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, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. By clicking through and buying (anything book-related, 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. Remember though all of these submissions are from people willing to be associated with this blog. So if you’re trying to buy from people who don’t hate you, this is a good place to start.– SAH
FROM KEN LIZZI: Long Gambit: Book Two of The Twilight Galaxy Series
The Long Gambit is the second book in Ken Lizzi’s Twilight Galaxy — the ongoing saga of the free trader Long Gambit and the crew who keep her flying through a slowly collapsing galaxy.
Captain Pyater Welloons is one missed payment from losing everything. His ship is clamped to the pad for unpaid moorage fees, his accounts are nearly dry, and the only job on the board is a humanitarian rush run: twelve million doses of medicine for a plague-stricken backwater called Owming.
The catch is that Welloons has to source the drug himself — on Ixtpa, a planet where nearly everyone is chemically modified and the automated factories run themselves while the population drifts pleasantly toward oblivion. The one compound he needs has been bought up to the last ampule to treat a cattle plague on another world. So Welloons does the only thing a man in his position can do: he plans a heist.
What follows is a working-crew space adventure with teeth — a midnight break-in through an automated underground, a street ambush, a slow-motion brush with suffocation when a part nobody replaced finally fails, and an ambush by two pirate ships that knew exactly where the Long Gambit would be. The crew’s best hope turns out to be a piece of bargain-bin junk the captain told them to throw out.
And when the ship finally reaches Owming, Welloons discovers that delivering the medicine and getting it to the dying are two very different problems — and that the people who ordered it may be the last ones who want it to arrive.
For readers of working-ship, declining-empire space adventure in the tradition of C.J. Cherryh’s merchanters, Andre Norton’s Solar Queen, and Nathan Lowell’s Solar Clipper. Dry humor, a crew worth riding with, and a captain who keeps his word even when it costs him. The story is the point.
FROM K. ANDERS: Resurgence of Light
Twelve years ago the sky over Marseille tore open and the Dyn Lords took Europe in a season. The armies are gone. The gods who answered humanity’s summons are burning through their Chosen faster than they can replace them. What’s left of the Resistance hides in wet cellars and calls them cottages, because a dry room means a desiccator has found you.
Micah Jones didn’t sign up to save the world. He crossed an ocean because Amy Allgood said yes to a goddess, and somebody had to keep her breathing. That was a whole team ago. What’s left is three people, a hunted road through occupied England, and a goddess who takes a little more of Amy every time the Resistance needs her.
They pick up allies on that road: a paladin who talks like a field manual, a cleric who has buried every hero he ever healed, and a hooded creature with human eyes who fights beside them and won’t say why. Something is hunting all of them through the tunnels, and it is not what any of them think.
Resurgence of Light is told in three braided strands: a desperate present-day flight through occupied England, the fall of a legend in France, and the two years that took one team apart one funeral at a time. Every chapter opens with a dated page from a twelve-year war journal.
It is a novel about what the gods take back, and about a man who can serve the Voice or save his friend but no longer both.
Fast, brutal, and unashamedly heroic. The good guys don’t win because the odds are fair. They win because they refuse to stop.
FROM EDDIE FERGUSON: The Horn of Caninia: A Boy, His Talking Dog, and a Kingdom of Hounds
Some new kids get a new school. Ian Richards gets a new world.
When his family moves to a rambling old house in the Texas bayou country, twelve-year-old Ian Richards expects nothing but mosquitoes, boredom, and a summer without his friends. What he finds instead is a symbol carved into an old oak, a matching mark deep inside a drainage culvert, and a shimmering gate that swallows his Afghan hound, Penelope—whole.
Ian goes in after her. On the other side is Caninia: a world of two moons and talking dogs, ruled by the noble Queen Coraline and threatened by an alligator warlord named Snaptooth who is swallowing villages one by one. The canines fight with teeth and claws. It isn’t enough. But Ian has something no dog in Caninia has ever had—a human’s knack for building, scheming, and turning a weakness into a trap.
He can’t out-bite an alligator. He might just out-think one. With a nervous whippet, a rambling pug scholar, a Doberman hiding a dangerous secret, and a talking dog who has waited her whole life to finally speak her mind, Ian sets out to find the legendary Harrier’s Horn—an artifact that answers only to a human hand, a canine paw, and a small silver cross from home.
The Horn of Caninia is the first adventure in The Adventures of Ian Richards—a fast, funny, heart-first middle grade fantasy about courage, loyalty, second chances, and a boy and his dog against an empire. Perfect for readers who love talking-animal kingdoms, portal adventures, and good guys who win the hard way.
