A Threat Among the Stars – Episode 9

Roundup:

BITE BACK 6: Inside Straight. Hit a problem. I’m putting a short update to the beta readers today and asking their opinions.

Bite Back in France: I have the covers and schedule for publication from Milady division of Bragelonne in France. See FB post on BB site. They’ve signed up to take it as far as Wild Card. They’re publishing in August-November and will review how the sales are going and whether they want the rest of the novels by the end of this year.

I’m going to start putting the novellas out in audio, but Julia Motyka isn’t available until September, so Inside Straight, Change of Regime, The Biting Cold and Winter’s Kiss will all go into the pile at that stage.

Still undecided about how to do audios of A Name Among the Stars (which I would *love* Jessica to narrate), and Bian’s Tale.

How are we doing in A Threat Among the Stars? Well, I believe the story’s main plot requirements have been set up and it’s now about how Zara, Hwa, Talan and Kat can defeat the Hajnal on Newyan and alert the rest of humanity to the dangers that the piskatellers have predicted. So… much teetering on cliff edges, banging and crashing around to follow…

Thanks for the feedback. All feedback welcome. 🙂

*****

Chapter 18

 

‘Pirate’ is the name being used by the people on Newyan for our attacker.

I’m not so sure. What kind of pirate attacks a courier ship? What kind of pirate has several salvos of missiles? Why were they right there, supposedly invisible to Newyan, just at the right time to attack us? Just when the Newyan destroyer returned to base for maintenance?

But more importantly right now, can we escape the latest salvo, and if so, how many more missiles does the pirate carry?

Lieutenant Commander Boon: Ten seconds to impact.

Standard hi-G crash couches double as survival pods, jettisoning the power-hungry compensators and shooting out through the skin of the ship. If the missiles hit the ship, we’ll be ejected. However, a survival pod has no engines other than some attitude jets for orientation. It just floats in space, waiting for someone to pick it up. If this pirate is determined to kill all of us, we’ll provide no more than a few minutes of target practice for its plasma guns.

Lieutenant Commander Boon: Eight seconds.

Survival pod instructions start to fill the left of the screen and I get a sliver of good news. These are military specification pods – they are shielded and have small thrusters and can land on a planet.

Unfortunately, we’re a long way from any planet and no low power shields are going to stand a couple of plasma bolts.

My bleak prognosis is interrupted by someone new on the in-ship communications transcription.

Xing: I am assuming control.

I almost miss it among the babble of damage and capability reports.

Who?

Xing the name reads.

There is no officer I’ve met on board by that name. Is it the ship’s Self Actuated Entity?

Xing: Primary compensators on.

With a nauseating lurch, I can feel the couch’s compensators fade. On the ship’s monitor, the acceleration drops rapidly.

What’s Xing doing?

But even as I ask myself that, I realize that speed alone isn’t going to save us. I have to hope there’s another way; that Xing has a plan.

The pad’s screen is now displaying a visualization of the entire ship.

Lieutenant Commander Boon: Four seconds.

On the pad, I see the ship, the whole body locked within the same compensator field, spin around until it’s pointing back at the missiles streaking in toward us.

Power is diverted from the insystem engines, dropping the acceleration to zero.

The forward Chang field generators engage.

We can’t get into Chang space with only half the generators operating and anyway, we’re within the minimum safe limit from the star to attempt it.

Lieutenant Commander Boon: Two seconds.

But there’s another use for the generator: a bow wave field, called the rockbuster, and used when travelling through an area of space with lots of debris.

The Xing Gerchu begins to spin along its main axis and then precess, like a gyroscope winding down, its nose making a circle, and presenting the rockbuster to the missiles.

I close my eyes and grab the canopy grip handles, even though it won’t make any difference if the ship blows up.

Lady of Mercy, into your hands…

The first missiles explodes.

Even with the cushioning of the acceleration compensator, the ship lurches to one side, then another, like a old, punch-drunk boxer taking one beating too many. I can feel the explosions through the fabric of the ship. We’re being battered and  thrown around inside our couches.

I can’t pray. Instead, I try to count the missile strikes.

Three…

Four…

The compensators fail. Zero-G.

Unable to stop myself, I open my eyes and look at the pad screen.

POD EJECTION SEQUENCE INITIATED.

Where are the fifth and sixth missiles? If they explode as we eject…

I’m pushed against the right side of the couch by a huge hand. We’re turning.

The Xing Gerchu swings around until it’s pointing insystem again.

POD EJECTION SEQUENCE TERMINATED.

Acceleration suddenly climbs again, and I gasp a protest as my ribs creak under the pressure. It feels like a horse just sat on my chest. My eyes blur.

I’m about to pass out when the couch compensators start to work again.

The ship status on the pad shows a flood of red and yellow for every unit damaged.

The forward Chang generators are gone. It seems a miracle that we damaged two of the six incoming missiles, and reduced the effect of the others, but it’s not a trick we’re going to be able to repeat; without the Chang field we’re down to the unarmored skin of the ship.

One of the two slim shuttles in the front docking bay has been hit and the whole section of the front where the Chang generators were attached has been ripped away.

I blink at the last damage report: the forward hi-G section is simply gone, along with the four people who had taken refuge in the couches there.

I close my eyes again and offer another prayer to the Goddess.

Main life support has failed. Half the external sensors are gone. It’s another miracle that the insystem engines are still operating at all, given their statuses blink between red and amber.

Even though Xing has bought us some time, we can’t outrun any more missiles, we can’t defend against them. We can’t even outrun the pirate. In another hour, they’ll have overhauled us and can slice us to pieces with lasers or punch holes in us with their plasma cannon.

But not everyone in the Newyan system is our enemy. As the list of damages mount up, Lieutenant Commander Boon reports that the captain of the Biháriz has fired four long range missiles locked on the pirate’s emission signature.

Hwa searches through the Xing Gerchu’s database to come up with their specifications. Her search results are mirrored on the screen of my pad.

Those missiles are fast. In their current usage, they’ll bracket the pirate’s position in about twenty minutes, so long as it’s still in pursuit of us and we don’t turn away. The missiles are the latest, horrendously expensive, three-stage Terran missiles. The Biháriz has probably fired its entire complement and some Newyan procurement bureaucrat will be having fits.

But they may be just what’s required.

The missile’s first stage involves a booster firing them to a sizeable fraction of lightspeed before separating. That’s just happened. Then the second stage cruises at that speed on a ballistic trajectory to a predicted position. They’re small and electronically dark, so the pirate won’t know exactly where they are until they enter their kill radius—a distance away from the target that’s not public information.

