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
REALLY IMPORTANT: DON’T BUY THE PRINTED VERSION OF WITCHFINDER. WHILE SMALLER THAN NO MAN’S LAND, IT WEIGHS IN AT 455 PAGES. IT’S GOING TO HAVE TO BE BROKEN INTO TWO VOLUMES TO PRINT. THIS BOOK IS TOO LARGE FOR THE PRINT VERSION TO BE STABLE. I’LL DO A TWO VOLUME PRINT EDITION SOMETIME THIS WEEK.
SARAH A. HOYT: Witchfinder (Magical Empires Book 1)
A Duke’s Defiance Could Shatter Two Worlds
In an England where magic pulses through every cobblestone and the Regency never ended, one man’s conscience threatens to topple an empire.
Seraphim Ainsling, Duke of Darkwater, inherited a legacy of forbidden heroism. For generations, his family served as witchfinders, crossing between worlds to rescue those condemned to die for possessing magical gifts. But when the royal princess vanished twenty years ago, the king sealed the borders between realities forever.
Now Seraphim faces an impossible choice: obey the crown and let innocents burn, or defy his king and risk everything he holds dear.
With only his enigmatic half-elf valet Gabriel Penn at his side, Seraphim tears holes in the fabric of existence itself, leaping between alternate Earths where magic means death.
His mother and sister are lost in Fairyland. His enemies circle like vultures. The king’s patience wears thin.
But Seraphim’s stubborn compassion burns brighter than caution. In a world where doing right means risking everything, he’ll discover that the greatest magic might just be the courage to keep fighting when hope seems lost.
Some prices are worth paying. Some lines are worth crossing. Some hearts are worth breaking.
A spellbinding tale of sacrifice, family, and the dangerous allure of doing what’s right in a world determined to punish goodness.
FROM FRED PHILLIPS: Dreams of Gold and Fire
Courage meets myth to create a destiny forged in fire.
Aron dreams of knighthood and battling dragons, but life in his quiet village means herding sheep and facing his father’s disapproval. When his parents dismiss his ambitions as childish, Aron’s determination ignites into rebellion. He runs away to the capital city of Lanfield, chasing a chance to prove himself as a knight and protect his home from encroaching goblin raids.
The city tests him and finds him wanting with hostile streets, trouble with local bullies, and a brush with the law that leave him reeling. A kind knight, Devan, offers guidance and sword lessons, sparking hope that Aron’s dreams might come true, for a time. Fleeing new troubles, he stumbles into the mountains, where a chance encounter with a goblin and an unexpected ally lead him to a hidden valley—and a discovery that changes everything.
Aron finds wonder in the valley, forging a bond that teaches him courage and the value of trust. When danger threatens his village, he must decide how to protect those he loves, even if it means risking his newfound friendship.
This heartfelt tale of grit and discovery speaks to boys daring to dream big and to parents who see their sons wrestling with who they want to become. Aron’s journey reminds us that heroism grows from believing in yourself, even when the path feels impossible. Perfect for young readers and families navigating the pull between dreams and duty.
FROM LIANE ZANE: Helsing: Demon Slayer (The Dragon’s Paladins Book 1)
Book One of The Dragon’s Paladins
A warrior bound by duty. A woman marked by fate. A world on the edge of darkness.
When the sky burns and the earth trembles, old powers stir beneath the surface. In the wake of a devastating solar flare, ancient evil rises to take advantage of a broken world. But the Elioud, a hidden race of angel-blooded warriors, have not stood idle. In the mountains of northern Albania, a stronghold has formed under the drangùe and his consort—a sanctuary where harmony and heroism might hold back the coming dark.
Ryan Helsing, a decorated Army Ranger with a past forged in fire, is sworn to that cause. Battle-tested and emotionally scarred, he never questions his orders—until he’s sent to retrieve Dianne Markham, the younger sister of the drangùe’s wife. What should have been a simple escort mission turns deadly when daemons strike Dianne’s cruise ship just as it docks in Split, Croatia. Ryan barely gets her out alive.
Now they’re on the run across a crumbling Europe, hunted by forces both human and inhuman. Dianne never asked to be part of a war between supernatural powers. All she wanted was to survive the chaos and find something real in a world of shallow pleasures. But when Ryan storms into her life with steel eyes and a haunted soul, she’s drawn into a world where ancient bloodlines, harmonic technology, and dark angelic forces collide.
Marked by an unseen enemy and carrying secrets even she doesn’t understand, Dianne may be the key to everything. And Ryan will risk his life to protect her—even if it means confronting the echoes of his past, and the possibility that fate has more in store for them than either imagined.
Helsing: Demon Slayer launches a pulse-pounding romantasy of survival, sacrifice, and the fierce first strike in the battle to hold the light.
Sometimes, one man is all that stands in the way.
FROM BRIAN HEMING: The Lives of Velnin: The Dark Empire: A fast-paced epic fantasy adventure of swords, love, magic, and battles
1.7 million enemy soldiers. One reincarnating prince. Who will win?
Swords. Love. Magic. Epic Battles. Reincarnation.
A year and a day after the death of his first incarnation, Prince Veldin rekindles his romance with the beautiful Princess Aloree, his first incarnation’s beloved widow. But these happy times are cut short as he is sent to repel the invasion of the Dark Empire: 1.7 million men, four thousand ships, all led by the Dark Empress Soraina, a beautiful maiden to whom the prince feels a mysterious but intense connection.
