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 JOHN VAN STRY: End Game: Wolfhounds – Book Six
The fight has been a long one and a hard one with many unseen events along the way. The end however is here. The last battle of the war. The most important battle of the war. Soon they will leave for Cor Imperii, the capital of the empire. Soon they will launch a head-on attack against Speaker Phillip T Neill of the Democratic People’s Republic of Solaria. Soon Chase will do what he swore to do: Kill Neill, personally, tear down the DPRS, abolish the Secret Police, the Loyalty Officers, and re-establish the Empire of Solaria.
There’s just one last battle to fight to win the war.
Or is it? The last battle that is. Neill has his doomsday weapon, out there, somewhere, being developed in secret. It could kill billions, maybe more. Whole planets could be wiped out if it’s not found and stopped before it can be finished, before it can be used.
There’s also other players about. Other star kingdoms who have seen the inevitable decline that Neill and his government started when they lost access to the Tomb after killing off the prior emperor. In a hope to survive, or perhaps just seeing the state of the decaying Democratic People’s Republic, they’ve decided that some of those planets are ripe for the taking.
Which means that this battle may still have a few more rounds left in it before the Wolfhounds can, once and for all, return home.
FROM JASON CORDOVA AND MELISSA OLTHOFF: To Tread Obsidian Shores (The Bronze Legion)
Brand new military SF from two veterans with a proven track record of excellent storytelling!
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A WARRIOR?
The Protectorate of Mars Foreign Legion: A path to citizenship. A fresh start. Defending the Protectorate of Mars against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
HOPE
With itchy feet and a vagabond soul, all Blue ever wanted was to join the Survey Corps and explore the universe. But when she failed the entry exam, becoming a dropship pilot for the Legion was her last chance at achieving that dream. It was only supposed to be a stepping stone . . .
DUTY
All he ever wanted was a home. But when Tavi is driven from his world by murderous revolutionaries, he only has one chance to escape: the Legion. Searching for a new life, he soon discovers something even better—a family.
WELCOME TO THE LEGION
FROM JOHN BAILEY: Orbital Renaissence (Space Stations)
In the mid-21st century, Earth staggers under collapse—cities failing, governments powerless, and corporations competing for control of the skies. Commander Elena Voss and her crew aboard the orbital wheel Von Braun Prime fight to prove that humanity still has a future beyond the dying planet below. But whispers of sabotage spread through the station like wildfire: oxygen scrubbers tampered with, stabilizers overridden, crops nearly torched.
At the center of it all are those who would see Von Braun Prime fall: Gideon Crowe, a populist firebrand rallying Earth against the project, and hidden agents working from within. Trust fractures. Factions form. And when a young technician is unmasked as a saboteur, the crew must decide whether to stand united—or watch the station collapse from within.
Orbital Renaissance is a gripping, cerebral science fiction mystery that blends political intrigue, human drama, and the timeless struggle between hope and betrayal. Perfect for fans of Kim Stanley Robinson, James S. A. Corey, and classic space operas with a sharp, contemporary edge.
BY JULES VERNE, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: The Vanished Diamond
In 1880s South Africa, French chemical engineer Victor Cyprien has discovered the process to create a synthetic diamond, creating a very large diamond that gets christened “The Star of the South”. When it is stolen, he and his compatriots pursue the thieves across the African veldt.
This lesser-known classic by Jules Verne is remarkable not for its science fictional speculation, but for its singular portrait of its main character.
FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Dragon’s Sister (Timelines Universe Book 7)
Two Sisters, Separated By A Timeline
When most people find out they have a long-lost twin sibling they never dreamed existed, reactions can range from happiness to anger.
In the case of US Space Force Marines Brigadier General Mei-Lin Lai, her “twin” is her timeline analog she was told did not exist. And because of that reassurance, the expatriate Chinese taikonaut migrated to Timeline Zero from Timeline One Right, to take command of United States Space Force Base Terra Meridiani, on Mars.
But her analog did exist. And was pulled out of a cold-stasis chamber in Chicago eighty years after she’d been recruited into a failed plot to disrupt an American presidential election.
Twenty years later, Mei-Lin must grapple with a woman who is her genetic twin and wishes to join the Space Force Marines as a medic — and will go through Basic Training on the planet where Mei-Lin is the boss Marine.
Will the two women, identical but different, be able to form a sisterly bond? And will Mei-Lin finally come to grips with the very existence of her other-timeline twin?
FROM BLAKE SMITH: A Kingdom of Glass: A Novel of The Garia Cycle
In a kingdom of secrets and silk, one girl must choose between duty and her heart.