At that point, the missiles will fire third stage booster engines, and the pirate will become history in a matter of seconds after that.

The pirate has the same data as we do. He turns tail, heading back out to where he can engage his Chang field and escape.

My pad relays a transmission from the captain of the Xing Gerchu, his voice ragged: “Biháriz – Captain Besud of the Xing Gerchu. Thank you for that timely intervention.”

A female voice responds breezily: “Commander Tiziana of the Biháriz. That’s okay, Captain Besud, I always wanted to fire those babies, and as a bonus we get to reel them back in, this time. It’ll all have been a useful exercise for us. Appreciate somewhat different perspective from your view.”

“Indeed.”

“What’s your status? We can rendezvous before you achieve orbit over Newyan.”

“Negative, Biháriz. Thank you, but please proceed to recapture your missiles safely,” Captain Besud says. “The next arrival is likely to be the Terran cruiser TSS Annan, in a hurry and not expecting missiles on its sensors. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for any accidents. Or misunderstandings.”

“Acknowledged, Xing Gerchu. Thank you. Good luck. Biháriz out.”

It doesn’t escape me that the captain has not answered the question about our status.

On my pad, the icon marking the pirate disappears. He’s engaged his Chang field.

I can feel Captain Besud switch the primary compensators back on a moment later. They’re damaged too. ‘Gravity’ comes back as a lurching, swaying force, as if we were being pulled along on a cart with differently sized, eccentric wheels.

“Remain in the couches,” Lieutenant Commander Boon warns us over the speakers in the pods. “We have severe damage. We’re ensuring compartmental integrity before re-pressurization.”

I guess the reason for switching the primary compensators back on is to try and prevent the whole ship from disintegrating as it begins its gentle deceleration. It’s as much as much as the groaning hull can stand, but I don’t need Hwa’s computational abilities to see it’s not going to be enough. We’ll be going far too fast to assume a standard orbit over Newyan.

And the ship coming apart during braking maneuvers could kill us just as easily as a missile.

 

 

Chapter 19

 

Half the overhead lights come back on, and some of the red warning signs by bulkheads switch to amber.

Bridge crewmembers scurry past in full vacuum suits and carrying tools, clumsy with their loads and the failing compensator field.

The rearward bulkhead door has to be forced open.

The litany of damage continues on the pad’s screen.

More dead in engineering.

Insystem engines down to 60% and dropping.

Life support 40% capability.

Meanwhile, incredibly, some official on Newyan is criticizing the destroyer’s captain for firing on a vessel without full identification. He’s not even restricting it to narrowband or military frequencies; he’s broadcasting on the main shipping frequency.

He goes on for half an hour, with the Biháriz ignoring him, until someone further up the chain of command silences the idiot.

We’re still trapped in our pods.

Every minute I can feel a new shudder run through the ship as some over-stressed structural component fails.

The middle section of the ship took the main impact of the missiles. It’s too badly damaged and has to be abandoned. The crew can’t even make their way past the destruction. The surviving engineers are stuck on their own at the back, with engines that are being nursed to provide one final effort.

The crew cut loose whatever can be jettisoned and retreat from the middle sections. The hi-G station I’m in is the first forward compartment that escaped major damage, but the rearward bulkhead won’t re-close or seal.

An impermeable sheet of conforming material is applied over it. As the first pressure returns to our section, the sheet solidifies.

The main air pumps don’t work. One crewman remains behind to operate a portable emergency system. It’ll take another a half hour before we have a breathable atmosphere, and we have to remain in our pods.

“You’re not thinking this is your fault, Zara.” Hwa has managed to patch into the remains of the in-ship comms system and her voice comes from my pod’s speakers.

“It is,” I say.

“Stop right there. I would have been on this ship whether or not you were, and I would have brought the ship here. And even if neither of us were, Captain Besud was due to return here. You can’t assume that you were the target.”

“If they’ve worked out what I’m trying to do, they know I’m the greatest threat.”

“That’s one assumption piled on top of another,” Talan says. “This isn’t the Inner Worlds, there are pirates out here.”

“It’s hardly the Frontier, either,” I snap back, still on edge with adrenaline.

“With no disrespect to Newyan, as a world,” Hwa says, “I think the Hajnal have moved the Frontier here.”

I can’t argue the point. Yes, Frontier space is riddled with pirates. Pirates don’t always behave in predictable ways. If this had been a world out on the edge, the sort of place that Newyan’s media portrayed as common in the Frontier, I would believe it had been a pirate, mistaking a courier for something worthwhile.

My view of the Frontier comes from the Newyan media reports that I saw growing up. That thought stopped me in my tracks. If they could distort everything about what was going on in Newyan, then why should I believe what they said about the Frontier? They’d misrepresented the situation on the Inner Worlds – I knew that. What if…

“Zara?”

“Sorry, just thinking,” I replied.

“I give you that it was unusual behavior from a pirate,” Hwa said, “but what gets called pirate here might be some Frontier system’s navy.”

“Doing what? Attacking a courier? Why? What benefit—”

“Attacking a Xian courier.”

“Oh.”

Pirates attacked ships carrying anything that had value. That wasn’t only standard trade goods. Xian ships carried technology that would be more valuable than any freighter’s entire standard cargo. Whether the pirates knew about it or not, the Xing Gerchu’s Self Actuated Entity, Xing, would be more valuable than the rest of the ship combined, but even standard Xian navigational computers were highly prized. And couriers were unarmed. A Frontier system, one of the marginal ones, they might think the value of the tech outweighed the risk of the attack.

“That attack was intended to disable this ship,” Hwa said. “Those missiles fired at us weren’t ship-killers. I’d lay odds that pirate had a docking bay big enough to take the whole Xing Gerchu in one gulp. If Besud hadn’t come into the system so fast, and kept accelerating, they’d have had time to grab us and leave before the Biháriz could do anything.”

The pirate would have had a Xian ship with all its technology to trade. And any survivors. There was a market for slaves in the Frontier.

“Still not random,” I said. “That wasn’t a pirate scouting out the system and getting lucky that the destroyer normally on patrol was away just at the moment that the Xing Gerchu happened to be due. Or, for that matter, that no one in Newyan noticed the pirate’s footprint on arrival.”

“Agreed,” Hwa said. “There had to have been collusion with some people on Newyan. And yet, it was the Newyan Defence Force Biháriz who saved us. Clearly, the Hajnal’s grip is not complete.”

