Book promo
If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH
FROM JERRY BOYD: A Reptile Dysfunction (Bob and Nikki Book 42)
Bob and the crew found out about some castaways, who seemed to be related to their new friends. What to do but take their friends to rescue their people? Of course, things are never as easy as they seem. Come along and find out what their shepherd has in store.
FROM LILANIA BEGLEY: Djinn: A short scifi romance.https://amzn.to/48KpyYY
The planet Sumire’s dry surface holds many surprises. Seona’s academic background hasn’t prepared her for what happens when her flitter crashes, and she nearly lands on top of Henry. Henry has his own secrets, but first, they have to survive…
FROM SABRINA CHASE: Red Wolf: Scout Part 1 (Red Wolf Serials Book 4)
An unexpected hazard of going from a world of modern technology to a primitive, alternate Asia: explaining the concept of “swimsuit” to people who can’t swim. Nic must train a truly effective special forces team, and protect the only safe haven she’s found. The people of Shanmen fortress have accepted her— even if some still think she is a wolf demon in her spare time—but Feng Guo, the general in command, has a powerful enemy determined to wipe them out.
Nic must save the fortress and the people within from sabotage, single spies, and entire squads of soldiers in a world wracked by rebellion. She only has her wits and what she had on her when she was shunted to this timeline. What can she do with a cell phone, a tourist guide, and a very slightly used geology degree? Wreak havok, and let slip the Red Wolf of war!
FROM DAVID COLLINS: Return of the Old Gods
The modern gods are gone; they have been removed from power by the old gods. The old gods are back: Greek, Egyptian, Norse, Roman, Hindu, Aztec, Celtic, Japanese, Chinese, Babylonian, and many others.
The first thing they do is kill off over 1 billion people who have been judged as Evil. They also eliminate the weapons of all of the militaries, all nuclear power fuel, and waste.
Gordon Anderson was a clerk at a 7-11, and he was (as usual) late for work. That is suddenly the least of his problems.
The world is changing; everything is in turmoil. However, the most disturbing fact may be that his phone now has some new contacts listed in his address book.
The gods of old, the ones that have just judged and executed a billion people and are literally shifting continents like chess pieces. They now have him on speed dial…
FROM SEAN FENIAN: Fireborn
An end can be a new beginning … sometimes.
Life is not kind to everyone. Some would say it is cruel to more than it is kind to. But sometimes, someone’s life can become so empty, so miserable, so filled with pain, that they simply don’t want to live it any more. Life has become an unbearable burden. Some people in such a position choose suicide … or perhaps find death rushing at them and simply make no effort to avoid it.
Often, that person doesn’t really want to die. They just can’t bear to continue living that life any longer. What they want is an escape, any escape, from a life that has become intolerable.
But even if you are somehow granted that escape, you must still somehow heal the trauma of the life you escaped — and learn who you are NOW. And you may find that even your second chance comes at a cost.
Fireborn is an alternate-world fantasy novel including dragons, a “magic” system based on Finnish mythology, detailed swordsmithing, and a lot of back-story about poly relationships and healing from past abuse. Ever heard of a smith who can mix advanced metal alloys by ear? In this book, you will.
FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: A Huntress on the Rocks (Timelines Universe Book 4)
A young military intelligence agent. Hunting a murderous drug dealer across a floating city on a water world light-years from Earth – with only his name, and a vague description of what he might look like. Will she finally find her quarry and bring him to justice, or will cases of mistaken identity mean she’ll simply end up
A Huntress on the Rocks
(A Delaney Wolff Fox story)
FROM LIANE ZANE: The Harlequin Protocol (The Unsanctioned Guardians Book 2)
Prequel to the Elioud Legacy series
She was trained to follow orders. She chose her conscience instead.
