that nobody knew about, and Bond couldn’t care less. Bond is after for something very specific, and he won’t stop until he gets it, and he won’t let anyone, not even M, not even Duty, keep him from it.

At one point Camille says, “I wish I could set you free, but your prison is in there.” This film is about Bond’s redemption, but his release is not hers to grant. At some level, I think as the film progresses, Bond finally understands the truth; he is his own jailer, and the one most responsible for his enslavement is himself.

And that’s where people get it wrong, when



they think Bond is doing this out of revenge. He’s not. As I said up front, this is a film about more than just closure. Moriarty from Ain’t It Cool News put his finger on it and observed that Bond is working out something more meaning-ful than just unfinished business: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/39096:

He’s ready now to finally be the James Bond we are used to. He needs to know that something he trusted was, in fact, real, and until he knows it, he won’t stop killing and wounding and beating his way through as many people as he has to. Watching him piece together his penance, watching him work through it... that’s the movie. And that’s what makes this such a radical departure from any other Bond film before.

As I read that quote, a gong went off in my head. Penance? Bond’s closure is not merely psychological. And that corresponds with something he is told early on, that Bond needs to forgive himself. Sin and remorse, forgive-ness and redemption—these are big concepts straight out of scripture. What are they doing in a Bond film?

Saving it. (Forgive the pun.)

There is so much action and blood and sound and fury in this film, and the McGuffin is so huge, that Bond’s character arc is almost subtle. At the beginning of the film, Bond thinks Vesper betrayed him. By the middle of the film, he’s begun to doubt that, and by the end of the film, his driving motivation isn’t just the truth, it is his need for penance, a repa-ration of wrong, an act performed voluntarily to show sorrow for wrongdoing. It is the thing that restores just a hint of humanity to Bond,

doggedly digging out the truth about his one great love. And uncovering that truth, at the end, is what frees Bond.

After leaving the theater this afternoon, as I thought about all this, I realized that in a sense, we are all damaged goods. The message of this film seems to be that none of us have to remain that way. And that’s some heady stuff for a mere ‘revenge action flick.’

Addendum

There were a number of times where the parallels between Batman Begins / The Dark Knight and Casino Royale / Quantum of Solace seemed very apparent. Both series feature a lone vigilante loosely affiliated with a more official force of social protection; Batman with the Gotham police department, and Bond with MI6, the British Secret Service. Both Batman and Bond are doing what they think is right regardless of what their respective organi-zations think, and both don’t give a second thought to striking out on their own if they think circumstances dictate without regard for mere social niceties. Both franchises get the origin story out of the way in the first film and start the second almost immediately. Both have women on their mind. Despite that, neither will find personal love in their two-film story arcs. Both second films are darker than the first, and both will do battle with great evil. Both films don’t have a single wasted line of dialogue—each statement means something, everything drips with resonance, everything

matters later on.

The primary thematic difference that I can see is that Batman battled against the Joker, but Bond’s battles are more of a mystery. Is he battling a ghost? His own demons? Authority? Is he fighting himself? Or are his battles really, as he claims, something more throwback, something more basic. To whit, a person operating outside of anyone’s oversight but his own really be expected to be beholden to something as archaic as love of country and ‘duty?’

The primary practical difference is that Christopher Nolan directed both of the Batman films with great cohesion and results, while two different directors handled the Bond films. And that’s too bad. QoS, directed by Marc Forster, is really the second half of a larger story begun dramatically in the as directed by Martin Campbell. Peter Chattaway notes that while Campbell was the oldest director to helm a Bond film, Forster is the youngest, and it shows. Casino Royale was a reboot to the genre that set aside the Playboy-era Bond of gadgets and girls and returned to the grittier Bond of the Ian Fleming novels. The new Bond was as different as could be, with his blond hair and piercing blue eyes; his appearance was just the first of many signals that this Bond was different. He was his own man and should be taken on his own merits.

Having read the Ian Fleming novels from my dad’s bookshelf as I was growing up, I much prefer this new Bond franchise to the former one, and I hope we see many more install-ments about this character. So far, after these two films, this is a stunning start to the new franchise.

Featured Artist: Dan LuVisi Pg. 33


Name: Dan LuVisi

Age: 23

Country of residence: Santa Monica, Ca

Hobbies: Art! Film! Reading.....and my cat and hanging with my girlfriend.

Favorite Book / Author: Gangster by Lorenzo Carcaterra. One of the best books I’ve ever read.

Favorite Artist: Ryan Church

When did you start creating art? At the age of 3.

What media do you work in? Traditional (pencils mostly) and digital (Photoshop/Wacom tablet).

Where your work has been featured? DeviantART, Imagine FX, 2D Artist, It’s Art!, SIGGRAPH, Comic-Con.

Where should someone go if they wanted to view / buy some of your works? I sell some of my prints on DeviantART, but not all. I usually don’t sell too many prints, I’m weird like that. Though, you’re the first to know (hey, it’s big news that I’m even doing this, ha!) I will be creating an art book soon to sell.

How did you become an artist? I have to say Kevin Eastman, creator of Ninja Turtles and owner of Heavy Metal was my inspiration of this all. A Ninja Turtles book was the first I ever read, and when I saw one of the characters I just knew I had to draw it. Ever since then, been hooked.

Featured Artist Dan LuVisi

http://adonihs.deviantart.com/



What were your early influences? Batman, Street Fighter, Judge Dredd, X-Men, Star Wars!

What are your current influences? My father, even though he hits his walls and struggles, he has never, once given up. And that’s what I’m all about, never giving up and pushing until you get to the point where you want to be. That’s what inspires me; what’s at that point.

What inspired the art for the cover? It’s actually a concept for one of the stories I want to make into a graphic novel. I ended up dropping the design, since it felt a little too close to Robotech (even though their ships are a lot different) I wanted something totally unique. So I still liked the picture, and added it to the gallery.

How would you describe your work? Still needs a lot of improvement, every day I’m not drawing...someone else is. But hopefully I can be like one of the artists that inspired me to become who I am.

Where do you get your inspiration / what inspires you? Seriously, music. Music, music, music. Rock. Alternative. Rap. Hip Hop. Classical. Soundtracks. Just music...and films :)

Have you had any notable failures, and how has failure affected your work? I’ve had tons of failures. My friends always ask, “Why don’t you finish this drawing?” “What about this concept? This would be cool.”

But if I cannot connect with the picture, I can’t finish it. I’ve deleted hundreds of thumb nail designs, just to get one right. But when I do connect with it, I become stubborn and cannot



change it (I mean for personal work.)

As for when I work for clients, it’s an inner struggle. I’ve had clients tell me that I nailed it at take #2...but to me it won’t be right until #15.

What have been your greatest successes? How has success impacted you / your work? I consider myself very fortunate for the success that’s come my way. I don’t exactly think I’m “there” yet at the position of my dreams, but for my age I could not ask for more.

My greatest success was working for 20th Century Fox, on a film at 21. This was so great for me because I always told myself, “Danny, you need to nail a film gig before you turn 25.” Also working for DC Comics and coloring Batman was a dream.

What are your favorite tools / equipment for producing your art? Photoshop CS3, Wacom Cintiq 12WX, .3mm and .5mm mechanical pencils.



What tool / equipment do you wish you had? Well, if Wacom is reading this: Wacom Cintiq 21 Inch. ; )

What do you hope to accomplish with your art? I just want to be able to take care of a family (when I’m ready) and be able to inspire kids to never stop trying to achieve your goals. If I can inspire one kid to become successful and continue to inspire, then I left some type of mark.

Money and all that jazz only gets you so far. It pays for the bills, makes you feel comfortable, and affords you a few goodies. But having a little kid come up to you and ask for you to sign a piece of your work for him...that’s a whole different feeling.



Calamity’s Child Chapter Five: ROP: Skip a Rope by M. Keaton Pg. 38


Part One

The scream ripped through the lodge, dragging across Pharaoh’s bones like shards of glass, shattering the night’s tranquil spell. The sound was a mixture of fear and rage, almost too feral to be borne of human throat, reminding him of a jaguarundi.

His skin prickled instinctively as he started to lever himself from one of the pair of over-stuffed armchairs that bracketed the fireplace.

“Sit!” Martha commanded. There was no fire; the heat of the jungle precluded it most nights, but the hearth doubled as a convenient footrest and the habit was well established. “You no go to bother little girl yet. Give time for her to settle. Do not embarrass.” Content that her husband would obey, she returned her attention to the pile of ruddy cloth filling her lap.

Pharaoh sighed. “I do not like it, Ma. She is getting worse, and the nightmares are more frequent.”

“Pfft! Husband hears but does not see.” Martha did not bother to look up as she spoke. “More often is good. Confronting. Listen to yell when Kylee wakes. Each time more angry, less scared. Getting better.”

“If you say so.”

“I say so.” She paused, seemed to take pity. “You try, but you only know boys.” She lifted her hands, inspecting her work. “Here, take this to child.”

Pharaoh accepted the bundle awkwardly, holding it at arm’s length. It looked as if Martha had sewn a series of red beanbags together and trimmed the entire assembly with purple fringe. “A scarf?”

“A Red Dog,” came her exasperated reply, complete with rolling eyes and hands thrown heavenward. “Devil is nightmare. In Kylee’s mind, Red Dog kills devil.”

Pharaoh chuckled. “You made her a doll? She is a little old for that.”

“I married idiot,” his wife snapped. “I made her fetish. Now go, put girl back to bed.”

Ducking his head in mock submission, he slipped from the sitting room into the darkened main room of the lodge. He mounted the stairs at a lope and followed the loft balcony around to Kylee’s bedroom. The door was open. Unless there were guests at the lodge, she did not close it, something Pharaoh took as a good sign. He tapped a knuckle on the door jamb as he stepped into the room.

“Come on in,” Kylee said in a whisper. “I’m up.” The room was decorated in the same Spartan style as the rest of the lodge—simple wooden furniture, dark paneling, an old map

framed and mounted on one wall—unchanged from the time she had moved in, no indication that its occupant was a teenage girl. It bothered him, though he could not say why.

“Rough night?” he asked. She stood on the opposite side of the room in front of the window, scanning the jungle outside through a scope. The simple white cotton shift she wore made her look ghostly in the blue glow of Selous’ smaller moon.

She lowered the scope and nodded. “Night-mares again. Sorry if I woke you.”

“We were still up. What do you look for?” he asked, moving to stand behind her, looking out over her head.

“I’m not sure. I thought I saw something flying in the canopy but, if I did, it was awfully big and fast.” She offered the scope to him over her head. He accepted, raising it to his eye, and scanned the jungle slowly through its crosshairs.

“Nimrod used to tell me that there were harpy eagles in the jungle, but I have never seen one,” he told her. “Could be, though. The old man brought a lot of species from Earth to Selous.”

“Langer?” Kylee asked.

“No. The langer are locals. Most of the imported species are on the southern veldt

Calamity’s Child Chapter Five: ROP: Skip a Rope by M. Keaton



where the langer cannot eat them.” He put his hand on the girl’s shoulder, squeezed gently. “You okay?”

“Perfect,” was her sarcastic reply. “Any word from Ivan?”

“Nothing yet. He and Red are probably busy making explosions.” Anxious to change the subject, Pharaoh draped the stuffed Red Dog around her neck. “Martha made this for you.”

She lifted the trailing ends in her hands then laughed. “Red Dog as a scarf. That’s seriously cool!” She turned and gave him a fierce hug. “Thank you!”

“Thank her. I can’t even darn socks.”

Kylee looked up at him and pursed her lips. “Martha hates Red Dog.”

He shrugged. “She loves you.”

“Just because she finally has a girl to dote over in this house full of men,” she teased, releasing him and dropping onto her bed. “Do you hate Red?”

Pharaoh laid the scope on her nightstand, moved to sit on the opposite edge of the bed before he answered. “No, I do not hate Red Dog. Neither does Martha really. She just—” He stopped, began again. “How much did they teach you of the war?”

“That there was one. What schooling I got, if you couldn’t eat it or sell it—well, you know.”

He nodded. Given the bare minimum of attention she had received growing up, Kylee’s

curiosity and quick learning were nothing short of miraculous, let alone her ravenous hunger for books. “You do know that the Cillians were some of the bad guys?”

She rolled her eyes and flopped backward on the mattress. “A slave race, placed under quarantine after the war. Yeah, I know. So what? We won, they lost, war’s over.”

“If only life were always so simple.” Pharaoh smiled thinly. “The war was almost a century ago. My grandfather fought in it. Ivan’s too. Our parents grew up with it. My generation, we knew about it but we did not feel it. For us it was history, more so for you. That is why, for you, it is over. For others, not so much. Martha’s entire family died in the final years of the war. It will forever be fresh for her.” He paused, rubbed a hand across the top of his head. “I only know two people still alive that fought in the war—Rainmaker and Red Dog.”

“Red Dog?”

“You forget, Cillians are not like humans. Who knows how long they live? I suspect there may not be a simple answer. Maybe they live until something kills them. We do not know.” He frowned, holding up a finger to delay Kylee’s questions. “You need to understand, the war is still fresh for Red Dog, too. In his mind, still going on, I suspect. He is a self-professed enemy of all mankind. He does not deny it.”

“But he’s also good,” she protested. “He saved me, and Ivan too, lots of times. He’s been Ivan’s friend for years.”

He frowned. “Friend may be too strong a word but, yes, he has done well by my brother. For that, I forgive him much. And, despite my

concerns, he has done well by you. Based on this, I respect him, maybe even trust him, but it is as I respect and trust the great cats. They are what they are. If you forget that, you get hurt.” He pressed on before she could interrupt again. “Do not begrudge Martha her caution. And do not begrudge Red Dog his due either. We do not understand how the Cillians think. Even if we did, maybe that would not apply to Red Dog. He has been with humans a long time. It has changed him, I think. I am not attacking Red Dog, Kylee, just explaining why not everyone sees him as you do.”

“I get it,” she said, heaving a melodramatic sigh. “But I can’t go around afraid of him all the time either. I like the Red Dog I know.”

“Fair enough. But be aware of the risks.”

“He’s no bigger risk than most humans.”

“Agreed. Better the monster you know than the devil you do not.” He stood, returned to the window. A light breeze blew through the screens, cloying with the scent of blooming flowers. “You are not alone in your opinions. Rainmaker has made the same arguments, that the past is done and present actions are what truly matters. His opinion carries much weight with me. If he can forgive, who am I to judge?”

“Is Rainmaker the pilot Ivan was with last time he called?”

Pharaoh nodded. “He came out of retire-ment to captain the Hecate. I do not think you have ever met him.”

“He fought them in the war?”



“They ate his homeworld,” Pharaoh said softly, turning away from the window to face her, leaning on the sill. “The Cillians would be dropped on a world as shock troops, without support or supplies. They are incred-ible omnivores, able to eat and digest almost anything. Even other Cillians.”

“They were cannibals?” She sat upright and wriggled her way back to lean against a mound of pillows.

“And if they would eat each other... The Cillians stripped the surface of the world bare. The only survivors were the Acadians fighting off-world. By the end, rather than fight a bloody ground war, the survivors chose to nuke the planet bare, to sterilize it. There was no home or family to return to anyway.” He rubbed the back of his neck and flashed Kylee a sad smile. “If he can forgive that, I can put up with Red Dog.” He stepped to the side of the bed and squeezed the girl’s hand. “I am sorry, Child. You have enough on your mind, I did not mean to add to it.”

She shook her head and squeezed back. “I’m glad you told me. It’s something I needed to know. And I’d really like to meet Rainmaker someday. He sounds like a really neat guy.”

Pharaoh laughed in surprise. “Neat is not a word I would have used to describe him.” She grinned at him, and he felt his expression soften in response. “Will you be able to get back to sleep?”

“Oh, yeah.” She held up the doll wrapped around her neck. “I’ve got my evil man-eating cannibal monster to protect me. Anything that can eat Cillian exoskeleton can eat bad dreams right up.”

He chuckled and tousled her hair. “You’re with Martha tomorrow. The boys and I have to get our supplies ready to hunt the veldt.”

“Take me with you when you go!”

“I will consider it. Now, go to sleep.” He stood to leave, paused at the door to hear Kylee’s muffled “g’night,” and returned slowly down the stairs to the sitting room. “She loved it,” he said, dropping into his chair. “You are a genius.”

“I know.”

He swung his feet up onto the hearth. “Did you ever wish we had more children, Ma?”

Martha sputtered out a staccato cackle. “With you and Ivan around? More children? No. Two boys are enough.”

“Not even a girl?” he asked in a teasing tone.

“Lovely girl upstairs right now.” She glanced at him, cocked her head to one side. “You take her to veldt?”

“She asked again tonight. I said I’d think about it.”

His wife slapped her thighs with her palms. “What is problem? Girl smart and tough. Older than boys first time you take them south.”

“It is not a girl thing,” he protested, painfully aware that he bordered on whining. “It is not ladylike.”

Martha cackled again. “Husband needs to get over himself. Big hunt. Male-bonding. No girls allowed. Pee on trees, mark territory.”

She paused, considering, added a final, “Idiot.” Seeing Pharaoh’s frown, she repeated, more gently, “Take girl.” When he still did not answer, she shook her head in amusement. “Not ladylike,” she repeated with a snort. “Three months you teach girl to hunt. Is hunting langer ladylike? You teach her that. Shoot guns, crawl in mud, eat bugs. How that ladylike?”

“Completely different,” he grumbled. “It is a matter of tradition. Selous took Nimrod. Nimrod took Ivan and me. I take the boys.”

“Oh,” Martha said, raising her tone as though she suddenly understood. “I wrong. Husband not idiot. Husband coward.”

“What?!”

“You afraid of girl. Afraid girl too good hunter, make boys look bad.”

He gave a dismissive grunt. “She already makes the boys look bad. Kylee has learned more in a few months than the boys learned in years. It is probably good for them, makes them work harder.”

“Then you afraid maybe you get too fond of girl.” She curled her feet under her and pressed against the arm of her chair, leaning toward her husband. “Is hard to love many people. Maybe she get hurt. You and Ivan, you two not want to lose again.”

Pharaoh sat quietly, looking at the empty fireplace. “Maybe,” he said at last. After another long pause, he added, “You do not go.”

“ I not ladylike either. I too smart to want sleep on ground and eat burned meat. Take girl, pig-head husband.”



“I suppose. I will think about it.”

Satisfied, Martha relaxed in her chair. As her husband began to settle into a comfortable rest, she said softly, “I think James likes her.”

“Oh for goodness sakes, woman! He’s almost ten years older than she is!”

“Like you to me?” She shrugged expansive-ly. “I say as I see.”

“I said I would think about it. Let me be,” Pharaoh growled. His irritation did nothing to change her satisfied grin. After a moment, he relented and sighed. “She asked about Ivan, too.”

“Ivan better get himself home. Now!” she snapped. “Kylee needs Ivan here, not off playing!”

“I know,” he said wearily. “I know.”

“Mark my words,” Martha continued. “Ivan not get home soon, there be trouble. And I not happy either.”

Pharaoh pushed deeper into his chair and released a long sigh. “He must be who is he and do as he must,” he said. “Ivan is Ivan.”

#

House pretended not to notice as Beta Max started to spin his chair only to be jerked up short by his headphones. Instead he studied the grid littered with blinking lights projected onto the wall.

“Tight beam squeal from the Hecate,” Max shouted, whipping off the headphones in frus-

tration. “Two more squads of four coming in behind this one. They read them all as small fighters.”

“In the tank,” House ordered, hooking his thumbs behind his back. More lights sparked to life on the display. It was the first time the Orion had been harassed since her upgrades were completed but he had no desire to tip his hand anytime soon, not for the likes of these. Still, the bridge crew was handling the new systems smoothly and live fire was good for training. “Shift the tank to the new 3D, please.”