And the news we were on the way could only have come from the Annan, carried on the message drone which left Kernow before us. That pirate had to have been close, and someone on Newyan knew exactly where they were and how to get a message to them.

But it can’t mean the Terrans are colluding with the Hajnal, surely?

The air pressure has risen high enough that the couches can open and we’re told we can get out.

We can’t go anywhere outside of this small section, but the restroom facilities are much pleasanter than the array of tubes in the pods. Even if it’s freezing cold and the gravity is erratic. Everyone gets out and makes use of the facilities.

A crewman brings in emergency power cables and air piping. We’re warm ourselves up by helping with the mechanical connections and running tests. The air is thin and we’re soon panting, breath steaming in clouds around us.

Every few minutes, I check the ship status on my pod’s screen.

The ship is basically in four sections now. The remaining shuttle, the bridge, this hi-G section and the engines, all held precariously together by the ship’s spine. Everything else has gone dark.

The deceleration has increased, but it’s still not enough.

Hwa wants to talk to the captain, but he’s understandably busy.

However, he takes just enough time out from trying to save the dying ship for a broadcast message to the Newyan system, which he pipes onto the ship’s general announcement speakers. We all stop and listen.

 

“This is Captain Besud of the Xian Hegemony diplomatic courier ship Xing Gerchu to all Xian citizens and all Xian registered vessels in the Newyan system. I am an authorized level 2 official of the Xian Hegemony Foreign Ministry, and in that capacity, I am implementing Xian intra-system conflict directive W738. I repeat…”

 

Hwa’s eyes blank as she consults the data banks, and then widen.

“No!”

She rushes to one of the bridge crew still checking structural damage in our section and persuades him to hand over his comms unit.

I can’t follow what’s being said, so I check on the couch pad what directive W738 is.

Newyan has been designated as a hostile system. The Xian delegation is being withdrawn. All Xian traders are to cease commerce, regardless of the state of their business dealings. All Xian trading ships are requisitioned for evacuation by the Hegemony. All Xian citizens are ordered to get onto those ships are rapidly as they can.

It’s understandable, but Hwa needs to be down onto the surface of Newyan to initiate her court proceedings, and she’ll need to do it before the Annan arrives. Once Taha and Ivakin present their credentials and declare there’s a Commission of Enquiry in process, they’ll be able to prevent any new proceedings.

For me, I’m not a Xian citizen, but I had hoped to be able to use the Xian delegation to assist me in retrieving the evidence. And I had hoped to stay there too, as the delegation buildings would have offered some level of physical security that a hotel wouldn’t. Not to mention I’d risk being arrested anytime I wasn’t somewhere covered by the delegation’s diplomatic immunity.

What the sea folk’s vision showed us was the threat of withdrawal of trade that Hwa could use to bring pressure on the Newyan government while, working from the safety of the delegation, I could present the evidence to the Commission that reveals the extent of the Hajnal.

The directive has suspended Xian trade with Newyan already and there is no longer a Xian delegation to assist me.

Directive W738 has just destroyed our plans.

Like a banished nightmare returning, I can hear the screaming of the bleak winds that blew through the dismal landscapes of the piskateller’s vision.

 

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A Threat Among the Stars – Episode 7

Quick round-up:

BITE BACK 6: Inside Straight. I have had positive feedback from the beta readers on the first 10k of the book (with some tweaks) and I’m going to try and set up a schedule to get them about the same amount every week. Eeek!

BIAN’S TALE 1: The Harvest of Lies. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DBPK2B6/
It’s very evident from the *lovely* reviews of THoL and ANATS that I’m selling to fans. Which is *wonderful* and *thank you*. It does leave me puzzling how to increase the number of fans! I dipped my toe into Amazon adverts over the last couple of weeks with negligible response, and I’m chewing over what that might mean.

Audio books: Okay, okay, on it. I have contacted Julia Motyka about the novellas: Change of Regime, The Biting Cold and Winter’s Kiss. She’s not available until September, at which time I hope that Inside Straight will be available to go to audio. In any event, whatever order we go with, they’ll start to come out toward the end of the year. I’m still hoping Jessica might do ANAtS, and I’m looking for a narrator for Bian’s Tale. It’s not that Julia couldn’t do it, but I thought it would be good to get a Vietnamese American narrator.

How are we doing with ATAtS?

Here’s the next episode. Of course, because this is a two-thread story, you don’t get the resolution of the last episode’s cliffhanger until the second chapter… ‘cos I’m cruel like that.

Thanks for the feedback last week. Even a single line is good. Even negative stuff. Don’t be shy.

*****

Chapter 14

High sierra, Newyan

 

Cold light seeps through the pines around Kattalin.

It’s not dawn yet and she’s so tired.

Yesterday she rested. She’d walked hard for two days beyond the last high sierra villages, and was beginning to feel she’d gotten away. She’d stopped walking. She’d fed on early spring berries which cramped her stomach. She’d pulled up gozo roots, and baked them with a mixture of pine seeds and nuts, burying the fire and letting the slow heat soften the food.

She washed it all down with water from the ice-cold streams.

Then she’d slept, truly slept.

And woken to a forest too silent around her.

She’s been walking non-stop since then.

They certainly aren’t Newyans, but there is a group hunting for her. They’ve got a seeker. It’s the only way they’d be able to find her in this expanse of forest.

It’s their strength and their weakness.

The seeker is almost as sensitive to odors in the air as a dog. It can separate out human smells from animal and plant. It can identify a human, separating out the smell from other humans. It can even detect disease or infection.

But it’s not a dog. It doesn’t have a dog’s feel for tracking. It has provided enough of a trace that the hunters have been able to follow her up into the high sierras. Given her head start and the fact that they would have had to keep stopping to check the seeker readings, they must have been moving almost continuously. They must be even more tired than she is.

The situation’s bad, but it’s not impossible, she tell herself.

What would Zarate do?

Kattalin has a trick of pretending she’s her cousin. It makes her braver. It silences her fearful inner voice. Zarate wouldn’t be scared. Zarate is never scared.

Even now.

Now, when she can see them. She’s walked in a huge loop to come back and cross her own trail.

Her heart is beating so loudly, she’s afraid they’ll hear.

