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 DAVE FREER: Storm-Dragon
On the treacherous Vann’s World, Skut battles a savage wind and deadly hamerkops to rescue a mysterious, telepathic creature. Fleeing a rising tide and a menacing Loor-beast, he forms an unexpected bond with the tiny, electric-charged being that sees him as its protector. As Skut navigates the perilous tidal tiers, his impulsive escape from Highpoint Station unravels into a fight for survival—both for himself and his newfound companion.
Podge is the new kid in town, trying to keep his head down. Meeting Skut is about the only bright spot in his introduction to this strange new world. The boys bond over Skut’s creature, and trying to avoid the class bullies. This is only the beginning; soon Skut finds his new friends do not ease the growing concerns of the adults around him while the town is coming under a mysterious threat. What can two boys and a tiny storm-dragon do?
FROM MEL DUNAY: Marrying A Monster (The Jaiya Series Book 1)
New, professionally edited edition! Journey to the country of Jaiya, in a world not quite like ours. Here, humans ride trains, drive cars, and use cell phones, but they share their world with insect people and trollfolk, and stranger things lurk in the shadows… As a favor to her parents, Rina agrees to come back to her hometown and take part in an old local custom: a symbolic marriage between the town’s women and the Mountain King, a mythical guardian spirit no one really believes in. But the Mountain King really exists: a monstrous being that feeds on fear and suffering. Rina’s only hope for survival may be Vipin, the dashing scholar hunting the Mountain King, but Vipin is hiding a few secrets of his own… Note: Rina and another character are friends with or related to a few characters from the later books in the Jaiya series, but Monster is meant as a standalone.
FROM J. MANFRED WEICHSEL: Not Far from Eden
Jealous angels with no genitals discover the passion and ecstasy that humans experience through sex. In revenge, the frustrated but impotent celestial beings banish the men to the wilderness. Will the women save the human race, or will they become the mothers of great evil?
FROM MARY CATELLI: The Enchanted Princess Wakes
Once upon a time, a princess was cursed at her christening — but not the one you heard of.
When the fairy decreed that Rosaleen would fall into an enchanted sleep, and how she would wake, the grand plans of kings, to unite kingdoms, failed. They sent her to an out-of-the-way castle in the mountains, in hopes the curse would do no harm to anyone else.
There, alone, Rosaleen lived and learned, and realized that she herself had to be ready to face the curse, and when it broke.
FROM DALE COZORT: Earth Swap: The Stone Library of Venus
Near-future Earth suddenly finds itself in a different version of the solar system, one where human civilizations trade and war between planets. Lurking behind those humans: the long-vanished non-human “Builders,” who colonized the solar system long ago, seeding it with Earth life. Ward Parke, astronomy enthusiast and presidential advisor, wants to explore this new solar system, but the planets here are on the verge of a genocidal, civilization-ending interplanetary war.
Our Earth is caught in the middle of that looming war, with technology hundreds of years behind the other powers. Its only advantage is an ancient stone library preserved by a now-vanished human civilization from Venus and a mysterious woman called Pandora who may be that civilization’s only survivor.
FROM HOLLY CHISM: Meals on Wheels (Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 4)
Not by the (nonexistent) hair on her chinny-chin-chin…
Meg Turner, vampire, accountant, ruler of her own small territory. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Not if you ask her, it doesn’t. Because the world’s going mad, the idiot mortals in charge are forcibly shutting down the economy without the understanding that it won’t start up again as easy as it’s going down, nor that it’s creating a nasty blood shortage for hospitals, much less vampires.
Even better, the head of her line is invading her dreams again, and teaching her history of all things. And teaching her about the laws, and why they’re there. It’s not just to avoid being noticed by humans capable of staking, beheading, and burning vampires during daylight hours—a vampire that breaks fundamental laws turns into something worse than a vampire.
And she’s got a bunch of those knocking at her border, wanting to come in. Worse yet, they’re sending their day-help into her territory to kidnap their meals, and they keep mistaking her for prey. And leaving their discarded empties in her territory to make it look like she’s draining humans without concern for the laws.
This really isn’t looking good, and it’s really not safe for her still-living friends and family.
FROM KAREN MYERS: The Visitor, And More: A Science Fiction Short Story Bundle from There’s a Sword for That
A Science Fiction Story Bundle from the collection There’s a Sword for That
THE VISITOR – Felockati is anchored to his permanent location underwater and misses the days of roaming his ocean world freely.