Zara has spent eleven blissful years in the sun-drenched kingdom of Garia, where she rides free across a vast grassland, shoots her bow beneath starlit skies, and calls her foster family’s castle home. But when a royal summons arrives, her golden world shatters like spun glass.
Thrust into the cold, formal courts of the East Morlans—a realm of rigid etiquette and deadly politics—Zara must navigate an arranged marriage to a stranger, reconnect with a family she barely remembers, and survive the unforgiving world of noble society.
Gone are the warm winds and open skies of her beloved home. In this land of marble halls and suffocating tradition, every word is measured, every gesture scrutinized, and falling in love might be the most rebellious act of all.
As court intrigue swirls around her and threats close in from every side, Zara must discover who she can trust—and what she’s willing to sacrifice—to reclaim the freedom she left behind in the endless plains of Garia.
Some cages are gilded. Some prisons are palatial. But Zara’s heart belongs to the steppe.
Perfect for fans of court intrigue, swoon-worthy romance, and heroines who fight for their own destiny.
FROM HOLLY LEROY: Back Burner – A Lt. Eve Sharpe Thriller: Book 2 (Lt. Eve Sharpe Thrillers)
You don’t become a Homicide legend without surviving your first monster.
A gripping crime thriller full of emotional stakes, razor-sharp tension, and a killer you’ll never forget.
Before Lieutenant Eve Sharpe earned her reputation for solving Chicago’s toughest cases, she was a rookie cop trapped in a dead-end beat and ready to quit. But when a close friend is found murdered and the case is buried by Homicide, Eve refuses to walk away.
Driven by justice and a gut feeling that something isn’t right, Eve launches her own investigation. What she uncovers is a pattern of brutal killings stretching across the city, all tied to an elusive, sadistic killer who doesn’t leave survivors.
Now, Eve is no longer chasing justice. She’s racing the clock.
Because the killer has a list—and her name is on it.
•Perfect for fans of gritty police procedurals and psychological thrillers.
•Loaded with suspense, dark twists, and a fierce heroine who won’t back down.
•Appeals to readers of Michael Connelly, Lisa Gardner, Karin Slaughter, and J.A. Konrath.
FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Schrödinger Paradox: Heisenberg’s Point of Observation
To save the future, sometimes you have to reach to the past.
Thomas Sutton was not your average fourteen year old, not even in an Ark City. Born in one of the three refuges of the last remnants of life on earth, deep underground, he knows his history. A century after an asteroid shattered and struck the earth, they have been trapped below by volcanic eruptions, toxic gasses, and radioactive dust. But what if he could…change things? What if he could reach the past, to prevent the asteroid’s impact?
https://amzn.to/3JsvQoFFROM 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.
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Wolf and the Well-Tempered Clavier
With the coronation fast approaching, the Cathedral of St. George the Dragonslayer cannot afford trouble. But come it does, while the cathedral choir director is at the Dragon’s Breath Organ, practicing the anthem he wrote at King William’s own request. While explaining some technical terms to his understudy, the choir director decides to show off a little.
In the process, he releases an ancient menace from long before humanity came through the worldgate to this place. An entity that strikes him blind, and threatens further harm to anyone who tries to play the Dragon’s Breath Organ.
However, they dare not disappoint His Majesty, not on the most momentous day of his reign. Someone must cleanse the Dragon’s Breath Organ of this malicious entity, and the choir director cannot. So the task falls to Miss Anne Teesdale, understudy organist.
Now she must delve into the history of the cathedral, and the mysterious ancient magic that fills the organ’s windchest. A secret that may well cost this young woman her life.
Or worse, her sanity.
An Ixilon story.
FROM RETRO ROCKETS: Retro Sci-Fi Pinups Volume #1: Yesterday’s Women of Tomorrow
Retro Sci-Fi Pinups, Volume #1″
Making use of the latest 21st Century Artificial Intelligence’s ability to generate images, And assisted by some merely Human Intelligence’s ability to curate and edit said images, We’ve attempted to recreated the thrill and wonder of the Golden Age of Science Fiction combined with the Universal Allure of Pretty Girls in Short Skirts and Skin Tight Spacesuits,
Here is a collection of 100 AI rendered art works featuring Yesterday’s Women of Tomorrow.in all their Winsome Glory. Inside you will find
- Intrepid Space Cadets,
- Amazing Astronauts,
- Comely Cosmonauts
- Space Babes
- Mini-skirted Moon Base Operators and Starship Crew Members
- and other Sultry Sirens of the Spaceways.