There was a painfully long hesitation, then the display expanded into a high-resolution hologram of the Orion and her attackers. The overhead lights dimmed in response to the change and House permitted himself a thin smile. Equally satisfactory, the Hecate did not show up. The cloaking technology of the light cruiser surpassed even the upgraded sensor suite. “Max,” he said, projecting his voice without shouting above the background murmur of the combat bridge, “Tell the Hecate to stay put. We can handle this lot with the old systems.”

He stepped forward to lean against the thin rail fronting the raised platform that allowed him to overlook the crew at their consoles. They were comparatively calm, excited and tense but not panicked, busy at their work. He still envied the silent precision of Rainmaker’s crew aboard the Hecate, but he was satisfied with what he saw and the knowledge they would get better with time and practice. “All the cowboys out?” he asked.

“No, Sir. I couldn’t raise two when we

scrambled. I’m still trying to find them. The other fourteen are launched and ready.” House recognized the sandy-haired youth that answered him but could not remember the man’s name.

“Don’t worry about the last two—they’re fired. How’ve you got them split up?”

“Three sets of four. Designation Outrider One, Two, and Three. I paired up the two oddballs and sent them wide to extend our sensor range.”

House raised his eyebrows, impressed. “Good. Put Outrider Three between the Orion and their first squad. Have One and Two split the first bunch away from the others and drive them toward us. And remind our boys this is not a free engagement—stay in formation.”

“Aye, Sir. What about—”

“Missiles away!” interrupted the weapons tech. She stopped, embarrassed by her outburst, then added, “You said to launch when I got a lock at 67% probability. I didn’t think to ask for confirmation.”

House dismissed her explanations with a shake of his head. “You’re fine. I expect all of you to follow SOP and think for yourselves. This tub is too big for you to wait for me to make up your minds for you. Carry on.”

“Designating enemy squads Red One, Two, and Three. Engaging Red One now.”

The pirates had made a mistake in sending their first group in ahead of the others, too far ahead. Cut off from their support and facing an onrushing missile salvo, they were easy meat



and realized it almost immediately. Two split off trying to flee, only to be cut down by the Outriders. The other two fell to the missiles.

“Tight beam from the Hecate,” Max called. “Your ears only.”

House nodded, stepped back to lift his own set of headphones from the arm of the command chair he refused to use. “All right, Max. Put ‘em through.”

“Hecate actual here. Orion, do you read?” Rainmaker’s voice crackled through the headset.

“What’s up, Rain?” House asked.

Rainmaker gave an exasperated groan. “I swear, y’all have no comm discipline at all.”

“Just tell me what you’ve got.”

“House, I think we’ve got another ship out here. Big ‘un. Can’t be sure though. We’re only picking up electronic disturbances, kinda like looking at something by seeing its shadow. Whatever it is, its cloaking’s almost as good as ours.”

“What’s it doing?”

“Hard to say, but it’s staying pretty still. I reckon it’s just watching at this point.”

House gave a nod that Rainmaker could not see. “If it’s just watching, let it watch. Get what info you can and we’ll sort through it later. Let me know if the situation changes.”

“Roger that,” Rainmaker said formally. “Hecate out.”

House dropped the headset back onto the chair and returned to the railing. Max shot him a questioning look, and he shook his head.

“Red Two and Three are breaking off. Never even came close to being in range,” someone reported. “Looks like they’re running.”

“Let them go,” he instructed, straightening to clasp his hands behind his back. “Solid job, people. Prepare to stand down and open the blast shields on the mezzanine.”

“That was simple enough,” Max noted above the renewed chatter of the crew.

“Not really,” House replied softly. “Costs me about two mill every time I raise shields and shut down the casino. They can bleed me out if they have to.” He thought about the mystery observer the Hecate had detected and the will-ingness to sacrifice four lives just to probe the edges of the Orion’s defenses. The game was afoot.

“Have Dell get me if anything changes,” he said at last. “I have to speak to a visitor.”

#

Don Rosten awoke to the sound of a steel door opening, closing. The room, or wherever he was, was completely dark and unheated. Cold, and the hard metal chair he was tied to, cramped his muscles, insuring that even when he fell into a fitful sleep he did not rest.

“How long?” he croaked. At first he had tried to keep track of time, counting the number of times he had been fed tasteless muck from a squeeze tube, allowed to suck at the straw of a squeeze bottle of water, the few occasions his

legs had been freed so he could relieve himself. Always in the dark, fumbling. Always in silence. His jailors might have been machines for all he could discern.

“About a week.” The voice was masculine, vaguely familiar.

Instinctively, Rosten turned his head toward the sound. He had not expected an answer. “Why?”

A water bottle landed in his lap. A moment later came a jerk at his arms and his hands were free. “Really, Carl. That’s a foolish question. You’ve done some bad things over the years.”

“Carlos,” he corrected, slurped greedily at the water.

“Afraid not. Carlos don Rosten died a few days ago. He shipped off the Orion bound for an ErSec holding facility on Nevrio. Convicts aren’t worth wasting manpower on, so when his preprogrammed drone went off course—well, there wasn’t anyone to fix it until the ship had already tumbled into an asteroid. Tough break, that.” The voice might have been reading an engineering text for all the emotion it showed.

Rosten suppressed a surge of fear. There were rumors, things that other smugglers did, people disappearing, sold into slavery, slipped past quarantine to become servants of alien rulers, or food. But none of that would explain why talk to him, why explain, unless... “I have information you want.”

“True enough. And I’d rather not have to play rough to get it.” The voice started beside him, moved behind. The speaker was circling,



making him dizzy, disoriented.

“I’m a dead man,” Rosten sighed and finished the water anyway.

“Not necessarily. For slime, you’ve kept your hands pretty clean. You climbed to the top with more business sense than violence. You ran contraband but no people, no hard drugs. Even when you breeched quarantine—and most of your business was with aliens—you were still picky about what you took in. No weapons, no tech, and again, no people. Mostly, Carlos don Rosten was a thug and petty thief who happened to be a good marketer and made his money selling trinkets across the quarantine.”

“It paid the bills,” Rosten replied, wondering why he felt insulted at having his criminal exploits presented so minimally.

“Point is, before I go to the stick, I’m offering a carrot. Carlos don Rosten is dead. Carl Ross doesn’t have to be. I’m willing to gamble that, with a clean start and a good dose of fear, you might turn out to be a halfway decent citizen.”

“You got a place for me in your organiza-tion?”

“I might. Question is, have you got what it takes to put yourself there. Answering a few questions would go a long way toward easing my mind on that score.”

Rosten licked his lips and tried not to sound too relieved. “Yeah, all right, I’m in. Who’m I in with?”

“Call me House.”

Carl Ross cursed softly, hung his head. “I’m dead anyway. Casey’s gonna mess you up. I’ve

seen the signs. He’s getting ready for war.”

“His call, not mine. You want out already?”

“No. No, right now, you’re the best offer in town.”

House chuckled grimly. “Something you ought to know, in case you get any ideas later. I played a hunch when I sent out that prisoner drone empty. I guessed right.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, my people didn’t sabotage your drone, someone on the other side did. Somebody out there wants Carlos don Rosten dead. And that somebody’s got contacts in ErSec.” House laughed as Carl cursed again. “You sound surprised. I’m almost disappointed.” He made a clucking noise deep in his throat. “I’ll send someone down to help you get cleaned up before we get to work. I’ve got to go make a few more calls. Shoring up my army.”

#

Two in the chest, one in the head—classic triangle. Three spikes of silver from a weapon with miniscule recoil. Today they shredded paper targets, tomorrow maybe human flesh. Rose paused, replaced the gun she held on the waist-high shelf in front of her and lifted the next gun in line. Another triplet of fletchettes spat down the range. The darts were heavier than in the previous gun and dropped off even at the relatively short distance. She set it aside and moved on to the next gun, this one with finned darts.

It was a matter of design, she knew. In exchange for the lighter weight and faster

fire rate, fletchette firing weapons sacrificed penetration and stopping power. Heavier ammo decreased the handicap but at the cost of reduced range. For a duelist, accuracy and speed were at a premium and the lighter weight made it easier for her to find a grip that fit her hand. Besides, conventional slug-throwers were loud and sloppy. Sonics were never meant for anything more ambitious than short-range crowd control and were equally sloppy, as bad as using a shotgun.

Lasers did not kick at all but, as a personal weapon, they were a disappointment. Short of being anchored to a fixed, external power source, they could not muster lethal power past a half-dozen yards. Some military models used high-density batteries carried in a backpack mount but, if you had to carry a thirty-pound backpack, it defeated most of the laser’s advantages. At longer range, the handheld models could blind and generate considerable pain, but in Rose’s estimation a brutal sunburn was not sufficient damage to be considered a full-fledged weapon.

That left her with fletchettes. She sent another clip of darts down the range.

A buzzer cut the air and a warning light flashed above the range. Rose lowered the gun and stepped back, pulling off her protective ear and eye guards.

A stout man strolled toward her on bandy legs. “I thought you’d already settled on a new gun, Rose,” the rangemaster teased.

“For me, yes. I’m looking for one for someone else now. I think her hands are about the same size as mine, but her wrists are weaker. Plus, she’ll need something more



utilitarian. Mine’s too specialized to what I do.” She passed her guards into his waiting hands.

“Try looking for a gun that takes a wide range of needles. That way she has more options without having to change the gun itself.” He rolled her safety gear in one hand, motioned toward her rack of guns with the other. “Listen, Fagan just called down. Wants to see you up in his office. I’ll put up your stuff for you.”

Rose nodded. “Thanks, Mike.” She paused to strap on her own weapon and left the range shaking the tingle of a long practice session from her hands.

Fagan’s office was decorated in the smooth textures of wood and stone. Rose had never seen it in color, but in her mind it was the same warm brown of pipe smoke and leather that always seemed to surround her mentor. He smiled merrily and stood to greet her as she entered. “Why am I not surprised you were at the range?” he asked as they sat. “You’re becoming predictable, my dear.”

“I’ve always been predictable, at least in that regard.” She sank deeper than was comfortable in the cushions, fought with the armrests until she was more at ease.

“Indeed you have,” Fagan replied with a paternal chuckle. “Drink?”

“Thank you, no. You go ahead though.”

He grinned at her. “I believe I will.” Ice clinked against glass. “Rose, I am sorry that you’re miserable here.”

She felt her mouth drop open in surprise,

forced it closed. “Fagan, I never said—I would never—I mean, after everything you’ve done for me—”

He waved her to silence with his free hand while he poured his drink with the other. “I know, dear. Trust me, old Fagan knows. There’s no malice in it. But I understand too. This kind of work is not for such as you. I see it—it eats at you, wears you down, makes you sick.” He paused, placing the crystal decanter back on his desk. “Why do you think I hire you out for bodyguard work and the like, away from the dueling, whenever I can? Quicksilver, dear, I understand.” He leaned back in his chair and sipped noisily over the lip of his glass. “If I didn’t have all you children to look after, I don’t know if I could do it myself, you know.”

“I’m not miserable,” Rose protested softly. “I’m just...not happy.”

He smiled at her. “You’re a poor liar, and I forgive you for it. It’s only natural for you to want more, a lovely young thing like yourself. You should want something other than death and killing. I just wish I had a different set of skills to teach, I really do.”

Rose resisted the urge to curl into a ball. She despised herself for letting the man turn her into a child. “I think I’ll take that drink now.”

“You know you’ll always have a home here anytime you want, don’t you?” he asked, preparing a second glass. “I think of you as my own flesh and blood.”

It took her a moment to realize what he had said. “You’re putting me out?”

He chuckled deep in his throat, slid her drink across his desk toward her. “Goodness no. I suppose I forgot that you wouldn’t know. I’ve had an offer to buy your marker.”

“You’re not going to, are you?”

“Sell your marker? Normally, no. You’re not a slave to be bought and sold like chattel. In this case, though, I thought it might be something you’d approve of. You spend most of your free time on the Orion anyway these days.”

“House?” she asked, her voice squeaking like a girl half her age. “That’s—” she stopped herself, suddenly aware of how much seeing her leave must hurt the older man, not wanting to make it worse with her excitement.

“Wonderful, you were about to say? Yes, I thought it was.” The skin around his eyes crinkled in amusement, giving lie to his dry tone.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’ve...you’ve been very good to me.” Her throat constricted. If she had tear ducts, she might have cried.

“Don’t be.” Fagan leaned forward, sincere and concerned. “You know that you’ll still have to kill. That part doesn’t change. Your gun is still your value. And you’ll be mostly on your own. I don’t imagine House will give you the free hand with his purse strings like I have.”

Rose nodded. “I’ll get by. Money I can work around, somehow. And it’s never been about the killing, Fagan. It’s the killing for no purpose. I need,” she paused, searching for the word, “meaning.”

“I understand. If you ever want to come



home, I’m just a call away. I’ll buy back your marker, no questions asked.”

“Thank you.” She hid her face by staring into her drink.

He shrugged and drained his glass. “I do need you to do one thing for me before I transfer over your contract. I don’t want people thinking I’ve gone soft or that I’m having some kind of trouble that I have to sell my best talent. Bad for business. You understand how important public perception is.”

“What is it?” she asked around the sudden knot of tension in her chest.

“Nothing horrid. I need you to go out on top, that’s all. Next month is the Salle des Armes.” He gave her an exaggerated wink. “Do you think you could win me another cup?”

Rose laughed, relieved. “You mean five aren’t enough?” The Salle des Armes was a dueling tournament—the dueling tourna-ment—but only a contest. No one else needed to die. “I suppose I could.”

“Good. It’s settled, then. You win me another cup, and I’ll sell your marker to House.” He refilled his glass from the crystal decanter at his elbow, raised it like a toast. “You’ll need to find a second. I’ll be too busy training your replacement. Anyone come to mind?”

Rose returned the toast with her own glass. “I can think of someone.”

#

“What am I looking at here?” House asked. The display showed a star map marred by a

twisting cone originating from a single spot and expanding to end in a nebulous spread.

“Kylee’s path on the destroyed slo-po,” Dell replied. While the girl lay comatose, the medical computers had recorded the neural memories of her inner ear. Dell had been working for months on translating the subtle shifts of balance into a possible drift path. “The fixed point at the end is where she was recovered. The rest shows her possible travel path taking into account survey error, gravi-metric perturbations that would have gone unnoticed, and similar factors. I’m afraid it’s not overly specific. Even factoring in her recol-lections of the attack itself doesn’t cut it down significantly.”

House gnawed his lower lip and nodded to himself. “It’s a start. Start cross-referencing it with known information of other attacks on the Third Earth to Farnham line. Keep an ear on the reports from Earth Defense. There’ll be more attacks coming.”

“And more information,” Dell added. “Each attack is more blatant and more aggressive. It’s counterintuitive. The more force the Navy moves into the area, the more visible the pirates become.”

“It’s a clear-out. I don’t know why yet, but it sure looks like someone wants ErDef’s strength committed there, away from Fargone and Nevrio, and they’re willing to spend a lot of effort and manpower to insure it.”

“In the last six months,” Dell noted, “we’re the only ship that’s been hassled on the Nev-Far run. You haven’t reported those attacks to ErDef, either.”

“They’re negligible.” House dismissed Dell’s implied rebuke.

“We’re also the only heavily armed ship left on this side of the Frontier with Earth Defense pulling out.”

The ex-smuggler gave a noncommittal grunt. “Who’s the acting naval commander at Farnham?”

“Blackmore.”

House grunted. “I know him.” One did not run a ship on the Frontier without getting to know the local defense forces in a hurry. “Make sure he’s on the VIP list—perks, invitations to major entertainment events, all that. Send him a fruit basket or something too.”

“Any kind of message attached?”

House shook his head. “Just make sure he remembers my name.”

#

A mountain of beige folders hit the desk with a whomp, and only Graves’ startled grab prevented an avalanche onto the floor. “Scare me to death,” he growled at the man who had dumped the pile. “What’s this?”

“This, Hyland, is your new job. At least for a while.” Graves’ supervisor gave him a watery smile. “I’ve also authorized your access to all this data electronically, but I know how much you love the hard copies.”

“You’re a prince,” he replied, breaking the folders into shorter stacks less likely to cascade to the ground. “Like I said, what is it? I’m still



working on Casey.”

“Not anymore.”

“Hell, Lumley, you’re killing me,” Graves barked. “This potlatch mess is the first real break we’ve had in years, and now you’re pulling me off?”

“Easy boy. I didn’t make the call.” Lumley hesitated, continued in a more placatory tone. “This is just a distraction. Couple of weeks, tops, to settle the feathers of some bureaucrat and then you’re back to work on your real case. You’ll gain more by getting over it and getting to work than moaning.”

Graves huffed a sigh. “All right. So for the last time, what is it?”

Lumley perched on the edge of the desk, smoothed the flat black of his suit pants. “Salvage claim. And before you start yelling again, yes, I’m wasting your time with just a salvage claim.”

“I’ll bite. What’s the rest of the story?”

The ErSec department head grinned. “Smart boy,” he said approvingly. “Mostly it’s hot politics. Some punter out on the Frontier filed a salvage claim on an abandoned ErDef ship. The claim checks out, the ship had been written off as lost about a year back, and they had to let him have it. So far so good. Here’s where the feathers got ruffled.” Lumley paused dramatically. “It’s one of the stealth cruisers, and it’s fully functional.”

Graves swore, then laughed. “Somebody’s tail is in the sling.”

“Fortunately, that’s not our problem. What

we have to find out is how. The senate’s more than a little concerned. Frankly, I can’t say that I blame ‘em. That kind of a screw-up in an area with quarantine worlds is darn close to a major security issue.”

“So, why us? Why not wait for an ErDef internal investigation?” Graves laced his hands behind his head and leaned back, thinking.

“Politics again. Too many ErDef names in the list of people possibly involved.” Lumley stood and straightened his suit. “Walk gently on this one, Hyland. Odds are it’s a simple mistake but, politically, it could be a hot potato. One of us will probably have to go back to Earth and talk to a Senate investigatory committee.”

“Well thank you for the favor.” Graves said acridly. “Who made the claim?”

“Some guy goes by the name of House. It’s all there in the files. What’s that look for?”

Graves’ face twisted into a tight grin, eyes narrowed. “Oh this just got a lot more inter-esting.” Once Lumley left, he began paging through the files. He was midway through the third when he stopped to poke a button on his desk. “I’m going to be needing an encrypted channel,” he said distractedly. “Ship name is the Orion. Let me know when a line opens up.” Closing the file, he swung his feet onto his desk and settled in to wait.

M Keaton

Growing up in a family with a history of military service, M. Keaton cut his lin-guistic and philosophical teeth on the bones of his elders through games of strategy and debates at the dinner table. He began his writing career over 20 years ago as a newspaper rat in Springdale, Arkansas, U.S.A. before pursuing formal studies in chemistry, mathematics, and medieval literature at John Brown Uni-versity. A student of politics, military history, forteana, and game design, his renaissance education inspired the short television series: These Teeth Are Real (TTAR).

His literary “mentors” are as diverse as his experiences. Most powerfully, the author has been affected by the works and writers of the “ancient” world, including the Bible, Socrates, and (more modern) Machiavelli, Tsun Tsu, Tacitus, and Von Clauswitz. (This horribly long list only scratches the surface; M. Keaton reads at a rate of over two books per week in addition to his writing.)

Thieves’ Honor, Episode Three: Best-Laid Plans by Keanan Brand Pg. 47


Previously, on Thieves’ Honor:

Our intrepid Captain Kristoff has ventured from his old freighter—the Martina Vega—with a fastidious crewman, ship’s engineer Alerio, to visit the Katy Joy, a private yacht sailing the space before the Vega’s bow.

All they are going to do is a little bartering—an excuse for Alerio to take a gander at the shiny new technology and perhaps lift a little of it when no one is looking.

He is, after all, a pirate.

As is common with the Vega crew, plans change.

The airlock door hisses open.

Alerio yelps. Kristoff draws his pistol.

A large man holding a large gun grins down at them with large teeth. “H’lo, boys.”

“Hello, Marty.”