But something new drops out of the sky and widens his horizons — all the way to the stars.
YOUR EVERY WISH – Stealing the alien ambassador’s dagger is a sure thing for Pete — just what he needs to pay off his debts.
Until he starts talking to it. There has to be a way to get something for himself out of the deal. Has to be.
FROM SARAH D’ALMEIDA (YEAH, ME): Death of a Musketeer
When D’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis discover the corpse of a beautiful woman who looks like the Queen of France, they vow to see that justice is done. They do not know that their investigation will widen from murder to intrigue to conspiracy, bring them the renewed enmity of Cardinal Richelieu and shake their fate in humanity. Through duels and doubts, they pursue the truth, even when their search brings them to the sphere of King Louis XIII himself and makes them confront secrets best forgotten.
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: Mask
According To Hoyt 
Great promos today! Thanks!
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The priest sent for the bishop. The bishop listened with his face as motionless as a mask.
Then he said that they should return to Giovanni’s native land with the necklace, that his parents and family might know the wonders that God had performed for them.
“Then, perhaps, dedicate it.”
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Walkelin’s voice emerged from the back of the room. “There are masks that will make one person look exactly like another.”
“Then,” said Karl, “they would have to know that Erik would be there, so as to intercept him. And believe that he would venture to talk rather than fight.”
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It’s amazing, how many different kinds of tape you can buy these days. Back when I was growing up, you could get Scotch tape or masking tape. Now you can get duct tape, gaffer’s tape, packing tape, double-sided tape, and even special high-temperature tape for sealing the pipes that connect your furnace or water heater to the chimney. Small wonder that there’s a whole rack just of different types and colors of tape.
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Leon shifted uncomfortably, and nodded at the kid in the bright orange apron who’d led him to the right aisle while rambling on. “Thank you.” He picked up one of the more esoteric varieties, reading the directions on the back and keeping his face an impassive mask. “I’m sure I’ll figure it out.”
If there were only two varieties, he could have gotten both, and not been blamed for any failure. This rack… if he bought the whole spread, he would be blamed for attracting attention. If he didn’t, he needed to figure out fast what would hold together an ailing spellgate, and keep a few critical scales attached to the injured dragon until it could heal.
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Hmm. Obviously duct tape for the first! Works on anything.
Now, for the second, Leon should make absolutely sure that he won’t get his head literally bitten off when he removes the bandage… Might be better off taking a look over in the adhesives aisle.
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One of them tried to don a magical mask to hide his face.
“The thing is,” said Angelo, “we didn’t know him well enough to mark him. It was the magic that gave him away.”
The captain grunted. “We were not the real danger. The mass of the cityfolk who would know him, they were.”
He looked about that strongroom. “Stands to reason, though. Anything they couldn’t use themselves they had to sell, which mean they had someone to sell it too.”
Or someone to turn a blind eye to their selling, though Scholastica. The fences didn’t get the gold.
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“What happened?”
“A bunch of idiots tried to take Harry’s mask off.”
“But Harry doesn’t wear a mask.”
“That’s what they found out and also found out what happens when Harry gets extremely annoyed.”
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Stealth is essential for a cat-burglar. Gotta disarm the alarm panel quickly and correctly on the first try. Open the panel, start counting down from 15. I find the model number and pull the matching non-conductive mask from my pack. Cutouts show which wires to jumper, red to blue. Success!
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Sheila sat across from the bureaucrat, adjusting her scarf of office as a High Mage. “You do realize this incredibly virulent yet mostly benign contagion has a magical nature?”
“Yes, yes. The Center for Arcane Disease Control has inform this department of that.”
”And that, being magical, there is literally no mundane measures that can prevent transmission?”
”Yes, they informed us of that as well.”
”And yet you have issued this,” she said, manifesting in her hand and then shaking a handbill, emblazoned in large type, all caps, “MASQUE MANDATE”. “This is worth exactly nothing, zero, zip, nada. No mundane masque will have any effect whatsoever on the spread of this disease. And it is causing a panic, and shortages for hospitalers and other medical professionals where, against the mundane diseases, surgeons masques are of actual value. Presuming a great deal in the presumption of any thought whatsoever on your part, I must ask: What. Were. You. Thinking?”