There are four of them, Syndacians, walking where she walked a few hours ago. One is carrying the seeker in a backpack, with the readouts displaying on a small InfoPad mounted on his helmet, like a look-up display. The other three are carrying camping equipment. All of them are carrying plasma rifles. She doesn’t recognize the type. They have blocky mounts on top—she guesses they’re light-enhancing telescopic sights. They can probably kill her from a thousand yards. In the dark.

She has to ignore that. If she gets in their sights, she’s dead, so she will not get in their sights.

Think like Zarate.

What else can she learn from seeing them?

They’re carrying about a week’s worth of supplies in their packs.

Will they be re-supplied by an aircraft, or will they have to go back?

An aircraft.

She’d forgotten about aircraft.

She’ll have to keep to the forests. If they’re this committed to finding her, there could be an aircraft high above with infra-red vision. She has to keep under the canopy of the forest. Sleep hidden beneath fallen trees or in caves.

The men pass out of sight in the pre-dawn gloom, and with her heart in her mouth, she hurries down to the trail. She follows it downhill for ten minutes, back the way she came, before disappearing into the forest on the opposite side from her approach.

That will not throw them off completely, but it’ll take a day of their time, circling around and around until they have a firm reading on where she left the trail.

Zarate would be proud of her.

Now to find a stream.

 

As dawn breaks, her feet have become frozen in the run-off from mountain snows.

She trudges up the stream, and as the day brightens, she occasionally leaves it to walk clumsily a dozen paces to one side or another, out and back.

This should all delay the hunters even longer.

They’ll eventually find the place she entered the stream down below. The seeker can’t track her in the stream, but they know she has to leave it at some time. So they have to walk along the stream until they find a point where she came out.

Actually, they should check downstream as well as up, but she imagines they’ll assume she’s heading up.

They need to walk the seeker down both banks of the stream, and any time she leaves the stream, they have to check that as a possible route until they’re sure she didn’t leave that way.

It will delay them, every time.

It becomes a routine. Walk half an hour, get out, stamp her feet and walk away from the stream, then get back in it. To keep her mind away from the pain of her feet, she tries to plan ahead.

Spring is well under way.

Another week or so and the Hartzak will begin to stir from their winter hibernation. They’re far more dangerous than the hunters. She doesn’t have any clever ideas about how to avoid them. Walking in streams, sleeping in caves and burying her waste won’t fool the Hartzak. She can’t hide from both Hartzak and Syndacians.

Maybe the Hartzak will kill the Syndacians.

Or maybe she’ll sprout wings.

She distracts herself from this bleak prognosis by thinking of her cousin instead.

Ohana must have been mistaken. Zarate will be bringing allies. Terrans or someone. Maybe they’re coming right now, emerging out of Chang space this very moment.

Little bits and pieces of news had filtered out to her and her comrades in Training Company Bravo. They’d heard Zarate had smuggled herself past the Hajnal and got onto a freighter heading for the Inner Worlds. But that was immediately followed by news that the customs cutter Duhalde had fired on the freighter.

It had been a bleak few days, imagining her cousin’s death in the void of space, which made hearing the final bits of the story all the more glorious.

Even now, shivering as she struggles up the cold stream, Kattalin feels a warm inner glow as she imagines Zarate hijacking the freighter, locking the crew out of the bridge, making the spaceship twist and turn like a snake so the missiles from the Dunhalde miss, and then escaping into Chang space.

Her cousin.

Just thinking of Zarate makes her feel proud.

Such a heroine would not abandon Newyan.

She must be on her way with help.

Kattalin looks back down the stream. All she has to do is keep ahead of the hunters until Zarate arrives.

 

 

Chapter 15

Outbound, Kernow system

 

“Talan! What the nova are you doing here?”

“My duty, officially. I have to say, protection detail is usually so boring, but this is the most fun I’ve ever had, looking after you. Anyway, up you get, it’s time for lunch.”

I bury my face in my hands.

“Be serious,” I say.

“I am. I’m starving.”

I want to strangle her. Even putting the joking aside, she’s misunderstood the whole situation. She must think I’m here with the Duke’s knowledge. That everything’s all right.

We can’t turn back. She’ll be absent without leave for weeks. Along with everything else I’ve destroyed on Kernow, I’ve ruined her career.

I tell her so, unable to meet her eyes.

“Zara.” Her voice is gentler, and she takes my hands, uncovers my face. “Whatever bridges you think you’ve burned, whatever decisions you’ve taken, you have to learn to trust others more. And realize not everything is always your problem alone.”

She drags me off to a small cabin which she laughingly calls the restaurant.

The food is pre-prepared and re-heated. I have no appetite. I sit there and poke at the meal.

“You have a duty,” I say.

“I made an oath when I joined the Welarvor Mounted Police,” she replies. “I made another, to the Duke himself, to guard you with my life. I know which one he thinks takes precedence. Maybe I’m honoring both. Maybe just the one. Time will tell.”

Before, Bleyd might have agreed, but by now he’ll have read the letter. By now, I will no longer be Duchess. No longer Colonel. Just Zarate Mirari Aguirre.

Talan breezes on. I’ve been asleep for hours and she updates me.

The TSS Annan got underway not long after the Xing Gerchu, but the courier is faster than the cruiser. Much faster. We’re pulling away.

Ivakin has been trying to communicate with me, but Talan dismisses it with a wave of her hand. “She’s still trying to lecture you about the rights of ordinary people on Newyan to self-determination, as if that’s what’s happening.”

That angers me enough to make me talk. “Is she stupid or deliberately not seeing?”

“Have you seen what a Commissioner is paid?” Hwa interrupts, joining us.

It’s disorienting, being so close to her. I can almost hear her thoughts. When the piskatellers reconnected us through them, it’s as if they left a channel open. I know if I touch her hand, we’ll be able to mentally talk as easily as when I hosted her in my head.

“When they set up their Commission of Enquiry, Taha and Ivakin will become fabulously rich, even if they conduct it honestly,” Hwa says. “And there’s a whole industry back on Earth responsible for extracting vast amounts of money and funneling it into these Commissions. And skimming a fortune off it.” She snorts. “People will be urging them to run their Commissions for ever, regardless of the situation.”

“And if they admit that the Hajnal threat exists?” Talan asks. “If they say the military has to get involved?”

“Then it’s not a Commission of Enquiry on Newyan, it becomes an occupation, and the money goes back to the military. That’s where most of the budget has come from.”

“No wonder Ndungane is so angry all the time,” I say.

“It’s not just that,” Hwa says. “The Annan was his command. He’s been effectively demoted while Taha’s on board, and the ship will stay in orbit over Newyan until relieved if there’s a Commission established. He’s been made a sort of glorified orbiting honor guard in a navy that’s shrinking to pay for the Commissions.”