Berlin, 2011—The War on Terror is ten years’ old and shows no signs of abating. While on a high-stakes operation to unearth a terrorist cell on the verge of a devastating attack, newly minted CIA officer Olivia Markham spots a young woman being harassed by a group of immigrants. Unable to stop herself, she intervenes. For better or worse, her actions affect the mission objective. The instincts that made Olivia a stellar CIA recruit threaten her ability to work in the field.
But Olivia’s instincts won’t be denied.
Even as she faces opposition within the CIA, Olivia meets two other operatives from other agencies whose instincts match her own: Captain Alžběta Czerná of Czech military intelligence and Anastasia Fiore of Italian foreign intelligence. Yet each action outside the wire risks her future at the CIA. As what’s right becomes lost in the fog, Olivia must balance her official and unsanctioned covert activities. Until the dangerous mission that forces her to write her own operational protocol.
Set two and half years before THE ELIOUD LEGACY series, THE HARLEQUIN PROTOCOL tells the story of Olivia Markham’s transition from trained field operative to unsanctioned guardian.
“If I loved Olivia before, I am insanely mad about her after this. She is a superb character.” — Ted Fichtl, Col. USA (retired)
FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Godshead (Modern Gods Book 1)
Food and drink for sale; snark for free…
It’s hard to be a god nobody believes in, sometimes. Especially when one spends their days trying to quietly go about his or her life in a world that barely remembers the myths surrounding the old Greek gods, but where some religions still follow the old Norse gods.
And some of the Norse gods are getting more dangerous: Loki, the trickster, has lost the last of what passed for his sanity, and needs to be helped, or stopped. One of the two. And no one seems to be up to it.
At least, not alone. Working together, they can avoid the worst of Loki’s tricks, and maybe even solve their problems.
A tale told from several points of view.
FROM DALE COZORT: Snapshot: Book 1 of the Snapshot Universe
Alternate realities you can fly to.
For eighty million years, the Tourists have taken Snapshots of Earth, creating living replicas of continents. Life in the Snapshots quickly diverges from the real world, creating a universe where humans and animals from Earth’s history fly between Snapshots, exploring, fighting, and sometimes meeting themselves.
In 2014, the Tourists’ newest Snapshot catches Middle East Analyst Greg Dunne rushing toward Hawaii to join his wife, who just went into labor. The new Snapshot doesn’t include Hawaii, cutting Greg off from everyone he loves.
Greg is thrust into the aftermath of a hidden, decades-old massacre, where Germans from a pre-World War II European Snapshot battle ranchers from a Korean War-era U.S. Snapshot,a fun house mirror version of the US cut off from the world since 1953.No Beatles. No Internet. No Personal Computers. No cell phones. No Vietnam War.But an endless new frontier.
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Rockin’ the USA
It’s not easy being married to the leader of the band, even in the best of times. When everything becomes political, you’ve got a nightmare on your hands.
Laurel had her doubts when her husband signed on to headline Governor Thorne’s Independence Day concert in Candlestick Park. Now that the band’s committed to the appearance, the Flannigan Administration has decided to shut the show down, with prejudice.
Laurel knows she has to fight this attempt to stop the signal. But doing so may put her in more danger than she could ever have anticipated, and risk those she loves.
A story of the Grissom timeline, originally published in Liberty Island Magazine.
This edition also includes a bonus essay on the era of dictatorship in Grissom-timeline America.
FROM MARY CATELLI: Winter’s Curse
Who but a fool would linger after Zavrien laid his curse? Ill luck can kill — and all the more in Zavrien’s enchanted, endless winter, haunted with ice giants and frost fairies.
When the soldier Gareth is cursed, the young wizard Perriel learns how dangerous lingering can be.
But she can hold out a sliver of hope for breaking the curse — if it doesn’t break them first.
Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.
We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.
If you have questions, feel free to ask.
Your writing prompt this week is: obedient
According To Hoyt 
I could feel the venom coming off of her tongue as she asked, “Did? You? Put? This? On? Her?” And I knew I had to answer quickly because if I didn’t, she was going to go full Aztec Blood Sacrifice, with me as the guest of honor.