Stopping the invasion from destroying all he holds dear may cost him everything. To protect his people and triumph against impossible odds, must he sacrifice not just his lives, but even his love and his very soul?
Combining the most amazing battles in history with swords, love, and magic, The Dark Empire is sure to please fans of swords & sorcery, adventure romance, and military fiction alike. A fast-paced epic fantasy of swords, love, magic, and battles.
FROM NICK NETHERY: Relics of the Fallen (The Wormwood Archive Book 1)
Dan Kelly, a battle-hardened Army bomb tech on the brink of retirement, can’t shake the ghosts of his fallen team from a long-ago war zone. When a shadowy government outfit called Wormwood recruits him, he’s thrust into a world of enigmatic weapons—artifacts of unearthly power, scattered across Earth like forgotten relics. Alien remnants? Echoes of a vanished human empire? Wormwood hunts for answers, but they’re not alone; darker forces crave these devices for chaos.
As Dan grapples with tech that warps reality and inflicts unseen wounds, he uncovers a chilling link to his past tragedy. From cartel tunnels beneath the border to high-stakes raids on illicit arms hubs, missions blur the line between duty and vengeance. A leak within threatens everything, forcing Dan to root out betrayal before a final assault where old enemies await.
In this gritty fusion of military precision and otherworldly mystery, redemption comes at a price—one explosive secret at a time.
FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Quilted Circle Mysteries: Eight Suburban Scandals: Eight Suburban Scandals (The Detective Stories)
In the northern suburbs of Philadelphia, five retired women meet weekly to quilt, swap gossip, and — unintentionally — solve crimes.
The Quilted Circle Mysteries: Eight Suburban Scandals is a charming and clever collection of cozy mysteries featuring Vera, Dottie, June, Lois, and Marie — a circle of longtime friends whose projects always seem to uncover more than they bargained for. Whether it’s a missing recipe card, a vanishing med-spa mogul, or a suspiciously swapped quilt at the county fair, these suburban sleuths bring wit, wisdom, and just the right amount of sass to every case.
Perfect for fans of Agatha Christie’s village tales and the quirky humor of Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate, this delightful collection blends sharp observation with small-town secrets, proving that retirement is just the beginning — especially when your friends bring snacks and surveillance drones.
Each mystery can be enjoyed on its own or as part of the full collection. Come for the gossip. Stay for the justice.
BY DWIGHT SWAIN, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Crusade Across The Void (Annotated): The Classic Space Opera Novella of Revolution
“Scum of the spaceways,” the interplanetary police had called them, so Wolf Stone and his motley crew left the solar system for another. There, they found a tyranny not too different from the one they left, and this time, they decided to fight.
And when they fought for justice, they were one blood with the crusaders!
- This iktaPOP Media edition has a new introduction giving historical and genre context to the story.
FROM NATHAN BRINDLE: A Dragon in the Foie Gras (Timelines Universe Book 3)
Captain Delaney Wolff Fox is back.
She’s just led her team on a months-long hunt through the penal world al-Saḥra’ (known otherwise by its semi-satirical name “Sanddoom”), looking for an industrial-sized illegal drug “kitchen” that’s been supplying colony worlds with various illegal substances via a network of involuntary migrant “mules”. That hunt ended satisfactorily, and rather explosively, with the destruction of the “kitchen” and hundreds if not thousands of personnel associated with it.
Now the team is heading back to Earth, hoping for some well-deserved shore leave . . .
. . . but it’s not to be. A long-sleeping foreign agent has been found in a stasis chamber in an abandoned Chicago warehouse, and it’s up to Delaney and crew to investigate the mystery, by traveling back to the year 2017 to find out why the agent was placed in stasis then, and why the stasis seems originally to have been planned to end in late 2020.
And when the sleeper wakes, asks for and consumes an entire pound of goose liver pâté, and asks for more, it’s pretty obvious they’ve got
FROM MARY CATELLI: The Wolf and the Ward
A wolf wanders the land. . . .
Charity had thought it dreadful, being sent like a package to a man who might refuse to take her on as a ward. But when a wolf comes to look her up and down in the woods, and the man she is sent to greets her, making her wonder if she remembers something that never happened, she finds that there are problems far worse than that in the duchy.
FROM HOLLY CHISM: Fixing Up Love
Amaryllis left school with a worthless degree and a fiance who wasn’t that into her. She refused to go back home to wallow in her family’s judgment of her choices, so she took refuge with her best friend instead. Her very handy best friend, who was fixing up a foreclosed house he’d bought. It was a really big job, and he could definitely use her help. His handiness kind of made her want to get handsy, but would fixing up the house together fix up their relationship as well?
FROM KAREN MYERS: Monsters, 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
MONSTERS – Xenoarchaeologist Vartan has promised his young daughter Liza one of the many enigmatic lamedh objects that litter the site of a vanished alien civilization.
No one can figure out what they’re good for, but Liza finds a use for one.
ADAPTABILITY – The Webster Marble Deluxe Woodsman, Model 820-E, has been offline for quite some time. Quite some time indeed.
Good thing Webster has a manual to consult, and a great many special functions.