The bureaucrat turned red, sputtered, and then started with his already squeaky voice raised yet further, “How dare y…”
Sheila, third in line of succession in the continental guild of mages, had absolutely no intention of letting this bureaucrat toad bloviate nonsense at her. She flexed the fingers of the hand not holding the handbill in the meme ting pattern necessary and threw a truth spell across the desk at said bureaucratic toad, who halted his squeaky tirade with a twitch, then began haltingly, struggling wide eyed against each word, “We…did…it…to…show…them…all…who…is…really…in…charge.”
”Ah,” said Sheila. “Well, you and your department are about to find out who is actually ‘In Charge’. I am sure the High Inquisitor will be most interested in the recording I have made of our little chat. We are done here, though I think I will leave your little truth spell in place for a bit. Good day.”
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“You lot don’t get it, and you never will. You keep trying to see what’s under her mask and expose her secrets. Her only secret is — she’s not wearing a mask. She is herself, all the way through. You just can’t believe it.”
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Aidan was breathing too hard to speak. And the captain spoke at once, “Are you saying that he wears some magical mask to pretend to be the prince?”
Oswald flinched.
“It’s a wig,” said Randall. “He does not have white hair. He has the royal hair. It’s red.”
Aidan winced.
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“And my son has a wonderful teacher!” exclaimed Julian’s mother. “Mrs. Plightly is such a gem!” Her afternoon guests cooed appropriately and sipped their coffees. Julian, in his bedroom, could not agree. His knuckles still smarted from the ruler. If only Mom could see how she really is, he thought.
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Mrs. Plightly hated schoolchildren, with particular loathing towards boys, who were more likely to be outwardly defiant. He’d heard the word “sadist” somewhere. Looking it up, he decided it fit his teacher perfectly, except on Parents’ Night, where she was jollity and smiles. Julian held out slim hope for justice.
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“We’ll be disguised,” insisted Alvin, Julian’s pal and fellow victim of Mrs. Plightly’s wrath. “It’s the perfect time to get even.” Halloween was only days away. Alvin told Julian and Wade that he had a plan – all they had to do was go along, and no, they’d never be caught.
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It was the year of the COVID. But he was still apprehensive going up to the bank teller to make a withdrawal wearing a mask.
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My daughter was particularly miserable during the lockdown, but did note that this was the one time you could walk into a Maryland liquor store with a mask on, and nobody would be bothered at all.
She also noticed a billboard somewhere along a Maryland highway: “Safer at home, Hon!”
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Her face must have shown nothing, because her father left the shop without a glance at her, and she managed to scuttle along into the winter blast.
The bear shone.
Her tongue was as frozen as the snow. She could not ask it any questions. Especially not those she wanted.
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The stuff I’m writing these days looks more like the following (although the indenting seems to be lost in the copypasta sauce):
def validate_input(self, *args):
“””Validate and clean the text entry input.”””
# Get current value
value = self.entry_var.get()
# Keep only alphanumeric, “.”, and “-” up to 50 characters
cleaned = re.sub(r'[^w.-]’, ”, value)[:50]
# Update if different
if value != cleaned:
self.entry_var.set(cleaned)
And the last mask I used was 255.255.255.128.
But I am still glad to see the book promo posts!!!!
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In a dim bar at the edge of town sat a man in battered armor, turning a mask over in his hands. It was a thing of thermoplastic, biosteel, and several other reagents he could not identify, but he knew what it did.
“”Two things, rookie. Just two. It’ll hide your face while you’re working. Keepin’ your ident on the down low is kind of counter productive on the face of it, but what we do here ain’t always exactly legal. We’re mercs, not saints.”
“L’gumbubi!” slurred a drunk, sprawled in his own mess in a corner by the door to the necessities.
“Or that, whatever it is,” chuckled the scarred mercenary.
“The other thing is, it’ll explode when you die. Makes it harder for your killers to track down where you came from, cause trouble for other innocent-like mercs. Pretty good, eh?” Then he’d laughed, drank himself insensate, and commenced to drooling on the table.
That had been a week ago. Since then, he’d been on his first job. Simple, they said. Just escort the package to the pickup point. Keep it safe, and make it back alive.
Only the package was a person, and that person was a target that some very lethal people wanted permanently silenced. The crew of three escorts, including himself, successfully completed the job. Officially.
Unofficially, one was dead, another missing, and that left him alone in the bar. Paid off and done. No strings keeping him. No snooks or peepers on his tail. Free. Utterly and completely. He turned the mask over again.