“Is he on our side? Could we use that?” Talan asks. “Get close to him somehow?”

I shake my head. “Very dangerous. He may not like the Terran Council politics, but he’s no fan of Xian either. Or me.”

We’re silent for a while.

“If you’re not eating that…” Talan says.

I push my meal over.

“You owe her the rest of the details,” Hwa says to me, nodding at Talan.

Talan gives every indication of being interested only in the food, but I can sense her attention at Hwa’s words.

It will hurt to speak of it, so I must. I deserve the pain to remind me of the pain I cause others.

“What do you know so far?”

Talan looks up thoughtfully.

“I saw you and Hwa in that vision, and I saw the predictions that the piskatellers made if we fail to stop the Hajnal. And so I also know you may have a cousin still alive on Newyan.” She frowns. “Hwa’s told me you hid the evidence your grandfather compiled which will prove there’s been a genuine conspiracy and Newyan’s current government is the result of an illegal, murderous coup carried out in secret. I get the bit about using the Commission’s own rules to actually broadcast that information.”

She pauses and becomes focused on her food again.

“I know there’s something about the evidence that you think will destroy your family Name,” she says.

“All Newyan Names,” I say. “But Aguirre most of all.”

“Why?” Talan asks sharply. “Why is it always your responsibility above all others?”

“Because the Aguirre are the foremost,” I reply. There’s pride and sorrow in my words. Responsibility and privilege. Honor and duty. “That’s what the name means in the old language—foremost. And it’s a recognition that the others gave us, because it was Xabat Abarran Aguirre alone who made Newyan possible, who claimed the planet for all of us.”

It looks as if Talan will argue, but she and Hwa exchange glances and she falls silent.

Into that silence, I must bear my shame. Our shame, all of the Names of Newyan.

“Xabat chose the site of the first city, which he called Berriaren. It was in the high sierras, a habitat isolated from the rest of the planet by the geology. The Founders needed time to study the native life and experiment with merging Terran forms in a non-invasive way.

“Newyan means ‘promise’, and the planet lived up to its name. Little needed to be done with the atmosphere, native crops were compatible with humans, the introduction of our crops and livestock had near neutral effect on the ecology. It seemed the great promise would be delivered. Berriaren thrived. Farms spread out around the city, even as the laboratories continued to study the planet.”

We are alone on the room, and Talan has put aside the empty plate to listen intently.

“There was one exception, ironically limited to the same high sierras where the Founders set their base; a species trapped in that habitat.” I sigh. “We call them Hartzak, the old Basque name for bear. You have bears on Kernow, adapted Terran black bears, and you might mistake the two at a distance. They share some characteristics—they’re large, furry, quadrupedal predators, they hibernate in the winter, they’re territorial.

“But there are differences. The Hartzak bite is highly poisonous, so even if you survive being bitten, you die without a blood transfusion. And the adult Hartzak are not just territorial and aggressive, they’re insanely so. A Hartzak coming across humans always attacks. Even if it’s hungry and just made a kill, it’ll abandon the kill to attack the human. To make it even worse, they trigger each other. A Hartzak attacking a human will release pheromones which will override the territorial exclusion pheromones and call other Hartzak to attack. And then, as a species, they take it beyond that. The Founders detected the Hartzak breeding rates increased as if they somehow jointly perceived humans as a threat and gave birth to more Hartzak in response.”

“Intelligent?” Talan’s single word question cuts across my lecture.

I blink. “No. The Hartzak are not intelligent.”

She’s right and she’s wrong. Just as the Founders were, so long ago.

I take a deep breath.

“They have a weakness. The full grown adults hibernate, moving up out of the high sierra into the mountain cave systems. They leave the adolescents and the cubs, who haven’t developed the territorial reflex and aggression, down on the high plains.

“The Founders argued that it would be disastrous for the rest of the planet if the Hartzak ever got out of the high sierras, and it was clear humans and Hartzak couldn’t co-exist.”

“So they eradicated them?”

I shake my head. “They tried. They thought it would be easier to eradicate the adolescents and the cubs, so that’s what they did in winter operations: they cleared the high sierras of any Hartzak they found. They had IR scopes and seekers, surveillance drones and motion detectors. The Hartzak young were docile, without the strength and capabilities of the adults. Couldn’t run, couldn’t hide. Just sat there and got slaughtered.”

“But it didn’t work?”

I take another deep breath.

“They stopped when they found they had it all wrong. Completely wrong. There were two symbiotic species that looked identical – the Hartzak young and the other, the Atsekabe. They killed a generation of Hartzak that were being cared for by the Atsekabe, and they wiped out the Atsekabe.”

Talan is shocked, but not enough. Not yet.

The old story hurts, but I complete it: “They found out later that the Atsekabe were intelligent. They found rock paintings that told stories, stories about families and generations, and about the bond between the Atsekabe, who nurtured, and the Hartzak, who protected. This is what we tried to hide when we abandoned Berriaren and the high sierras: the shame of Newyan that everyone will know soon. Our Founders, led by the Aguirre, killed an entire intelligent species. The only group of humans ever to achieve that.”

 

A Threat Among the Stars – Episode 6

Quick round-up:

BITE BACK 6: Inside Straight. The first 7 chapters, 10k words are with the beta readers. I have written more, but these first 7 contain two really key scenes and I want feedback on them before polishing the remainder of the first 1/4.

BIAN’S TALE 1: The Harvest of Lies. Launched! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DBPK2B6/
How’s it doing? Quick initial sales. Glowing 5 star reviews. Slipping in the ranking already.
The market for books is brutal and I will need to put time aside to do real marketing. As one reviewer noted, this is a major alternative route into the Athanate world, and I need to get it out there.

How are we doing with ATAtS?

Well, break out the handkerchiefs. If I don’t make you cry this episode…

Oh, and look out for that cliff.

We’re at 20k words, which I guesstimate is 1/5 of the book already. The build-up has been, of necessity, slowish because I had to undo all the HEA ending on ANAtS. Zara’s starting to do crazy stuff again now.

Some of you do regularly feed back, and that feedback is vital to the process of writing a serial novel. If you haven’t said anything recently, I would appreciate even a few words. Enjoying it? Not enjoying it? Don’t be shy.

 

Chapter 12

Kernow

 

“The Duchess Aguirre-Tremayne, Colonel Zarate Mirari Aguirre.”