“Becca,” I snapped, “If I am not the last person you know that would stick someone in a slaver collar, period-let alone something as high-end as that-I’d like to meet them right now. All I knew was that somebody had bonded her to me and now she’s completely obedient. I have to watch every single word I say around her because she’ll intelligently and enthusiastically obey it in full. Without trying to find any escape clauses.”
Becca glared at me, and then she relaxed her attack eyebrows and let out a long huff. “No, you wouldn’t put anyone in a slaver collar. Not even if they deserved it, especially if they deserved it. But, Jack, the creator of that collar is probably a high-Pride or a Grand-ranked mage. Maybe even a senior mage of the Clock Tower, Temple, Wandering Sea, or Institute. The entanglements are so tight I can barely see between them, and there’s all sorts of nasty traps built into it. The sort of traps that anybody not as smart as I am would have tripped and probably blown out this side of the house while I was looking. Oh, she’d be fine, but I’d have been reduced to a fine red mist if I hadn’t pulled out after finding the first trap.”
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Father Michael asked “So you Ancients claim that you’re not gods”?
The Ancient replied “Your Church defines a god as a being worthy of worship. We are arrogant enough and powerful enough that your remote forefathers considered us gods. However, we never wanted “worshipful” behavior from them. We wanted obedient behavior from them. Even if we’re “worthy of worship”, that’s not what we want.”
“And if we don’t want to be obedient?”
“Chuckle Chuckle. We Ancients are badly outnumbered by the humans with power of this time and they’d object to us forcing obedience. The most we can expect is co-operation with our goals.”
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“If she was intended to be an obedient sex-toy for men, why is she a genius? Why is she independent, self-confident and assertive? She listens to me, sure, because I know a lot more about this world than her, but she doesn’t always agree with me. As for her appearance—”
The woman standing beside him interrupted. “We know the civilization I came from had highly advanced genetic engineering. Why would they choose to make themselves ugly?”
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“It’s a chain-of-command issue, Toni.”
Roger spoke in that same matter-of-fact way he might’ve used in discussing fundamental principles of physics — yet another proof that he was no mere sim programmed to emulate a long-dead person, but the man himself, drawn out of the quantum hologram and alive again as an infomorph. Yet unlike the moment when he’d asked her a technical question about aeronautics that she would never have considered, this one was bringing back all the old ugly memories.
“Roger, she’s not under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. She’s a civilian, an adult who’s trying to break free of dysfunctional and overcontrolling parents who were able to game the family court system to keep her under their thumb by putting a guardianship on her on completely bogus grounds.”
“That may be, but there is still an order to society, and a proper way to do things. Rebelling against it does not help her case for emancipation.”
Before he was an astronaut, Roger was a Navy officer.
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The others climbed dutifully into the cart. They had to lie under blankets and guess what chanced by the noise it made.
Karlos hesitated. “You can climb up in those robes?”
Autumn swallowed, the mask in hand. “I will call for help if I need it, but the horses may start off as soon as they appear. I — it is necessary that you be in the wagon first.”
“Make haste,” said Ciara, her voice muffled by the blankets. Karlos still moved swiftly.
Autumn drew a deep breath, gathered up the robes like an awkward gown’s skirt, and climbed in.
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Rosaleen drew a deep breath. “It would be best for you to have more soldiers, would it not?”
“Indeed,” said the captain. “All the more in that these men have not been trained to obey, and that loses more battles than any other flaw.”
“We must wait. Because of the want of rations.”
The captain inclined his head.
“But it is better to summon them too soon than too late. Choose the hour wisely.”
“The land, too,” said Liam. “Best to summon them in a place to defend.”
“The men are more aid there, sir. They know where fortresses are.”
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“Obedient! You wish for me to be obedient to you, the man that killed my only protector?” Baroness Grayson defiantly asked.