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Moon Mirror
Chelsea Ayles dreamed of going to the Moon since she was a child. Now her dream job at NASA has turned into a nightmare, thanks to those many blood-sucking arachnids. Yeah, politics, as in a Senator accusing her of destroying America’s priceless heritage because she chose the moonrocks that were used to make a proof-of-concept mirror segment for a lunar telescope project. Now the mirror sits in her office like a bitter mockery of what might have been — until the day her reflection turns into a handsome stranger who calls himself the Man in the Moon and offers her visions of a world that might have been. Visions that ignite a longing of an intensity she hasn’t known since she was in grade school and watched videos of the Apollo lunar missions in science class.
SARAH A. HOYT: No Man’s Land: Volume 1 (Chronicles of Lost Elly)
Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.
On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Now technology indistinguishable from magic courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric civilization survivable—and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star Empire—Skip to his friends— has just crash-landed through a time-space rift into the middle of it all.
Dodging assassins and plummeting from high windows was just the beginning. With a desperate king and an archmagician as his only allies, Scipio must outrun death itself while battling beasts, traitors, and infiltrators bent on finishing what the founders started: total destruction.
Two worlds. One chance. No time to lose.
Volume 1
The Ambassador Corps has rules: you cannot know everything, don’t get horizontal with the natives, don’t make promises you can’t keep.
They’re a lot harder to follow when assassins are hunting you, your barbarian allies could kill you for the wrong word, and death lurks around every corner.
The unwritten rule? Never identify with the natives.
Skip’s already broken that one.
Now he’s racing against time to save his new friends from slavery—or worse—while dodging energy blasts and political intrigue. One crash-landed diplomat. A world of deadly secrets. And absolutely no backup.
Some rules are meant to be broken. Others will get you killed.
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: THUNDERING.
According To Hoyt 
The red-haired bearded prisoner kept trying to smash the walls of his prison but the shielded wall helds until he collapsed.
Outside two Ultra Guards were watching and after the thundering stopped, one asked the other “what’s his story”?
The other replied, “nobody knows. He appeared in the New York City area proclaiming that he was the Norse god Thor. It took six Alpha-level Titans to stop him.”
“They couldn’t talk him down?”
“Nope, he kept demanding that he be worshiped as a god. What’s worse, he had a “magical” hammer and it was only after they got it away from him that he was defeated.”
“Crazy world.”
“Yep.”
LikeLike
Every week a great cloud of new books to tempt me!!!
LikeLiked by 2 people
“She stood, clutching the blueprints, her mind racing. The world was fracturing—geopolitical tensions flared over the last scraps of resources, corporations vied for control, and governments bickered over scraps of sky. Yet here, in these fragile pages, was a plan to unite them. A station in orbit, free from Earth’s gravity and politics, could build ships too large to launch from the surface. It could process ores, fuel colonies, and send wealth back home. It could be the fulcrum for an Orbital Renaissance.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
…so of course the Earth-bound politicians fought against it tooth and nail. :-(
LikeLiked by 1 person
”What were you THINKING?! Wait, I know, you weren’t thinking AT ALL!!” Celeste thundered, stalking back and forth across the floor of my small office. I sat waiting for her to either run down a bit or ask a question she actually wanted me to answer. “You KNOW I am on the Imperial Proscription list in the Empire. That’s why I am hiding out on your backwards little dirtball – Earth is in an Imperial Primitive Preserve, so no Vigiles are assigned this sector, only a few Frumentarii. And you go and include me in your stupid novel!”
That was too much. “Celeste, you’re not in there as you. And I made all kinds of changes to my Imperium compared to what you’ve shown me about the actual Interstellar Empire.” I spread my hands. “And you can’t tell me the Frumentarii assigned here are so bored they just sit around reading Kindle books looking for characters inspired by Proscribed fugitives.”
“No, they have AI for that, you fool,” Celeste said, shaking her head. “You people are so freaked out about your primitive Artificials, but you have no idea what the capabilities are of actual machine intelligences. And the Frumentarii here have the best, with the Trass Dominion frontier just forty light years away. For that matter, I am sure Trass Foreign Intelligence Clade AI are monitoring your little internet too, and they’d just love to get their claws on me.”
She was a bit calmer after explaining interstellar politics, so I tried again. “And there’s no way either will connect the wispy thin blue skinned white haired seven foot tall alien princess in my book to your voluptuous fully human looking sexy redhead Imperial political operative self. We’ll be fine.
”Oh no, mister, you can’t flatter your way out of this one. And I may have married you, but that doesn’t mean you can sit there right in front of me and tempt the fates like that by using those three words. You know what happened last ti…” A sudden blast shook the building, sending Celeste sprawling across me in the chair. I grabbed her tight and kept both of us from falling to the floor as the building fire alarm started wailing. Over the alarm I heard another odd noise outside. “What’s that…”
”Trass pulser fire,” she said getting back to her feet. “Well, crap. Grab the go bag and your slug thrower, we need to go right now.”
LikeLiked by 3 people
Opps! [Very Big Grin]
LikeLiked by 2 people
The funny thing is, those Trass are assaulting a building down the block, for a completely different reason than valiant-yet-proscribed Celeste, and our heroes are about to stumble right into imperial intrigue and deep cover Frumentarii monkey business as Earth becomes WWII Lisbon In Space.