The announcement is grand. If it had been Hanna, if it had been ‘Duchess Esterhauze-Tremayne’, she would have glided into the ballroom, elegant and glittering. She would have looked the part and won people over with her charm and presence.

I laid a flower on her grave this afternoon, and wept.

My way to win people over will be different.

I enter wearing my uniform, now officially the uniform of the Kernow Air Force. I have a rank and gold braid and medals. I have had my hair cut short again this afternoon.

Gaude could barely speak when I explained my requirements. The braid and medals represent my compromise with him. Without his frantic argument, I might well have walked in here with a sidearm.

A ripple of silence flows outward across the ball. I am a raven come among peacocks.

Behind me the Master of Ceremonies calls out again: “Lady Rhoswyn Tremayne, Lady Alexis Esterhauze and companions.”

The girls are dressed for a ball, and still surprised I’ve brought them. Talan and Moyle are with them, in uniform and under strict instructions what to do. Hwa follows unnoticed behind, dressed in traditional Xian silks.

My hostess, Lady Dowriel, hurries forward to greet me. I guess as much to limit the damage as anything else. I feel a twinge of guilt, but it was her decision to invite the Terrans that has brought me here.

“Duchess,” she says, and we offer little bows and shake hands, that being the custom on Kernow.

“My Lady.”

“Such a smart uniform,” she says, clasping her hands together, and meaning something completely different. “I suppose simplicity of form might be the fashion this autumn.”

I smile briefly. “Perhaps. Uniforms can be fashionable when we are at war. And we are at war, despite the behavior of the Terran Council.”

I timed my entrance to arrive immediately after the Terrans, and I’ve spoken loudly enough that they, and others close by, can hear.

Lady Dowriel retreats hurriedly to attend to other arriving guests.

Captain Taha and Yeva Ivakin take my bait and engage in a defense of their actions. It goes better than I could have hoped—an argument in the middle of the ball with almost all the Founding Families present. I am sorry for Lady Dowriel, but the message gets out. The Duke and I believe the Terrans have failed in their responsibilities as defined by the Accords. I can see Commander Ndungane repeatedly trying to signal the others to leave the party. They’re too stubborn to listen to him.

Good.

“It’s a pity the Duke has left you to attend events on your own,” Taha says. “I’m sure we would get a more reasoned and reasonable approach from him.”

“And I assure you,” I reply, “both that I am perfectly capable of presenting our shared opinions, and also that he would put his opinions no less vociferously than I.”

“Really? Is he not embarrassed by the court cases against you on Newyan? I understand he was able to quash them here.”

Taha’s anger has made him careless. He’s just insulted Kernow. I can see the reactions of those who are close enough to hear. They turn and walk away. They’ve heard enough. It will ripple through the ball tonight, and the news will travel across the world tomorrow.

No one will remember that he started by talking about cases against me in Newyan.

Ivakin and Ndungane realize his mistake, but Taha is their leader and he’s desperate to get the last word in.

Whatever they think of me, this kind of confrontation is making me shake with adrenaline, but I’ve made my decisions. I’ve done what I can for Kernow, now it’s time for Newyan.

“I will enjoy proving those cases against me were brought fraudulently, entirely for the murderous political agenda of the Hajnal.”

Taha raises his eyes to the sky, presumably that I persist in my conspiracy theory about the Hajnal. I don’t care. I need him and his Commission of Enquiry on Newyan. I don’t need him to believe anything at this point. What I need is to irritate him to the point that he—finally—hurries to Newyan.

“You won’t be able to dismiss them from here,” Ivakin points out.

“I’ve no intention of attempting it from here,” I reply. “I intend to return to Newyan to ensure the Hajnal are stopped. Clearing my name is secondary to that.”

That silences them for a second. I can see they’re shocked. And Ivakin’s expression turns calculating.

“It’s possible the Commission of Enquiry may close the system to non-essential traffic,” she says, with an icy smile. “You would probably be best advised to come with us on the Annan, though you may need to apologize to the captain first.”

I know what’s going on in her head. There’s no likelihood that the Commission will close the system at all. She’s made some deal with the Newyan government, whether explicitly or not. If the Terrans take me there in the Annan, she believes that will give them some advantage with the authorities—see, we’re bringing back a criminal to face justice.

She might even believe that’s what she’s doing. I haven’t decided yet whether she’s genuinely mistaken or she knows the Hajnal is real and she’s just assuming she can use them for her own personal gain somehow.

“The Duchess will not require transport in the Annan.” Hwa steps up beside me.

“And who the nova are you?” Taha scowls at her.

“I am Hwa, representative of the Fragrant Stars Trading Company of Xian, and I will be prosecuting the administration of Newyan, on behalf of my company, for their deliberate attack on our freighter Shohwa.”

Taha and Ivakin bluster that Xian has no authority in Newyan.

Hwa waits patiently. While they’re still blustering, Ngungane’s eyes have narrowed, flicking to and fro between Hwa and me. He can see the resemblance and it’s probably put his brain into overdrive. He bears watching closely, this man. He’s certainly far sharper than Taha and Ivakin.

His colleagues come to the end of their little speeches about over-reaching jurisdiction, looking satisfied that they’ve put Hwa in her place.

“There is, of course, no way I can compel the Newyan authorities to attend my court,” Hwa says calmly. “Nevertheless, my resolution will bind all Fragrant Star traders, as well as anyone who wishes to do business with us in future.”

Taha still doesn’t understand, although Ivakin and Ndungane certainly do from their expressions: Fragrant Stars is the second or third largest Xian trading company, and Xian companies dominate pan-system trade. One major Xian company doesn’t make it a complete embargo, but it doesn’t have to be. The effect will ripple through the markets. Newyan businesses will face collapse.

Captain Taha sniffs dismissively. “Ridiculous,” he says. “Anyway, all such complaints and procedures would come under the aegis of the Commission. It’s all laid out in the Accords.”

“That only applies for matters arising after the Commission has been established, which it cannot be until you’re actually present,” Hwa replies. “My court will begin before your arrival.”

Ndungane stares at her as if she’s grown a second head.

“The Annan is the latest design of Terran light cruiser, and we are departing tomorrow,” he says. “You can’t credibly claim that some freighter is going to overtake us?”

Hwa smiles. “Oh, I don’t doubt your ship is very, very fast, Commander, and you’re proud of her. Don’t worry, we’ll try not to make you look too bad.”