“Yes, but not in the way you believe, the only obedience I desire is obedience to the destruction of Baron Vogel, the man who killed your first husband and love of your life” I replied.
“For that Baron Whoever You Are, you will have my obedience” the Baroness replied.
“And what of the former Baron?” I amusingly asked.
“After the poor that he mistreated are done stripping his body in the street. One of them will probably feed him to the swine. I shall endeavor to find out which farmer took his body so as not to eat that pork until such time as any spec of him has been shat out” She calmly replied.
What can you say, I liked her.
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“Well, you could start by fixing some tea,” said young Nigel Slim-Howland. Would Lily, his new cyber companion, follow directions?
“Can you not make it yourself?” replied Lily indignantly.
“Wait, aren’t you supposed to do what I say?”
“I’m supposed to be your friend, Nigel,” said Lily. “Not your servant!”
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Bruford was large and stupid, and unfortunately captain of young Nigel’s football team. “Hey,” Bruford yelled. “If your Lily’s hanging around here, at least make her do cartwheels or something!”
“No,” said Nigel.
“Daren’t she do what you say?”
“Nobody tells her what to do,” stated Nigel. “Not even me!”
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“I thought you said they were obedient!”
“Are they not? They did exactly as you instructed them to.”
“In the most obstructionist, inefficient, maliciously-compliant way possible!”
“Perhaps you should revise your methods for instructing them, then.”
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Translation: “Oh sh*t! You did exactly what I told you to!”
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XD Naturally!
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“Wait, the TREE has on board diagnostics?”
“Well, it’s more than a tree, what with walking and talking and all, and then you have to factor in the incredibly high tech machine intelligences that created it took most everything they absorbed on first contact literally, including fiction. It’s a technical construct, and yes it has on board diagnostics. Just plus into the port.”
“I haven’t seen it do anything but be a tree. What port?”
“That’s because it’s offline. Look right there. It’s even labeled.”
I squinted. “Okay – I see it. ‘O B D Ent’? Hey, I think I have this connector in the kit…”
“Right: ‘On Board Diagnostics, Ent’. What else would you call a walking talking tree? Plug in and let’s see if we can get it rebooted so we can maybe convince it to help us out here. Or at least give us some information before those flying monkeys come back.”
“The least they could have done is stay in one canon…” I mumbled as I plugged in.
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Once they realize they are small blue islands is sea of angry, heavily armed red that hates them, they’ll be a lot more obedient.
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That would be rational. That would mean accepting a reality they can’t change by wishful thinking. That would mean admitting they were wrong.
Never gonna happen. They will go to their graves Believing in the Righteousness of their Cause.
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Good one, but they won’t. They’ll just get crazier.
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Yeah, they’re devoted to Götterdämmerung. I’d love to sit back and wave, but that’s an awfully big wrecking ball.
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Again, to an extent we can’t stop them. They also can’t win.
When I say things are going to get very bad…. Yeah. that’s what I mean.
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Vote time:
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/284218-which-theme-shall-we-read-in-february
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Ahead a wildling, its fur matted and its eyes wild, loomed over three peasants. The oldest shouted orders, but the other two looked too dazed to obey, and the wildling already had blood on its claws.
Marcus shot silver darts at it. It screamed with rage, and glared at him.
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(This story has been following me around for weeks, since about the prompt ‘smart’ — so I finally wrote it. Hoping 3 installments will avoid Wiile Pete’s imposing Moderation Purgatory on it and a little extra work on our hostess.
Part 1/3)
Elliott turned over, almost. It seemed to him, caught between sleep and waking, that something was wrong; but he couldn’t place it, as drowsiness clung to him like seaweed. So even after all his years soldiering for the Orderly Incorporation, he lay there and listened, and heard nothing amiss.
And when he did decide, of his usual dutifulness, to get up and check the displays or ask the officer of the night, and stirred in his cot, he heard simple clear familiar words. In short-command-imperative mode, but also in intimate-comradely-kin submode.