FROM MALORY: The Clockwork Terror of Blackglass Island: A Felix Jones Adventure
Book Two of the Felix Jones Adventures. New to the series? Start with The Weird Map in Mr. Glimm’s Skull.
Felix Jones is the kind of kid who builds a frequency scanner from broken library barcode
readers and uses them to forge permission slips. He is not exactly the student teachers dream
of sending on school trips.But when his Year 7 class arrives at the Museum of Time and Tides on fog-locked Blackglass
Island, something is immediately wrong. The curator doesn’t blink. Ever. The classmates who
were throwing scotch eggs twenty minutes ago are now breathing in perfect synchronization.
And beneath the volcanic rock, something is ticking — a deep pulse that keeps trying
to sand away all of Felix’s best ideas.Archibald Rook has been planning this visit for a very long time. Blackglass Island isn’t
a museum. It’s a machine — a lighthouse built around a shard of alien crystal that broadcasts
a frequency capable of rewriting human thought into clockwork obedience. All he needs is
enough brains to run it at full power. Thirty-two Year 7 students will do nicely.Felix and his best friend William are the only ones the signal can’t reach. So it’s just
two twelve-year-olds, a Victorian signal cannon, a swarm of clockwork crabs, and one very
loud brain against a man who wants to silence the entire world.The Clockwork Terror of Blackglass Island is the second adventure in the Felix Jones
series — smart, fast, and funny enough to get the book-hater in your life to read past
page one.
FROM TC ROSS: Bloodstone: The God’s Ransom: Boons and Banes, Book 2
The curse on Magnolia Manor is broken. The beast is gone. Verity Magnolia is human again.
And the god who put that curse on her just escaped from prison.
The Binding Death — Zeus’s parting gift, branded into her wrist — draws her life force to his with every passing hour. September Zamfir made a promise when he rode into her enchanted forest: he would walk the world for her. He’s about to discover how literally he meant it.
The only way to break the Binding Death lies with Hades himself, who hasn’t been seen in decades. To reach him, Sept and Verity will have to cross the Appalachian mountains, navigate the territory of rogue shifters, visit a goddess who holds ancient grudges, and eventually cross an ocean now patrolled by Poseidon’s dragons — all before Zeus heals enough to come looking for what he’s owed.
Their small company grows into something none of them planned: a werelion Warden from the Blue Ridge mountains, Artemis and her arrows, a mysterious little girl who may be the missing daughter of Hades and Persephone, a half-brother Cryptik with a rebel’s heart, and a flying air schooner that won’t survive its maiden voyage quite as long as they’d hoped.
Meanwhile, at the Gehrig Workshop, Sept’s youngest brother Sunny is learning to be a Tinker with one arm and a clockwork replacement — one near-disaster at a time.
Bloodstone: The God’s Ransom is the second book in the Boons and Banes series — a gaslamp historical fantasy set in 1887 America, where magical bloodlines run old and deep, the gods are not myths, and the debt between them and the people they’ve wronged keeps coming due.
FROM LEE ECKHARDT: THE WATSON PROGRAM: A Science Fiction Mystery
Fifteen-year-old Mallen de la Pena lives aboard a cityship, a star-faring vessel with a crew of thousands. Since his parents were killed on an exploratory mission Mal has led an isolated existence that is almost completely divorced from the rest of the crew; his only real companion is the cityship’s computer, Zhang. The lonely Mal is happy to have the chance to aid eminent archeologist Jonathan Archer catalog a collection of alien artifacts, but his excitement turns to horror when the ship’s teleportation device suffers a catastrophic malfunction and Archer is killed. Then, only a few hours later, Mal himself almost dies – in a million-to-one accident. Only then does he begin to understand: Jonathan Archer did not die by chance – he was murdered. When the authorities refuse to believe him, Mal must become a Sherlock Holmes to find the killer, with Zhang as his Doctor Watson…
FROM HARDING MCFADDEN: Beyond 175
RETURN TO THE LOST CONTINENT
In 1915, Edgar Rice Burroughs, the master of adventure fiction, wrote Beyond 30, a prophetic vision about our world locked onto a course certain to lead us to a horrendous World War. That global nightmare became a reality in ways the brilliant Burroughs couldn’t imagine, and so he never returned to the apocalyptic setting he’d created. This was a rarity for a writer who loved to pen series, ala Tarzan, Barsoom, Pellucidar, and many, many others. Now, after a hundred and ten years, writer Harding McFadden, himself a devoted Burroughs fan, has picked up the thread of Beyond 30 and offered up a powerful sequel that would have made the Master proud. Filled with bizarre creatures, barren wastelands, and insane villains, Beyond 175 explores the frigid, barren landscape of the once mighty Russian Empire. Here is a novel filled with excitement, thrills, and adventure that pays homage to the great Edgar Rice Burroughs.
FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: Family Law
People love easily. Look at most of your relatives or coworkers. How lovable are they? Really? Yet most have mates and children. The vast majority are still invited to family gatherings and their relatives will speak to them.
Many have pets to which they are devoted. Some even call them their fur-babies. Is your dog or cat or parakeet property or family? Not in law but in your heart? Can a pet really love you back? Or is it a different affection? Are you not kind to those who feed and shelter you? But what if your dog could talk back? Would your cat speak to you kindly?
How much more complicated might it be if we meet really intelligent species not human? How would we treat these ‘people’ in feathers or fur? Perhaps a more difficult question is: How would they treat us? Are we that lovable?
When society and the law decide these sort of questions must be answered it is usually because someone disapproves of your choices. Today it may be a cat named in a will or a contest for custody of a dog. People are usually happy living the way they want until conflict is forced upon them.
What if the furry fellow in question has his own law? And is quite articulate in explaining his choices. Can a Human adopt such an alien? Can such an intelligent alien adopt a human? Should they?
Of course if the furry alien in question is smart enough to fly spaceships, and happens to be similar in size and disposition to a mature Grizzly bear, wisdom calls for a certain delicacy in telling him no…
The “April” series of books works from an earlier time toward merging with the “Family Law” series.
FROM NATHAN C. 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
A Dragon In The Foie Gras
FROM KAREN MYERS: The Chained Adept: A Lost Wizard’s Tale
MEET A POWERFUL WIZARD WITH UNANSWERED QUESTIONS–AND AN UNBREAKABLE CHAIN AROUND HER NECK.
Have you ever wondered how you might rise to a dangerous situation and become the hero that was needed?
The wizard Penrys has barely gained her footing in the country where she was found three years ago, chained around the neck and wiped of all knowledge. And now, an ill-planned experiment has sent her a quarter of the way around her world.
One magic working has called to another and landed Penrys in the middle of an ugly war between neighboring countries, half a world away.
No one has any reason to trust her amid rumors of wizards where they don’t belong. And she fears to let them know just what she can do — especially since she can’t explain herself to them and she doesn’t know everything about herself either.
Penrys has her own problems, and she doesn’t have any place in this conflict. But they need her, whether they realize it or not. And so she’s determined to try and lend a hand, if she can. Whatever it takes.
And once she discovers there’s another chained adept, even stronger than she is, she’s hooked. Friend or foe, she has questions for him — oh, yes, she does.
All she wants is a firm foundation for the rest of her life, with a side helping of retribution, and if she has to fix things along the way, well, so be it.
The Chained Adept is the first book of the series.
FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Five from Nouvelle Bruges (The Occupations of Nouvelle Bruges and New Lyon Book 3)
In an occupied city where every movement is documented and every document is monitored, a hotel concierge discovers five names in an overnight manifest bearing a designation that appears in no official vocabulary. The designation means one thing: these men are to be made to vanish.
Élise Marceau has spent eleven months reading every document that crosses her desk. She has mapped the occupation’s administrative systems with the same thoroughness she brings to managing the Hôtel Aurore. She knows how the apparatus works — and, more usefully, she knows where it doesn’t.
The five men she sets out to save are a railway freight scheduler, a former detective, a structural engineer, a linguist, and a shipping logistics administrator — professionals whose expertise the occupation has decided constitutes a threat. What follows is not a rescue. It is an argument in document form: a demonstration that systems can be defeated from within, using their own logic, by people who understand them.
FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Draw One In The Dark (The Shifter Series Book 1)
Deep in the Colorado Rockies, Kyrie Smith has mastered the art of keeping secrets: like how she turns into a panther at will, or how she’s trying to solve a string of shifter murders while serving up the daily special. But she’s not the only one with something to hide.
Take her coworker Tom Ormson—your typical guy next door, if your typical guy could transform into a dragon and might have accidentally killed someone. Then there’s the lion-shifting cop investigating the murders, a guilt-ridden father, and a trio of dragon shifters hunting for something called the Pearl of Heaven.
As if navigating a world of supernatural intrigue wasn’t complicated enough, Tom’s falling for Kyrie, discovering powers that shouldn’t exist, and learning that trust is a two-way street paved with decades of secrets. In Goldport, Colorado, where the coffee’s always hot and the shifters are always watching, solving a murder might be the easiest part of Kyrie’s day.