Inspired by fond memories of:
- Sci-Fi Covers of books, magazine and comics. (Amazing Stories, Planet Stories, Weird Science)
- Sci-FI B-Movie stills and posters, (Forbidden Planet, Flash Gordon, Queen of Outer Space, Barbarella, Star Wars)
- Sci-Fi Television shows (Star Trek, Space Patrol, Dr. Who. Buck Rogers)
We hope you enjoy our featured presentation.
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: Heat
According To Hoyt 
Cognition has a limit, Light was positive, but was he evolving toward it? Through some event in precognition Light’s sources had come close enough to become one across the vacuum of space in a way that Light did not yet perceive. Light knew all the worlds and all the spaces between the worlds as intimately as himself, for they were in him. In a way, they were him, for he encompassed all. He was everywhere. He knew everything. Yet he did not understand. He needed to concentrate, and the blue shift told him he was concentrating. Would he become a point, finally comprehending as well as knowing everything?
Light did all he could do—he waited.
So I cheated, but light and heat–same thing, right?
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“Hey Baby! It’s cold outside so let’s generate some heat together.”
“Sorry Dude, I can generate all the heat that I need without you” she replied as she called flame to her hand.
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So that explains why Dude showed up to work on Monday with no eyebrows…
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Letty was in a rebellion mood.
“I hate chopping vegetables. I hate washing dishes all the time. You make me do all the drudge work and I never get to do anything interesting. Restaurant work sucks!”
Her mother shrugged.
“If you can’t stand the kitchen, get out of the heat.”
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Yay for the updated cover on Etoile du Sud, Deej!
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It’s been updated for quite a while, but thank you.
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Remember to be a FORCE MULTIPIER!
Read books. Rate books. Review books. Help speed the Revolution!
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She crawled slowly across the debris strewn floor towards that sliver of light, that precious little gap in the darkness. Her gloved fingers moved as she pulled herself into the light three limbs dragging her damaged leg behind. She felt it, at last, a little warmth, a little heat. There was no sounds behind her, no pursuit from those already dead or the dying, all that mattered to her was that sliver of light and the heat it brought. They would find her now and then the explanations would come and their disbelief, until then she drank in the light and the heat it brought with it.
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“You were commenting,” said Emalie, with uncommon heat, “on how swiftly we got through it. You wanted to know how. That was how.”
“And,” said Sonia, coldly, “we are lucky to be alive. The prince is correct that no one must go through it.”
“What is this about a snake?”
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Thank you!
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Very welcome
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As we fled, I heard a bit of song from a passing car. The heat is on — how appropriate now that our mission had been blown and we had several Federal agencies looking for us, including at least two known to employ telepaths.
Fill your mind with chaff, I reminded myself — and that song offered the perfect line of thought to close out everything we didn’t want them picking up.
Where had I heard that song? Back in the 80’s, back when Reagan was in the White House, Thatcher was in Number 10 Downing Street, the Cold War was a permanent fixture on the world political landscape, and human cloning was something out of science fiction, or sf-adjacent books like The Boys from Brazil. It’d been the theme song to something, some kind of show about crime and law. Had it been Miami Vice, with its fast cars and the ever-present tropical heat and humidity of a city on the tip of the Florida peninsula? Or had it been L.A. Law, with its sharp legal minds in a city that could go mad when the hot Santa Ana winds blew out of the deserts?
Truth be told, Miami Vice had better visuals, although I hardly ever got to watch it. But over at a friend’s house, with the big color TV and the lights turned down low — I can still remember the neon brightness of the nightclubs where the drugs seemed to flow as fast as the music, where the dancing might suddenly be interrupted by gunshots after a deal gone wrong or a rival recognized. And the sharp suits and the hot cars — you could watch it just to get the eye candy, of Crockett and Tubbs moving through a city riddled with illegal drug traffic, all to the tune of your favorite pop stars and Jan Hammer’s distinctive synthesizer background music.
Ah, nostalgia. I could go on and on about those days, and those shows….
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Heat is funny stuff, especially by-product heat.
I was staring at the water, musing, with all the “ten thousand things” of the imminent startup tumbling and fizzing through my mind. One learns to take what breaks one can, as one can, in such a ‘crunch time.’ With only a last few dozen hexagonal holes left to fill, beneath those yards of water, till we could shut the lid and tickle our new dragon to life at last.
Curse or blessing, friend or foe, waste or waste-not-want-not.