 

 

 

Chapter 13

Kernow

 

An hour later, I’m changing into plain work clothes.

The Terrans left the ball soon after Hwa and I finished with them, Taha and Ivakin finally realising that they would find no friends on Kernow after our loud discussion.

I gave my heart-felt apologies to Lady Dowriel. She not only graciously accepted them, but embraced me in sight of others. The Terrans have made an error here that will not easily be erased.

It all went far better than I deserved, far more easily. Now I am alone and the tears are streaming down my face.

Rhos and Alexis are still at the ball with Talan and Moyle. They are excited to have my permission to be out until 11pm. They won’t notice until it’s too late.

The letter is in the envelope on the table, waiting for me to seal it. Waiting for me to end this little spell of incredible happiness that I stole from fate.

There’s only one thing left to do. The hardest thing of all.

My heart is coming apart in my chest.

I can’t do this.

The knocking on my door is the sound of nails in my coffin.

I have to go. I have to. Now.

Duty and honor.

It says that in the letter.

Quickly, so as not to give myself time to weaken, I pull the rings off my finger and put them in the envelope. Seal it with trembling fingers. Rest it against the vanity mirror where whoever comes in will see the name it’s addressed to on the front.

Duke Bleyd Tremayne.

His Name stands alone. It looks wrong.

I have to go.

I rush from the room carrying nothing but my old duffel bag. I will leave as I arrived.

Hwa and I run down the back stairs.

Outside, a car driven by a member of the Xian delegation takes us to the airport, where a special dispensation has been made for a shuttle to land.

It’s an unusual shuttle, tiny and fully capable of atmospheric flight. It has no need for the Skyhook, and has none of the facilities of that kind of shuttle. Hwa and I are bundled into a closed compartment barely bigger than ourselves, and strapped in.

The crew is scrabbling to meet their lift-off window. Five minutes later we hear the outer doors close and seal. The last sounds of people rushing through the narrow corridor cease and the warning lights come on.

The acceleration is brutal; there’s no room for compensators on this small a craft.

I welcome it.

I want the pain. I want the weight on my chest squeezing the life out of me. It’s what I deserve. And still, my heart is torn with such a longing I can barely breathe.

Duty and honor.

Two hours later the shuttle docks precisely into the sleek shape of the Xing Gerchu, the Xian Hegemony courier ship waiting for us.

As soon as the clamps lock onto the shuttle, I feel the Xing Gerchu move and its acceleration compensators start to operate.

Space is at a premium in the courier. The ship is all engines and compensators, with passengers a distinct afterthought. There aren’t even private cabins, just bunks we may take turns in. Hwa guides me to a reclining seat and presses a drink into my hand.

I haven’t stopped crying since I left the hotel. I’m still crying when exhaustion finally takes effect and I fall into a deep and troubled sleep, where every time I reach the end of the letter, the words at the beginning have started to fade and must be written again.

 

My Dearest Bleyd

I love you. I am more sorry than I can possibly express in words.

We met in the most improbable of circumstances and you risked everything to accept into your life a woman with nothing to her name. And I truly believed I had nothing, except my Name.

But as my grandfather took pains to remind me, there is more to a Name than the sound; that bearing a Name may sometimes be an honor and a privilege, but it is always to have a duty and a responsibility.

Generations of us have accepted the benefits of our heritage and fate has it that it falls to me to pay that sum back, in full if necessary.

It does not seem fair, but no one promised me that life would be fair, and if it could, I would not deserve it.

I am a coward, and in that failing, I lied to myself. Worse, I lied to you and our daughters.

When I thought all my family had died on Newyan, I felt absolved of the duty to fight against the conspiracy we now know as the Hajnal. My grandfather, in his premonition, had made me swear I would never abandon the family so long as one of them was alive, and surely, I fearfully justified to myself, their deaths released me to escape and save myself. I forgot the greater truth; that my duty was not limited to my family, but to everyone touched by us on Newyan, and to the whole of Newyan.

Worse, even that cowardly justification is false, for I have discovered that one cousin survived, at least until recently. Unlike me, she took arms against the Hajnal. Her example shames me for my cowardice.

I have a duty. I must return.

You, too, have a duty, and your duty binds you to this world, which I have come to love as you do. Do not abandon Kernow to pursue me, I beg of you. I am not worth that.

This is not an entirely hopeless cause that I must commit myself to.

The Terrans will install their Commission of Enquiry, and think that doing so absolves them of any further requirement. But the Commission has procedures, written in the Accords, which it may not vary, one of which is to make freely available all verified evidence submitted to them.

Everyone seems to have forgotten that my grandfather compiled evidence that will prove the existence of the conspiracy that murdered him and all but two of the family. I hid it on Newyan. All that remains is for me is to evade the Hajnal long enough to provide that evidence to the Commission.

After that? I have not thought too much on it. The Annan cannot do very much on its own, but I expect a full uprising. It may be that it will be my honor to lead it. The Hajnal have mercenaries on Newyan against such an event. It will be a bloodbath, and the Terrans will be forced to ship in marines from Earth. Once they have committed a military force, the political prevarications will end and the Hajnal will be revealed for all to see. I do not expect to survive that long.

There is one further matter of honor.

My grandfather’s evidence is in an encrypted quantum holographic storage unit. The same method that guarantees its veracity means that it cannot be delivered other than as a whole, and what it comprises is the truth of Newyan from the planet’s foundation. It is the bare, unalloyed truth of every government decision and responsibility since Xabat Abarran Aguirre landed.

And so, along with the evidence of the conspiracy, will come the shame that we, the Founding Families, led by the Aguirre, bound up and left in the high sierras, hoping that the ages would eventually erase it. Now all humankind will know, and the Names of the Founding Families of Newyan will become anathema; Aguirre foremost among them.

I could not bear the thought of you and Rhoswyn and Alexis sharing that burden. You should not have to, and the girls must not.

There will be pain. I beg you to do what you can to shield the girls and comfort them.

But pain will end. Shame attached to a Name does not heal.

My heart is breaking. I cannot ask for forgiveness, but only that you sometimes think kindly of me and what might have been, without the weight of our duty and honor, and without the stain upon the Name of Aguirre.

Attached is a legal form of annulment, which I have signed.

I release you from your vows.

Zarate

 

I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep before a touch on my face wakes me.

I open my eyes, and the shock that greets me reaches into my very soul.

Has everything I’ve tried to do been in vain?