“Rest quiet. Nothing is out of order. Go back to sleep.”
In perfect (if inevitably human-accented) Vizzhnouth’a that dug deep into other habits of thought and action. Elliott James Darling was no defective servitor; so, half-alseep, he relaxed.
Until, a short but measureless time later, the first sharp shot split the cold Christmas-Eve air. Then he sat up bolt upright, awake, but at once heard more of the same…
“Be still. Avoid hazard. Obey!” Followed at once by English, words as plain, “Or I’ll burn a hole right through you where you sit.”
And whatever the whip-crack of hearing master-to-slave-imperative might’ve missed, those other words hit, like bucketsfull of near-freezing river. If any of his men had spoken so, if they could’ve — it was as good as a shot to their own hearts.
Colonel Darling, in uniform pants and shirt, his sidearm on the table with the papers and commware and compware, very slowly raised his hands; as the tent’s lights (over seconds) dawned upward to a soft orange glow.
His life had been a choice between obedience or suicide; and he breathed.
He faced two men in the greenish-gray semi-uniforms of the so-called Army of the Insurrection, the Rebs. Between them stood the speaker, in the same but less field-stealthy; not their now-open suits of dirty-ice camouflage or even a greatcoat against the twenty or thirty degrees of frost outside.
The two had repeating powder-pistols, the middle one held an energy pistol much like (but not) his own Forces-issue sidearm. All aimed…
“So I’m to be your prisoner, then?” Elliott’s voice sounded, felt ragged.
“No, Colonel Darling. I’m to make as sure as I can you come to no harm, on your good behavior. Even offer you a sort of parole. I am Isaac Sheridan, intel-lieutenant, and my superior ought to be here to see you soon.”
“Your command of Vizzhnouth’a is impressive.” Darling used a proper accent for that one word, making its buzzing, humming “zzh” instead of the usual muddled human “zh” as clearly as if one of the Overlords themselves were there. The hard glottal-stop near its end didn’t choke him at all.
“First know thine worthy enemy well, next defeat him wisely.” Old Vizzhnauthi military proverb, a classic this past few millennia or so.
There was a stutter of automatic-firearms fire, like the heavier weapons squads were issued for this campaign on a — previously? — low-tech and indigenous-insurgent world.
Int-Lt. Sheridan grinned. “There’s an old, old textimage from the turn of the millennium, about an incident in the 1700s, that fits tonight pretty well. ‘Americans. Ready to cross a frozen river on Christmas at midnight to cut your throats. Totally not kidding, we’ve done it all before.'”
“So most of my men are already dead?” With genuine flatness-of-affect and tension even Darling could not suppress.
“No. Not-so.” Sheridan also made the swift hand/claw motions that accompanied strong, hasty negation in wide-speech Vizzhnouth’a talk. He was somewhat clumsy, one hand being both full and steady; but he used the exact ones appropriate to one maimed or half-paralyzed or half-bound.
And continued, “Our mission is to secure this camp, not depopulate it. A pint or two of GB gas, or a small high-radiation fusion explosion, would’ve done for that, at zero risk to our personnel.” Again he grinned outright, then chuckled. “After all, ‘t’d not be a nice thing, this bein’ Christmas Eve an’ all.”
“Lieutenant Sheridan, you speak the Overlords’ Tongue to me. Why?” (There was nothing his racing mind could find to do, better than — talk. At gunpoint, three to one, two paces from the foe and his nearest weapon three distant.)
Again the other smiled broad in his deeply-tanned face. “Because you, my dear Colonel, are a product of your so-called Overlords’ occupation. You and yours raised by a human society, taught from the cradle to submit and survive as aliens rule unquestioned and unchallenged… thus, your habits of thought and action and obedience.”
“In our armed forces you’d be dead in an hour for using, for doing that.”