They didn’t really appreciate it so well, a lot of those early (or late) “visionaries” who’d dreamt of what we did here, every day. They’d had the data well enough, first in slow fuzzy remote-sensing generalities, then in specific on-site and measured detail, all the way back in the mid-1970s. From those old Viking landers, to start.
Better and more, of course, as time went forward.
But apparently, they still didn’t quite understand what it meant, saying that even in near-equatorial regions like right here (get too close to the equator, and those near-ubiquitous buried glaciers mostly aren’t there any more), it gets down to Antarctic-winter levels of cold, just about every single night. Worse, of course, in the mid-latitude winter; stunningly so near the winter-dark poles, where it frosts dry-frost yards deep.
They could’ve guessed, without even any too much guessing, that the rock temperatures as averaged from those air and surface temperatures would be (before us humans started mucking about with them) tolerably near what it took to freeze CO2, at least at “normal” Earthly-ish air pressures.
They’d known enough to understand that “insulating” multi-pane glass does work right fine, to choke down on escaping heat; but only at the price of muting and dimming the incoming light… not what you want for a place to grow plants, or much even for a ‘dome’ for people to get a bit of the old ‘light and air’ before withdrawing again back underground.
In shorter words, even this little bit farther from the Sun than Earth, it usually isn’t a matter of “getting rid of waste heat” but one of using the by-product heat you have, the best you can.
Only, solar mostly doesn’t have any, not for you to use. Solar panels up on the surface lose their heat to the air, or radiate it to space; sure it boosts their efficiency a little, but a kilowatt is a kilowatt. Yes, you sure-enough can collect the sun, concentrate it, beam it through a window or a light-pipe and hit solar cells with it inside some box or down below; but that’s a lot more trouble and expense (where ‘expense’ means use of scarce resources like industrial capacity, light or even heavy, and most of all people’s time). And solar is even more sparse than on Earth, a few hundred watts per square meter if you could use it all, and you can’t.
Now take our bright-and-shiny new toy here, the first big reactor in all Martian history (where ‘big’ means ‘too big to fit on a landing craft’ like the ancestral, ancient Mars-rated Starship ‘orbiters’). Water cooled and moderated, like those hoary old submarine-derived reactors on Earth.
Not so very efficient as some of the newer designs cooled by pressurized gas and moderated by blocks of purified graphite, in terms of kilowatts of electrcity per kilowatt of heat generated. (And here, electricity is life; unless you’d want to subsist on oxygen from algae tubes or greenhouses, as you kept ’em warm… somehow. It’s a hackneyed cliche, to note that solar panels are “the way to dusty death” in a sandstorm, but also not wrong.)
Water-pool reactors give you near twice as much ‘waste’ heat as they make in useful electricity to split water to hydrogen and breathable oxygen, or whatever else you want. At a temperature of condensing steam somewhere between water’s usual boiling point (not its boiling point most places ‘indoors’ on Mars, we tend to run more Buenos Aries or Pike’s Peak than sea level) and a sort of bathwater-tepid-lukewarm. Icing on the cake.
Maybe someday we’ll have genuine Global Warming here, or even terraforming on the huge scale. Right now, it’s a challenge to make it happen enough to give us a snug little place to live, well and cozy and happy.
And this one is also the first large-scale reactor to mix Earthly enriched uranium with good old Mars-mined thorium (another thing they knew was all over the place, some of the sandy spots, decades ago). Thorium makes you uranium 233, nuclear fuel like the plutonium neutron capture on uranium makes — which is clumsier to ‘burn’ and breeds lots of nasty-ish heavier elements, by comparison with thorium-bred uranium. (Our captures will be over 90% in thorium, the more because thorium ‘grabs’ neutrons better.)
And, it’s better — unless you’d want to go to temperamental metal-cooled fast-neutron reactors — at getting closer to breakeven, needing no input fuel because it “breeds” its own. Of course, the bureaucrats gave us lots of grief before we got much medium-enriched uranium, and still won’t let us have the real high-proof stuff, “orallloy” as they used to call it, if it’s not in a handful of tiny, puny “kilopower” reactors for the Outback.
But we’re getting there. I try not to hold a grudge, it’s a heavy thing to drag along behind you on your way to a better and brighter future. But I did have ancestors who didn’t make it through the Great Hunger in Ireland of a couple centuries ago; and I do remember “Force must be the Instrument but Famine must be the Means” out of good-ol’ fun Mr. Spenser that Faerie Queene guy. And those ships, full of food, sailing away from hungry Ireland back “home” to England, right in the very middle of all of that stark and frankly-murderous tragedy… “not for the Irish.”