Kristoff backed toward the hatch, and Alerio pounded the fist-sized button, but the airlock door did not close nor did the hatch behind them open.

“Come on in, boys”—Marty gestured with the Ginchon-make shotgun—”and meet my crew.”

Kristoff did not lower his weapon. “What happened to Quinn’s crew?”

“They’re around. Never saw such a group of men bound to their work.”

Alerio pummeled the release button again.

“Got that on override.” Marty stepped aside, and gestured at Kristoff. “Toss that piece to William.” Again the large-toothed grin behind the shaggy beard. “He’s the weapons expert.”

Kristoff tossed the gun.

William—almost as tall as Marty, but half his bulk—caught the weapon made of a cheap alloy and cheaper manufacture, clamped his big hands over it, opened them. The gun fell. In pieces.

“That’s my favorite!” Kristoff looked down at the pieces. “Was my favorite.”

“Rule number whatever: never bring a weapon you can’t afford to lose.” Marty rested his shotgun in the crook of his arm. “Guns are like women, captain. There’s always one more.”

Alerio muttered, “Finney’d show him one more.”

“Finney.” Marty planted his feet wide. “She still flying that tub?”

“It’s a good job,” said Kristoff. “Decent pay, food whenever we can get it, excellent

medical—”

“But the retirement plan—” Alerio shrugged.

“I’m workin’ on it.” Kristoff stepped out of the airlock, looked around. “Nice boat.”

#

“Nice—ship.” Maybe fifteen, a little on the thin side, the kid was well dressed. “It actually flies?”

“Sweetest goer in the galaxy.” Kristoff hefted a crate; Wyatt checked it on the manifest.

Finney strode down the gangway. The kid looked at her and whistled.

Finney drew her gun, checked the chamber, glanced at Kristoff. “Hiring more help?”

He smiled. “Couldn’t hire anyone said bad things about my ship.”

She looked sharp at the kid. He backed up a step.

“Making fun of Martina?”

“Uh, no. No, ma’am.”

“Careful, kid”—Kristoff stepped up the gangway—”she’s the pilot.”

“Who are you?”

“He’s the captain.” Finney holstered the

Thieves’ Honor Episode Three: Best-Laid Plans by Keanan Brand



gun. “You need something? Other than a strong lesson in manners?”

At the hatchway, Corrigan took the crate from Kristoff, who rested a minute and watched Finney cross her arms and wait for an answer.

The kid said, “Before he went into the trading business, my father captained a ship, and he never loaded his own cargo.”

“Bully for him.”

“You might know him. Sam Quinn?”

“Nope.” Finney lifted a crate, Wyatt marked it on his clipboard, and she headed up the gangway. Kristoff met her halfway. She muttered, “Snotty rich brat.”

“You can do better than that, Finn.” Kristoff chuckled. “You have some real hair-curlers in your verbal repertoire.”

She snorted—”Verbal repertoire”—and kept walking up the plank. “Somebody’s been reading the dictionary.”

#

Down two shallow steps, white upholstered sofas and chairs formed a U in the center of a common room, the better to capture the view of space out the forward port. Across the back, in an alcove tucked beside the narrow passage leading aft, stretched a wet bar stocked with liquor and wine with expensive labels. Hard to believe the snotty rich brat was old enough to own all this, let alone know his intoxicants. Kristoff whistled. “Hey, Al, you thirsty?”

He stepped toward the bar but was blocked

by a muscular woman with short, spiky hair and a suspicious five-o’clock shadow.

“Polly. You’re looking”—scary—”lovely, as always.”

She scowled.

“Uh, heard you got married last year. Con-gratulations. Who’s the lucky man?”

She jerked her head in William’s direction.

Kristoff stuck out his hand. “You caught yourself a right fine woman.”

William ignored the hand, but said in cultured tones, “I am well aware of my wife’s attributes, sir, but I thank you.”

As long as you know. Kristoff lowered his hand and turned toward Marty. “We didn’t come over to interfere with your thievin’. We were just hoping to buy some fuel capsules from Carson Quinn.”

Assuming, of course, that the son was less tightfisted than the father. Sam Quinn, cannier than most and not particularly bound by the ancient suggestion of honor among thieves, had made his riches by stealing them from other pirates. He retired from crime and estab-lished an overland trading business based in Port Henry, thus perpetrating a legal form of theft by charging exorbitant rates for goods sold to the far-flung inhabitants of the back country, covering his costs many times over, and nary a constable chasing him. The Quinn fortune was legend.

“You’re never short on necessities, Kris.”

“Burned a little more than expected. Had a

runner on our tail, and the Orpheus is behind us.”

“Fact is,” Marty crossed the sunken room, “you were hoping to do a little thievin’ of your own.”

“Well,” Kristoff lifted one shoulder, “it is what we do.”

Polly prodded him in the back with her gun, kicked Alerio in the leg, and they moved down the two steps, around plump-cushioned furniture, and across thick carpet toward a bank of telescreens above a wide row of starboard portholes. On one screen, a group of men huddled, blindfolded and bound, around the ship’s engine. Guarding them were two men with rifles.

Other screens showed various areas inside the ship, two were dedicated to the expanse of space astern, and two more—one starboard, one port—skimmed the sides of the hull. In the wheelhouse, the pilot sat with elbows and knees bound to his chair, his hands free to work the controls. A nasty-barreled Pike’s pistol rested across his shoulder.

Kristoff rested his weight on one leg and crossed his arms. “What’re you planning on doing with the crew, Marty?”

“Soon’s we get what we need, we’re gonna cut ‘em loose on a life boat. Couple bottles of water, a few crackers, maybe a knife and some matches. They’ll last long enough to turn on each other. Whoever survives gets to keep the raft.”

“Ah, Marty, you’re all heart.”



“Must be Polly’s influence.”

He nodded at her, Polly’s thick fingers tapped on a keyboard, and the Vega’s two-man shuttle floated free of the Katy Joy.

Marty said, “This security system’s a little too new for Polly here to hack. Can’t get through to the hailing codes”—not only mayday calls and general communication signals from ship to ship, but also the call signs, the ship’s identification—”and we need this sweet little vessel to have a new name.” Marty kicked a chair toward the engineer. “You do that, we’ll let you buy a fistful of fuel pellets and get back to your boat.”

Onscreen, a bolt of white shot from the side of the Katy Joy. The exterior starboard camera shuddered as the Vega’s kayak ripped apart in a soundless, flameless explosion.

Marty grinned again. “A’course, can’t promise how you’ll get back.”

#

Rebeka clutched her mug of tea and tried not to look at Jink Turner, still nursing his cracked ribs, or at Gleason Holmes, who winced as the ship’s doctor wrapped his bleeding palms with gauze.

“Shoulda asked for gloves,” the doctor murmured, tying off one bandage, a red blotch already staining the center. “These can get infected pretty easy.”

“He was just swabbing the floor. Maid’s work.” Jink sneered. “Doesn’t hurt to get a little blood on those soft white hands.”

“Don’t hurt to shut the mouth.” The fat cook, Sahir, slapped a plate of sandwiches on the table then wiped his meaty hands on the folded white towel tucked into his apron. “Eat. I bring tea.”

“What kind is it?” Rebeka took another sip. “I don’t think I’ve ever had it before.”

“Chandi—” started Ezra the cabin boy, but the cook shook the battered copper pot at him. “Uh, what kind is it again, Sahir?” Ezra grabbed a sandwich and took a large bite.

Sahir threw up a hand, shrugged a shoulder, and poured more tea into Jink Turner’s mug. “Get it cheap at last port.”

“Hey, Turner,” said Gleason, “maybe that was one of the crates you loaded.”

Jink pointed. “Listen, Holmes—”

“Whatever it is,” Rebeka lifted her mug, “it’s good.”

Sahir smiled, his eyes almost disappear-ing behind his cheeks. “For so beautiful Miss Bat’Alon, I make more.”

She glanced around at the others gathered at the table in the wide corner of the galley that served as a dining room. Six. “Where’s everyone else? Aren’t they hungry?”

“For someone who wanted to turn us over to the law for hanging, you’re awful concerned about our eating habits.” Ezra didn’t look at her.

He was perhaps fifteen or sixteen, a couple of years younger than Rebeka, with dark skin and curly black hair. Nice looking, for a pirate.

He spoke again, forming mushed vowels around a mouthful of food. “Finney’s in her bunk, Corrigan should be coming any time now”—and even before Ezra finished that phrase, the big mechanic ducked through the hatch and grabbed a fistful of sandwiches—”Alerio’s probably absorbed in some new function he’s invented for the engine, and Wyatt’s usually counting stuff. Who knows where the captain is.”

“The wheelhouse, I imagine,” said Mercedes, closing her medical bag and standing.

“Nope.” Ezra downed a swig of milk. “I checked.”

“Then his quarters, reading Huckleberry Finn for the seventeenth time.” The doctor nudged the bag against the boy’s shoulder, and he moved over on the bench. She sat beside him. “He gets hungry enough, he’ll join us.”

Corrigan sucked food remnants from his teeth and shook his head. “Didn’t nobody look out the window? The Katy Joy’s out there, and the kayak’s gone. I reckon the captain and Al went callin’.”

The doctor’s brows drew together, and her mouth thinned to a hard line. She unclipped her radio and hailed Alerio. No reply.

“Won’t work,” said Corrigan. “Too far. Ships’ hulls, and all that.”

“They could have told us first.”

“Probably knew you’d try to stop ‘em.” Corrigan reached for more sandwiches; the stack dwindled to five. “It’s just Quinn’s boat. He’s livin’ almighty high now that his daddy



died and left him all that money. His crew’s probably shiverin’ in their boots to see Kristoff aboard.”

Mercedes looked at him, and the mechanic grinned.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “Captain’s not that scary.”

Perhaps not, but Corrigan’s smile was. Rebeka turned away—right toward Jink Turner. His look was a mix of bitterness and longing.

He’d just have to get over it. She wasn’t marrying him nor any man, no matter how much Captain Kristoff might scheme or Papa might rave when she returned home. Men were liars all.

She stood, and crossed the galley to where Sahir cut rough-skinned Skorm apples. The cook moved over as far as his girth would allow, and she leaned a hip against the counter. “How did you come to be aboard the Martina Vega?”

“Was Kristoff’s gunner in war. Now I cook.” He scooted the apple slices off the cutting board with the flat of his knife, tumbling them onto a chipped pottery plate.

“Which side? In the war?”

“War is over.”

“Do you like being a pirate?”

The teapot whistled. Sahir slopped some of the steaming amber liquid into her mug then stomped over to the table.

Well—she sipped the fragrant tea—the losing side, then.

#

“Al,” Kristoff pushed down the curses gurgling in the back of his throat, “help these nice pirates with their thievin’ while I go over here and have a chat with Marty.”

Alerio adjusted his spectacles. “That an order, captain?”

“It is.”

The engineer sat before the keyboard. Polly stood a little behind him, gun ready. Alerio leaned forward; the jacket tightened across his shoulders, and a web of straps—the shoulder holster for an elegant little Tattersall’s Special, an aristocratic “lady’s best friend” for which he suffered much mockery among the Vega crew—raised a thin profile just under the fabric.

#

The kid returned to the docks every one of the five days the Martina Vega remained in port. The third day, he almost walked into Alerio’s bullet.

“Hey! No discharge of firearms at the dock!”

Alerio didn’t lower his arm, just waited for Carson Quinn to move out of the way, then fired again at the target, uneven black circles drawn on an old red grease rag stretched over the mouth of an overturned barrel. “You sound like a badge.”

“My father says—”

Alerio fired another round.

Laughing, Kristoff hopped down from a stack of empty crates and slapped Carson’s shoulder. “Most star mariners don’t care much for small talk. Ever fire one of these?”

An array of handguns lined a discarded bar-relhead. The kid looked them over, but didn’t touch them.

“Mother carries one like he’s shooting.” Carson nodded toward Alerio. “What did you do? Rob an old lady?”

This time, it was no friendly slap but a vise-like grip Kristoff clamped on the kid’s bony shoulder. “Before you make fun of a man’s weapon, better make sure you can wield it better than he can. Hey, Al, reload that Tattersall’s. Let’s see if sonny boy can shoot straight.”

#

Kristoff forced himself to relax, to look away from that betraying bit of lumped white cloth on Alerio’s shoulder, to smile and pay attention to Marty’s verbal swagger.

“…in Port Henry, and knew I was lookin’ at my last ship. Somebody let it be known around Port Henry that me and the boys were hired as bodyguards to a fella with more money than he knew what to do with, then we signed on to a mining vessel, waited for the yacht to come in range, jumped ship on a couple of lifeboats, and vy-ola, here we are.” Marty ran a big-knuckled paw along the woodwork. “A little paint, a new set of codes, some guns, and I’ll have me the best vessel in known space. She’s yar. The guns’ll have to be light cannon so she’ll stay that way. Government runners have the best light cannon. Hey”—he draped an arm



over Kristoff’s shoulders, and the fist holding the shotgun bumped against Kristoff’s chest—”that runner that was followin’ you. ‘Bout how long, you think, before it gets to this sky?”

“We lost it.”

“Lost it?”

“Dang. If only we’d known. We coulda slowed down, lassoed it, and led it right to you. Anything to aid a fellow pirate.”

“Is that, what’s the word? Sarcasm? That what that is?” “Marty, you’ve been reading the dictionary. Good for you.”

The gun tipped; the butt tapped Kristoff’s chin. “I try to be friends, you try to start a fight. Why you always doin’ that?”

“Old habits.”

“Yeah.” Marty thumbed a switch; both barrels twisted a quarter turn to the right, tele-scoped in a third of the length, and locked. He pressed the ends against Kristoff’s gut. “They take a while to die.”

Yeah. Sarcasm is my friend. “Ya know, Marty, you shoot me, my crew won’t play nice.”

“’S all right. The uptight crew of this boat—all they did was yell about their rich, fancy captain not inviting us aboard. Didn’t even give us a fight. Got the boys’ blood up. They’re spoilin’ for a donnybrook.”

“Even Polly?”

“Especially Polly.”

“Well, wouldn’t want to disappoint her.” Kristoff pushed the barrel away with his left hand, grabbed the stock with his right, and twisted, Marty’s finger still hooked around a trigger. A roar reverberated; Marty backed away, holding his right hand, the forefinger pointing east nor-east.

Hunched over, protecting that broken bone, the big man cursed.

Behind him, William aimed a Pike’s. Not much of a threat; if he fired, he’d hit his captain.

On the other hand, meaty as Marty might be, the bullet could still pass right through him and hit Kristoff. Unwelcome thought.

Polly shifted her stance, covering Kristoff but still guarding Alerio, whose quick typing was a nervous clatter in the sudden silence.

Marty, teeth gritted, “The boys’ll be coming upstairs any second now.”

“Donnybrook, remember?”

“What you want, Kris?”

“Where’s Carson Quinn?”

“Who?”

“Captain of this boat.”

“Skinny fella, no beard? Gave me some trouble. He’s nice and snug in the hold.”

“Alive?”

Marty half-laughed. “He’s got a sword, can you believe it? Some old navy cutlass he said belonged to an important ancestor on Earth.”

“Always was interested in antiques. Let’s go see it.”

Marty shrugged. “Why not?”

He glanced at William, stepped aside, and half-turned.

Uh-oh. Kristoff ducked behind the white sofa that looked like it belonged in a parlor.

Not anymore.

The first shot exploded a cushion into white confetti. The second pinged off something metal and thudded into something solid.

Kristoff pushed the end of the barrel against the back of the sofa, angling for the space above William’s head, fired, then scooted along the floor toward the bar.

A shot blasted through the furniture again; another gouged a groove in the polished wood bar.

“Hold your fire!” Marty bellowed. “No messin’ up my ship!”

Kristoff took advantage of the ceasefire. “How you doin’ over there, Al?”

“This security system is, uh, pretty darn secure.” The engineer’s voice, though tense, was steady. “Finesse isn’t working. We need the binary version of a sledgehammer to bash down all the layers of code protecting the ID files. This is stuff I’ve never seen before.”

Then, casual-like, Alerio added, “Anybody shoots him, they might as well shoot me, too. If he dies, I’m not going to crack this code and help the pirates who murdered my captain.”



That could almost make a man choke up and get teary-eyed.

Standing, Kristoff again pointed the gun at Marty. “William, toss me that hand cannon.”

The man hesitated.

Marty turned his head. “’S all right, William. The rest of the crew’ll take him down.”

The Pike’s skittered across the floor. Kristoff stopped it with his boot.

Footsteps thudded aft, approaching.

#

Grrrp. Grrrp. Grrrp. Grrrp.

Eyes still closed, Finney grabbed her radio. “Not funny, captain.”

Grrrp. Grrrp. Grrrp.

“Trying to sleep here.”

Grrrp. Grrrp.

“Kristoff?”

She sat up, eyes open. The telescreen—tech salvaged from a ghost ship—showed an empty wheelhouse. She switched the visual; lines of white digits and letters interspersed with the odd green numeral.

Grrrp. Grrrp. Grrrp. Grrrp.

She clamped down the red all-channels button—”Okay, who’s mucking about with the hailing frequencies? And where’s the captain?”—and switched the visual again, this

time to a view off the bow.

Pieces of shuttle floated like flotsam in a languid sea.

“Dear God and gearshifts,” she breathed. “They blew up the kayak.”

#

Kristoff tucked the pistol into the back of his belt. From the corner of his eye, he saw Polly take a step forward and tuck the stock of her gun into the hollow of her shoulder. He kept the Ginchon trained on Marty’s middle. “You wanna lead this crew? A little pressure on this trigger, Polly, and you’re in charge.”

Silence.

“Of course,” Kristoff added, “You might have to fight the boys for the privilege.”

Down the passage came the rest of the gang, single file in the narrow space and not much help to their captain, who had backed toward them, still nursing his broken finger by holding the hand close to his chest.

Gotta love a bottleneck.

“The kid who owns this boat, you do know his daddy stole more than one cargo from me, back when I had the prettiest ship in these skies?” Marty asked.

Kristoff nodded.

“I reckon Ol’ Sam Quinn probably stole his share of loot from you, too.”

“He retired before my time.”

“His kid some sorta kin to you?”

#

On the fifth day, a few hours before liftoff, Kristoff made a tour of the ship’s hull, looking for breaches and weak joints. Carson Quinn appeared at his side.

“Hey, kid.”

“Hey.”

Kristoff ran a hand along Martina’s metal skin. Pressure-cleaned and gleaming, she was smooth as silk.

“Captain?”

“Hm?”

“Thanks.”

“For what?”

“Letting me hang around.”

“Alerio’s impressed with your target skills.”

“He wanted to give me one of the guns, but I wouldn’t be able to explain it to my father.”

Yeah. Ol’ Sam Quinn wasn’t known for his understanding.

“So,” the kid ventured after several steps, “when will you be back in these skies?”

“Not sure.” With a stub of chalk, Kristoff circled a dodgy-looking rivet as broad as his two hands side by side. He’d send Corrigan to weld it. “We’re freighters. We go where our customers need us to go.”



“I was sort of hoping I could, you know—” Carson shrugged.

“Sign on with us?” Kristoff shook his head.

“But—”

“No.”

“I’m a quick learner—you saw that for yourself with the guns—and I want to sail.”

Kristoff stopped walking. “First rule of a sailor: obey the captain. Even the worst criminal of a captain will do what’s best for his ship. I take you aboard, your daddy comes after me—and he has the resources and the contacts to kill not only me but my crew, and destroy the Vega, too.”

They continued along the side of the ship. Carson moved ahead, running a hand along the hull as he walked. When they reached the forward hatch, the boy turned. “He’s going to make me a businessman like him.”

“Go to school. Don’t waste your mind.”

“Did you go to university?”

“Military academy.”

“And now you’re a freighter?”

“Life happens.”

#

“I met Carson when he was a boy, down at the docks. He likes ships.”

“You met him once.”

“Yup.”