Tune in next week!
LikeLiked by 3 people
I ran with all my might, knowing I’d either stroke out, have a heart attack, or get trampled to death by the ton of raging animal thundering down the road after me. 100 feet to the trees by the road. I probably wasn’t going to make it. Damn stupid bison.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Strange how that ended up in my MeWe stream.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Last month you tried to throw me in prison for providing medical treatment to an innocent woman who was collateral damage in a crime she had nothing to do with. Practicing medicine without a license is against the law, you said. Now you threaten to throw me in prison for not providing treatment to one of the criminals!”
She looked really pissed off, but looks were deceiving. She was far more pissed off than she appeared.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Remember you can be a FORCE MULTIPLIER!
Every book that you, after reading, rate or, better yet, review helps forward the revolution!
LikeLike
Smoke filled the sky, so dark that only a thundering cloud could match. A zeppelin, brightly amber, floated west. Another, rosy pink, went south.
Her heart pattered too quickly, and she, realizing that, felt heat in her face. In the nearest shop window, she looked pink.
She forced her breath in and out. What nonsense. She was not a newcomer to the city. She had been here before, and often. She was full grown and about to become a scholar at the Towers, when the prince himself attended. It was beneath her dignity to act like a dazzled country chit.
LikeLike
“Oops,” said a small voice as the Buffaloes’ mascot went thundering down the field, chasing three referees, the opposing team’s defensive line, and two reporters (who deserved it) into the stands. “I think we need the big ropes. He’s feeling a little frisky today.”
LikeLiked by 3 people
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
LikeLike
“Boys!” yelled Mrs. McDoohan. “Come to supper!”
Silence from upstairs. Too busy reading, were they? She knew how to get their attention.
“I guess your father and I will just have to eat all the shepherd’s pie!”
Immediately, the noise of a thundering herd of elephants came from the staircase.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s funny how I change change your mental picture of the location from Ireland to somewhere else with just a couple of word changes.
“Boys!” yelled Mrs. Svensen. “… I guess your father and I will just have to eat all the casserole!”
“Boys!” yelled Mrs. Rodriguez. “… I guess your father and I will just have to eat all the enchiladas!”
“Boys!” yelled Mrs. Ishikawa. “… I guess your father and I will just have to eat all the ramen!”
(And note that in that last one, she is NOT talking about cheap store-bought ramen, but the real thing.)
LikeLiked by 2 people
Sheesh, that was supposed to be “can change”, of course. I do wish WordPress made it easier to have an “Edit” button that would be active for fifteen minutes after you post.
LikeLike
The Rhaganth threw back his massive head and from his throat came a thunderous roar.
Serena’s skin went gooseflesh, and she understood the old expression “blood went cold.” Even knowing that Gurand was a civilized lion proved little comfort to a nervous system shaped by untold ages on the African veldt, where lions were a continual danger to the roving communities of prehumans and early humans.
That’s not an angry roar, she reminded herself. That’s a grief roar.
But knowing that her shipmate had just received news of the loss of his brother in the destruction of Stalker Under Starlight did little to calm Serena’s racing heart. On the other hand, noticing that even the Kitties were showing very alert body language was some comfort, a reminder that both species came from a mesopredator heritage before the Pearl of Wisdom enabled them to make weapons that elevated them to apex predators.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Speaking of books – I’m following Pam Uphoff, yet Amazon hasn’t alerted me to at least the last three books put out. I’m having to just search on the author every once in a while to find the new stuff. Anyone know what’s up?
LikeLiked by 1 person
amazon is VERY bad about that. For me too. It also has followed a bunch of writers FOR me. People I’d never read.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sigh.
LikeLike
Kip thanked Saint Gus, patron of space travelers, for the engineer that had designed The Phoenix. Segmented architecture mean there was no passageway from the recon pod where he controlled the ship back to the propulsion module. Vibration from the hyperspace motor was producing an audible and irritating buzz at the pilot’s station. It must be like the middle of a lightning storm back in that module, he thought – spacetime thundering as the motor ripped it apart ahead of him and sealed it behind. If it didn’t operate with 100 percent efficiency, test pilot Kip Gerringer would be a faint plasma trail drifting across three light years.
The Phoenix was on its maiden voyage. Maiden manned voyage, that is. The ship had made an automated jump out to Sedna last year, far enough to prove the technology but close enough for retrieval in case of a malfunction. Today’s flight was a reconnaissance mission to Proxima Centauri; there and back in 16 hours, but no rescue in case of an emergency. That’s why I get the big bucks, Kip mused and smiled ruefully as he thought of the ex-wife and the outrageous alimony arranged by her divorce lawyer.
Hyperspace technology had been in development for years, retro-engineered from an alien ship buried in the Pacific seafloor. Project Azorian had brought up more than a Russian sub back in the Seventies. Now that it was ready for manned flight, the Reagan administration was covertly funneling defense acquisition money into full-scale development of an interstellar fleet. Funding supposedly earmarked for SDI was pouring directly into the hyperspace program, but six hundred dollar hammers and two thousand dollar toilet seats were some of the Pentagon’s less inspired efforts at hiding the money trail.