People hard try to pooh-pooh ‘economic autarchy’ and all; but it’s not an obligate autarchy I’d like, but an opportunistic one. I want us to be able to fend for ourselves, if we… have to. For any reason, from a disaster of Earth-wide proportions, to a “mere” political one. Or just simple, and very old fashioned, “no, actually we don’t care, let them die then and decrease the surplus population” — of people who won’t bend the knee or do the will of the Right People On Top. (I do try; I don’t always and invariably succeed…)
There under the twenty feet or so of shielding water (that we wouldn’t be truly needing till after startup), was the future, our future. Or at the very least, one more important piece of it. Another step up the Long Long Ladder, till we uppity humans have the ready technology to live just about any place Out There we feel like inhabiting.
“Molly? We’re ready to load the starter assemblies.” Dmitri’s voice didn’t so much break my reverie into a thousand flying shards, as tell me to get back to work, pack it all away neatly in its proper places till I could go back to contemplating it all again. A “hundred thousand things” as the old Irish saying deftly ten-upped the ancient Chinese one.
(And, starting an absolutely “cold” reactor is a bit of a thing. Normally, you have enough neutron emission, from old neutron emitters or at the very least gamma-induced photofissions, to give you a pretty decent background to re-start a reactor… without taking ridiculously long, or else doing one of the big, big no-no’s in safe reactor control, going prompt-critical on purpose. Loading ‘old’ and massively-radioactive fuel in a few spots, just for the initial start and checkout, sidesteps most of that stuff.)
But first I did something they’d never’ve done in a million years, back on Old Earth. I composed the words neat in my mind… and spat into the pool that filled the main reactor vessel. Reverently and mindfully, of my deepest self.
“I christen thee after Nikolai Kardashev, that you may long light and warm a generation of Martians to come, for Martian decades to come. Welcome to our Great Game, Kardashev One.” There wasn’t hardly a tear in my eyes, not quite hardly. Really, truly not.
Different worlds, different customs. And up the long, long ladder we go.
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And, of course the one time I didn’t bother to carefully split my less-than-8K comment into bits of 4 to 6 K chars. or so recently, I get “awaiting moderation” — more for Our Esteemed Blogmistress to do, in this not likely so very convenient time. (I’ll hold off re-posting for awhile, and just see.)
In other and likely more significant news, it sounds like the Space-X Starship test scheduled for today (7:30 or so EDT) is still a provisional ‘go’ with weather about 45% likely to cooperate the last I saw. Also, Space X on Twitter/X is announcing a ‘technical update’ by Elon Musk on Starship, at about 5 Eastern before the launch (attempt).
The flight coverage can be found on spacex dot com, and you don’t need at Twitter account to see that. Not so sure about the live Elon Talk beforehand, but these always show up on the Web site as generally available some time later…
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I received the last three paperback proofs today. My my my… some books are 3x the size of others!!!
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I really enjoyed the last line of the countdown precis:
00:00:00 Excitement Guaranteed
Indeed. Whether a big whoosh or (much less likely) a big boom – excitement.
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As we reached the door to the parking level under the building Celeste waved her “phone” across it. “Clear.” As we moved out towards my truck I heard the unmistakable popping of gunfire, and then a new sound was added to the continuing racket down the block. Celeste’s gaze snapped up, though she didn’t slow. “That’s a Trass heavy pulser, crew served. And I think I hear an imperial maser returning fire along with your popguns. What the grent is going on out there?”
We reached the truck just as a flash lit up the garage level, then a pulse of heat washed through the openings up to street level, but there was no blast wave. “And a p cannon too?” Celeste muttered, shaking her head as we climbed into the truck. I placed my bags in easy reach on the back seat then belted in, while Celeste snapped her seatbelt and pulled her bag onto her lap. I could see through the openings the legs of people running on the street, all sprinting away from the direction of the noise. Luckily the ramp out of the garage faced a side street away from what was apparently alien close combat, so I got us rolling towards the exit on batteries, not bothering with the turbine gen start sequence.
Just as we reached the exit a figure staggered from the shrubbery and fell onto the ramp, silhouetted in the daylight, right in front of my truck. “Crap.” I braked to a stop so I didn’t run them over. I squinted, trying to make out anything in the shadows.
Celeste unbuckled. “Let me check,” she said as she shifted her bag to the floorboards and opened her door.