Marty frowned. “And you’re willing to die for this kid?”

“Dying isn’t part of the plan.”

#

Finney met the rest of the Vega crew at the airlock in the hold. “What are the passengers doing here? Thought the captain said to lock ‘em in their cabins until we reach port.”

“He let ‘em roam a bit.” Corrigan had exchanged his coveralls for a pair of blue-and-gray patterned camouflage pants, a belt and holster of black webbing, and—most shock-ing—a clean t-shirt. He pulled a bandolier over his head and settled it across his chest. “Everybody bring the same caliber?”

Wyatt and Sahir nodded. Each holstered a standard glide-action Cavanaugh Cutlass—”the Mariner’s Choice”—and Corrigan carried the same gage in a rifle.

Finney preferred one of the heaviest Tat-tersall’s, and she loaded her own ammunition clips ranged in small sheaths lined up at her back, along her belt—not the old-fashioned jacketed bullets she learned to shoot as a child, but custom breakaways, designed more for incapacitation than death, though they achieved that pretty well, too.

“Ez, watch’em,” she nodded toward the passengers, “though I reckon they won’t be inclined to do much.”

Sahir must have served tea again. All three had a drowsy look, their eyelids at half-mast

and their movements lethargic. Mercedes propped up Jink Turner, whose usual sullen expression had become almost blissful.

“Could you contact the Katy Joy?” asked the doctor, her forehead lined.

Finney shook her head. “But there did appear to be an attempt to signal us. I don’t know if it was a distress call, or just a fumble-fingered pilot. Either way, our kayak is blown, and there’s no word from the captain or Alerio. That’s enough for me.”

Mercedes shuffled past with a slack-limbed Turner. “Bring Alerio back alive so I can kill him myself.”

Finney smiled. “I’ll do my best.”

“So,” Wyatt crossed his arms, “what’s the plan?”

“Get our crew back.”

“No, I mean details.”

“Get ‘em back alive.”

“You sure you and the captain don’t share genetic material? Siblings separated at birth?”

“Doubt it.” Finney stepped into the airlock. “My frontal lobe is prettier.”

“What is frontalobe?” Sahir looked at Wyatt.

“Whatever it is, it’s probably not standard equipment.”

She held down the button, keeping the hatch open. “C’mon, guys. We’ve got people to rescue.”



#

“Looks like we have ourselves a little standoff, gents.” Kristoff smiled his best ah-shucks-why-can’t-we-be-reasonable. “Whaddya say we—”

Something slammed into his chest, stag-gering him. The shotgun banged against the bartop, fell from his loosened grasp, bounced on the hardwood, and blew a hole in the ceiling. A fist of pain squeezed the breath from Kristoff’s lungs. He looked down. Red spread across his shirt like spilled paint. He sprawled against the wine rack, struggled to draw air, slithered to the floor.

A quiet sound, almost a pop. Polly’s eyes widened. She fell, the surprised look never leaving her face.

With a howl, William launched himself across the room. He, too, fell, blood blossom-ing on his chest.

Alerio—God bless his stupidity—aimed the little Tattersall’s Special at the angry group of men who pushed Marty aside and brought weapons to bear.

His chest crushing as if under the weight of an invisible elephant, Kristoff scrabbled for the shotgun. He propped it on his upraised knee, hooked a shaky finger over one trigger, and squeezed. Empty chamber. The second trigger fired the other barrel, and the slug took down a pirate.

Unfortunately, it was someone in the rear, not one of the men shooting at Alerio—who, calm as you please, fired off another round.

“Hold your fire!” shouted Marty, waving his good hand. “Hold your fire! Somebody grab the peashooter and sit on that little man. He’s becomin’ a downright nuisance. But don’t kill ‘im,” he added. “He’s the only brain here that can help us, unless one of you got the codes from the pilot.”

“Pilot’s dead.” Finney appeared behind the men, and with her stood Wyatt and Corrigan.

Wha-Hoo. Bring on the cavalry. Kristoff tried to cheer, but he couldn’t speak, couldn’t lift his arm.

Startled pirates looked over their shoulders, and some grinned at the sight of a woman.

Finney stared at them down the barrel of her gun. “Drop your weapons.”

Of course, they did not.

#

“Captain. Captain.”

The light stabbed. He groaned and lay back again, closing his eyes.

Finney’s voice, dry as a knife scraping over toast: “A couple days ago, you’re knocked out by a skinny kid about two-thirds your size, and today you’re shot by Polly, rest her soul. Not exactly making a name for yourself as the Terror of the Galactic Main.”

“Nice to know you care.”

“It’s a tough job, but—” Her words held a smile.

“In the future, whenever I feel compelled

to do a good deed, remind me I’m a pirate.”

“Freighter, sir.”

“Whatever.”

“Did Alerio make it? What about the kid?”

She didn’t answer.

There was the rustle of clothing, a brief exchange of murmurs, and then the decisive sound of boots hitting the floor as someone strode from the room.

“Finn? Finn?” Kristoff struggled to sit up, but thick bandages and sharp pain pinned him to the bed.

“Captain, it’s me. Carson.”

It was a deeper voice than he expected. Well, it had been what? Five, six years?

“Hey, kid.”

“Got those fuel capsules you needed.”

“Thanks.” Kristoff took a few short, shallow breaths. “Sorry about your pilot.”

“He was a good man.”

“The rest of your crew?”

“Alive.” There was a click and a faint hum. “Thought you’d like to see this.”

Kristoff squinted open his eyes. A telescreen floated in front of him, and showed Marty and crew gagged, hands and feet bound. Kristoff choked out a laugh.

“Poetic, don’t you think?” The telescreen



moved, and a young man came into view, a wide bandage around his head, and one side of his face bruised and cut, as if it had been smashed with a gloved fist or the butt of a gun. He wore a shoulder holster—Alerio’s—with the Tattersall’s tucked under his arm. “How are you feeling?”

“Like a trading caravan parked on my chest.”

Mercedes appeared, her face hovering upside down. She did not look happy.

“Hey, Doc,” said Kristoff.

She and Carson Quinn helped him sit upright, adjusted the bed to keep him at an incline and breathing better, and then the doctor left the room, her shoulders rigid.

“What’s eating her?”

“I think the only reason she patched you up is the fact that Alerio wasn’t hurt. If he had been, you’d probably still be bleeding all over my bar.”

“Yeah. Sorry about that, kid.” Then Kristoff smiled. “Nice ship.”

Keanan Brand

A sailor who couldn’t (and still can’t) swim, Keanan Brand’s father is a veteran of the US Navy during Viet Nam, and his stories fueled Keanan’s interest in all things nau-tical and military.

Keanan can barely swim, has only been canoeing on a small river in Oregon, and has never been in the military. Oh, well. In fiction, one can be anything.

Keep up with Keanan on his website at http://adventuresinfiction.blogspot.com/

http://adventuresinfiction.blogspot.com/

Pg. 56


Part One

Lashiir always found it was wise to keep one talon ready on Tsiika’s grip when he came into Tong’s presence. The Count’s face was nearly always expressionless, his body and features impossible to read even for a warrior of Lashiir’s experience. It was as if his bones were steel, his muscles artificial fiber, his skin plastic. Lashiir admired that poise. He strove to cultivate it in himself. But it made Tong difficult to deal with, placed him in a class far above such weak beings as Nathan Clane.

Even so, as Tong strode into his cavernous throne room, Lashiir could discern an unchar-acteristic vitality in the sweep of his armored legs and the carriage of his head. Perhaps a lighter expression floated around the edges of his thin lips.

“You are satisfied?” Lashiir asked, speaking through the translation device embedded in his throat.

“Exceptionally,” Tong replied. “Two is a masterpiece. He endures my deepest probings with impressive strength, and I had forgotten the pure elegance of his design...”

Tong ascended his throne in silence and perched on it like a vulture. His yellow eyes hardened as they turned on Lashiir. “You have something to say to me?”

Inwardly, Lashiir felt a kind of cold joy as he delivered his news. It was the next best thing

to driving his claws into Tong’s eye sockets. “I was visiting the monitoring station inside the crater. Caulthor’s high-altitude satellite have detected ships moving several thousands of kilometers outside your permitted shipping routes.”

“Smugglers. I’ll send a few ships to...waylay them.”

Lashiir hissed through the airholes in his beak. Tong wouldn’t recognize the noise as a laugh. “A force of more than a dozen capital-class smugglers? That is a formidable syndicate indeed.”

Faint anger flickered in Tong’s eyes. “Capi-tal-class?”

“The correct size for warships.”

Tong’s lips lifted just slightly to reveal yellowed teeth clenched like a closed gate. “You’re certain?”

“Your men were certain. I didn’t think to second guess them.”

Tong stood and descended the steps of his throne in predatory strides, his cape whirling around his shoulders. Another aspect of Tong’s personality that Lashiir admired: he rarely hesitated to act once his course was decided. But Lashiir had never seen him this enraged. Not even when Lashiir had acciden-tally beheaded one of his better Hands during a training exercise.

He had known, of course, that it was no accident. Tsiika could only go so long with her thirst unquenched.

#

The Rover tongue had seventeen variously crude words for sexual intercourse, and Esheera used several of them as a spray of hot white sparks washed over her shoulder. She knew from torturous experience that the burn was superficial, but that didn’t keep it from hurting like jagged needles driven through her flesh. She switched off her plasma arc and clutched her shoulder, gasping for breath and fighting down the pain, her back pressed against the cold metal floor of the docking bay.

The pain faded slowly, and Esheera opened her eyes, assessing the work she had done thus far. The Vulture’s Prize was suspended above her, supported by enormous steel jacks, and she had just finished bolting two small pulser cannons onto the ship’s belly. It had taken plenty of sweet-talking—and a little help from Zartsi—to wheedle them away from the weapons commissar of the Canghi Blood Falcon Shinotsubasa. If she managed to hook up a set of energy cables thicker than her neck without electrocuting herself, the cannons would join improved maneuvering jets, a stellar wave-com system that could process hundreds of signals at a time, and redundant life support among the improvements she had been able to pillage from the ship’s stores. Borrowed military-issue

Memory Wipe Chapter 24, Memory Reborn by Sean T. M. Stiennon

Deuces Wild, Season Two, Chapter 6: Suicide Run, by L. S. King Pg. 57


repair gear and, occasionally, workers sent at Zartsi’s request had expedited the process, but Esheera had gone largely without sleep during the voyage. She felt uncomfortably light-head-ed and had trouble remembering how many days had passed since their departure from Sirena.

But she had no duties aboard the ship, and spending every possible moment busting her ass on the ship kept her from thinking. Thinking about Takeda, about the battle ahead, about whether she would be incinerated and her ashes frozen in vacuum.

She made a few finishing touches that would keep the welds from breaking under combat acceleration, then put the welder aside and pulled on elbow length rubber gloves. She had already installed the cables with the help of two muscular but sadly idiotic marines. Now all that remained was to wrestle them into position and send through a test surge of energy from the ship’s central generator.

Esheera had just gotten her arms around one when Zartsi’s voice came softly from directly behind her. “You want help, Rover?”

She tilted her head back over one shoulder to look at him. Esheera could still barely recognize the Lithrallian in this new incarna-tion. A shining cloak woven with shards of red glass engulfed his shoulders, which also supported a breastplate of strome iodized to a deep bronze color. Braided gold made up his belt and a red tunic hung to his knees. At least his head was uncovered and still recognizable as belonging to the Zartsi she had come to know. He had refused the gold-and-ruby circlet normally worn by the Prince-Heir.

“How did you escape your bodyguards with all that weighing you down?” Esheera asked, smiling.

Zartsi winced. “With difficulty. They should listen to order—any order—I give, but are reluctant when order is dismissal. They also do not trust Rover.”

“Wouldn’t expect them to,” she grunted, turning back to the Prize. “Most of my people in Kingdom space operate as pirates or drug runners.”

Suddenly Zartsi crouched at her side, his wiry arms helping support the cable’s dull weight. Together they heaved it up. Zartsi crouched beneath it, holding it up with both arms, while Esheera dragged each connector into place and bolted it onto the cannons’ shared power cell. Zartsi relaxed, letting the cable sag. Smears of black grease came off onto his cloak and breastplate.

“I don’t mind leaving it exposed,” Esheera said, patting it. “Makes the ship look...ferocious.”

Zartsi nodded, pointed teeth showing in a smile.. “As if something could break off and electrocute bystander.”

She cuffed him on one arm—practically the only exposed portion of his body within her reach. “You build a functional ship from scratch someday and we’ll see how long she stays aloft.”

He laughed softly. “I concede. Is ship complete?”

“Well...yes, unless you count the thousand

things I’d add, replace, or tune up with another six months to work in.”

“Good. Commander Sergi tells me we will enter Caulthor system within two hours.”

Esheera shut her eyes and sucked in a deep breath of the docking bay’s cool, metallic-tast-ing air. “Almost zero-hour, then.”

Zartsi glanced back up at the Prize. “I could arrange for you to pilot better ship,” he hissed.

Esheera snorted. “No Imperial Swallow can replace a Rover ship. I built this hulk. I’ll die in it if I have to.”

“There may not be so much fighting. Vodrune Province lacks shipyards, and Commander Sergi tells me only patrol craft have been purchased in last decade.”

Esheera smiled coldly. “Zartsi, how did you get to be a prince without knowing about the black market?”

“I know,” he said. “There is drug trade in Kingdom.”

“In the Empire, too. The Blacksnouts have their noses deep into it. There’s also a healthy business in illegal warships for pirates, gangs, outlaws, or Imperial authorities who want to have some extra punch without the trouble of getting official approval.”

“Large ships?”

“Well...Jaggo once described a Suto deal involving a twenty year-old Green Scarab with ninety-six pulser batteries and docking space for twenty attack craft.”



“Who purchased it?”

She shrugged. “I don’t remember the details. A front organization for someone larger.”

“This makes me wonder...I have heard reports of pirates in Caulthor system. No man has ever claimed to capture except Tong himself. Perhaps pirates receive orders from him.”

Esheera’s response was cut off as one of the pedestrian doors on the shipward side of the docking bay hissed open, and six armored Lith-rallians came charging through the opening, weapons pressed against their chests. One Imperial ensign in a neatly laundered, white uniform trailed behind them, jogging to match their stride.

One of the Lithrallian guards bowed low, his tail sketching out its own set of movements in the air behind him. He hissed out something in Lithrallic which Esheera couldn’t tell from an obscene joke. Zartsi nodded, somewhat sadly, and responded with a few words.

Then the human stepped up. His mouth opened, and he got through a handful of syllables in broken Lithrallic before Zartsi turned to him and said, “I speak fluent Imperish.”

The ensign’s cheeks flushed a light red. Esheera gave him what she hoped was an encouraging smile, but her presence seemed to make the young man even more flustered. He abruptly snapped into formal posture, snapped off an Imperial salute, and launched into what was obviously a carefully prepared statement: “Your Highness, Count Xhang politely requests that you meet him at the bridge at your earliest

convenience for a council of war, to finalize plans for entry of the Caulthor system.”

“At ease,” Zartsi hissed, not quite managing to hide his annoyance. “Tell Admiral that I will come.”

The ensign hurled his whole body into a bow that came alarmingly close to smashing his nose on the polished floor. He straightened, glanced nervously at the armored Lithrallian warriors now clustered around Zartsi, and hurriedly jogged out of the room.

Esheera pulled her braids back with one hand, checking that they were firmly hooked behind her ears. She turned back to her ship, scooping up a wrench and a small welding iron from the floor.

“Aren’t you coming, Rover?” Zartsi asked.

She shrugged. “I’d just wrinkle noses and give the cleaning staff more work. I should probably sleep for a few minutes, too.”

“Invited as my guest? I would give honorary rank.”

“You’re a prince, aren’t you? Most princes wouldn’t be seen hanging around my kind.”

From their expressions and wary postures, Esheera suspected that his bodyguards felt the same way. They gripped their weapons with just a bit more purpose whenever she came within thirty feet of Zartsi.

Zartsi raked one hand through the air in front of him, as if clawing away any objections. “You are friend. That is enough.”

She smiled. The expression felt more

genuine than it had for weeks. “Actually, I need to talk to Winnowski, my flight commander. Ask her where in the wing she wants me to fly the Prize. So I’ll have to pass, with thanks.”

Zartsi smiled back. “Very well, friend.”

He bowed quickly, then turned and strode towards the exit without giving his guards time to react. They jogged to catch up before enfolding him once again in a shell of blades and rifles. Zartsi would spend the battle aboard one of the Lithrallian Burning Light frigates—the Ressiset, Esheera thought. She realized, as she watched the doors close over his armored and bedecked figure, that it might be the last time she saw him alive. Bridge crews were hardly immune to the storm of hyper-accelerated energy, torpedoes, and white-hot shrapnel that constituted a vacuum engagement.

And fighter pilots...they tended to die like gnats in an oven.

Esheera spent perhaps a half-hour going over her work, checking every bolt, screw, and weld seam for combat-readiness. Then she set off for Winnowski’s office. If she did die in the battle to come, she could think of several things to console her: she would see Jaggo beyond the kind stars, her death would be quick—even vacuum suffocation didn’t tend to drag on, and she would die knowing that she had been friend to two remarkable beings: a murderer and a weapon, a prince and a security guard.

#

Esheera had taken some time to study the Caulthor system from the handful of observa-tion holos available. Four planets traced out



orbits around the white sun that formed the burning heart of the Vodrune province. The first and farthest out, Brintris, was dark rock with thick scars of gray ice, laying claim to three misshapen moons of nearly identical topogra-phy. Beyond that came a gas giant, cinnabar with crimson streaks like open wounds, and millions of kilometers further on a nondescript orb of dusty yellow clouds with its own collec-tion of rocky moons.

Caulthor was the fourth and last, its surface endlessly scorched by the furious light of the Vodrune sun. Esheera had seen a dozen temperate worlds from orbit, all similar in their luxuriant blues, vivacious greens, and pale browns overshadowed by ivory clouds. Caulthor was like a reverse image of such planets. Its surface was burnt orange and rust red, its clouds ranged in color from black to ash-gray to sulfurous yellow, its poles were tinged with sinister streaks of pale red and cinnabar. Its single moon looked as if it some beast had chewed it up and spit it out.

Esheera could see none of that from behind the Prize’s canopy. The stark, gray steel bulkheads of a cavernous docking bay obscured the stars from her view as she waited in an empty launch stall for flight orders to filter down from the bridge. She sat with her back pressed against the torn leather cradle seat she had scavenged from the Suto, her feet hovering over dozens of maneuvering pedals, her hands spread over banks of thrust, navi-gation, gravity compensation, and weapons controls. More levers, buttons, switches, and simple displays hung like stalactites above her head and clustered in her peripheral vision. Their placement was chaotic, and some of them weren’t actually connected to anything.

Her feed from the Shinotsubasa’s exterior sensors, displayed on three screens and one slightly broken hologram projector, told her that the fleet had passed the third planet and were driving towards Caulthor, slowly decel-erating to orbital speeds as they did. Picket ships on the outskirts of the system had simply refused to answer hails and had fled after dispatching messages towards Caulthor. No fighter squadrons had yet been scrambled. Esheera’s legs were starting to ache—this seat was designed for a Vitai slightly smaller than she was, perhaps even a youth.

“I’m sick of this waiting. I need to piss,” one of her squadmates said through the comm. The speaker hovered right by Esheera’s ear, and she dialed down the volume.

“Piss in your suit. Or aren’t you hooked up?” Captain Winnowski’s voice came back. “This is the easy part. Say your prayers while you can.”

The Vitai worshiped no gods. Esheera believed only in astral forces, energies greater than any mortal life that were present in the nuclear hearts of stars, the endless reaches of blackness between those pinpoints of light and life, the nearly-infinite oceans of emptiness between galaxies. Life would not be possible without worlds. Worlds would be nothing more than boulders of rock and ice without the heat of stars. The stars would be impossible without the void.