The autopilot, also an alien tech retro, signaled that the hyperspace sequence was almost complete. Kip checked the mission chronometer: six hour and ten minutes, just as scheduled. He tightened the harness and warmed up the sensor suite. The cameras and data recorders came online, except for the tertiary backup recorder, probably a victim of the vibration. All other systems were in the green, and Kip braced for the seven-gee reentry stress and extreme nausea that had accompanied hyperspace launch. He thanked Saint Gus again for the wisdom to skip the traditional astronaut’s steak-and-eggs preflight breakfast. Well, Kip thought, maybe the engineers could figure out the alien inertial dampening system next.
As the view out the forward port reassembled itself from the mesmerizing dazzle of hyperspace, Kip prepared himself for the vistas for a new planetary system. The target exit point was just outside Centauri b’s orbit, close enough for a recon but far enough away in case the navigation team made an error in the 30th decimal place. Believed to be a rocky, Earth-like world, it could be a potential colony site or a source of need minerals and other resources. Kip mentally flipped a coin on whether it would be a barren rock or a blue-green gem, and it came up tails. Rock it is, he thought. That’s when the seven gees and nausea hit him hard.
As the starfield solidified in the viewport, Kip recovered from the shock. The tunnel vision cleared, and he found himself enthralled by the M-class red dwarf before him. It seemed so close he could almost reach out and touch the star’s mottled crimson face. After a moment, Kip gathered himself and checked the sensor readouts. Centauri b was behind him, so he enabled the RCS system and yawed The Phoenix to port. As the planet came into view, Kip was astounded by the sight of blue oceans and white polar caps, but his astonishment quickly turned to dread. A large structure filled the viewport as what was clearly an alien spacecraft maneuvered towards him.
Kip was not alone.
LikeLike
I threw myself down, hard, as the thundering roar of infantry and armor hypersmarts cracked overhead, salvoes of five to six missiles homing in on targets independently. Powered armor took most of the impact, along with the inner kinetic layer, but ATHENA was already flashing indicators that I was going to have some interesting bruises tomorrow morning.
Assuming I survived that long.
Grenades and mortar shells exploded overhead, far enough away not to trip my point defense. I quickly squirt-connected to some of my drones and found the fire-team of Unity combat servitors that was engaging some friendly panzers nearby. I slammed their coordinates into my launch rack and a six-tube salvo of infantry hypersmarts screamed away as I got the power rifle ready to shoot.
LikeLike
The dulcet sounds of the live production ofThe Music Man were emanating from the stage when Sergei sat down next to me. “You said you had something unique for me,” I told him.
“I do,” he replied. “We’ve found something in the KGB archives that was stolen 100 years ago, something that your people might be interested in purchasing.”
“Oh?”
“A previously unknown John Phillips Sousa march.”
I paused in thought as the main theme repeated. “Thundering, thundering, louder than before…”
“Tell me more,” I told him.
LikeLike
“I don’t have to answer to you,” said the woman, sounding rather desperate.
“There was poisonous magic here,” said Honor. The children drew out of her path as she walked forward. “Inside this house. With the children. And the birds were drawn to it. You’ll answer to someone.”
“They were coming after you,” said the woman. “That’s obvious. You should have known what you were doing in the field.”
“And there just happened to a poison feather in here?”
Thundering sounds outside made Honor start. For an uneasy minute, she wondered if she had summoned something new.
The door opened.
LikeLike
Is this Witchfinder the same one I bought in 2018?
LikeLike
yes, sir. It just got properly typeset, anda new cover.
LikeLike
(Part 1/3)
There are nightmares, and there are nightmares. The worst of ’em follow you right on into the waking world, as the one I was so deeply tangled up with pretty-much did, once the telephone (videophone) rang me out of it.
But, the best of those worst are the ones you can actually do something about, if you’re lucky and smart and dogged enough. So I have to say I’m properly grateful for that blessing, at least.
“Nicholas? What in the world, you know I like to work late of a Saturday night, then sleep it off late Sunday morning.” Being a mathematician for the Republic of Brunswick on Great Wessex, military more than civil, let me indulge my deeply work-obsessive side… and if I occasionally decided I’d spend a Saturday night going out or getting (almost) drunk, it shared the same consistent pattern of habit, smoothly interoperable right fine.
His aspect was… amazingly like tense. By now I’d been around him enough, over the ten years or so we’d known each other, to get some idea of what ‘made him tick’ — and to glimpse at least some deep sinks of darkness in his mind and history. Of course, I did not pry, my own experience forbid.
The boss of the boss of my immediate boss; still I knew him fairly well.
“Thank you for answering the comm, Dolores.” (Here-and-now I was Dolores Williams — but still, outside of the details of alleged background, also and always myself. The one person you can not and could not ever properly or successfully run away from… not that I’d been foolish enough to ever genuinely try.)
He looked at me, just looked at me, for a beat or two. That was the first thing, that really twigged me to something… well beyond the ordinary.
“I’d like you to come in to the office as soon as reasonably possible. It came up quickly, but there’s a situation.” The emphasis on those last few words was palpable, even though also subtle. Maybe more, because subtle.
“You mean the Imperials?” It was the odds-on guess, crazy as their whole so-called system of government usually was; and their constant low-level provocations never came with any guarantee of staying low-level. For all I could tell, Brigadier Nicholas Carstairs-Smythe might’ve gotten his own personal ration of inner winter’s cold and murk due to their efforts.