“In your armed forces I’d likelier be a week dying on the cross, but…”
“Mister Sheridan, you are relieved. Thank you.” It was only a bit higher pitched, but sounded suspiciously female… unusual though not unheard-of (for infertile ones at least) in his own service.
She came in the doubled cloth-flap doors to his chamber, in the same sort of uniform with a flapping-open greatcoat. Far shorter than Sheridan was, olive-skinned with dark hair, she’d be unremarkable on most human-cattled worlds of the Incorporation… Except, of course, not.
There was… something about her. It shone out like a light, more and yet more, now that she was… unshuttering or uncovering it, somehow.
And, oddly by contrast to Sheridan’s issue uniform, he realized, there was no insignia or personalization anywhere on hers. Nothing, at all.
“Osiyo, my name is Elissa Redwing. Good Christmas to you, Colonel Darling. And I can see by the crucifix mounted to your wardrobe over there you’re a Christian, too, so I mean it as more than a formality.”
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(Part 2/3)
“The Vizzhnauthi see mine and all forms of religion as mental illness, so it’s not any sort of advantage; but it is traditional and tolerated and it does give me some measure of comfort,” he allowed.
But she, this Elissa, had taken a cling-wrapped, fist-sized wad from her greatcoat, stripped off its wrapping and set to washing her face, or so it seemed, scrubbing at herself in a dim tent corner. Odd sort of thing…
But before he could find anything to say or ask, she’d tossed the cloth to his work table — it looked greenish-gray dirty in the better light, where it wasn’t bright red — then faced him directly again.
She was still as short, her hair was still brown and near-black; but her face was… different, a study in contrast. One side was lighter, freed of the — makeup? — that had covered it. The other was a far paler shade of white, nearly albino-white, save for a small ring around that eye matching its natural-pale-brownish-copperish sibling…
“Lady Hela? You’re really her, that Elissa, of the seven hundred kills??”
The words tumbled out before he could stop them. A trait that could be so easily and simply fatal with the Vizzhnauthi, a Darwinian sure dead end.
“That, once upon a time. Yes, and the pallor is from a bomb-flash, where my new skin came in bone-white after it took again. Of course the ring’s from the scope, ours have photochromics against overbrightness naturally enough.” And she almost chuckled, almost-giggled. “Christian, as I said, not Norse-heathen; but I resemble their Lady of the Underworld enough.”
They’d wondered where she’d gone. Evidently, the answer was up.
“And, Colonel Darling, if you’re willing to give me your parole to do us no violent harm, I intend to show you further greater, brighter wonders.”
And she smiled, like a sun uncloaking from clouds next to Sheridan’s easy grin. Whatever that light of hers was, it was open now yet more.
“This is a day of miracles, not only historically. I’d like you to watch, as humanity makes one more. So, if you’ll give me your parole? Of course the two gentlemen to my sides will watch, to see if you keep it rightly.”
“I give you my parole, witnessed and pledged.” One of the oddest things, between the mad Rebs and the Vizzhnauthi — mostly they kept their word.
“Come outside, Colonel Darling. The sky is clear, the river mist has all blown away, the stars and planets are out.” All true, he found.
And she… sang. “And in this dark sky shineth…” An old hymn, most likely.
“So how did you cross the river? Our alarms did not ring.”
“Those ‘tennis courts’ were hovercraft. No antigravity, barely a whisper of noise. Ice and river water are flat, so were our craft and riders. All hidden in the ground-clutter and lack of tech-signatures. And, of course, we used devices to confuse your sensors and… drowse your people. Not at all to ‘stun’ or ‘make you sleep’ but to make it hard for you to wake, to stay awake, to rouse yourselves if you did get sleepy. Obviously limited, as you can no doubt testify; yet mighty useful.”
“Why? Why any of it? The Unity’s big presence is on Brightfall, sunward.”
And she smiled a smile that chilled his bones far more than the soft wind off the hard ice on the Byelovodye River. “Yes, it is. You should look up to that next planet in toward the sun, up there in the southwest sky, for you’ll see something there soon. Light-time delay, and all.”