At the same time, Esheera believed firmly that souls were immortal, that some peace among the stars awaited those with good hearts. She would see Jaggo again, in whatever dimension lay beyond her current life. She

whispered to him, wondering if he could hear her. Let me fly like no other, my love.

Esheera thought of Jaggo and waited for the launch order to come.

#

A burst of static exploded from the speakers on the command nexus of the Burning Light frigate Ressiset, chasing any thoughts of prayer away from Zartsi’s mind. He stood up from where he had been slouched against the bulkhead and returned his attention to his ship. Kingdom astrogators in black uniforms clustered around diagnostic displays, sensor readouts, communication banks, thrust controls, and a dozen other functions Zartsi could barely grasp. Projection screens on the curved walls, the domed ceiling, and a recessed pit in the floor showed the gleaming stars, black space, and other ships surrounding the Ressiset.

Lithrallian designers were rarely content with the stark bulkheads and monochrome carpets of Imperial ships. Molded statues enameled in bronze and even gold reared between piloting and sensor stations: mountain turtles, firesnakes, deepfins, and other beasts both real and mythical. The floor was paneled in rough wood inlaid with streaks of thinly-beaten gold in complex geometric patterns.

The static in Zartsi’s subsided for a moment, then burst out even louder. “What is that?” Zartsi said, loud enough for his voice to carry.

One of the comm officers turned towards him, bowed, and said, “A massive signal is being projected from Caulthor. It’s strong enough to override our normal communications.”



Zartsi had little experience with the finer points of stellar-range communication, but at this distance from Caulthor...the signal would have to be immensely powerful to force itself onto military networks.

The bridge’s holoprojector flickered suddenly, and the previous image vanished to be replaced by a human figure built of pale green laserlight. Zartsi had never seen the man before. He was lean, like a man left in the desert to starve, the sharp planes of his face easily visible beneath dry skin. Hands like talons hung ready at his sides, and he was armored, with a sweeping cloak that nearly reached the floor. The hologram, although imprecise, conveyed the cold hardness of his eyes.

A sharp voice split through the static. “I am Jezai Tong.”

Zartsi snarled, one hand going to his sword, and stepped out to stand in front of the towering figure. He bared his fangs. “Can you open a response channel?”

“I can try, my prince,” the tech said. “But the primary link is with Shinotsubasa, not with us.”

Tong’s image spoke again. “Canghi ships,” he growled, “explain why you’ve violated the borders of the Vodrune province.”

“Shinotsubasa is broadcasting response to all ships,” Zartsi’s tech said.

Zartsi nodded as the fleet commander, Count Xhang, answered Tong’s question: “We carry the Emperor’s Dragon Lance, authoriz-ing us to depose you as ruler of the Vodrune province. Surrender yourself and his Imperial Highness may show you lenience.”

Tong’s image smiled thinly. “And the reasons

for this are?”

“Stockpiling arms for use against the Imperial Throne. Illegal bio-engineering. Failure to admit Imperial agents for inspection of your holdings. Treason. Attempted assassination of an Imperial ally, the Lithrallian Prince-Heir.”

“Since when is Shingen a scale-kisser?”

Zartsi growled just as his tech called out that he had established a communication channel. “Tong!” Zartsi hissed, in his best Imperish. “This is Zartsi Hsik Hsonra, oldest living son of Serpent King.”

Tong’s head shifted slightly, and Zartsi felt as if the hologram’s attention had shifted to him. “Lithrallian,” he said. “Dare I ask why you’ve joined this traveling carnival?”

“To avenge friend.”

“I see.”

Tong’s attention shifted again. He must have the two of them on different screens. “Count Xhang, I won’t waste your time with civilities. I will say this only once. Break that lance over your knee and get out of my space, or die.”

His image vanished as quickly as it had come. “Normal communications restored,” Zartsi’s tech said.

Zartsi turned away to find his bridge commander apparently staring at him with thinly veiled anger. “With all respect, my prince, you should not have announced yourself.”

“Because Tong will now target Ressiset?”

“Yes.”

Zartsi smiled. “You think that was not my

intention?”

The bridge commander studied his face for a moment, as if search for a cue on how Zartsi expected him to react. “Was it, my prince?”

“I do not fear Tong or his warriors. Let them shake, for the warriors of the Ascended Kingdom are here to challenge them!”

His voice rose into a booming roar the resounded from the curved screens sur-rounding the bridge. Warriors and crewmen answered back with shouts of “Glory to the Serpent King!”

It had been many, many years since Zartsi had last acted as Prince-Heir. It had only begun to feel particularly odd when his normal company of Esheera had been supplemented by Chaqi and a company of bodyguards. Now he had been thrust into a position of command greater than anything from his youth: three of the best warships his father owned and nearly three thousand trained crew, marines, and pilots, all with their lives depending on him.

The ships had their own commanders. Count Xhang commanded the fleet as a whole. But Zartsi would bear the guilt if any of his people died in this battle.

Zartsi molded his expression carefully. The bridge crew’s eyes were on him. They knew what he had done, and many were inwardly suspicious of his leadership and nobility. For their sake he must appear as the perfect warrior, like the great champions of the Sun Saga. Chaqi had taken to drawing him aside for a half-hour or more to polish his armor and put every scrap of cloth in some ideal place.

To create an image was one thing. To fulfill its promise was another. If he did...then, perhaps, his atonement would finally be made.

The Adventures of the Sky Pirate , Chapter 26, The Friar's Paradox, by Johne Cook Pg. 61


#

Tong stepped out of the projection ring with a soft hiss. Lashiir watched from the shadows. “The response you were expecting?”

“Yes, roughly. But the Lithrallian...that is unforeseen. A friend, he said. He may mean Two.”

“Will you kill him?”

Tong shook his head, making his braid sway back and forth. “No. I will not allow Canghi to dictate my actions. My war begins now.”

Lashiir hissed through the air vents on his beak. “You think you can bring down the entire Empire?”

“I have many Hands in place. Too many for Shingen to find half of them. Three of them are employed in his baths. When I give the order, Shingen and half his Lords will die. I will walk over their graves. But first...there is a fleet to destroy.”

Lashiir inclined his head slightly. “What place do I take in this battle?”

“Your ship is of Dark Sphere manufac-ture?”

“Despair is the best our shipwrights can craft.”

“Then take it and fly freely. I’ll have a trans-mitter attached that will prevent our weapons from targeting you.”

“My thanks.”

Six Hands—all among his most powerful

and best-conditioned—stepped out of the shadows as Tong turned to leave the projec-tion room. Lashiir spoke as he was on the threshold. “One question. What ship carries the Lithrallian?”

Tong tilted his head towards the Hand serving as comm-tech. “One of the Burning Light frigates,” the man said. “Currently the one to galactic east of the fleet group.”

Lashiir left the room in Tong’s wake, then began to make his way through dark corridors to the docking bay where Despair waited. It would be pure joy to commune with the black ship once again, and to kill together.

#

Somewhere, alone in the dark, Takeda Croster knew only three sensations: the icy-coldness of steel pressing against his naked flesh, the metal bands screwed tight around his arms, legs, and neck, and the infinite pain that flowed through him like his own blood. His mind floated in and out of consciousness, moving between darkness and dark dreams.

He bled, but Tong was too cruel to let him die. A tube pumped fresh blood into him to replace that he had lost. Wounds like windows on his organs were stitched and molded shut until the next operation. Takeda had lost his ability to distinguish one session from the next, to measure the endless stretches of silence, darkness, and agony between.

Still, it seemed as if a longer than normal span of time had passed since Tong had last come with his blades and needles and monitors. Could he be distracted? For a moment, Takeda

hoped that Tong would leave him to starve or shrivel from dehydration. Then, at last, he could die.

Sherri. Liun. Were they still alive, or had a century passed and ground them to dust? Either way, Tong still had them. Tong, the torturer, the devil. Takeda flexed his muscles within their straps. The pain intensified, but not much—Takeda felt that he had truly began to plumb the depths of suffering.

He threw his unwilling body against the restraints and realized he was wrong. The pain before had been darkness, and now light burst into his mind, a searing light of white excrucia-tion. He screamed silently—the pain stole his breath. He slumped down and wavered on the edge of unconsciousness.

This pain would never end.

#

The hologram projector in the center of the Ressiset’s bridge showed space for several thousand kilometers around the Canghi fleet. Zartsi’s three frigates were marked in bright yellow, the Imperial ships in green. The second planet was an orb of brown light several thousand passing off to Galactic East.

One of the front screens showed their des-tination, still millions of kilometers ahead: the smoldering, sun-baked world of Caulthor, its night-side turned towards them. The location of Tong’s headquarters was known. Count Xhang’s plan called for all orbital defenses and space craft to be destroyed. Then landers carrying brigades of highly-trained Imperial marines would land at key locations across the



planet, most notably Tong’s fortress near the south pole, and would seize those locations with the aid of orbital bombardment and air support from fighter wings.

“It is strange, my prince,” his bridge commander hissed. Commander Nalza was an old warrior—older than Zartsi’s father—who had seen a dozen battles. The scales on the right side of his face were torn and uneven because of a shrapnel wound he had taken during a boarding action against a Drava ship.

“That Tong has flown no ships?”

Nalza nodded. “It would be customary to deploy light bombers as soon as he picked us up, to inflict damage before we’ve scrambled fighters. But we have seen none of his ships. Perhaps he has none...but I think not.”

Imperial records stated that Tong possessed no more than a pair of light cruisers and several wings of patrolcraft—enough to stave off pirates, but not to wage war. But Zartsi’s conversation with Esheera stuck in his mind. How many ships could a rich man comb out of the black market?

“My prince,” a sensor tech called, “our sensors register engine signals from the third planet. The gas giant.”

Zartsi turned. Activity at last. “How far?”

“Signals take time to reach us. I estimate...ships launched fifteen minutes ago. Will arrive within half-hour.”

Zartsi tilted his head towards Nalza “Light bombers?”

“Perhaps, my prince. But it seems strange

to give us so much warning. Maybe...”

The tech broke him off again. “Massive energy register from Caulthor. Launches all across planet...sub-station! Calculate ship size.”

Nalza bounded over, craning his neck to study the sensor readouts. Zartsi watched as crimson pinpoints of light flared into existence within the central holofield, entering the map from both Galactic north and south, like a flight of burning arrows aimed at the Canghi fleet.

The bridge exploded into life around him. Holographic displays sprang up, technicians called requests back and forth, comm banks crackled with intership communications. The bridge commander stepped in front of him and bowed. “My prince, permission to deploy fighter claws?”

“Given.”

While the commander issued the necessary orders, Zartsi returned his attention to the holofield. The red dots multiplied, and tags sprang up next to some, marking them as ships of destroyer-class or larger. Those marked as fighters were shrunk to pinpricks while larger ships were expanded in size. Zartsi saw two marked as full battlecruisers, with small entou-rages of cruisers and destroyers, all in the group advancing from Caulthor. As the commander had guessed, the ones coming from behind were smaller, mostly fighters with a couple larger picket craft, spreading out to circle the Canghi fleet.

It was too simple, too orthodox for a man who had concealed so much for so long. For a man who had devised the idea of turning

men into living arsenals. Zartsi’s eyes moved to the second planet of the system, a small world wreathed in thick clouds that repelled light and radio waves. Would they also conceal the energy readings of a ship clearing atmo-sphere?

“Scan the second world!” Zartsi roared.

His voice was loud enough to break through the chaotic mess of noise that had begun to overtake the bridge. Nalza’s head snapped up and turned towards the holofield. He thought for a moment. Then his eyes widened with realization. “You’ve heard your prince. Turn all active sensors towards that planet. Tag any marks.”

Long seconds passed in tension as the techs waited for sensors pings to bounce back. Other techs continued to update information on the forces approaching behind and ahead of the invading fleet. Two more cruisers were identi-fied among the ships coming from Caulthor, and three of the ships from the outer planet were revealed as light destroyers.

Zartsi could see the second planet as a small orb of dusky yellow on the display screens wrapped around the bridge’s curved bulkhead. Already he hated the distances of space combat, that made seeing an enemy with one’s own eyes nearly impossible until he was close enough to strike with a well-thrown wrench. Zartsi liked to see the eyes of his opponent—whether they be the yellow orbs of a Belari skitter or the white-and-brown of most humans.

Or the inscrutable black of a Clordite.

Flecks of pale red flared up within the



holofield. “Missiles,” a tech barked. “Hundreds of missiles.”

The words were like a flare tossed into a razorgnat hive. Techs shouted and hissed back and forth while the bridge commander and his aids ran from screen to screen, gathering infor-mation and issuing hasty orders. The crimson lights marking enemy craft crept closer.

Zartsi stepped up to the launch officer and gripped his shoulder. “How many fighters are deployed?”

“Six claws, my prince.”

Each claw contained three assault craft, piloted by Lithrallians who had trained and lived together since their maturity. The frigate carried twelve such groups—low compared with the fighter counts of Imperial ships, but not insignificant.

“Commander!” Zartsi called. “What word from Count Xhang?”

The older warrior looked up, his scarred face harried. “We’ve just transmitted those missile tags. He asks us to deploy our fighters towards Caulthor and let Imperials handle the missiles.”

Zartsi caught the displeasure in his tone. “You don’t like this?”

“I don’t like being ordered into red space by a human.”

Zartsi met his gaze levelly. “I do not like fighting for Empire. But this is an evil which would touch the Kingdom eventually if allowed to spread. I have offered them our blood, and we will pay if we must.”

The commander smiled tightly. “I would not be a solider if I did only things I liked, my prince.” He ducked his head in an abbreviated bow. “You wish to give the order?”

Zartsi nodded back—a gesture of respect between two warriors, both confident in their strength. “Launch officer, order all fighter claws to the front.”

“Yes, my prince.”

A moment later, Zartsi heard his bridge commander speaking to weapons crews scattered throughout the frigate, ordering them to arm pulser batteries, torpedo tubes, and kinetic railguns the Lithrallians called sokshimat. Burning Light ships took the shape of Lithrallian dagger-rays: long, broad, and flat on its vertical axis. Weapon batteries were concentrated along its edges while docking bays opened above and below. They were among the most powerful ships available to the Kingdom, nearly matching Imperial battle-ships in firepower and troop capacity. Zartsi commanded three.

He seated himself, gripping the gold-plated dragon heads that formed grips on his chair’s arms. He was trained in sword, the twin daggers, bare claws and teeth, rifle, pistol, flamecaster, palm blades, and a dozen other weapons. He had hunted beasts from horned rushmesti to Belar skitters to dust worms and Walking Evils, all with success.

He prayed that he wouldn’t fail his warriors in this new command.

#

Seven Imperial Swallow-class strike fighters and one cobbled together Rover craft formed a slanted Y shape in space: Commander Winnowski in the center, with two ships forming arms above and below. Esheera posi-tioned the Vulture’s Prize between the two prongs of the Y. She could see four wingmates above her, Winnowski and the two others just visible below through the lower edge of her canopy. Imperial Swallows were sleek craft, their hulls painted dark blue, with smooth, sweeping wings on both sides and elegantly rounded cockpits.

Esheera had succeeded in installing only a single holofield that flickered slightly as she watched it. Still, it gave her the basic layout of the Canghi fleet...with red gnats beginning to enter the view on two sides. Other information was splashed across over a dozen screens of varying size, resolution, and states of repair. A jungle of thrust levels, switches, and other controls—many improvised from scraps of metal and plastic—was laid out under both her hands and her feet.

The Caulthor system’s white sun was a tiny orb of light in her canopy. The planet itself was hidden among the surrounding stars. Other ships from the allied fleet surrounded her: wing after wing of Swallow craft, jagged Lithrallian rasshi and zakneen bombers in claws of three. The Shinotsubasa lay just behind, its curved bulkheads painted with feathered dragons in the red and silver of Canghi province, as well as the ship’s name in the angular pictograms of Gold Chinese, all illuminated by glow stripes criss-crossing the ship’s hull. The fleet’s other vessels showed similar polish: painted, illumi-nated, studded with weapons in orderly rows and clusters. They made the Prize look like a



vulture among falcons.

Esheera nudged her controls slightly, firing jets to bring her more in alignment with the other ships. Commander Winnowski’s voice came in from the comm, “Caulthori ships are sending out swarms. I know you’ll all enjoy being outnumbered, but stay sharp and watch your wings. Esh, you know what you’re doing?”

“Stay with you and Three, blast tagged enemy ships, and try not to die,” Esheera said back, smiling despite herself.

“Right. Our job is to keep bombers and their escorts away from the hulks. Don’t worry about runs on the enemy hulks unless we somehow manage to nail every strike fighter out of the black. Not likely.”

Esheera flipped a series of switches to route power to the pulsers freshly wired and bolted onto Prize’s belly. She prayed she hadn’t botched the connections—the tangle of cables, air and waste pipes, heating coils, and coolant valves had become such a labyrinth that the Nii clan’s Elder Metalwinder would have trouble navigating it.

She gripped the fire controls with her left hand. Her right was on a pair of levers tied to thrusts on her wings that controlled lateral movement—turns, pitches, and rolls. Other thrust levers beneath her feet affected vertical movement and axis orientation. A few other thrusters came into play for more complex maneuvers.

Commander Winnowski barked a maneu-vering order, and Esheera had a moment to respond as the entire wing lurched upwards,

filling a gap in the wall of fighters filling space ahead of the capital ships. Her eyes caught a gleam of reflected light from a strome hull: a fleck of light, dimmer than a star, that marked the position of a warship.

Minutes passed and other flecks flashed up against the blackness of space. Esheera had a peep line patched into the Shinotsubasa’s sensors, and she pulled up information on the motley cluster of screens around her head. One cruiser looked as if it had been assembled from five or six smaller ships, all with clashing designs. Another looked as if it had begun life as an ore hauler before having banks of tight-maneuvering engines and pulser cannons welded onto its hull. A third seemed to be a retrofitted construction ship, with grasping and welding arms still attached.

The rest seemed similar. Small patrolcraft built by private contractors for security and police work flew escort for angular hulks of raw steel with weapons and engines grafted on wil-ly-nilly. Only two or three light cruisers looked as if they had come from any legal shipyard. Whatever engines Tong had welded onto those hulks, though, they were powerful enough to match the speed of Canghi warships.

A little closer, and fresh data poured into Esheera’s computer from Shinotsubasa. The vacuum ahead of the enemy fleet swarmed with a vanguard of fighters. Hundreds of them, as many as a thousand, scattered like steel petals in a hot breeze. Esheera’s data was limited, but they didn’t seem to be flying in any regimented squadrons. Tong had probably filled space with as many half-functional ships and green pilots as he could scrounge up.

Esheera’s finger tensed on her pulser trigger and her toes curled as she held them poised above the thruster controls.

Commander Winnowski’s voice growl over the comm. “Flight Three-Seven, slash, wheel, and hamstring, polar axis slant thirty east.”

Esheera had a handful of moments to interpret that from hazy memories of the jargon briefing Winnowski had given her. Then the enemy fighters were no longer pixels on a display. They were flecks of metal and engine flare in her canopy, approaching at attack speeds. Esheera flicked a thruster lever with one toe and edged away just as red pulser fire slashed through her squadron. She corrected almost instantly, bringing the Prize back into place.

Winnowski’s voice was a snarl in her ear. “Acquire targets and fire.”

Esheera activated the box she had installed to pass for a proper targeting computer. It patched into her peep data from the Shinot-subasa to acquire hostile tags, then used the Prize’s sensors to transmit aiming orders to the actual cannon. It was a slapdash job, and she would have almost no chance of hitting anything at ranges beyond one kilometer or so.

She jerked one hand up to pull a targeting screen close to her left eye. The computer had acquired a ship that looked as if it had been built from old truck parts. Her thumb pressed the trigger down.

Only one of her twin cannons fired. She was surprised it worked even that well. Bolts of red pulser energy slashed the blackness, faster



than her eyes could track. At nearly the same instant other lances of crimson light exploded from the squadron around her, blasting towards targets that were still many kilometers away. The gap closed rapidly.