The face was a constantly shifting pattern of greys, blacks, and blues. The color of shadows and secrets. It did nothing to hide his build or height, his armor or his tracks. All it did was keep his features hidden.
He didn’t even know what the others looked like. A skinny girl with jet black hair and a habit of swearing. A thickset older man with a parched, creaky voice. The old man went by the moniker “Stroker.” The girl called herself “Wicker.” Uncommon handles for most folk, but mercs were expected to have their quirks.
The oldster could throw lightening. Actual hot death from his own hands. Hard to handle that sort of ability, from the other end. As their opponents had discovered. He’d been crushed to death when they dropped a building on him, the one he was inside. The broker at the bar confirmed the death. How they did that, he didn’t know. But he remained mildly curious.
The mask had no straps to it. No adhesive to peel off when you doffed the thing. It just stuck to your face when you put it there. Not even getting hit in the face dislodged it. Only willingly removing it. He’d heard that even torture could not take it off. Not that he’d want to find out first hand. Curiosity had its limits.
The girl had disappeared into the night, leading their pursuers astray. Her ability was a two part one. She could create a body double that looked like anything, but could only do what she could. And she could swap places with it, so long as it was close by.
She’d used that to trick their foes into gunning for her, pretending she was escorting the package herself. While she did that, he’d been tasked to finish the job. Which he was the best suited for.
The form of the mask was mutable, to a degree. It could have razor sharp cheekbones, or soft curves. You could give it a brow that a troll would envy or make it smooth pated. Give it a can opener for a chin or a weak under bite.
He’d used his ability, a common one from his home town, to shield them all. The flicker shield was a weak thing, but useful if one had a good sense of judgment and timing. Any blow or projectile you caught with it would lose momentum and force, but the shield only existed for an instant. And it could only be conjured so quickly, it also had to be manifested very, very close to what it shielded.
When he was young, he saw masters of it catch people thrown off of buildings, letting them down softly and gently. He’d seen them block actual lightening with it, siege projectiles, and once divert a mountain’s worth of a mudslide for a critical moment.
He himself was not that good though.
His own blood stained his clothing. His companions, too. The package was relatively unharmed, delivered safe and alive to the pickup point- a fortified structure housing a discreetly modified ship that carried her away. He’d left the docks through another exit, mere moments before the emptied structure was swarmed with killers.
And now he was back at the bar. Somehow, the same bar he’d left a week ago, which had been in an entirely different place.
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“You get used to it kid,” a voice tumbled into his ear like a tiny avalanche. Gritty. Tired. Inevitable.
“This place, it has its hooks in you. It’s a curse. A curse made our own, in a way. It’s but a light hold now though.”
The stranger was a tall, rangy man. He wore a mask like the one in the rookie’s hands. His shoulders were broad and his hands square and calloused as he gripped a mug that smelled of tea and honey.
“You could take off. Right now. Step outside with no one the wiser and you’d be gone. Swept off to some unforsaken corner of existence, carried far away from what you see here and have seen.
“You wouldn’t even be the first to do so, or the last, by far. But you wouldn’t be here in the first place, you would never have even have been dragged into this pit of insanity, if you didn’t, in some way, belong here.”
The veteran mercenary, for that was what he was, sipped his tea.
“You’ve already heard about the mask. The same thing we all wear. Why we wear it. What it does. It’s an identity and not. We are the Band of the Mask. But we are the individuals that wear them, too.
“The mask makes us what we are, but it reveals what we are, too. Step out that door on a job and you can be anyone. Or no one at all. Make a name for yourself. Create a persona to fill that name with meaning. Or something very like.
“Or you could just treat it as a piece of kit for the job. We do this for the money, don’t we lads?”
A ragged cheer echoed back at him, other patrons with varying levels of sobriety celebrating in their own way.
“Either way, it’s yours to decide. Keep the mask, toss it in the gutter, either works. The mask will find its way back here if you decide to lose it.”
“And if I really do accidentally lose it?” The rookie shieldman asked.
“You won’t,” the man replied, standing up. “The mask is part of the curse. Once it’s stuck with you, it’ll always be there.” Then he left, disappearing through the crowd by the bar.
“Don’t you recognize who that was?” A woman appeared beside him. Perhaps she’d already been there, and he hadn’t noticed at the time. A familiar voice.
“That was Kingkiller.” Said a solidly built fellow from a nearby table.
“No, it was the Judicar, Savior of the Verdant Isles!” Another, from the bar replied.