Welcome to small-town life where everyone has something to hide—and some of those secrets have scales, claws, and a tendency to roar.
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 to ask.
Your writing prompt this week is: place
Remember, o Readers, that you can be FORCE MULTIPLIERS!
After you read books, you can rate and review them!
Even short reviews are of aid to the writer, because sheer mass helps. (And if you really can’t review, still rate.)
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“Deeply grateful though I am for the place you have given her, she is now needed at my house.”
A woman shifted through the ladies-in-waiting. Looking almost smug, thought Clara. Then she blinked. Nicolosa, spiritless, pallid, had followed Veronica with uncommon intensity in her nastier gossip.
Princess Katherine graciously assented.
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“This in the place?”
“Yes, this is the place where you will die.”
“Not if I can help it” George said while worrying about Famous Last Words.
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When I woke up, lying on my back, a very calm voice with some great reverb, said, “Hello there, Mr. Sullivan.”
I rolled my head around and I swear to God, I was looking at something that…well…if you’ve ever seen art of a Seraphim-of that whole floating spheres with eyes and wings where there shouldn’t be wings and eyes thing-and can imagine that in a very calming shades of gold-in yellow and white and emerald green-with tentacles and a pina colada, that’s what I saw.
At least we weren’t at Trader Vic’s.
And I didn’t want to know if his hair was perfect. Or if he even had hair.
I think I should have been throwing up, I could start to feel a headache, but except for the head pain I was feeling pretty good. “Hello there,” I replied and carefully waved a hand in the thing’s general direction. “I don’t think I caught your name?”
“Ah!” he said cheerfully, and somehow I knew he was smiling. Hopefully the change of shape of his eyes indicated that. “Well, my actual name is something like seventy-two syllables long and requires me to make at least two sounds the human ear can’t perceive and three that human throats can’t generate. But it won’t drive you mad, I promise. Let’s go with ‘Fred,’ about that?”
I looked around and realized that I was lying on something that felt like blood-warm concrete, but rippled like a very thin layer of water over glass going to infinity. The sky merged into the horizon with absolute smoothness and zero clipping issues at all. “I think I can, Fred,” I tried to chuckle but stopped when it started to get a little shrill. “Hey, Fred, why am I here?”
Fred chuckled, a rolling booming sensation full of mirth, and I had to smile at that. “Well, this is the thing. You’re not dead. You’re not waiting to go to Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, New Jersey, or anywhere else. The thing is…well, call this a job interview.”
“Job interview?” I echoed, and somehow levered myself up into a sitting position. The ground was the kind of half-slick you got with textured glass, and I could get myself up. “What kind of job?”
Fred cleared his…throat?…and started. “Our people, the Unity, have found your reality and your people. And it is incredibly rare for sapient races to make it past several technological hurdles without screwing things up and screwing them up badly. So we’re going to help you get past the hurdles.
“But there is a catch, two really. The first is that without gateways on both sides of the multiversal barriers, it takes a lot of energy to establish any kind of contact. The second is that helping from the outside rarely works well. It makes the problems worse, almost always. So we’re hiring local help and we decided on you, Jake Sullivan,” Fred paused for a moment. “So, do you want to save the world?”
I thought about it for a moment. “What’s the catch or special sauce in the job offer?”
“We believe in free will, big-time. So this is entirely on you to handle things. No back-doors, no Manchurian Candidate-type programming, no messing around with your head using memetics and cognitive hacks of any sort. We have those skills, but we’re not using them and won’t use them on you-and we really discourage you from using them in bulk. Not that you would, which is one of the big reasons why we chose you.
“Second…most of our post-Singularity human-origin races think baseline humanity is…well, the term unfired clay is the most polite way to say it,” if it was possible for a ball of wings and eyes to be embarrassed, Fred was embarrassed. “Well-meaning, but somewhat…floppy in places. They don’t want to give a baseline human access to the full Unity technology database, which means as a part of the job offer we’re going to upgrade you to the full Alpha-type genome level and…well, there’s no other way to say it.
“We’re going to have to turn you into a space elf. With elf-ears and everything. You’re what…180 centimeters tall right now?”
“Five foot eleven,” I chuckled. “I’ve always held the belief that freedom ends where the metric system begins as a major unit of measurement.”
“Considering human history, you might have a point,” Fred agreed with me. “But we’re taking you up from five foot eleven inches to six feet six inches even. And you’ll keep about the same weight, because we’re not only going to make you muscular, we’re going to pack in every passive and concealed combat augmentation possible.