Slash. Commander Winnowski barked the order. Esheera activated her thrusters with a sharp kick and managed to stay with her squad-mates as they yawed left, joining a dozen other squadrons in angling to rake along the front of the enemy fighter advance. Crimson energy traced lines of fire across Esheera’s vision.

A pair of enemy ships blossomed in silent bursts of white fire and red metal as lances of pulser energy ripped through their engine blocks. Esheera’s thumb pressed down on her trigger as her computer acquired a fresh target. Her pulser fire blended with that from her squadmates.

As the Caulthori ships advanced in a sweeping wall across space, nearly two hundred Canghi and Lithrallian fighters formed into a blade to cut across their front. Pulsers and Lithrallian railguns hammered at the fighters’ broadsides. Engine exhaust flares, pulser light, sunlight gleaming on polished metal, and eruptions of flame from destroyed ships combined in a silent orchestra of light. For a moment Esheera almost forgot that this was a battle, that men and women were dying.

Then a burst of white fire flared up in her peripheral vision, perhaps fifty meters away, and she had an instant to kick her thrusters and propel herself out of the way as one of her squadmates exploded, sending accelerated shrapnel into space all around. Somewhere behind her the Prize’s hull rang and screamed

as bits of metal and fuselage raked across it. The white light blinded her for a heartbeat.

“Re-form and wheel!” Winnowski barked.

Esheera glanced at her hologram as she worked thrusters with her feet, turning the Prize around and beginning to arc it back towards the Canghi fleet. They had passed through the bulk of the Caulthori vanguard—a maneuver that exposed them to the capital ships behind.

The Canghi capital ships were distant shapes of color-striped strome in her vision. The Caulthori ones behind were only slightly larger. Esheera’s entire canopy flashed crimson as alarm light switched on near her head, indicating that the Prize’s entire hull had just gone red hot. She had just lost a wingmate to a cruiser’s primary cannon. She yawed down and began to accelerate in pursuit of the enemy fighters.

“Rover, get your ass back here! Winnowski barked. Esheera glanced at her screens and realized she was over a kilometer away from her four surviving wingmates. She also realized, as she kicked a thruster control to correct, that her entire body was shaking and her chest was throbbing.

She should never have agreed to fight with a squadron. Squadron combat relied on fighting in unison for mutual protection in a melee. Rover fighting relied on chaos, unpredictability, confusing an enemy’s computers while slowly jinking into a position to smoke them—what her people called the “Whip Dance.” It was how she had avoided Lashiir’s X-ray lasers in orbit above Nihil.

She would break off if she had to. For now,

though, she continued flying in formation, hands and feet poised over dozens of distinct controls, eyes flicking between the canopy and her many displays. Torpedoes weren’t effective against fighters—they couldn’t match a small ship’s capacity for complex maneuvers—but the Caulthori ships continued to fire long-range pulser blasts, hoping to pick off a few Canghi fighters. Winnowski led her squadron in quick, awkward loops and occasional sharp jerks to throw off their computers. Esheera broke formation just slightly to wheel around the other four remaining ships. She pitched and rolled, focusing on her displays rather than the stars and planets and pulser bursts filling her canopy with light.

The first wave of fighters struck the Canghi fleet. Others came from the opposite side, catching the fleet between two swarms. Small, easily aimed pulser batteries lashed out at the buzzing ships, which began to hammer three-foot thick strome bulkheads with short-range bombs. Several Imperial fighter wings had stayed back for defense, including at least three flights of Lithrallian claw-ships, and they engaged the swarms of Caulthori fighters at seven-to-one odds. Explosions spattered the blackness like newly formed stars.

Then a long chain of small explosions seemed to spring up in the center of the Canghi fleet, as if a hundred fighters had burst in unison.

Commander Winnowski began to give an order. Static interrupted her after three syllables. Esheera detached one hand to fiddle with the settings. The static got worse, then her comm system went suddenly silent.



At the same moment more than half her screens went black—every display that used peek information from Canghi sensors. For a moment she froze, stunned. Then her eyes went to her diagnostics. None of her comm systems had been damaged. Granted, her diagnostic system was crude and hastily thrown together, with wiring improvised in under four hours, but this time she thought she could trust it.

She tried hailing her squadron, the Shi-notsubasa, Zartsi’s flagship Ressiset. Nothing. The signal seemed to die as soon as it left her broadcaster. Nothing was reaching, her either—no data except what her own sensors could trawl.

Esheera had never seen jamming on this scale. Whatever Tong had deployed, it didn’t just interfere with communications and data exchanges—it severed them entirely.

As the two fleets came together like storm fronts clashing, a cold knot in Esheera’s gut told her that Tong had seized the advantage.

#

Takeda screamed as he awoke. The pain was too much, as if his bones had been heated like coals, as if the muscles beneath his skin were tearing apart strand by strand. His voice echoed in the darkness, reflecting back to his ears from unseen walls. He screamed until his voice went raw, and he lay sobbing in the darkness.

Then he felt a cool touch on his shoulder—so unlike the heat and agony that, for a moment, he thought he was hallucinating. A soft voice fell on his ears. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and

it was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.

Hair rustled in the darkness, and Takeda felt her bending over him, her breath on his face. He cringed. Would she vanish? Would she blow away like sand in the wind? Soft lips pressed against his forehead, bringing a fresh stab of pain from the healing incision there.

“Don’t...leave,” he croaked, his throat raw from screams and dry air.

She didn’t seem to have understood. She didn’t speak. Her hands touched his shoulders, chest, belly, feeling the wounds and carefully closed incisions marring his flesh. Pain followed her touch, but also an odd comfort.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, and her hands came up to touch his face, his lips, his eyes.

“How?”

A long moment passed before she responded. “Caulthor is under attack. My father is distracted by the battle, and the Hands are on full alert, manning planetary defenses. There was only one guard on my room.”

Her hands remained on his cheeks, their cool touch seeming to radiate through his bones. “I’ve learned to move silently. I was able to smash a bottle over his head. Then I cut his throat with the shards.”

Liun’s hands moved a way. For the space of a heartbeat, he feared nothing more than that she might leave him alone again. He felt her hands on the bands of strome pinning his arms. One came free. The cloth of her dress rustled as she circled to the other, undoing the

binding with a gentle touch. The bands on his neck and legs followed. He was free. Naked, wounded, delirious...but free.

“Water,” he croaked.

The jagged rim of a plastic bottle pressed against his lips and titled, pouring lukewarm water down his throat. He gripped the bottle in both hands and drank in long, slow drags until the last drop had flowed over his tongue. He licked his lips and tried to speak once again. “Who is attacking?”

“I’m not certain.”

“Did you bring food?”

She held something out towards him, and he took it. A loaf of faintly spongy bread, wet and heavy in his hands, that felt as if it was soaked in oil. “That’s what my father feeds his Hands. It contains nutrients to fuel your...abilities, and that should have at least four thousand calories. I brought more...”

Takeda tore into it like a skitter attacking a day-old carcass. It tasted greasy and bland at once, but went down easily and filled him quickly. “Where’s Sherri?” he said in between mouthfuls. “We’ll find her, take a ship, join the fleet. I don’t care who they are.”

Liun exhaled slowly. Her voice was low and soft, and she used his name with a slight hesi-tation. “Takeda...I’ve never killed before. Never really hurt any living thing before. Until today. I didn’t do that so you could leave.”

Her face was no more than an outline in the darkness as he looked towards her. “What do you mean?”



“My father. Whoever is attacking him, I don’t think they’ll be able to defeat him. I’ve seen everything he’s built here. But...if he died, it would all collapse.”

She paused for a moment before continu-ing. “I want you to kill him, Takeda. You’re one of the strongest Hands he ever created, and you should be able to reach him.”

Takeda stretched his arms out, flexing muscles and joints. His wounds burned with a steady, insistent fire—not just the incisions themselves, but other injuries buried beneath his skin and muscles. He didn’t think Tong had actually removed anything...but it was hard to remember. The nightmare remained hazy in his memory, a confused stew of agonies beyond description.

“Is Sherri alive?”

“Yes.”

Takeda exhaled deeply. “Will he kill you?”

“Only if you fail.”

Takeda shifted his weight forward, sliding off the bloodstained table. His bare feet made contact with warm stone and, miraculously, his legs supported his weight. He could already feel the food in his stomach as a reserve of energy, a pool of strength to be drawn upon.

Liun pressed another loaf into his hands. He devoured it in seconds, then drained the water flask she pressed to his lips.

“Lead me to him,” Takeda said, softly. Cool fingers wrapped around his arm as she led him out of his torture chamber.

#

Zartsi’s claws scraped on the arms of his throne aboard the Ressiset, leaving nearly invisible scratches in the bronze-plated serpent heads. The cold gems of colored light in the central holofield didn’t begin to convey that carnage occurring in surrounding space. Tong’s ships were mismatched hulks, but they out-numbered and possibly outgunned the Canghi fleet, with two ships near battleship class and nearly a dozen cruisers and frigates. Fighters and bombers filled space like clouds of gnats over a marsh in a summer heat. The main Caulthori formation was passing to galactic east, decelerating to pour fire into the Canghi ships.

Damn the Imperials. They had sent perhaps eight fighter wings to intercept the missile launch—perhaps enough to destroy the explosive warships, but not enough for the jamming pods that had been hidden in their wake. Dozens of them had burst within a kilometer of the fleet, filling space with millions of tiny static transmitters which had all but cut-off communications between ships. The Ressiset was isolated, not only from the two other Lithrallian ships, but from her fighter claws and the Imperial forces with them. Lith-rallian and Imperial squadrons were being out-flanked by better coordinated Caulthori ships.

Several voices barked out in clipped Lith-rallic. Commander Nalza seemed to be every-where at once, snapping orders to a dozen techs and monitoring every display on the bridge. Those Lithrallians—warriors in black uniforms and gleaming headsets—were the lifeblood of the ship. Most of them had spent their entire lives working with spacecraft in

one way or another.

Zartsi stood and began to move among them, his path intersecting with Nalza’s fre-quently. He sucked in information and used it to build a coherent map of the battle inside his head, picturing the ships attacking him, their firepower, Ressiset’s defenses, her own batteries.

He stopped and stared at the holofield, studying the slowly shifting arrangement of ships. The Caulthori fleet was beginning to divide, splitting into two arms to wrap around the Canghi ships, which had begun to curl inwards in a defensive formation. The whole fighting, struggling mass continued to move towards Caulthor with residual velocity, but their attention was on fighting each other.

A formation of three cruisers and several smaller ships currently occupied the space between the Ressiset and Caulthor itself. They were moving towards galactic west, however, broad sides spewing destructive energy at one of the Imperial Blood Falcons, and Zartsi guessed that in twenty minutes—less—the corridor to Caulthor would be open. He stood suddenly.

“Commander!” he barked.

Nalza looked up from the other side of the bridge. “My prince?”

“Our landers are ready?”

“They’ve been ready since an hour before engagement, my prince. As is customary.”

The Ressiset carried four hundred Lithral-lian warriors of the Red Greave—among the



best strike marines in known civilization. Zartsi smiled to himself, one hand falling to the leath-er-wrapped grip of his ivory sword. His mind seized an idea and would not release it.

“Order them to be prepped for launch,” Zartsi hissed. “Prep our remaining fighter claws as an escort.”

His bodyguards stirred, shocked, as Nalza bounded over to stand in front of him. “My prince,” he hissed, “I speak with all honor to your glory when I remind you that you will be considerably safer here than aboard an assault lander in the middle of a battle. To attempt a boarding action now would be suicide.”

Zartsi’s response was cut off by a hollow roar from within the ship. The deck quivered under Zartsi’s claws as if someone were pounding the ship with a giant mallet. A breath passed, and then felt himself wrenched forward by a second shock. He came to his feet and clutched a handrail bordering the holofield.

“We’re under fire on our portside,” a pilot roared. “Short-range warheads. Our armor’s taking a beating.”

Zartsi scanned the holofield, picking out the ominous blotch of red that had drifted alongside the Ressiset. An enormous battle cruiser—the largest ship in the Caulthori fleet—was hammering the Ressiset with its full broadside. “Concentrate firepower on the engines,” he hissed. “Order engines to full speed. Take us straight into Caulthor, using forward batteries to clear the path.”

“They’re targeting weapons,” the pilot hissed back. “Caulthori bomber squads

approaching.”

Without the communications black-out, the Ressiset would have been able to summon fighters to defend it. As matters stood, however, the frigate flew only with whatever claws took enough initiative to defend it.

Zartsi shouted across to the bridge commander. “Tong’s headquarters are open to us. When we are close enough, I will deploy landers lead a ground assault against them.”

Nalza’s eyes widened. “Your father would have me gutted if I let you off this ship.”

Zartsi shook his head. “The ground cannot be more dangerous.”

The old warrior opened his mouth again. Zartsi cut him off with a sharp flick of his tail. “You forget something. There’s blood beneath my claws.”

The ship boomed again, tolling like an enormous strome bell, its bulkheads and decks rattling before a burst of explosive force. Zartsi held up one hand as he steadied himself, fingers splayed to expose his talons. “You can’t see it, but it remains nonetheless. I will wash away my brother’s innocent blood with guilty blood.”

The battle-scarred commander looked slightly shocked at how frankly Zartsi spoke about his crime. Zartsi knew the warriors and crewmen around him preferred not to think about it, preferred to imagine that their prince had been away on a pleasure trip. He had nothing to hide. The murder itself had stripped away whatever honor he might preserve through secrecy.

“You are a commander of great skill, Nalza,” Zartsi hissed. “You will command this ship well in my place. I must fight with sword and rifle, and if I succeed in penetrating Tong’s fortress...I may end this battle before all our ships are destroyed.”

He reached up to undo the clasps holding his cloak to his shoulders. The heavy cloth mantle slithered to the deck at his feet. He gave the bridge commander a shallow bow. “Thank you for your service. Fight hard, and tell my father if I don’t return.”

Then he turned and strode through the doors, his bodyguards jogging in pursuit, running their hands along the bulkheads to stay standing despite the intermittent hammer of enemy warheads pounding their ship’s armor.

#

Esheera’s mind and body united in a blur of synchronized action as her hands and feet skittered across the controls like spiders, as her eyes flicked between a half-dozen displays and the chaotic mess of fire and speed painted across her canopy. She had fallen into the Whip Dance, firing thrusters in a randomized pattern to throw off enemy attacks while attempting to line up her own. Commander Winnowski and her squadmates were lost somewhere in the melee. Esheera flew alone.

Her only thought was how proud Jaggo would be if he saw how his mate soared.

The capital ships of both fleets had joined battle, pouring waves of pulser fire and short-range torpedoes into each other as they passed a mere handful of kilometers apart. Fighters



swirled around and between the two capital formations, sleek Imperial Swallows forming a sharp contrast with the patchwork swarms of fighters of a hundred different classes and styles. White explosions formed constellations of destruction against a backdrop of unmoving stars.

Ships on both sides had taken wounds, like beasts clawing at each other, bleeding fire and air. One of the Canghi cruisers was venting atmosphere from several points, and half its engines had been blasted out by a torpedo barrage. A large black frigate in the Caulthori fleet had suffered a similar fate. Fuel fires raged across its aft portions, threatening to ignite the entire ship.

Esheera could spare only a splinter of her mind to the macroscopic picture of the battle. Tong’s ships outnumbered the Canghi forces, and they worked in coordination, focusing their firepower to attack from several angles at one. The Blood Falcon battleship Endless Dawn, twin to the Shinotsubasa, was taking heavy fire from four cruisers. The uppermost Burning Light frigate had engaged an enormous Caulthori ship, built with all the grace of a demolition vehicle, its hull mottled with gaping torpedo-tube clusters. That was the Ressiset, she realized—Zartsi’s ship—responding with streams of blood-red pulser fire and invisible sokshimat rounds.

Esheera threw the Vulture’s Prize into a sharp roll, then kicked an opposite cluster of jets into life during the maneuver, throwing herself into a corkscrew for which geometry had no term. Her stomach lurched and her shoulders pressed against the straps of her flight harness as conflicting accelerations threw

her in opposite directions. Lances of pulse energy roasted vacuum around her, but none came closer than a hundred meters. Esheera detached one hand from her flight sticks long enough to tug a lever above her head. A small thruster on her ship’s flank flared up for a second or two, just long enough to turn her ship to one side.

Her crude targeting system acquired the quad-winged craft swooping towards her. Her fingers clenched on the trigger. A burst of red energy exploded from the Prize’s belly. Her bolts sliced through two of the enemy ship’s wings, breaking them off in flashes of white fire. The ship yawed crazily as its thrusters lost balance. Esheera fired again. This time she neatly destroyed the cockpit and burnt through the main fuel lines. The ship exploded, and Esheera accelerated away to avoid the hail of shrapnel generated by its death.

She scanned her screens and found reference points on the canopy to orient herself. It wasn’t hard. The dark underbelly of a medium-sized cruiser filled half her view, its blocky lines illuminated by explosions and pulser blasts. Fear rushed through her in an electric wave before she realized that it wasn’t targeting her. A sudden move might attract some gunner’s attention. She gently eased the Prize into a long arc that would carry her past the ship. It would be close, and she braced her hands over the controls to take evasive maneuvers if she was targeted.

Esheera thus had a perfect position from which to watch six fragments of dark metal detach from the cruiser’s hull. Engines flared, spitting blue light into the vacuum, and Esheera realized that they were ships—oblong, heavily

armored, perhaps thirty meters from nose to tail. No visible weapons, but the folds of strome wrapped and re-wrapped around the hull looked capable of stopping a class-4 pulser burst.

It took her a second longer to notice the strome pincers folded back against the ship’s prow. Her suspicions were confirmed. Boarding transports.

Esheera noticed a flash of movement on one of her screens and kicked an entire row of thrusters. Acceleration crushed her chest and flashes of pulse energy tore through the patch of vacuum she had occupied a moment before. Other fighter wings began to form up around the transport convoy, flying defensive trajec-tories, and Esheera ignited her main engines, corkscrewing erratically as she made her way back towards friendly space. A burst clipped her lower starboard wing, sending globules of molten steel into space. Three or four thrusters gone. It added an extra element of chaos to her flight.

The Caulthori fighters let her go. As minutes ticked past, she maneuvered into the space controlled by the Shinotsubasa, its pulser cannons shielding her. Its accompanying cruisers also launched waves of firepower into space. Thank the kind stars their active sensors could still tag her as “friendly.”

The Shinotsubasa was targeting the cruiser behind Esheera, however—not the transports it had deployed. The Swallows seemed more interested in picking off fighters than destroy-ing the oblong ships under their protection. At first glance, boarding craft weren’t much of a threat—they rarely had enough focused



firepower to crack a warship’s armor, and their incursions were generally easy to predict and counter.

But Esheera knew how much damage a successful boarding raid could do. It was a preferred tactic among her people, giving warriors a chance to kill their enemies while sparing ships that could be repaired, sold, or cannibalized. And she also knew how dangerous Tong’s men could be in a close engagement. Even a handful of men with Takeda’s power, his speed, his endurance, his superhuman reactions, and aim...a couple squads of such men could buzzsaw through Imperial Marines.

One by one, the transports fired external rockets—quickly exhausted, but capable of providing intense acceleration for a few seconds. They shot forward, zeroing in one the Shinotsubasa. Segmented claws extended from their prows and laser torches ignited on their prows. The Swallows continued to engage the Caulthori fighters, seemingly ignoring the transports themselves—perhaps thinking they could be easily mopped up once their escorts were downed.

Esheera glanced over her screens. Her data for other areas of the battle was hazy at best, but it seemed other Caulthori ships had deployed identical assault craft, targeting capital ships throughout the fleet—primarily the two Blood Falcons and the Lithrallian frigates. Esheera made her decision in an instant. She had to find a way to impress on them how deadly those transports could be. Zartsi would know—the Ressiset might be safe—but Tong’s jamming isolated him.