“No. Something other, something from outside. Level Kyoto.” Okay, now that last item rocked me back some, and brought me the rest of the way awake.
There are lots of code-words in human history, and some of them allude to things that happened, or didn’t. Kyoto was one of the cities on the old World War II nuclear target list, but also semi-proscribed for a few reasons.
So what that meant, as part of the briefing I’d been given years ago, was a top-level threat — like the Americans in the world’s only nuclear war. (By “the world” I mean Earth, of course; the way “the city” is still Rome.) How anyone or anything on Great Wessex, beyond the People’s Rational and Compassionate Empire, could threaten this country I was in and had been a willing and tolerably-happy part of, and sufficiently, um, existentially..?
Oh. My intuition had suggested something, unusual but scary. I repressed sternly an impulse to glance up at the ceiling, remembering not-reality.
“Rocks? Natural or artificial?” My own voice was level, not quite ‘flat in affect’ as they say, but… well, it’s scary, when you dream of mountains falling; bright and terrible as an army with banners, and nerve-gas by the trainload. Then, all a-sudden, it may not be just a dream…
“Protocol, Miss Williams; but yes rather so, and near surely the first.”
I didn’t mind letting him see me clutch my bathrobe tighter. “Be there as soon as I can get myself decent and so forth. I mean, you sound like this is truly urgent.” Obviously, it was, if ‘Kyoto’ pertained. “Not going to bother with much but dressing, then I’ll hop in the car and come in by the usual gate.” (Thankfully this world had never got the fad of auto-driving being habitual, or even compulsory. I like to do my own walking, too.)
His brows knit, just the merest trifle. “No need to take so much trouble, I can have a car at your door in fifteen minutes if it’s agreeable.” And the Brig’s voice was so level and easy, which sent even more alarum bells clanging in my inmost ears; luxury wasn’t something the General Research Directorate ever paid much attention to at all, at all. (Results, sure.)
I just looked levelly back. “So should I bring anything with, Nicholas?”
“Simply yourself. And, your honesty. And… your best grip on yourself.”
Now, that wasn’t foreboding, not at all, at all. “Any idea what you’ll be wanting me to do, for… us?” Note I wasn’t asking him to tell me, over a very unsecure line, only asking him if he already knew what it was or not.
“You may have special skills and attributes that harmonize synergistically with your mathematical expertise, and the needs of our mission.” I cannot likely ever get across how utterly, madly far out of character it would’ve been, for Nicholas Carstairs to descend into bureau-speak. No, it was not that, nor would he ever have recited some Personnel Service mush-mumbling either. No; instead somehow, this was… coded for the available channel.
I looked down, then up at him again. Flicked my eyes to the little inset that showed me what I was showing him. Nothing leaked, but, still. Habits of a lifetime tend to be strong ones. I let him have a chance to go on.
“Some sacrifices may be required.” That really was flat-in-affect. And it told me more about him and his vague and shadowy past, than about me now.
Could they truly suspect? Or have guessed, or..? Then again: Kyoto.
“I’ll be all up an’ dressed in ten minutes. Likely in five.” Somehow, the old Ozzie expression comforted me; though there really wasn’t much of that element overtly here in today’s highly authentic-Britannic Brunswick.
“Don’t rush that part too much, Dolores. Cartland will be attending, too.”
Undersecretary, um, Sub-Minister Rebecca Cartland??
Freyja’s tits, they truly are buzzing all about in a swarming cloud, I did not say aloud. Or even subvocalize, any too very strongly.
“Roger that, Nicholas. See you on the inside.”
And there was an expression on his face I could not read, but yet there.
“Thank you again, Dolores. Your record of service is appreciated.”
And with that he cut the link.
LikeLike
(Part 2/3)
It was a quick and comfortable ride, in their car. Not luxurious; our fair Directorate did not often run to such, and then only to be politic to the larger world outside its walls. But there was no briefing packet for me to dive into on the way, which had been the usual practice the rare times I’d been summoned this way to the office. We did not enter by the usual gates, neither the one I’d become used to using myself (I like to drive, as I’ve said, just as I prefer to wipe my own nose also when appropriate) nor the other, more “discreet” entry previous Directorate cars had used.
I did like the smoothness of the ride. Though perhaps not entirely what it likely betokened, the stolid massiveness of armor in this car, uniquely.
My “chauffeur” (surely not his main qualification or occupation here) did something again unusual: whisked me to a conference room somewhere up on one of the Upper Floors, where offices usually had a grand view out over the rooftops and chimney-pots of New Londinium. Only this room had a set of chairs around a conference table, and chalkboards and viewpanels, and not the least hint of a window or a skylight — we could have as easily been five floors underground.
Or, I could’ve been, once “Geoffrey” had conducted me here, offered me a sampling of edible this-and-that, and withdrawn. At least the lights were all incandescent, none of the buzzing of ballasts to be heard at all. But it wasn’t more than a minute or two, of me alone with my speculations, or perhaps even some of my fears, till the door I’d come in by opened. And I had stood up, as surely as I’d’ve done if the King himself had entered.
Her hair was as brassy-blonde as you’d expect from the photographs. And it wasn’t more than half a second before Sub-Minister Cartland was saying, in a way of speaking more than “brisk” but still no-wise brusque, “Thank you so much for coming in on such short notice, Miss Williams, but as you’ve heard there’s an emergent situation. This briefing is to fill you in on as much of that as you ought to know, and to describe two lines of action we hope you may assist us in pursuing.”