She jumped out and moved cautiously toward the figure as I rolled down my window. On batteries and stopped, my truck was silent, so I heard clearly a raspy soft female voice. “High Peer Celeste, take this and flee.” I saw Celeste freeze, then quickly kneel, and the figure on the ramp struggled to hold out something in her hand. Celeste hesitated, then took it. I heard Celeste’s voice, sounding shaken. “Peer Sarah, what are you doin… You are injured.”
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Well, not only was the Alien Attack not about finding Celeste, at least one of the attackers knew (or knew about) Celeste but was willing to get Celeste involved. Very Interesting.
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Cannot but repost in tribute –
Fondly Fahrenheit, Alfred Bester
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After a silent minute, Susan said, “Don’t complain about the heat.”
Honor followed her in silence to the house, and then to the hearth. The fire she built up was, indeed, hot, and Honor sat by without complaint.
“What do you want to look at?” said Susan, her voice brittle.
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Fresh from a late evening shower, June stood spread-eagled in front of the bedroom’s box fan, set on high. Her husband walked in and did a double take.
“Good Lord, woman. You’re naked!“
“I’m desperate, is what I am. I don’t care what your handyman buddy promised you he could do, I’m calling the air conditioning repairman tomorrow morning. I just hope they don’t make us wait for days. I can’t stand this heat wave any more.” Her glare convinced her husband to rethink his objections.
“I thought you Southerners survived without air conditioning up until recently,” he muttered feebly.
“Doesn’t mean we enjoyed it. Until we get it fixed, we’ll be living on peanut butter sandwiches and tuna salad. You try turning on the oven in this heat.” June huffed her way to the chest of drawers and chose her thinnest nightgown, as her husband headed for his own tepid shower.
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(Part 1/2)
Heat is funny stuff, especially by-product heat.
I was staring at the water, musing, with all the “ten thousand things” of the imminent startup tumbling and fizzing through my mind. One learns to take what breaks one can, as one can, in such a ‘crunch time.’ With only a last few dozen hexagonal holes left to fill, beneath those yards of water, till we could shut the lid and tickle our new dragon to life at last.
Curse or blessing, friend or foe, waste or waste-not-want-not.
They didn’t really appreciate it so well, a lot of those early (or late) “visionaries” who’d dreamed of what we did here, every day. They’d had the data well enough, first in slow fuzzy remote-sensing generalities, then in specific on-site and measured detail, all the way back in the mid-1970s. From those old Viking landers, to start.
Better and more, of course, as time went forward.
But apparently, they still didn’t quite understand what it meant, saying that even in near-equatorial regions like right here (get too close to the equator, and those near-ubiquitous buried glaciers mostly aren’t there any more), it gets down to Antarctic-winter levels of cold, just about every single night. Worse, of course, in the mid-latitude winter; stunningly so near the winter-dark poles, where it frosts dry-frost yards deep.
They could’ve guessed, without even any too much guessing, that the rock temperatures as averaged from those air and surface temperatures would be (before us humans started mucking about with them) tolerably near what it took to freeze CO2, at least at “normal” Earthly-ish air pressures.
They’d known enough to understand that “insulating” multi-pane glass does work right fine, to choke down on escaping heat; but only at the price of muting and dimming the incoming light… not what you want for a place to grow plants, or much even for a ‘dome’ for people to get a bit of good old ‘light and air’ before withdrawing again back underground.
In shorter words, even this little bit farther from the Sun than Earth, it usually isn’t a matter of “getting rid of waste heat” but one of using the by-product heat you have, the best you can.
Only, solar mostly doesn’t have any, not for you to use. Solar panels up on the surface lose their heat to the air, or radiate it to space; sure that boosts their efficiency a little, but a kilowatt is a kilowatt. Yes, you sure-enough can collect the sun, concentrate it, beam it through a window or a light-pipe and hit solar cells with it inside some box or down below; but that’s a lot more trouble and expense (where ‘expense’ means use of scarce resources like industrial capacity, light or even heavy, and most of all people’s time). And solar is even more sparse than on Earth, a few hundred watts per square meter if you could use it all, and you can’t.
Now take our bright-and-shiny new toy here, the first big reactor in all Martian history (where ‘big’ means ‘too big to fit on a landing craft’ like the ancestral, ancient Mars-rated Starship ‘orbiters’). Water cooled and moderated, like those hoary old submarine-derived reactors on Earth.
Not so very efficient as some of the newer designs cooled by pressurized gas and moderated by blocks of purified graphite, in terms of kilowatts of electricity per kilowatt of heat generated. (And here, electricity is life; unless you’d want to subsist on oxygen from algae tubes or greenhouses, as you kept ’em warm… somehow. It’s a hackneyed cliche, to note that solar panels are “the way to dusty death” in a sandstorm, but also not wrong.)