She smiled again, a bit more… warmly, humanly. “My ancestors are mostly Cherokee, Eastern Band, and they would’ve understood. What humans need to do to survive, well, they do. We… declined the Federals’ nice offer of the Removal to the Indian Territory to the west; and stayed, or returned, even if we had to buy our own land back. Though I’m happier I do not have to walk behind a husband of mine, carry our baggage and feed our family, as he walks in front of me and does the talking and wears the pretty jewelry.”
And she smiled that other way. “Progress, Colonel… if needs must. The old Greeks called it Ananke, Necessity. Our story is not yet told; and will not consist merely and solely of an appendix in someone else’s book.”
The… brightness of that, from her, made him shiver. Not the cold.
“The Unity of the Orderly Incorporation has endured since the Ice Ages on old Earth, twenty thousand of its old years. Incorporated many dozens of species, those that were worthy of being Servitors, beyond mere Prey.”
Elissa Redwing cocked her head. “I was named after a bird that’s native to a planet forty light-years from Earth, Colonel, until human starflight was ready to bring it closer to us. We’ve done a lot more since the War of Servitude started than you’ll likely ever be able rightly to understand, at first.
“But look up, now. Now, so you’ll not miss it. Because the reason for this little operation, really, is… you. You, personally, Elliott James Karol Darling of the Servitors’ Sharp Claws. You, it seems, have a destiny, have your very own little and quite personalized edition of Ananke.
“No, don’t look at me, look up at Brightfall. Now!”
He’d been meaning to ask how she could possibly know his saint-name, when no-one outside his own little mountain village had ever heard it said…
When Brightfall… went off, like a flashbulb, like a magnesium shell. In mere moments it brightened, like a meteor, like… He looked down from a blue, near-cloudless sky lit by a blazing dot he could hardly look at, to an almost-daytime landscape. Maybe a bit eerie-blue and darkish, as in a mid-eclipse.
Elissa was looking at it, no goggles or dark glass. “There’s a boundary field to limit the visible brightness, it burns off the energy in a ball about a million miles across. Deep infrared that can’t hurt your eyes.”
She looked away, at him. “Ananke, my dear Colonel Darling. Matter burning into energy, only, and nothing else. Neutron-antineutron oscillation. It’s pure human tech, like no one else ever. Right now, that planet is shining a tenth as bright as its sun, behind our limiter screen.”
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(Part 3/3)
It hit him like a gut-punch. “But they’re all dead!” Bases, stations…
She smiled, that other way. Savage. “Yes, like all the human planets who ‘deserved to die’ without even a Scavenging first. Only ours is faster, at least they literally ‘never knew what hit them’ though that’ll be little comfort at all. Necessity, dear Colonel, is a stone-cold bitch; but still less harsh a mistress than your ‘Overlords’ are masters.” And she spat.
Elliott Darling looked around. At the faces of his men, all some distance off, almost all of them with their arms trussed together from hands to elbows behind their backs, ranked in rows, mostly looking at the sky. A few, looking at him, with cold slow murder burning naked in their eyes.
The light from the sky was dimming, reddening toward an orange, still yet fading; like an incandescent lightbulb did with its power cut. Almost too bright to look at, even now. Over interplanetary distances. Still surely somewhat in shock, he was, his mind just catching up to how much.
“Colonel Darling. As I imagine Isaac Sheridan told you, we’re here to make you something of an offer. As strange as it’s gonna sound, especially to you from a two-faced girl you just met, I invite you to be my apprentice.”
“Wait, you’re trying to recruit me as a defector??”