“Yes, of course, Minister Cartland, I…”
“Forget all that stuff in here, Dolores, if I might be so bold. Time is of the essence, now, as I believe Brigadier Carstairs-Smythe has hinted.”
I just bowed, a little (curtsying having fallen out of style here-and-now, unless you were wearing the cut of dress that made such a retro-formality, um, practically required), and waved a clear by-your-leave. “Minister, are we to wait for the others?”
“We are the others, Dolores.” Nicholas’ manner was closed, but not distant in any way; deferential, to Cartland of course, but not formal. Wry.
Okay, then, wow. “In which case… I humbly invite you to talk to me.”
“Yes. Sit down, if you please. The first of those two tracks involves your assistance with an acceleration of Project Home Run. The second involves a sort of, well, wild Hail Mary pass, to use an American-football metaphor.”
It took only a handful of seconds for the lights to dim, for a panel to my facing-side to light in its place. With summary plans I knew well, by now.
“This, you’ll recall, is our working prototype of a celestial interceptor. An Ulam-drive, high-boost delivery vehicle, for a fusion explosive device to flash-heat an asteroid’s surface, and generate a diversive impulse.”
She looked me straight in the eyes, and for the first time I realized she was more than just brisk, more than just on-task. She was scared, perhaps even frantic, somewhere deep inside; in a way that bubbled upwards to the visible surface, like a geyser about to ‘blow’ in its accustomed manner.
“Unfortunately our prototype interceptor isn’t ready, and cannot be for at least a week or two. Which will be too late.” Now the picture had flipped to a lumpy-potato-shaped hunk of… what I recognized as natural metal.
“It’s coming at us out of the sun, this object, which for reasons about to be obvious we’ve named Wormwood. Our asteroid survey has been interrupted and diverted, as you know, by the war, cold and occasionally hot. It’s not such a huge one, only about half a mile in diameter; but that’s enough, as you know, to deliver a ground-burst explosion in the multi-gigaton range.”
And I felt a clench in my stomach. I’d never seen any such event, nor ever its immediate aftermath; but my mind was full of names like The Tunguska, and Sudbury District, like Meteor Crater and Burnham Fells; and away off at the far end of that scale, Puerto Chixulub.
The sky-rock that’d put the ‘boundary’ in ‘K-T boundary’ once upon a time, to all the remaining dinosaurs’ sad but brief lament.
“Impacting near the middle of the Great Polar Ocean, such an object will, to the best of our experts’ estimation, throw Great Wessex back into the global ice age it’s barely just finished climbing out of, these past two to four centuries. But that’s not the worst of it, for Brunswick.”
Because, of course, our northern border was the Great Polar Ocean.
And there was a chart on the screen, concentric circles on a map; so like those familiar charts of zones of overpressure, flash effects, blast wave intensity, over some dozens of miles around a nuclear ground-zero point.
Only this was hundreds and thousands of miles, around the point-zero of a fireball that all Brunswick, even with its new deuterium-lithium H-bombs, could not begin to hope to equal for decades to come.
“So, Minister, I mean Rebecca as you say, does all this boil down to using the test vehicle? Because it’s been readied, and flown, and done it pretty well if I dare to float my personal analysis before you. All begging your pardon if I’ve made too bold or talked out of turn, at all.”
And she looked at me with an intensity I’d not yet seen, even in this, and also something oddly like gratitude. “But of course, Dolores. There are a few major problems with that. Limited payload is a minor challenge and one we (so far) think we can handle; limited shielding is a serious issue.”
And her look invited me to continue. “You mean our test vehicle wasn’t at all designed for sustained thrust. Its pusher plate isn’t thick enough to shield the rest of the craft from the fast-neutron flux from the drive explosions. But of course, it wasn’t supposed to be anything but a simple test article, to validate the old ‘Orion’ nuclear-explosive propulsion as we’ve implemented it, these recent years. Not ever a long-haul spacecraft.
“And of course our old colony ship still up there in orbit can’t ever do more than a fractional percent of a gee. So, then, too slow for your time frame? Or I should say, instead, for this asteroid’s time scale?” And the Sub-Minister — (!) — sitting across from me simply nodded. And went on.
“But as you say, our test vehicle exists, and it does work. The erosion of the pusher plate from the nuclear drive explosions is slow enough it can survive long enough to fly out to Wormwood, match velocities and complete a rendezvous, and do it all fast enough to… make diversion possible. It gets harder and harder to complete the diversion, of course, the later we make our attempt.” And Nicholas still had not yet said a pertinent word.
“So, am I supposed to help with this? I can do shielding calculations, I can try to come up with ideas, yes; but so can many others. This is hardly a pure math problem, or even my particular kind of applied-math forte.”
And why, exactly, was there a light in Cartland’s eyes, burning like mad if not-unreasonable hope? Amidst, of course, her tight-leashed fear and terror.
LikeLike
(Part 3/3)
“That brings us to our second track, Dolores. You should know that none of what you’re about to hear was my initiative; the data came from particular parts of the Directorate, what you’ll have heard called the Spook Squad.” Nicholas had broken his near-silence at last. Quietly, matter-of-factly.