“L’gumbubi!” Supplied the drunk, sprawled in a different spot, cleaner than he’d last saw him.
“Whatever,” said Wicker. “He’s a legend. Everybody has a story about him. A theory. I even think he was the,” her voice dropped to a whisper “the first Mask.”
What did that mean, though, the ‘first Mask’? The first one to suffer the curse, as he called it? The first one to take control of it, make it what it was today? He did not voice these questions aloud, but his companion seemed to deduce them nonetheless. She shrugged, apparently curious as well.
“Anyway, seeing as we’re here and both alive, I was wondering if you’d be available for another job sometime soon?”
The rookie shieldman regarded the mask in his hands. And thought.
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For a moment, she thought she saw a white stag, with white fawns. Then she blinked. A man wearing a mask of a white stag, and children wearing masks, white, but of other beasts. A rabbit, certainly, a cat, a hawk.
Despite the mask, the man looked disapproving of her.
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She ran a finger along the lip of the dragon-head helm which hid the upper half of her face.
“A mask? Not in the least, young hero, anymore than this dress – ” she stretched out her arm, the draped sleeve shimmering in the light of the luminous stones “is fabric.”
At his puzzled look, she elaborated “These are my own skin and head. They only look like clothes because I’m in human form.”
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The whole company was puking and twitching. Not pretty in environmental suits.
‘Something they ate, doc?’
‘No, something they are missing – we’ve been working them too hard in this heat. Their suits remote EKG reports show decreased T wave amplitude and prolonged QT interval.
Break out the 40 mmol potassium chloride and the whole stock of IV sets and suit adapters.’
‘You mean …?’
‘Yes, time for mass K.’
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Carpapult loaded.
Twaaaang!
Carp out!
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“This is not, I know well, the world you’d have been expecting; even if you had guessed you’d end up on another planet after you were Snatched up from wherever you were on Earth the instant of the First Decimation.” The red-haired — warrioress? techno-gladiator? duellist? — who’d just now nearly (but only nearly) killed her opponent on the floor of this Arena pulled up the red-leather-looking mask on its hose to her backpack unit, and took another heavy drag of air.
“You’ll not have heard about the three Decimations, of course. Because the very first one happened to you, all; and you’ve been in what amounts to a standstill in time ever since, until last night. Still it’s so much easier to tell this tale, for me not to have to try to explain the Advent to you. Surely you’d never forget that.” It was near-obvious she was breathing in a bit of the air of the arena floor, to carry on speaking; but it wasn’t much for sustaining life.
“My name is Aliyah Antoinette Carter, that’s Annie Carter to my family and friends and those I know in daily life. Yes, that makes me Annie Carter of Mars; but I come by my name honestly, my grandfather lived between Gretna and Chatham in Virginia once upon a time pre-Advent, and our name isn’t exactly rare around there yet. And the big advantage I have over you-all is how I’ve lived through all the quarter century (by Earthly reckoning) since the Advent, one second per second, so I and most everyone I know got a far easier chance to adjust than you can ever get now.
“You were told you’d all live if your champion killed me or nearly did, by the Skargots. I know it, because they always say that. Did they bother to even mention you’d also all live, if she lost instead of won this match?” Another deep drag of air, after a lung-emptying outbreath. It took a while to build up, but the still-muted noise from the crowd in the low bleachers sounded increasingly… ugly. Not much toward Annie, though.
She drew the thin, crystalline-glittering sword she’d used. “This is not a human-designed or man-made weapon. We’re pretty sure we understand, now, what kind of matter it’s made of, though that’s a bit tough to explain. It looks thin, but it’s thinner; and even ridiculously rigid and strong as it is, it’s only a tenth to a twentieth as dense as water. You can move it around like a yardstick or a thin dowel, quite handily, no male upper-body strength needed.” Her left hand held up her mask again, as she walked over to the edge of the arena floor, and a chunk of what looked like pig iron. “And like that old kenning about Lugh’s spearpoint, it’s sharp enough to draw blood from the wind.” She fixed the mask on her face one-handed as if she’d done it a thousand times before, bowed low to the rusty old lump of iron, and…
Sliced it into cutlets like a razor through cheese, in less time than it’d take to say vorpal sword. Snicker-snack! Pulled off her mask. There’d been something of a collective gasp from the crowd.