Esheera deactivated all but one of her

remaining portside thrusters and switched on all the starboard ones, locking them on. The Prize twisted hard to one side as its main engines drove it forward. Esheera pulled her legs up, curling them against her chest, and awkwardly squeezed out of her tiny cockpit. She scrambled back along the narrow passageway penetrating the ship’s main axis, gripping the bulges of hasty welds in the uneven bulkheads to keep herself on her feet despite the strain of acceleration.

Her communications package was stuffed between an auxiliary branch of the atmosphere cycler and a thick rope of cables routing power to the starboard thrusters. Only a thin pad of insulation protected the comm box from the electrics. Just one of the things Esheera had been intending to touch up. As it was, she could only access the comm’s controls by unlatching a panel at knee height and reaching her arms into a narrow slot. She pulled the box forward.

The ship rolled suddenly to one side, its new vector of acceleration throwing Esheera against the bulkhead and bending her arms at a painful angle before the gravity generator compensated. She groaned, but managed to pull the comm box out where she could see it. The decorative brass casing—long tarnished to a dull green—marked it as old and of Rover manufacture.

The standard paradigm for inter-ship com-munication was a general broadcast in all directions, scrambled by a code anywhere from light to heavy to byzantine depending on the message’s delicacy. It was fast, efficient, and could reach receptors anywhere on a ship’s hull. But it was relatively easily jammed, and

most codes could be broken within minutes by an experienced audiohack.

Rovers were looked down on in most of the Empire, and they often had to conceal their activities from System Police, Imperial Rangers, Scorpions, and other arms of the Emperor’s authority. Esheera had known of Rover ships caught, raided, and impounded for offenses as small as being unlicensed in their province. It all meant that broadcasting indiscriminately into surrounding space was unwise. So Rover comm packages were built with point-to-point capability, allowing them to send a tight beam precisely targeted at the receiver. Some Imperial shadow organizations used similar systems for similar reasons.

Esheera finished her adjustments despite being thrown against the opposite wall twice. She stuffed the box back into its nest and slammed the coverplate back into place. Then she stumbled back to the cockpit and slithered back into her seat.

A staccato burst of pulser energy cut across her bow. The Prize avoided immolation by a meter, no more—Esheera thought she could feel her seat grow warm. Her hands and feet worked levers frantically, pulling the ship back into the Whip Dance. She shook off her attacker, losing him in the whirl of fighters and bombers and light patrol boats.

Then she stretched one hand down underneath the control panel on her right side, fingers groping among loose cables and exposed circuitry. She found a tiny lever that she had installed almost as an afterthought, about the size of her thumbs. It would send a signal to the communications dish mounted



above the cockpit, reconfiguring it to send a point-to-point signal.

She pulled. The lever made a reassuring click. But nothing happened. Her comm display showed no change in the dish. She bent her head, straining her neck to see under the control board and into the jungle of wiring she had created over a dozen sleepless nights. There was virtually no chance of finding the problem while also avoiding sudden, fiery death.

Of course, it might be a moot point by now. The first of the boarding transports had already latched onto the Shinotsubasa’s hull, and its entire prow seemed to have become a mouth that was engaged chewing a red-hot opening in the warship’s armor. The others, slightly behind, were drawing some fire, but not enough to destroy them or force them away.

Esheera set her ship on another evasive course, aiming for a patch of space where she wasn’t likely to be noticed among a dozen Swallows, half that many Caulthori ships fighting for their lives, and an expanding cloud of rapidly-cooling wreckage.

Then she opened a compartment above her head and started squirming into the vacsuit stored within. It had been borrowed from the Suto and was slightly too big for her, but that facilitated things in the cramped space of her cockpit. Arms. Legs, head, air and heat connec-tions. She didn’t bother with the plumbing.

She stopped to alter her course slightly, nudging the Prize away from a piece of slag the size of a Rover hydroponic vat. Then out of her cradle-seat, up a few crudely welded ladder

rungs, and into an airlock not much bigger than her mother’s womb. Her breath fogged the inside of her facemask for a moment before her cycler whirred into life. Then vacuum sur-rounded her, and she slapped her magnetic boots onto the Prize’s patchwork hull.

She had been in vacuum hundreds of times—hullwalks were a familiar part of life as a Rover. But the silence had never seemed more wrong than it did now. Destructive energy great enough to level a city swirled in the darkness above, around, and below her, fire blossomed and was choked by the nothingness of space, thousands of living beings struggled and died in their metal shells. But the only sound was her own breathing and the rasp of her wing-flaps against heavy fabric as she moved her arms.

She walked forward as quickly as she dared, making sure one foot remained planted every instant. An Imperial Swallow soared by barely fifty meters away, every detail of its night-blue hull visible through the clarity of vacuum. The capital ships loomed above her like primitive gods waging war with thunderbolts. The Shi-notsubasa’s wings blocked out a wide swath of stars, while elsewhere, closer to Caulthor, she could see the manta profile of the Ressiset, Zartsi’s ship, its white hull gleaming like ivory in the light of the system’s sun.

Esheera reached the communications array and found the controls on the dish. It was a simple operation—a latch undone, a frequency changed, a compression of the metal flanges making up the dish. She turned and began to crawl back towards the hatch immediately. She didn’t want to tell Jaggo that she had been immolated while stargazing during a battle.

There was no sound, but a flash of light forced her facemask to polarize for a second. She looked up towards the source and saw a starburst of white flame, boulders of half-molten strome, and shards of smaller debris expanding from the space occupied by the Ressiset only moments before. Realization came over her in a fevered wave. The Caulthori ships had managed to penetrate the core engine block. Every Lithrallian on that ship had gone to their Light in an instant.

If not for the magnetic force keeping her rooted on the hull, Esheera knew she would have drifted free in space. Kind stars, no, she thought. Not him.

#

Takeda’s strome armor made a seamless shell over his flesh, pooling in the shallow troughs made by Tong’s incisions. Blades sprouted like bamboo shoots from elbows and knees, his fingertips had hardened into talons, a mask of cold metal sheathed his face. Sparks and small arcs of energy hissed across his bare chest or crackled between his legs. He moved through dark tunnels at a lope, bounding around corners and smashing through doors. Super-human endurance and bones like steel had allowed him to survive Tong’s tortures with his strength intact.

The base echoed with the clang of his footsteps, the corridors oddly empty of Hands. They would be manning turrets, issuing orders, deploying for defense. The hallways were empty. Tong was as unguarded as he would ever be. Naked except for his bionic armor, unarmed except for the weapons Tong had given him, Takeda ran to kill his creator.



Memories flashed through his mind in a jumbled torrent. The rattle of Silver coins and the flash of holograms in the casino on Belar. The surgical lamps of Tong’s labs. Zartsi’s brilliant blue eyes and feral snarl. The taste of Esheera’s cooking and the sound of her voice in song. The blasted wastelands of Nihil, hot wind scraping sweat from his face. Rain dripping from the edge of Lashiir’s sword on the streets of Freesail. Tong’s spectral face.

Most of all, he remembered two women, two faces: Sherri, always ready with a smile, his only true friend on Belar. And Liun, the daughter of a monster, the woman who had saved him twice.

Tong’s throne room was located in the center of his fortress, almost directly beneath the crater of the sleeping volcano above. Takeda had no trouble finding it. Liun’s direc-tions and half-recovered memories of his living death here guided him. Up a staircase winding around a shaft drilled through black rock, through an echoing hall lined with closed steel doors, towards an enormous pair of strome gates opened wide to a room lit with crimson lamps, their light gleaming like fire in a floor of basalt polished to a mirror-sheen.

Hands stood guard with pulser rifles on each side of the door. They fired as soon as Takeda burst into the hall. Scarlet energy blasted chips from the stone, but Takeda was already ahead of them, claws stretched and blue energy welling up in his palms. He dodged among lances of burning light and tore into the first Hand, ripping him apart with metal and crackling energy. His armored skin insulated him from the heat of fresh blood. The other Hand fired point-blank, his aim fast, but Takeda

was faster. He crushed the gun in one talon and removed the man’s head with the other.

Another Hand was already in the air as Takeda bounded into the doorway, his armored body a shadow against the red lights behind him. Takeda leapt to meet him. Metal claws met seamless armor. Takeda was stronger. He clawed a strip of metal away from the left side of the Hand’s ribcage and poured electric energy into the opening. The scent of cooked flesh nearly overwhelmed him, mingled with the smell of blood drawn from narrow scrapes across his stomach.

Takeda hit the ground and slid a few inches on the smooth rock. The Hand’s corpse—little more than a smoldering strome husk—crashed down a few meters behind him.

Takeda’s eyes turned upward. Tong sat atop a pinnacle of stone in the room’s exact center. His bony hands rested on blocks of sheer-cut basalt, and a small whirlwind of holograms and projected displays floated around his head, apparently projected by machinery mounted inside the apparently seamless rock of his throne. Tiny silver jacks were inserted into his ears.

Tong lifted three fingers as Takeda stepped forward. The holograms vanished, and with a languid movement of one hand he plucked the jacks out of his ears. “I had hoped to keep you alive a few more weeks,” he said, in the dry hiss Takeda had hated from the first moment he heard it. “My daughter?”

“Yes,” Takeda said. “She sent me to kill you.”

“I see. I had also hoped that I would be

able to see her natural death. You’ve been a great pain to me. You resisted my conditioning. Corrupted my daughter. Escaped. Survived the delayed-trigger poisons in your brain with only some memory loss. And it would not surprise me if this Imperial fleet has something to do with you. Their presence forces me to acceler-ate my plans.”

His yellow eyes fixed Takeda. “But first...you said you would kill me.”

Takeda bounded forward, claws scraping against smooth basalt, and sprang at Tong, his claws extended to shred. This was the end of it all. His vengeance, his justice, his salvation. Tong’s vermillion eyes were steady as the distance between them narrowed to nothing.

The impact jarred every bone and muscle in Takeda’s charged body, and suddenly he was hurled back against the floor with a skull-rattling impact. A booming sound reverberated from the domed ceiling of the throne room. Pain tore through Takeda’s body as if his flesh had broken into shards.

He opened his eyes to see a monster standing over him. Red armor blended smoothly into red-tinted strome. A spectral mask of thick metal had taken shape over the sharp bones and sallow skin of Tong’s face. His queue had become a lash of blood-red cords. His hands were razored talons twice the length of Takeda’s. Gash-like slits revealed the smol-dering fire of his eyes.

“I called you Two,” he hissed, “because I am the first. Everything I gave you I gave myself twofold. Because I knew, someday, I might have to kill you with my own hands.”



Before, when Takeda had called on his powers, his enemies had seemed to move as if struggling through water. Even Tong’s rank-and-file Hands had been slower than he was. But Tong...even with all Takeda’s enhanced senses and consciousness, Tong’s arms moved like automatic reapers, blinding fast. Takeda barely rolled aside before Tong’s armored fist crushed his skull against the basalt floor. Stone cracked as Tong’s knuckles hammered it.

Takeda had only an instant to stand before Tong’s shoulder hit him like a drill in stomach. The blow was forceful enough to press the air out of Takeda’s lungs, sending him off balance as spent air blasted between his own strome-capped jaws. Takeda turned his backward lurch into a defensive leap, putting himself out of Tong’s reach for an instant. His shoulders clanged against one of the narrow stone pillars arranged in a halo around Tong’s throne.

Tong’s eyes were like vents in a forge. His armored face was a mirror for Takeda’s, but harsher, sharper, his mouth seeming to curve upward slightly in an expression of demonic glee. Takeda saw death. Tong stretched his hands, and Takeda could almost see waves of power pouring down his arms like molten metal to collect in his needle-sharp talons. Energy danced in tiny arcs of gold and violet across his entire body.

Then he lunged, hands aimed like lances to destroy his first creation.

next month— part two of Chapter 24: Memory Reborn, the conclusion of Memory Wipe.

Sean T. M. StiennonSean is an author of fantasy and science fic-tion novels and short stories, with many pub-lications under his belt. His first short story collection, Six with Flinteye, was recently released from Silver Lake Publishing, and he won 2nd place in both the 2004 SFReader.com Short Story Contest and the Storn Cook Razor-Edged Fiction Contest with his stories “Asp” and “The Sultan’s Well,” respective-ly. “The Sultan’s Well” has been published in the anthology Sages and Swords. Sean’s short story “Flinteye’s Duel” was published in Ray Gun Revival, Issue 01, and “Flinteye’s Sabotage” was published in Issue 35.

Sean’s work tends to contain lots of action and adventure, but he often includes elements of tragedy and loss alongside roaring bat-tles. A lot of his work centers around con-tinuing characters, the most prominent of whom is Jalazar Flinteye (Six with Flin-teye). He also writes tales of Shabak of Talon Point (“Death Marks,” in issue #9 of Amazing Journeys Magazine), Blademas-ter (“Asp,” 2nd place winner in the 2004 SFReader.com Contest), and others who have yet to see publication. Sean loves to read fantasy and science fic-tion alongside some history, mysteries, and historical novels. His favorites in-clude Declare by Tim Powers, the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy by Tad Williams, Stephen Lawhead’s Song of Albion trilogy, and King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard. He has reviewed books for Deep Magic: The E-zine of High Fantasy and Science Fiction, and currently reviews books at SFReader.com.

This Raygun For Hire: The Alexander Cochran Affair by John M. Whalen Pg. 74


“Five million Universal Credits,” Alexander Cochran said, pointing at the steel

suitcase with the black plastic handle that sat on his desk. “That’s what they’re demanding. Five million. I pay it in five hours, or they kill my son.”

Frank Carson sat in a chair facing the desk. They were on the 150th floor of the Techtron Building in the center of Sentira-1, one of Jun-Tar’s model cities, a marvel of science and technology. The gleaming glass and steel towers of the city rose high into the clear atmosphere of the planet outside the window of Cochran’s office. The heavy air traffic that wove its way around the city created twisting lanes of steel that resembled silver snakes floating in the air.

A thin, well-groomed woman in her early fifties with dark grey-tinged hair and wearing a black jumpsuit sat in a chair facing the other corner of Cochran’s desk. She’d been intro-duced as Vivian Cochran, Alexander Cochran’s mother.

“They want me to deliver the ransom,” Cochran said. “They’re clever. They won’t reveal the drop-off point. I’m to take a Strato-Sled and the coordinates for the landing place will be beamed at the ship. The Sled will take itself to wherever they’re waiting.”

Cochran was a short, thin man in his early thirties who seemed brimming with nervous energy. He spoke quickly, and his whole body

seemed as though it were coiled up inside itself, as if he’d suddenly spring animal-like out of his maroon jumpsuit at you. He was the head of one of the largest corporations on Jun-Tar, and served on the boards of at least five others. Carson knew Cochran was con-sidered a scientific genius. His DNA-targeted weapons had saved the planet from the attack by Silo Jarth, the Kazulian mastermind who had brought his army as close as the planet’s fifth moon before being repulsed. In addition, Cochran Inc. was the leading developer of human and animal cloning technology. The company’s breakthrough in animal cloning had rescued the overpopulated planet of Jun-Tar from impending starvation ten years ago.

“And they’ll have your son there for the exchange?” Carson asked.

“That’s what they said.”

“Sounds pretty simple.”

“I agree,” Vivian Cochran said quietly. “Almost too simple.”

Carson looked over at the woman. He could see no outer sign of emotion in her face. Whatever she was feeling, if anything, she kept inside. But Carson could sense a strength, almost some sort of force, emanating from her.

“There’s something about all this that doesn’t feel right,” she said. “At any rate, obviously Alexander can’t meet with the kid-

nappers. It could be a plot to lure him to a place where they could kill him. My son is number one on Silo Jarth’s hit list, since he became aware he was defeated by the technology my son developed. He’s put a price on Alex’s head. If he went to meet with these kidnappers, he’d be putting himself into a very vulnerable position. My son is too valuable a person, too important to the future of Jun-Tar, to risk his life that way.”

Carson looked at her with a puzzled expres-sion on his face, but he didn’t say anything.

“I know what you must be thinking, Carson,” Cochran said. “Why is my mother in on this? Why does a grown man need the advice and counsel of his mother in a situation like this? It must seem unusual. Unnatural perhaps. But mother and I have always been close. Whatever success I’ve had in life, whatever triumphs, are mainly due to her support and guidance. She believed in my talents, such as they are, and it’s because of her I’ve been able to make the most of them. She’s seen me through many a crisis.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, Mr. Cochran, where is your wife?” Carson asked.

“We divorced last year. Irreconcilable dif-ferences.”

Carson glanced out of the corner of his eye at Vivian Cochran. Her face remained an impassive mask.

This Raygun For Hire: The Alexander Cochran Affair by John M. Whalen



“I know I should be the one to meet with the kidnappers,” Cochran continued. “But there are too many reasons against it. For one thing, I’m a scientist, not a gunslinger. I know how to design weapons but I don’t know anything about using them. It’s no use calling the author-ities. I know if the police become involved, I’ll never get my son back. If the kidnappers were caught, the court system being what it is, they’ll probably get off on some technicality. That’s why I sent for you. You have a reputation as a capable man. A man good with a gun and not afraid of too many things. I appreciate your coming here on such short notice. I want you to take the ransom and bring Jory back.”

“And we want the kidnappers, whoever they are, killed,” Vivian Cochran said. “No one, Mr. Carson—no one—has ever wronged a Cochran and lived to tell about it. I don’t intend this to be the first time.”

Carson could feel the cold steel behind the woman’s words. He looked at Cochran, who now fidgeted with a nano-pod that had been lying on his desk. Cochran was the kind of man Carson hated. Weak, ineffectual. An intellectual giant, no doubt. But no good in the practical world. Yet, seeing the domineering, implacable woman sitting across from him, he couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for him. He recalled another Alexander he’d learned about in history class when he was a kid back on Earth. Alexander the Great had a similar dominating-mother problem, but at least he still managed to conquer most of the known world.

“The exchange will take place in broad daylight,” Carson said. “Won’t the kidnappers be upset if they see me holding the money

instead of you?”

“They won’t know it’s you.”

“How’s that?”

“I’ve developed something,” Cochran said. “I’ve been working on it for years. I was never sure it had a practical use until now.”

He stood up and pressed one of the twenty red buttons imbedded in the glass top of his desk. A panel in the wall behind his desk slid back, and Carson saw a long fluorescent-lit tunnel that stretched some distance back.

“Come with me,” he said.

Carson stood up and the woman got up out of her chair. “I’ll leave you two now,” she said extending a pale, slender hand. “I hope you’ll accept this job, Mr. Carson. Get my grandson back. And make these men pay for what they’ve done.”

#

Cochran entered the tunnel behind his desk, and Carson followed him. The panel slid shut silently behind them as their heels clacked on the hard concrete of the floor. They came to a thick steel door. Cochran put his eye up to an Opto-Reader and pressed six numbers into a digital keypad on the wall. The vault-like iron door drifted open slowly.

“You’re the only person without security clearance I’ve ever let in here,” Cochran said. “Needless to say what you are about to see is all top secret.”

Carson nodded. They stepped through the doorway and entered a laboratory of stainless steel and glass. The center of the room was dominated by large bubble-shaped chamber made of glass. There were two stainless steel chairs standing side by side about four feet apart in the middle of the bubble. On the right and left were banks of electronic equipment that lined the walls on either side of the chamber all the way to the ceiling.

“What you are about to see will blow your mind,” Cochran said, as they went further into the laboratory. A door opened on the left, and a young man in a white smock came into the room. Cochran nodded to him, and the youth opened the glass door to the bubble and entered it.

“It’s the first Huma-Form Chamber,” Cochran said. “I’m going to enter the chamber and take the other seat. With a control device located in a console in the chair I’ll start the device. The machinery will do the rest. Just stand back and watch.”