“And…proper somewhat androgynous male elf appearance with some impressive ear size and length. Not World of Warcraft ear fetish length, but they are elf ears in all ways.
“The good news,” Fred continued, “is that you’ll be able to fit all of this in a more human-sized and human-shaped form once you have a medical vat up and running. With a little bit of luck, that’s about a year’s worth of work. Have to build the infrastructure and all.”
“And what abominations of science will happen to my brain,” I asked, eyebrow raised.
“We’re not going to mess with your thoughts, I promise. But the structure of your brain, well…a DSM-V analysis would put you as borderline manic optimistic, definitely hypersexual, definitely some kind of xenophilia, definite lack of most forms of paranoia, and a lot of other issues. Still ‘human,’ but that kind of annoying human most humans wish they were on a regular basis.”
I thought about that for a moment, and sighed. “And if I say no? Just asking?”
“You’re not going to say no,” Fred shrugged, as much as something that was mostly wings and eyes could shrug. “At some point, you want a challenge and this is the kind of challenge you want. Saving the world, not just to give it to people that are going to wreck it, but to make it a better place in general and in specific.”
I had to sit there and consider that. “Complete freedom of action?” I asked.
“Only way you can do the job is to do it,” Fred agreed. “Besides, this kind of causal channel is very energy intensive. Once we close it, it’ll be a few centuries-at least-before you can open a two-way gate of some kind.
I decided that if I was going to finish this up, it would be on my feet, and I scrambled to my feet with some difficulty. “So, do I get to meet the rest of my team? Know who else is here on Earth to work this program?” I held my chin up and looked.
“Remember what I said about this causal channel being very energy intensive? We opened one just wide enough to find the right candidate and you’re the right candidate. You’ll have to build your own team, build your own infrastructure, and it’s all on you.”
I know my jaw dropped. “I’m…I’m not a badly-cast Chosen One! How far down the queue did you have to go to find me?!?” I half-screamed when I got my mouth under control again.
“It’s not so much a queue as a set of circumstances,” Fred replied calmly. “In the time frame that we opened up the channel, you’re the single highest-ranked candidate that we have, in the best place possible to work, in the best circumstances possible. For all of its problems, you’re in a country with the rule of law and a free press and actual social mobility. Not perfect, not by a long shot or by most Unity standards, but better than the alternatives.”
Here, Fred paused and looked at me. I mean, he really looked at me. “So, are you in or are you out, Jake?”
I had to sit down again and think for a minute. “If you’re being completely honest,” and I raised my hand to stop Fred from saying anything, “I think you are, but just saying that to make it clear, how can I not take the job?”
“I need a positive yes or no,” Fred pointed out. “I will admit to rule lawyering, but we do need a positive statement.”
“Okay, I’m in. I’ll take the job as offered, but understand that I’m doing it my way, no back-seat driving,” I replied.
“It wouldn’t work if we did drive from the backseat,” Fred agreed. “It has to be done your way, because it’s your world.”
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More, please.
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There will be more as soon as I can find the time and place to write and not have noise EVERYWHERE…
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Very much that.
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SO very much that…
I need a place to work that doesn’t have stupid sounds or stupid human dialog while I’m writing.
I already have enough stupid in my life, I don’t need extra…
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I highly recommend cabin in the woods with decent wifi. People-ing is overrated.
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For me and people, I can barely tolerate them…
Until the moment that I just absolutely NEED human contact and I need a lot of it.
The problem becomes the levels I need that contact…I either have to have contact established for a long time or pay cash for temporary services.
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There will be more as soon as I can find the time and place to write and not have noise EVERYWHERE…
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Be sure to save all your vignettes for future use.
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I have a scratch file for that purpose.
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There will be more as soon as I can find the time and place to write and not have noise EVERYWHERE…
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There will be more as soon as I can find the time and place to write and not have noise EVERYWHERE…
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There will be more as soon as I can find the time and place to write and not have noise EVERYWHERE…
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There will be more as soon as I can find the time and place to write and not have noise EVERYWHERE…
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I gotta LOL at a federal judge asserting that defense contractor first amendment rights have primacy over federal export control whimsy.
Yes, maybe they have been doing it wrong for so very long, and need to be brought to heel.
But, well, there are irreparable harms that Anthropic could have caused the feds.
Maybe the feds did not line those out in explicit detail because they were incompetent.
Or maybe they had national security reasons not to tell all the national security reasons to a Biden appointee. A Biden appointee can be suspicious as a possible agent of the CCP, simply because appointed by Biden, and because Biden may have been an agent of the CCP.
Anyhow, we will probably find out what businesses she has an undisclosed financial interest in.