“This is what the Snails give us, to fight each other. A weapon so easy to use to chop each other right to pieces, or slice so deep in a single blow we’re doomed to bleed out in seconds, even with trauma teams they allow to go to work on us after the match is decided. Once, at this level of ‘play’ as they call it, one of us is wounded near to fatally.” Aliyah, that is to say Annie, swung her sword back and forth, quick enough to bring chills to the few in the crowd who knew what doing it so swift meant. Took a moment more to grab a deep out-and-in breath — as she looked (pointedly) to the trauma-team on the other sideline, still at work on Elizabeth Porter, late of Dorsetshire, who was up until a few hours ago with her family and among those filling up the stands now. As she slowly and with practiced care put her sword away in its scabbard again.
“They call me a ‘bio-glad’ because of all that, a ‘life gladiator’ in an awful bastard mix-up of Greek and Latin that’s become far too entrenched to ever budge by now. My goal is to carefully not-kill someone, who’s as likely as not thinking she has to kill me first, trying to literally chop me apart or cut me up into chunks like that stob of iron; while I use my crystal-sword as a defensive weapon to keep me in one piece. Not too many places you can stab deep into some vital spot in the human body, and not inflict a genuinely mortal wound. But here I am, still.” There was for the first time something utterly like a grin on her face.
“Here on Mars the air pressure used to be a hundredth of the Earth’s. Now, as I’m standing here in it before you, it’s a touch over a quarter of Earth’s, at our datum-level that’s like sea-level on Earth. Enough to be able to breathe nearly-pure oxygen, at that pressure, and do fine.” It was almost like punctuation, the mask-breath she took. “But our air isn’t even nearly pure oxygen, which is a right grace and a blessing; even thirty-odd percent O2 was enough, aeons ago on Older Earth, to make wet forests burn like dry kindling and put the Carbon in Carboniferous Era.” There was an almost-impish smile on her face, only for an instant. “And it surely does not help, either, that even now our air is ten percent CO2; which is more than enough to make you get sick and then pass out if you breathe it for long at all. So we need to work it over, a bit, first. Still far and away better than pressure suits, and recycling exhaled CO2 into O2.” Another long breath, as if in emphasis.
“We call the day that started to happen, the Day of Blue Rain. Because it was exactly that, to us here on Mars-as-it-was. Not purple rain, you silly twits of old-music fans; liquid oxygen is a light blue, not any kind of purple. Sure, liquid ozone is a sort of blackish purple; but for Heaven’s dear sake, you do not want to fool around with that kind of devil’s piss if you can help it. Pale-sky-blue liquid oxygen it was, raining out of our butterscotch sky. From a myriad of inch-sized Ulriinann here-to-there gateways in the upper atmosphere, we know now; but it was as Biblical as a rain of frogs, then, and about as easy to believe.” That one alien word was jolting, incongruous; if pronounced impeccably well for a mere human tongue. Her mask-breath afterward was deeper, even, than before.
“You folk got the U-Law, the Ulriina’s Law you could not be further than a third of an AU, about 31 million miles, from Earth. Or, you’d be snatched back to — somewhere — inside that moving sphere, for going even a mile outside it. But here, living dirtside as true Martians, we got their A-Law instead; the Alternate Law or Alien Law or whatever. So, we have to fight (some of us), against some of you (who were Raptured away in one of those Decimations on Earth, about a quarter of you-all in sum), to the death or very nearly as they choose, in the Arenas they made here for it. To decide who will get what they call graces or blessings — notably, who may Speak for us, to them. And who can Call Gates to Earth, say, to trade with Those Left Behind.” (A deep drag of lifely mask-air.)
“You can’t use those. You’re too ignorant, perforce; you’ve not only been kept in the dark but kept frozen away in time like a fly in amber all the while. We’ve had to learn all that, frequently the hard way. Did you know that not all who go to talk with our fine star friends, the Snails, ever come back? Or that their language has fifteen cases and fifty tenses and five different superior-inferior modes? Or how their Imperial Mode makes court-mode in classical Japanese sound curt and colloquial? Every one of those cost us lives to learn.” (Another rich breath.)
“And so, we win. ‘Conquer we must, for our cause it is just’ as they sang. Ad astra per aspera, semper fidelis.” She breathed the thin and spare air of Mars, Annie did; and became instead Aliyah, the Red Death of Tithonius Lacus, again. “And you will NOT stand in my way.”
“The stars always our destination,” she added, in a whisper like thunder.
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