Carson watched as Cochran walked into the glass chamber and shut the door behind him. He sat down in the empty chair and pressed some buttons in a console built into the chair’s stainless steel arm. He looked over at the young man in the other chair and gave him a reassuring smile. The young assistant smiled back confidently. Cochran tapped one final button, and the electronic equipment came to life with a low, deep whining sound. Lights flashed, digital clocks began a countdown, and the whine became more high-pitched. Carson saw lightning fork above the heads of the two men. The lightning bolt jumped back and forth



from one side of the chamber to the other, then the bodies of the two occupants suddenly became transfused with light. Their faces and hands began to glow preternaturally, like some strange creatures from a phosphorescent bog. The glow became so bright Carson could no longer make out their features. The whine of the machinery reached a peak and then began to quickly subside. As it did, the glowing halo around the faces and hands of the two men dimmed and soon Carson was again able to distinguish their features.

He rocked back, his eyes darting fiercely back and forth between Cochran and his lab assistant. It was impossible! On the right sat Alexander Cochran. But now on the left, instead of the laboratory assistant sat—Alexander Cochran!

Cochran got out of his chair, opened the door of the glass chamber, and came out, shutting the door behind him.

“I see by the look on your face you are suf-ficiently impressed,” he said. “The Huma-Form Chamber, as you have just seen, emits energy at a frequency that stimulates the molecules of human cellular tissue in such a way that it can duplicate any human in exact detail. Even my own mother would not be able to tell us apart.”

“What’s your idea, Cochran?” Carson asked.

“I’ll transform you into me. And the kidnap-pers will be none the wiser. You’ll have all the advantage. They’ll never suspect they’re facing one of the most formidable men in the galaxy. They’ll be completely off guard. Once you’re

at the drop point, and you have my son back, I’ll leave the matter entirely at your discretion how you handle it. Bring them back. Prefer-ably dead. Under no circumstances are they to be allowed to get away. And don’t worry. The Huma-Form process is completely reversible. When your mission is over you’ll be returned to your former self. I’ll demonstrate.”

Cochran walked over to the computers mounted on the wall to the right of the machine and tapped his fingers over the keyboard. The machinery cranked up once more and Carson watched as the laboratory assistant, alone in the glass chamber, sat amidst a shower of electric sparks and began to revert back to his former self.

Carson stood there marveling at it all. He wondered what Alexander the Great would have accomplished, if he’d had this machine.

#

Carson looked out the window of the Strato-Sled at the twisted beams and crumbling towers of Par-Kapa, the bombed out capital city of Tracor. It was here on the fifth moon of Jun-Tar that the Jun-Tarian forces, armed with superior weapons, had defeated Silo Jarth, the Imperial Ruler of Kazuli, and forced him and his army of lizard men to retreat.

“Landing zone in sight,” the Sled’s female computer voice said. The ship was on autopilot. As Cochran had said, the coordinates of the landing site were fed into the computer once the Sled had taken off. “Landing will occur in sixty seconds.”

Carson saw a flat, wide-open area below that had once been a plaza or a park in the center of Par-Kapa. It was a square about two blocks across, covered by broken and cracked asphalt. The area was rimmed by the black, obscenely twisted and distorted remains of what once were high-rise buildings.

Carson felt weird. Everything he saw, he was seeing through another man’s eyes. Every-thing he heard, he heard through another man’s ears. His entire physical body belonged to another man. Only his mind was his own. He shifted his weight in the pilot’s chair and was reassured by the familiar bulk of the Colt Laser Pistol he wore in the shoulder holster under the maroon jumpsuit Cochran had given him.

He wondered now why he’d agreed to be Huma-Formed; why he’d let Cochran, the sci-entific genius of Jun-Tar, transform his body into an exact duplicate of his own. The man said it would give him a definite advantage in dealing with the kidnappers. He could see that, but he knew he could have handled it just as well without the transformation. Maybe he’d done it out of curiosity. Just to see what it would feel like.

Carson looked through the Strato-Sled window again as the Sled circled once around the perimeter of the square in the middle of Par-Kapa. He’d gone through the transforma-tion after seeing Cochran’s assistant restored to his original appearance with no apparent side effects. The process had been painless but he could feel the physical differences caused by the transformation. He was four inches shorter in height and weighed thirty pounds less now. When he walked his stride was shorter and his



movements seemed much quicker than before. He could feel some of the nervous energy so apparent in Cochran struggling with the calm control that was so characteristic of his usual behavior pattern.

The Sled floated in softly for a landing in the center of the plaza. He grabbed the plastic handle of the suitcase resting on the floor by his feet and stood up as the Strato-Sled hatch opened. A wind blew across the open courtyard as he walked, stirring up small whirlwinds of dust, and making bits of paper and tumble-weed from the desert wasteland outside the city dance across the cracked and broken macadam. When he got several yards away from the Sled, Carson stopped walking. He peered ahead at the grotesquely charred and melted frames of what were once magnificent buildings. Nothing moved and the only sound was the wind whistling through the skeletal remains of the high-rises.

“Turn around, Mr. Cochran.”

Carson turned and saw three Kazuli lizard men standing in front of what was left of an old movie house. The white marquee behind them was pocked with holes and only a few twisted letters clung to what was left of the glass facing. The lizard men wore black leather pants and boots and body-tight sleeveless shirts. Their long green arms extended out angularly from their bodies and their scaly hands clutched Sony plasma rifles. Cold, lidless eyes stared at him, revealing no trace of emotion.

“Is that the money?” the biggest of the three lizard men asked.

“That’s right,” Carson answered. “Where’s

the boy?”

“Show it to me.”

“The boy first.”

The Kazulian’s lips twisted into something resembling a grin, and he stood there a moment looking at Carson.

“You don’t know me, Mr. Cochran,” he said. “I’m nobody to mess with. Let me introduce myself. My name’s Glor-Kann.”

“You’re one of Silo Jarth’s men.”

“Was,” the Kazulian said. “I was one of his lieutenants. I commanded a unit in the southern sector. We were wiped out early in the game. Your DNA-targeted cannons made quick work of us. Me and these two were the only survivors out of a thousand men. Our survival was considered a disgrace. Jarth had us arrested and ordered our execution for such poor performance of our duties.”

“That’s interesting,” Carson said. “But I didn’t come here to listen to your life story. Where’s the boy?”

“We managed to get away from Jarth, the three of us,” the Kazulian said. “We hid here in these ruins, living off our rations and what scraps we could find. The war didn’t last that long. Things turned bad for Jarth quick, and he had to retreat. He forgot about us and left us behind.”

The Kazulian came toward Carson. “But we haven’t forgotten about you, Mr. Cochran. You were the one responsible for what happened to us. You and your weapons designs. Cannons

that target specific DNA categories. In this case, Kazulian DNA. I saw bodies disintegrate. Sometime a whole body at a time. Sometimes just an arm or a leg, depending on how direct a hit it was. I saw things I’ll never be able to forget.”

“The money’s here,” Carson said, putting the steel case down on the ground. He’d had enough chit chat. “But you don’t get a cent of it until I see the boy.”

The Kazulian turned to his left. “Seems like Mr. Cochran isn’t interested in hearing about what happened to us,” he said to Kazulian standing next on his right. “Go get the kid.”

The Second Lizard man ran back under the marquee and went inside the movie theater lobby. A minute later he came out leading a nine-year old boy by a rope tied around his wrists and waist. The boy was obviously scared to death but trying not to show it. He had blonde hair that the wind riffled as he walked.

“Daddy!” Jory Cochran yelled when he saw Carson. The boy started to run toward him but the Second Lizard Man yanked him back by the rope. The boy and his captor stopped a short distance behind Glor-Kann.

“All right,” Glor-Kann said. “There’s the boy. Now open the case.”

“You open it,” Carson said.

The Kazulian squinted at him. “Didn’t know you were such a hard ass, Cochran,” he said. He slung his plasma rifle over his shoulder. “Keep him covered,” he ordered his companions. He stooped down and grabbed the steel suitcase.



He tried to open it by pressing the lock tabs with the fingers of his free hand. It wouldn’t open. The Kazulian looked up at Carson with a snarl.

“You’ll need this,” Carson said, holding out a key.

“Give it to me,” the lizard man said.

“The boy.”

The Kazulian turned and nodded to the second lizard man, who cut the rope around the boy’s wrists. The boy ran to Carson, and Carson felt his small arms hugging his legs.

“Daddy,” the boy said, letting out a long pent-up sob.

Carson picked the boy up off the ground. He’d never had a child of his own. He’d never felt the grasp of two skinny arms around his neck before. Never felt a small boy’s head nestle against his chest the way Jory Cochran’s did now. He’d forgotten how scared you can be when you’re a kid.

“The key,” the Kazulian said.

Carson tossed him the key. The lizard man caught it, started to insert it in the lock, and then stopped.

“How do I know this ain’t booby-trapped?” he asked. “You unlock it.”

Carson stood silent for a moment. He knew the moment was coming. The lizard man was reaching the end of his short supply of patience. Then a red laser beam blast tore off the lizard man’s hand and the key went flying.

The Kazulian jumped up staring in disbelief at the bloody stump.

“I wouldn’t worry about booby traps,” a cold female voice said. Carson saw Vivian Cochran standing a short distance away, a Colt Laser rifle in her hands. She was dressed in the same black jumpsuit she’d worn earlier that day, but now her hair was tied back in a tight bun and she wore goggles. Carson figured they were probably to sharpen the vision of her middle-aged eyes.

“I wouldn’t worry about the money either,” she said. “There’s nothing in that suitcase but worthless piles of paper.” She fired a blast at the case and the lid flew off amidst a swirling cloud of white paper. She swung the Laser Carbine back, but before she could fire again the third lizard man crouched and got off a plasma blast. The purple ray exploded against her upper body, and she was knocked back off her feet.

Glor-Kann reached for an Electro Pistol strapped to his left leg. Carson already had his Colt automatic out of his shoulder holster and, still holding the boy, he fired. The red laser hit the Kazulian in the chest and he staggered back. The second and third lizard men crouched down and started firing at him. Carson put the boy down behind him. A plasma charge glanced off his shoulder. The impact spun him and the pain was sharp. He went down on one knee and managed to squeeze off a round. The second lizard man fell.

“Daddy! Daddy!” the boy threw his arms around Carson’s neck. He heard a laser blast. The third lizard man yelled. Carson saw Vivian

Cochran back on her feet, the Laser rifle in her hands. The third lizard man, wounded, turned to fire at her, and Carson dropped him. Vivian Cochran staggered and then fall to the asphalt.

Carson grabbed the boy up and got back on his feet. His shoulder throbbed, but he knew the wound was not serious. He carried the boy over and knelt down beside the woman. Blood poured from her left upper chest.

“Grandma!” Jory cried.

“Don’t let him see me like this,” she said. Carson turned the boy’s face into his chest and held him so he couldn’t see.

“I had you figured wrong,” Carson said.

“I told you. Nobody does a Cochran wrong and lives to get away with it.” Her face twisted in pain. “I thought you might need some help. I followed you. You couldn’t see me, because of a cloaking device on my ship. Another Cochran invention.”

Carson wanted to say something to her about her son, but knew he couldn’t with the boy there. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “Don’t blame him. It wasn’t his fault. It was mine. I never gave him a chance to—” She grimaced in pain again. “Take Jory home now.” She reached out with one hand. “Jory.” The boy turned and looked down at her. “When you get home, you do what your father says. And love your father. He’ll need somebody to love him now.”

Vivian Cochran let out a sigh, and her arm dropped to her side.



Jory stared down at her with tears running down his cheeks. Then he turned, and Carson felt deep sobs throbbing against his chest. Carson picked him up and let him cry as he carried him back to the Strato-Sled.

#

Carson stepped into Alexander Cochran’s office. He’d just come from the Huma-Form Chamber where he’d been changed back to his own body. It felt good to stretch his long legs out as he crossed the thick carpet and stood in front of Cochran’s desk. They’d patched up the wound he’d received on Tracor, and after the retransformation, all he felt was a little stiffness in the shoulder.

Alexander Cochran was, however, was not in such good shape. The scientific genius of Jun-Tar sat slouched in his high-back leather executive chair. His yellow hair hung down in front of his eyes, and his eyes were red. The front of his jumpsuit was unbuttoned, revealing a bare, hairless chest. A bottle of Synth-Gin and an empty glass sat on the desk in front of him. Alexander the Great, Carson snorted to himself. He reached for the bottle. Carson swatted it away with the back of his hand and glass crashed against the wood-paneled wall.

“Hey, what’s the idea?” Cochran bellowed.

“What’s wrong with you, Cochran?” Carson asked.

The man looked up at him through bleary eyes. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong? How can you ask that? She’s dead. Don’t you under-stand? My mother is dead. Why did you let her

die, Carson? Why?”

Tears rolled down his face. “I never knew just how hard it would be when it happened,” he said. “I realize now that without her, I’m nothing. My mother was the force behind everything I did. I can’t go on by myself. I just don’t know how.”

He reached down and opened a desk drawer. Carson saw another bottle appear in his hand. Carson went around the desk and slammed the drawer shut on Cochran’s hand. He grabbed him and pulled him to his feet. Cochran tried to push him back, but Carson slammed him against the wall and slapped him back and forth across the face several times. He grabbed the front of the man’s jumpsuit and slammed him against the wall again, this time harder.

“I’ll tell you how, Cochran,” he said. “You’ve got a seven-year old boy out there who needs a father. A father he can look up to. Right now that boy thinks you’re some kind of hero. He thinks you shot it out with the kidnappers and rescued him. You’re going to see to it that he keeps on believing that.”

Cochran’s eyes swam in fear and doubt.

“But it wasn’t me,” he said. “It was you. I’ve never done anything brave in my life. My mother was the one with all the guts.”

Carson felt a hot wave of anger surging up from his stomach.

“Looks like with her owning all the guts in the family, she didn’t leave you enough room to grow your own,” he said. “She may have

thought she did you a big favor standing up for you all your life. Could be she did what she thought she had to do. But living under her shadow twisted you, Cochran. You never learned how to be your own person. You’ve got no confidence. Maybe you can blame her. It’s easy to blame somebody else. Or maybe you have only yourself to blame. But now it’s your time to stand up. Stand up for yourself. It’s your time to be a man, if for no other reason than that son of yours.”

He let go of Cochran and the man staggered back against the wall, pushing the hair away from his eyes. He stood for a moment staring at Carson.

“What do you care?” he asked. “You got paid. This was just a job to you. What do you care about me and Jory?”

Carson didn’t say anything.

Cochran peered at him through a haze.

“He got to you, didn’t he?” he asked.

Carson felt like hitting him. “Let’s just say I’d hate to see all the trouble I went to go to waste.”

Cochran smoothed his hair back and took a deep breath. He sat down and buttoned up his jumpsuit.

“All right, Carson,” he said. “For Jory’s sake, I’ll try. Will that satisfy you?”

“You’ll do more than try,” Carson said. “I’ll be leaving here soon. But I’ll keep tabs on you and the boy. I hear you let him down, I’ll be back.”



Cochran eyes were suddenly clearer. He didn’t say anything, just gave Carson a look that meant he understood. He reached out a shaky hand and pressed one of the buttons on his desk top. “Miss Brenner, is Jory out there?”

“Yes, Mr. Cochran,” the secretary’s voice said from a speaker built into the desk.

“Send him in,” Carson said.

The secretary opened the massive oak door and Jory Cochran came running in.

“Daddy!” he cried out as he ran. Cochran came around the desk and swept the boy up in his arms.

Carson saw the boy’s arms tighten around Cochran’s neck. Cochran embraced the boy tightly, and there were tears on his cheeks. Carson remembered how it had felt when the boy had hugged him the same way in the plaza on Par-Kapa. Cochran was right. The boy had gotten to him.

When Jory was done hugging his father, he turned around and looked at Carson curiously. Carson felt suddenly alone and lonely as the boy’s eyes moved over him with suspicion and perhaps a touch of fear.

“Who’s this man?” he asked. “What’s he doing here?”

Cochran put the boy down. “He’s a–a friend, Jory,” he said. “I’d like you to go over and shake hands with Mr. Carson.”

Carson bent down. The boy’s hand was so small it seemed to disappear as he shook it.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Carson,” Jory

said. As close as they had been for a moment on Tracor, they were strangers now.

“Nice to meet you too, Jory,” Carson said.

“Did you know my daddy’s a hero?” Jory asked.

“That’s what I hear,” Carson answered. “You should be proud of him.”

“I am.”

Carson looked down into the boy’s pure blue eyes and smiled at him. He looked up at Cochran and hoped he’d meant what he’d said.

“Well, I’ve got to run,” Carson said. “I’ve got business to attend to. Just stopped by to say hello to your father.”

“Sorry you can’t stay longer,” Cochran said. “Maybe next time.”

Carson strode across the office and opened the big oak door. He looked back and saw Cochran sitting behind the desk with Jory in his lap. He thought of that other Alexander who’d lived thousands of years ago. That Alexander conquered a fair portion of the people on his planet. Alexander Cochran had gained power and position in his world, but was only now, perhaps, about to make the most important conquest of his life. He was about to conquer himself.

Outside the big glass window of Cochran’s office the skyscrapers of Jun-Tar gleamed in the sun and air traffic wove snake-like ribbons of steel in the air. Carson stepped through the doorway and closed the door behind him.

John M. Whalen

John M. Whalen’s stories have appeared in the Flashing Swords E-zine, pulpand-dagger.com, and Universe Pathways magazine. His Jack Brand stories are a staple here at Ray Gun Revival maga-zine.

Contact the author here.

Pg. 81


The RGR Time Capsule October 2008 Sci-Fi news from the Ray Gun Revival forumsRGR Date: October 21, 2008 Stealth Sci-Fihttp://raygunrevival.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?t=2324

If geek stuff is so hip, then why are two of the season’s biggest scifi hits, CBS show Eleventh Hour and best-selling Neal Stephenson novel Anath-em, adamantly classified as Not Scifi? Because nerd culture will never be pop culture. That’s why Borders slashed its scifi section. And it’s why JJ Abrams, director of the new Star Trek movie, denied that it’s for fans of the scifi franchise, instead telling Entertainment Weekly that “it’s for fans of movies.” Successful science fiction, in other words, is still stealth. To get your spaceships and freaky science into the mainstream, you have to hate yourself just enough to shove your inner dork into a gym locker and keep her there.

Stealth science fiction is nothing new. Creators have been churning out scifi for decades and calling it

“adventure” or “suspense” or “slip-stream” or “speculative” or “magic realism” — anything to get their stuff shelved in “fiction” or “drama” rather than “nerdville.” I shouldn’t really pin this on creators, entirely: Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union was classified as literature, despite the author’s repeated protestation that it was science fiction. But Chabon’s position is a rare one.

RGR Date: October 15, 2008 Frank Frazetta’s Battlestar Galactica painting http://raygunrevival.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?t=2304

A Frank Franzetta conceptual painting for the original Battlestar Galatica, that’s the Campy 70’s version, not the very good-but-slightly-long-winded remake. Frank worked on concept visuals along with chief Star Wars designer Ralph Mcquarrie.

RGR Date: October 23, 2008 Scalzi Wonders If Mad Scientists Are Maligned http://raygunrevival.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?t=2329

A: Hollow Man is another example: Scientist starts off as nothing more than arrogant, and eventually turns into a murdering psychotic molester. Just because he becomes invisible? As if.

Q: Perhaps they were trying to make a larger statement. You know, like invisibility is a metaphor for lack of responsibility, and that lack cor-rupts judgment.

A: Oh, please. Have you seen Hollow Man? Suggesting it has metaphor is a little much, don’t you think? And again, it just doesn’t track with reality. I know scientists who have worked with invisibility. They haven’t gone nuts.

Q: So you know real invisible men?

A: Of course. There’s one in this room right now.

Q: That explains all that mysterious poking.

A: Dieter! Stop that!

(Disembodied Voice): Sorry.

Documents

Ray Gun Revival magazine, Issue 48