Water-pool reactors give you near twice as much ‘waste’ heat as they make in useful electricity to split water to hydrogen and breathable oxygen, or whatever else you want. At a temperature of condensing steam somewhere between water’s usual boiling point (not its boiling point most places ‘indoors’ on Mars, we tend to run more Buenos Aries or Pike’s Peak than sea level) and a sort of bathwater-tepid-lukewarm. Icing on the cake.
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The heat was on. Julian knew it. The vice principal looked over her glasses, watching Julian, saying nothing. Periodically, she’d inhale, as if to speak, but remained silent, staring down at some papers. Julian began to sweat. I don’t know what she wants, he thought, but she’s gonna get it.
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The receptionist and the principal watched from across the office. They could see Julian squirming, as if he needed the latrine, which he probably did. “The vice hasn’t even asked him anything,” the receptionist observed.
“No need,” replied the principal. “Doesn’t take much to light a fire under a kid.”
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After what seemed like centuries, the vice principal finally spoke. “Young man,” she said, “we can sit here all afternoon if necessary.”
Or what? Julian thought. He felt a white-hot rage building. What do you want? What do you freaking want? he wanted to scream.
But he knew he couldn’t.
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So, no Elon Musk talk about Starship; and no launch today either (scrubbed to “troubleshoot an issue with ground systems” during fueling). Presently rescheduled, if we can trust the Web site, for the same time tomorrow.
And evidently Willie Pete absolutely hates something about the second half of my vignette, maybe Molly’s explicit references to the Potato Famine?? (Or is it just the phase of the moon..?)
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By the time I made it to the medical bay, Ryan was walking around and moving his hands. “Hey, Adam,” he asked, looking at me. “I thought you were going to…well, fix things.”
“I’m allowed some drama,” I replied with a big smile. “In fact, you did check off big drama on your intake paperwork. I can pull it up if you’d like…”
“No, no,” he nodded, “I remember that. But…,” and here he waggled his beer gut under the hospital gown, “I thought I’d look better than this.”
I thought about this for a moment, lips pursed, and looking up at the ceiling. “There’s an explanation if you’re ready for it,” I replied, gently queuing ATHENA to bring me a prop. “Ready?”
“Sure,” he said, walking towards one of the chairs to sit down. I sent a command to the medical override still in the back of his neck and he froze. “What the fuck?” he asked, trying to move his feet or legs or anything from the hips down.
“You’ve still got your medical override in your neck,” I shrugged. “Need you standing for this,” and sent commands to turn him around and make him brace for impact as I walked over to the doorway. One of the drones had brought a loaded MP-5 from the armory and I cheerfully picked it up, slung it over my shoulder, and turned around. “Okay, first things first. New organs-pretty much everything is new, including your brain. You have a standard cortical stack, so there’s a stored backup of your memories and there might be some integration issues…”
“Feels a little weird now,” he agreed. “Old memories seem kind of slick, insubstantial.”
“That’s mostly because the bandwidth is so limited. Think about the difference between Super 8 and high-def video in that respect. More information you have stored and can review later if you want and once you have some practice…more ability to see things. Ruins most Vegas magician stage shows, I promise.” I walked over to the refrigerator and grabbed two cups along the way. “Some water?”
“No, I’m good,” Ryan replied calmly, looking warily at the MP-5 over my shoulder. “But why do you have a machine gun…”
“Sub-machine gun,” I interrupted gently. “Pistol-caliber cartridges, designed for close-in firefights, that kind of thing. It’s not how my brain works now, I always wanted to be clear about things but my brain could never catch up with my mouth before. Back on subject,” and I filled up a glass of water and took a long sip before setting the cup down. “Okay, new organs. We’re talking about high performance but not ultra performance. Think…high-end Toyota versus a Lamborghini or Ferrari. Got a lot of bang for the buck and great capability, but you’re not going to have to be in the shop every couple of weeks because a kidney-you’ve got two again, you’re welcome-blew out on you and we’ve got to order parts from Italy. And they’re on a six month backorder unless we pay a lot extra.
“But after this…you were about three hundred and twenty pounds before we got started. Now, if we just fixed everything, you’d be two-forty, two-fifty. A lot thinner and muscular, which everybody would notice. I mean…you’ve been in the tank about two weeks and you normally don’t get that kind of body without a lot of drugs. Many of them illegal,” I took the MP-5 off my shoulder and re-arranged the sling so it could be combat slung, the pistol grip in easy reach of my right hand under my armpit. “Which is why,” I chuckled, raised the MP-5 to port arms in my right hand, finger clearly off the trigger, and did a H&K slap of the charging handle with my left, “I have this.