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I just read CMDR Salamander’s report on the situation, and given what he wrote, I think all the DoW has to say is “Anthropic’s product, Claude AI, is not fit for the purpose for which the DoW needs it.”
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And some Biden judge will say it’s impermissible, like this on alien removal.
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https://open.substack.com/pub/amuseonx/p/the-first-amendment-protects-your?r=6em1o&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
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Argh, I used the word I have problems with again.
modded
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Is the squad ready, sergeant?
Aye, sir, all reviewed and correct.
Very good. You all know the mission – it’s the logistics you’ve been kept from. We’ve a bit of a surprise for the enemy today.
As the old theme park instructions went, keep your arms and hands inside the ride! Here, inside the lines inlaid in silver there on the floor. The space is big enough for you lot, but not by much.
Wizard Smith? Your show.
This will be quick but rather bright, boys. [ Gestures, glowing dome appears ] That’s all right. Off you go – rePLACE! [ thunderclap as the air slams together behind them ]
They’re gone, Wizard.
Good. Time for another cup of coffee.
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Golf clap from the carpapult squad. :) [Mulls over stealing that pun.]
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Should one of the soldiers fail to transport – a thing tested for, upon assignment to this command – such a soldier would the rare Implacable.
—
Puns are not stolen, they’re freely given. Like plague or Covid.
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“You cheated me! You told me that I was going to place! I came in last!”
“Last is still a place. It’s not my fault you didn’t negotiate for what place you would take.”
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“Place the gun on the floor and put your hands on your head,” agent Hunter Grey ordered the fugitive, his own stunner aimed at the man’s center of mass. A little more trigger pressure would have this putz on the floor soiling his pants. ‘I might do it just for making me chase you through the methane snow,’ he thought to himself.
“And if I don’t?” the man sneered as he moved his free hand towards his pocket, but kept the old projectile weapon trained on Grey. Carrying one of those inside Titan’s biodome was beyond reckless, it was criminally stupid. ‘Screw it,’ Grey thought as he pulled the trigger. The man hit the floor hard, his muscles spamming hard as the stunner charge wreaked havoc on his nervous system.
“That’s what happens if you don’t, you absolute turnip.” Grey pulled out his comm unit to have the local gendarmes pick up the unconscious smuggler. ‘Better tell them to bring a mop.‘
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Saluren.
I recognized the name, but couldn’t place it. Not a good thing for a private eye, or the Kitties called us, a Nose.
I considered my options. The obvious ones would reveal too much that I’d prefer my probable adversaries not to know about me or my client.
Even before First Contact, there were issues with various search engines. Part of being a professional in my field was knowing which bot did what. Now I had the knowledge of a good part of the Orion Arm at my fingertips — but wartime security meant that several Imperial agencies would have their own bots flagging queries for the attention of a sophont. If that name related to what I thought it might, any query string using it would almost certainly get the attention of one or more of those agencies.
Which left social engineering — which is a damned sight harder when you’re dealing with multiple species with different hardwired responses.
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Every writer eventually needs a place of his own—not necessarily a grand office, a library lined with leather-bound books, or a cabin in the woods. Sometimes it is simply a desk, a computer, and enough quiet to hear your own thoughts.
Mine has to accommodate a rather unruly collection of interests. I write about computers and technology, Christian history and discipleship, mysteries and science fiction. I write humor when the world takes itself too seriously, and satire when it deserves to be taken down a peg.
They may seem like unrelated subjects. To me, they are simply different doors into the same room: a place of my own.
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”Absent your surrender for arrest, I intend to intervene physically as deterrence for all of your future societally adverse actions, suspects.”
I blinked, looking away from the pair of gang soldiers we’d cornered after a brisk little chase and gave the droid standing next to me a serious, class IV at least, side eye. “Really, DT7? Intervene and deter? That’s what you’ve got?”
One of DT7’s optical sensor modules pivoted toward me, the other maintaining target lock on the toughs. “You previously advised this unit should, quote, ‘talk more smack’ unquote, prior to altercations incident to apprehension as a deescalation technique. Was this an incorrect venue or timing?”
”No, this is the place, and definitely the time, but we gotta work on your trash talk. Those guys don’t even know half the words you just threw at them.”
The backup unit arrived, so I nodded to DT7. “Okay, let’s go.”
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He raised an eyebrow, cast a spell, and walked over.
Clara moved aside the clothes and showed the wooden bottom. At least he could, by the spellcraft, make out that the spell put a bottom in it, to make a place to hide the gold. Then she bit her lip.