Cartland, or rather Rebecca, took a deep breath, out and in. “There is a specific class of stories out on the spaceways, Dolores. Legends perhaps, or folklore or tall-tales. Or not. One of them is quite persistent; talk of those people who, for whatever reason, can go through the decades or centuries of a full star-passage on a fusion-drive starship, not in cold-sleep but awake.”
And her eyes tracked to mine, like director cameras for some heavy gun. “Do so and, of course, not die of old age; or even age noticeably at all.”
Oh.
“Some call them Guardian Angels of the Passage. Or Vampires of the Deepest Dark.”
She smiled, did Rebecca Cartland. Almost grinned; as if the tension that was slowly (but yet so clearly) unravelling her being had remitted. “Rather a reversal of the old Rip Van Winkle legend, which our cold-sleep makes over into cold, hard, indispensible fact.” She breathed in again. “And, though it’s rather unethical in any other sort of time, the Directorate has been able to prevail upon the Chartered Transport Company for Great Wessex, to search its old legacy databases, from its long trip out here from Earth.”
And there was a picture on the screen, from a personnel file. The datablock caption said Denise Castanaveras. The face, and the body, looked like me. A lot.
“So you’re looking for… legendary immortals? Vampires? Elves? What? Why would you need something out of myth or legend, so suddenly and now..?”
Rebecca sighed. “Hard neutron radiation, mostly; also some gammas, as you said. The operational ship we have would let neutrons through enough, as it boosts and deboosts to Wormwood, to kill any normal human. To, likely, destroy or disable any automatic system we can make, or shield. Which is to say, we need something or someone… more survivable than that. Unless we simply want to risk the one best chance we have to stop this thing, on the mere hope we’ll get lucky, and our machines will survive what flesh, or to be more accurate most mortal flesh, cannot.
“We’re talking about ten kilorems, more or less. In sieverts, that’d be, uh…” I waved my hand, another crystal-clear nonverbal Brunswick signal. (Like we used in the old days, of the Big Ice.)
“No need, I speak rems more natively, anyhow, Rebecca. Are you actually, really, truly and genuinely right now trying to ask me if I’m this Denise Castanaveras in that decades-old picture up there, or moreso some kind of legendary immortal?”
And she looked at me in a way I’ll never forget. Nakedly, wide-open as one human being can ever be to another, for any reason or for all reason.
(There’s an old saying, some places and times, that we all of us owe God a death. In my case, He might also be requiring a diary. Thus, it seems, my memory.)
“Not merely that, Dolores, or perhaps Denise. More, and yet far more.”
And Sub-Minister Cartland got up from that table, and got down on one knee before me; as if readying to give an oath of fealty, or the like.
It wasn’t quite the full prostrations of classical Tibet’s Buddhism, no; she wasn’t the way-cool dude that Patrul Rinpoche was (and is, in some due form or other, yet and still). But, it was most… impactful. Eloquent.
“To misquote my infamous and not-so-illustrious ancestor, I beg of you to consider, Dolores Williams and whoever else you may be or may’ve been, if you might be able to help us all. Survive and live. Yes, it’s a mad guess made desperately clutching at reeds while half-drowning, but still yet…
“I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, consider if I might be correct.”
And in that thunderous, echoing silence that followed, I heard something else from far, far away. I do have superiors, I do have bosses, I do have Ones I consider to be wiser and more clear-headed than I. Before the gods who made the gods, as Poul Anderson wrote once, there were Those Who…
And over long years, since I wandered teaching weaving, more besides have come to us.
Like every riverfall, ever; like five thousand tons, clawing its ravening way upward to the stars in blue-flaming glory, roaring and crackling; as a live kimberlite pipe must sound, blasting diamonds miles upwards to our hands.
Like Gibraltar Falls in all its glory must’ve been once, long before my time.
I took Rebecca’s half-reaching hands in mine. “They’d fouled that one up, one more time, it ought to be Denise Castanaveras y Borges.” I said it to spec, three languages in three and a half words, but that’s old hat to one such as I. “Yes, I was riffing off an old book a couple centuries old, or rather two of ’em, but… yes. And, yes, I’ll fly your fine death-trap of a prototype ship. I’ve done ten kilorem in a month, a few times before, it hurts like a son-of-a-bitch like you’ll never understand, but…”
Raised her up, fealty still ungiven. But oath, inchoate, somehow already pledged.
“When? Where?” Nicholas’ low voice asked its simple, compelling question.
“A soured-culture little asteroid mine, of near-pure uranium oxides. They mined that stuff with people, ‘expendable’ ones, despite the zones that’d gone critical when they got wet enough, or rarely still did. Like Oklo had back on Earth, all those aeons ago. It actually took me a few decades, to get far-in enough; but we broke the place open in the end, so, well worth the cost of freight.”
They looked at me; as a hope, yes, but more as a person, unlike but like.
And I smiled; amidst the debris of she who’d been Dolores (ironic what it meant, that name, all a-sudden) and, a bit earlier, of Denise. As… me.
“You should start calling me Ellie, Eilidh Maclachlan. That’s who I was, once on a time, back when I was me as much as I’ve ever been for long.”
I did not even suspect then, after the quinine and bitter wormwood, there would be honey and night-black olives for me. I had only to get down the road to it.
LikeLike