“The Unity has what they call a soft suit, a form of environmental suit that is…well, think large-scale automata to keep you alive in hostile environments. Not quite nanomachines, but there are some involved. The base form of these is a black suit that wouldn’t look out of place in a superhero movie, complete with the auto-deploying helmet. It’s not a combat suit or powered armor, but against most low-level threats,” and I tapped the MP-5’s receiver with my fingers, “you should be fine. Proof against pistol-caliber bullets, resistant to rifle-caliber bullets, some low-velocity shrapnel. Don’t stand still too long in a firefight that involves grenades, heavy weapons, or high-tech weapons, that kind of thing.
“What you’re wearing is…well, I’m trying to think of a neat name to call it, but you’re wearing a fat suit. It’s a concealed soft suit that looks like your body before you got in the tank, weight and all. Which is why I have this,” and waggled the MP-5’s muzzle around at the ceiling. “Last chance to get past that ‘big drama’ note on your chart. Range is hot, weapons live. In three, two…”
“Wait a minute, what are you going to…,” Ryan tried to ask, but I paused just long enough to interrupt him.
“One,” and I dropped the MP-5 down into a good hip-shot position, stock resting firmly under my arm and both hands on the weapon as I ripped a thirty-round magazine right into Ryan’s chest and belly. Thankfully, he protected his face with his arms, so I didn’t hit his head or arms when the bolt locked back on an empty magazine. I smoothly removed the magazine, checked the chamber, and put everything on a table nearby. “You’re fine. Go ahead and take a look,” I said in a normal conversational voice and waited.
Ryan lowered his arms, shuddered, and looked down at where I had shot him. I”d put quite a few rounds in a perfect heart-shot position and tore most of the dressing gown away there. He tapped at that part, wondering why there wasn’t blood, and took a good long look at it. Everywhere I had hit, you could tell because his skin wasn’t skin anymore, or at least not nut-brown General American Hispanic.
Instead, it was a flat, light-absorbing black that radiated outwards in jagged shards that faded into the general skin color. Most of where I had hit him was this hunk of solid black that had tiny tessellation grains visible, starting to fade back into its normal skin color. “Like I said, pistol-caliber proof,” I shrugged. “Give me a second, and…,” I stepped up and checked his body. “This is going to feel a little weird, so it’s ‘band-aid rip’ time. Ready, steady, go…,” and his skin started to separate away, opening up like a perverse orchid to reveal his real skin under it. The gown tried to stay together, but tore apart in a few moments. “Medical override is released…now,” and I held my arm out for him to catch.
He staggered out naked from the suit and caught my arm, steadied himself, and turned around to look. “That was weird,” he remarked, then looked back and the skin was just standing there. “That’s…fuck…weird…”
“Yep,” I shrugged. “One fat skin suit. Nerve bypass, so you can feel everything normally, and it’ll bleed if you cut it and don’t activate the defensive measures. And it’ll be ‘your’ blood unless you specify otherwise. Same thing for fingerprints-yours or blank. Blood tests will show whatever you want. And barring a full autopsy or somebody getting access to a Purpose detection rig of some kind, you won’t show up on any scanners as out of the ordinary.”
I walked behind the suit and tapped just below the shoulders. “Added six manip field generators, in addition to the two in your shoulders. So you can fling bowling balls around at five hundred, six hundred meters a second without twitching. Or climb up buildings and even fly if you’re careful. Catch bullets, too-and there is a software package for that so you don’t have to think about it. Just remember that basic thermodynamics isn’t your friend and that kind of energy moving around means heat and lots of it. Has to go somewhere and that’s why you have about a gallon or so of water in the suit. Water is an easy-to-use way to disperse heat.”
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This is really bad. You know when you stop shivering, it’s really bad. I can’t feel my feet, just keep lifting, forward, sink in the snow, repeat. Don’t stop, can’t stop or… just keep moving.
Is that smoke up ahead? Or is my brain starting to freeze, too.
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“sometimes deranged” !?
I resemble that remark, young lady!
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Thank you for including my book in the book promo. I greatly appreciate it. If anyone is interested more can be found here.
https://creator.nightcafe.studio/u/RetroRockets
https://civitai.com/user/mmassey1/images?sort=Oldest
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Nice set of promos once again! Thanks and more fodder for the TBR list!!!
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