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“It would be easier to determine ‘win, place, or show’ if the secretary’s writing was better.” Carlisle held up a ‘Best Obedience Score – Large Dragon’ sheet with notably wobbly script all over it.
Jamison shrugged. “I’d be wobbly too after the second-place finisher ate the chief judge because she only got a blue ribbon, not red. No one was willing to disqualify her for that rules violation, either,” he tutted, then sipped more tea.
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(Part 1/3)
It seemed like a good idea at the time… and it turned out right fine in the end, too, I have to admit. It’s just what happened between those two was, well, not so much fun as plain exciting, in more than a few places.
(Isn’t that the very meaning of ‘a good adventure’ though — as long as it’s happening to someone else, preferably both long ago and far away?)
But what red-blooded American girl, having solved a nice little mystery of some generations’ standing in my (admittedly very strange) South Virginia family, would turn down the offer of a brief but nice sightseeing trip to, well, Mars? Especially having survived the service (shh, we WASPs were not supposed to have ever happened, at that point in time) in World War II.
So there we were, me and my friend Fred (and my alien ‘friend’ who’s sort of a machine intelligence of some kind). Sitting at a picnic table, with a two-hundred-pound bowling ball (density about sixty, radiographically very strange) on the sturdy table between us. On the back patio of what we’uns like to call our family Manor, in a little jab back at the old crack about “mountains of arrogance” by those aw-shucks south-of-the-border types.
“Sure you want to try this, Fred? You’ve been very loyal to the cause; but it’s not all-safe, or like you could tell much of anybody if it did work.”
Fred Dark just smiled. “It’s not like I could ever forgive myself, Sarah, not if anything happened to you; and also not if everything exciting did.”
Not going to get any longer answer, from him; but no-such was ever needed.
((Status?)) I sent, sort-of-subvocally, aware of the clear red stone ball hanging from a gold wire in my left ear. My very odd little inheritance, set up some decades before the War by my oft-gone ‘crazy old Uncle John’.
It wasn’t really sound, it wasn’t quite even a mental ‘voice’ — but it was (thanks to my/our genes) perceptively clear as crystal, Five by Five.
((Ready to proceed. Jump is calibrated for surface near Syrtis Major. Air holding envelope ready to activate. Awaiting your initiation command.))
((Go.)) I’ve never had much problem with equivocation; genetics I guess.
And the sun flickered, and came back dimmer, and… the green hills of my lovely South Virginia (uranium country, some would soon call it) flickered right in synch… and were replaced by ruddy hills and rock-strewn sand.
Under a lovely light-butterscotch sky. (No, Toto, not in Kansas anymore.)
I got up, looked around us. Yep, pretty and pretty alien too. ((Status?))
((Energy reserve seventy-five percent. Induced gravity is Virginia-normal, local gravity is 38 percent. Air pressure outside, zero point three inches of mercury. Temperature, thirteen below zero. Air envelope holding well.
((Please do stay clear of the walls of the air-bubble.))
“Fred? You doin’ okay?” “It’s really true. We really, I mean the Anomaly, really did it. We just, I guess you’d have to say, teleported to Mars.” Wonder, but not shock.
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(Part 2/3)
“Well, Percival Lowell’s ghost gonna be very disappointed. Air pressure on the other side of that, force-bubble I guess, is about 1% of Earth’s. And no Jeds or Jeddaks or Thoats likely, either.” (We try to laugh about what Mr. B did to the stories of my illustrious many-great-uncle. Because it’s better to laugh than to cry, right?) “To put that little tidbit into some perspective, not only would your blood boil at that pressure, icewater’d do the same, at least to start with.”
“Wow, but this geology! Come look, Sarah, there’s a pretty clutch of what looks like little balls of pure hematite, laid out in a stone bowl like decorations. Or maybe a clutch of owl pellets.” He’d gotten up, and stood very close to where I’d guess the ‘wall’ would be. Stretched out an arm, to point (I thought, and then he did). Then, next, he reached out exactly as if he meant to pick one up… “Fred! Stop!”
And my ears popped, and… “Pull back your hand NOW!” I yelled in my best imitation of some Carter of the Great War, or the Recent Unpleasantness.
“Can’t, Sarah, it’s like it’s stuck in molasses. And feels like it’s gone half-numb and starting to swell… those little balls are cold, too!”
((Warning, air dome energy level at forty-two percent and falling, please clear intrusion to forestall environment failure.)) I ran over, and then almost fell on my butt when the gravity dropped to… three-eighths or so.