“No, I’m asking you to join the winning side. The interesting thing about Brightfall is that it… had a strategic importance and effect far more than its size ought to merit… and we just hit dozens of other and similar garrison and naval-base worlds of that same class. But it’s still more than that; you’ll know even better than me or many of our analysts, how much this kind of shock will affect the Vizzhnauthi, culturally and, ah, psychological-operationally. Their religion is a belief in the ‘inherent’ cultural and military and technological superiority of their species and civilization — including many other Servitor species, sure, but only as ‘inherent’ inferiors.” She leaned back, crossed her arms.
“‘Never trust them savages! They’ll do you wrong, ev-ry time!'” Laughed.
Horror gripped his heart. “M-Miss Redwing, I don’t even know your rank, I have to just say this. You’ve probably exterminated the human species, our Overlords will never let us live after this.”
“Bullshit, Elliott Darling. Bullshit. Superior weaponry, and a ‘stubborn will to live’ — isn’t that the name of one of the two people, human, who survive Ragnarok and go on to repopulate the world after the Twilight of the Gods in the Norse story of the world? — are ingredients of victory. You’ve your head too far up the ass of your whole Lizardkin mob, to see.”
She tipped her head back toward Brightfall, which was dimming now toward a cherry-red. “The planet is still there, of course, heat doesn’t diffuse in nearly so fast. In a month, it’ll be cold and ready for us to terraform all over again. We still have the arkology ship that did it, from before.”
And again, oddly, she started to sing.
“And, in this dark sky shineth
Our everlasting light;
The hopes and fears of these iron years
Now rest with we, tonight.”
Elissa had a beautiful voice, almost eerily so. On a Christmas eve, all the way down to a Christmas Star that was… horribly, beautifully, so new and so terribly bright. A warrior’s star, or a warrioress’ star…
“I did not come to bring peace,” she quoted relentlessly, “but a sword.”
And she was smiling, that warmer and more human smile. “I really did mean what I said, that ‘everlasting light’ part — nothing, of course, in this world or of it lasts truly for ever. But, that technology lets us take an old, burned-out star and rejuvenate it, blast its cold ashes of carbon or oxygen or neon or whatever back to hydrogen and re-light it. Over and over and over again, dozens of times if we choose. This night has literally a cosmic importance. As well as, of course, being a new start for our human species, tiny on any truly cosmic scale though yet we are.”
She reached for her pistol, and for an instant Elliott thought himself a dead man, all despite. But she drew it with deft fingers and flipped it in her hand nimbly to offer to him, butt-first. “This is getting a bit behind the times, for all it’s served me so well. Perhaps I ought to pass it down to my new, still-dazzled apprentice?”
He looked at it like it’d grown fangs. “They’ll kill me.” Looked sidewise.
She smiled, grinned; no, she beamed. “Only if you shoot and kill or half-kill me first. And, if you do… well, one more dead Indian! Good’n!
“In old Japan, there was a general everybody thought wanted the throne. So the Emperor, tiring of all the gossip and drama, asked him to his private garden.
“Walked a bit, then told him he was tired of carrying the Imperial sword and asked him to hold it for him, just for a little while. As they spoke of nothing very much, for a few minutes. Then the general handed it back.
“End of story, Elliott Darling. If you want it to be.” Held it an inch or so closer, but made no further move.
“All so I can be your apprentice?”
“All so, when the time comes, you can lead all humanity to victory. Or be the hugest traitor to your species in all its history. No pressure.” And again that grin split her strange face. He slowly began to understand where Sheridan had come by his own bright smile, and how and why he was a ‘mere’ Int-Lt.
Elliott looked up to the dark sky, in which the pink dot of Brightfall had begun to resemble its former self, shining again by sun’s light. Looked in his own figurative rearview-mirror, back on all his life under the Overlords.
“Ananke,” he said simply, quietly, grasping his pistol and sliding it into the now-full holster at his waist.
“You’re with me, Mister Darling,” said Elissa Redwing, Detached. Turned on her heel and walked swiftly away, leaving and trusting him to follow.
As he reflected that this time, unlike those old Cherokee days, he was the one following her now, a couple of paces behind.
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