Grabbed his arm with one hand, draped my other across his chest, and gave as mighty a heave as I could summon — and almost dazed myself silly on the top of the table as we fell in a heap. He dropped his samples on the table, rubbed his red-swollen hand.
((Obstruction cleared. Air-dome energy levels critical. Insufficent quick energy to return to Earth soon. Suggest inter-analogue travel, to permit needed system reset and restart. Mars has several habitable ‘partners’ and one of them has been travel-tested both ways. Fissionables are present.))
I didn’t think. I just decided; maybe it was pure intuition, maybe it was that old family gift we’d called ‘do the right thing anyway’ since 1823 or possibly the late 1700s. ((Go!))
And once again, that flicker; only this time the sun and the hills were so alike, on either side of the ‘transition’ — and something ran through me, blessedly as quick as a wink, that felt like the worst menstrual cramps ever in all womandom, all over and inside you. I heard Fred gasp, too.
((Dome fields failing, executing soft release. Air is breathable, fission fuels are more abundant than in Virginia. Natural laws do differ some. An appropriate adjustment has been made to your biology, as usual before.))
And then there was something like a soft infrasonic whoosh, and… there we were, barenakedly on the surface of some alternate-time-track Mars. The breeze was soft, and smelled nice. The sky was blue, not butterscotch, and there was a cute dinky little moon in the sky, likely Phobos’ cousin.
I still hadn’t made the connection. That this was a place I knew, though of course I’d never personally been here before.
And then there was a sound, from above. I stood up, and when I saw what it was, quite suddenly… I was head-over-heels in love.
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(Part 3/3)
The hottest thing you ever saw in aircraft, followed by something twice as sweet. One was like someone stuck three P-51 front ends onto the back of a flying-wing-with-tail sort of plane; what followed it looked a lot sleekly like a jet. But what a jet, those outboard nacelles… glowed bright blue-white.
That air-buggy is nuclear, I said to myself. (Still yet fairly clueless.)
My hands itched for the controls. Of either participant in that mad chase.
“Sarah, what on Earth are… those? Nobody ever made a jet like that, and we aren’t supposed to know how to get to Mars yet. And didn’t you say this is a thin enough atmosphere to boil your blood?” Not in shock, quizzical. “And I can assure you this geology here is not the same at all, at all.”
“One of the things I never got around to telling you, Fred, is that this offworld gadget-with-sense knows how to go between different, well, sort of histories. This is one of those for Mars, a bit different physics too.
“Which is all lovely, because your little stunt overloaded the force dome holding our air in. It’s habitable here. So we can restart and re-group.”
“Sorry, Sarah. I guess I’m not used to interplanetary travel yet.” And I looked at Fred Dark. And he was… grinning. Yes, pretty stalwart guy.
((Time to normal return capability?))
((Seven to nine hours ought to do it. By nightfall it could get very cold, but by then a windscreen and heat should be easy. I would suggest crossing first back to Mars, then traversing around space back to your Virginia.
((I am also assuming you don’t want to signal the locals?))
((Would that be a good idea? Or a fatally bad one??)) And, how to do it anyway?
((Here, by all available information, you are… a Princess of the House of Carter. With your military background, likely a minor Warlordess also.))
And then, only then, it hit me like a brick to the head; color me stupid and slow as an ox as they’d be saying in a decade or three.
And beneath my breath, I said what I felt, for no-one but me to hear. Oh, Uncle John. You were no kind of tall-tale spinner; no, you were a piker.
“Hang on to your pants, Fred, the big surprises aren’t quite done yet.”
He lifted one eyebrow, in a way that told me his near-vacuum-exposed hand could not still be bothering him overmuch. Smiled, impishly. “Judging by that, um, hurtling moon up there? Those… rumors, are true.”
“Hurtling moon, singular, the other one crawls like a snail. And is near tiny enough to be a somewhat overfed star. But, pulp is as pulp sells.”
I swallowed, and went on; though I’d almost rather have done the full Lady Godiva bit down the middle of Lynchburg at high noon on a Friday instead, but…
“Fred Dark, be welcome to Barzum. From Sarah Carter, your longtime friend and now most-hungrily-aspiring would-be Flygirl of Mars.”
I am still convinced my face blushed ruddy as the Mars-scape, right then.
(Based on some pre-existing setting and characters — not all of ’em mine!)
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This dude is describing the literally dozens of emails I have received lately—one even today!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt4qGKpBaf0
As I said earlier, I was expecting something more like a Regency Period villain (“The odious Mr. Scabies”?) making fake offers of marriage in order “to steal my virginity”.
I’m feeling pretty good that I recognized it enough to keep it at arm’s length.
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