 

 

# # # # # # #

Some of you do regularly feed back, and that feedback is vital to the process of writing a serial novel. If you haven’t said anything recently, I would appreciate even a few words. Enjoying it? Not enjoying it? Did I make you cry? No?

Don’t be shy. Go on. Type a few words now.

Bian’s Tale book 1 released

And here’s the problem with using WordPress as a medium for telling a book in episodes – I can’t make the blog ‘threaded’. So, when I have an announcement like this, it sits in the middle of the current episodes for A Threat Among the Stars.

Anyway – here’s the link for A Harvest of Lies – Bian’s Tale book 1:

<<https://www.amazon.com/Harvest-Lies-Athanate-Nineteenth-Century-ebook/dp/B07DBPK2B6/>&gt;

 

 

A Threat Among the Stars – Episode 5

A disrupted week. Thank you government legislation on GDPR, among others.

BITE BACK 6: Inside Straight. I have two *key* meetings between characters that just don’t feel right at the moment, so I’m holding back going to the beta readers with the first 1/4.

The Harvest of Lies, Bian’s Tale 1, is *still* just waiting for the cover.

ATAtS is obviously more complex that ANAtS, and feels slower to me. I can’t really tell from the feedback, because there’s been so little. Hint! Hint!

The daughter wants to write or co-write a novel/novella in this universe, but she’s got her hands rather full. We’ll see. She’s back on Sunday, and for a month this time (we think).

* * *

Chapter 10

Kernow

 

Talan and I look at each other in one of those moments of complete understanding.

We just know who’s making that noise, and it isn’t piskatellers.

Down in the cabin, we’d swung the table out from its normal stowed position to give us something to drape wet towels over.

Talan pushes it back, freeing the cover to the old smuggling compartment in the deck. It’s pushed open from below: Rhoswyn and Alexis are squeezed into the space so they can barely breathe.

“Out!”

As they clamber out quickly, Alexis is looking frightened and Rhoswyn stubborn.

I can barely think straight. I’m so furious at them and scared for them at the same time, I can hardly speak.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“I heard Warwick tell you about the piskatellers,” Rhos says. “It’s time I saw them too.”

“You are impossible!”

Shouting is upsetting Alexis, who is a good child and would never have dreamed of an escapade like this. What can I do about Rhos? I’ll have to call Gaude—they’ll be searching for her. What will Bleyd think when he finds out about this? I’m not fit to be her parent.

I’m getting no help from Talan and Hwa. They’ve found urgent duties on deck.

Rhoswyn’s face is set. Not sulking at least, but so determined.

“It’s what you would have done,” she says.

How many times did I confront my grandfather with that face and that sort of argument? Rhoswyn is my punishment for not respecting him.

“We’ll have to turn back,” I start, but the girls get support in the form of Morgen, who leans down into the cabin.

“Duchess, it’s not dangerous,” she says. “If these young ladies are the next generation, they should be introduced to the sea folk.”

“I haven’t… I mean, it’s the sort of thing I should discuss with the duke.”

“From what the last Morrach told me, when the duke first went out, he was younger than his daughter is now,” Morgen says, and leaves us.

Although it immediately disappears, I catch a look of triumph on Rhos’ face and I know I’ve lost this one. Both girls go all soft eyed and appealing, like they’ve practiced it.

“You obey what Morgen says immediately and without arguing,” I say and they nod their heads solemnly. “And there will be punishments and extra duties.”

More nodding.

“Get on deck and ask if you can climb up into the crow’s nest or something.”

“There isn’t—” Alexis begins, but Rhos drags her quickly out, leaving me to sit on the narrow bunk, with my head in my hands.

I love them so much it breaks my heart.

 

When I emerge later, it’s still dark and we’re so far out, I can’t see any lights from the land.

Morgen suddenly stands, letting go of the tiller. She tilts her head one way and then the other, like a predatory bird. Her body sways to the rhythm of the boat.

“Here! Here!” she says. Her eyes are shining. “They’re rising.”

Talan drops the sail and we fold it hastily.

My heart stutters at the sound of a splash, thinking Alexis has fallen in, but it’s Morgen. She’s  lying on her back, her hands waving languidly in the water.

There are strange lights in the water and the sea looks odd, almost as if it’s simmering.

“Come on,” Morgen calls. “Quickly.”

Rhos and Alexis jump in as if it were the swimming pool at Pyran Manor and not the deep ocean, out of sight of land.

With a varying degrees of trepidation, near panic in my case, the rest of us follow.

Morgen orders us into a circle, then gets us to lie on our backs in the water and hold hands. Our heads point inwards and I have Rhos on my right and Alexis in my left.

It’s much warmer than I thought. The water is calm; there are no waves, just the stirring movement that stretches as far as I can see. My chest gets tighter and tighter: irrational fears of drowning, flashbacks of the undertow sucking me down, visions of creatures with teeth rising from the depths.

“Be calm,” Morgen says.

It sounds like she’s speaking in my ear, but she’s on the other side of the circle, and she can’t have spoken to me because she’s murmuring some sort of chant.

But oddly, it does help me to calm down.

And nothing happens. I don’t drown. Creatures don’t emerge and eat us. Instead we gently drift in our circle, around and around, while the sky above grows lighter.

There are sounds; the wind, and a sort of echo to Morgen chant, like a far off crowd.

What are they saying?

Too indistinct to tell, and it’s too warm and comfortable to worry about it.

I close my eyes and drift.

 

Chapter 11

 

There’s a cold, cold wind coming off the mountains. Up here, where it seethes through the endless pine forests, it has a smell you can never forget; lemon peel and fresh earth and balsam.

And it has a sound. You can never forget that sound either. The wind sighs secrets; whispers old, forgotten stories.

I know exactly where I am. I’m in long-abandoned Berriaren, hidden away, high in the Sierra Arija on Newyan. I’m walking the black stone corridors of the Jauregia, dripping seawater, shivering.

There’s nothing but stone here. Wood and weave has long gone to dust. Rust has eaten metals from the inside. Only the timeless stone endures. Even the great pines hold their ranks away from the ancient buildings.

The tall windows of the corridors I walk past have lost their glass. They stare with sightless eyes over the great Plaza Nagusia, over the sleeping ruin of crumbling columns and fountains, to the distant, somber Auzitegi, the High Court, that sits opposite the palace.

Nothing but stone here… stone and ghosts.

How many stubborn Aguirre feet trod this corridor, wore these dips into the stones? How many besides mine? How many pass this way like phantoms?

This corridor, any corridor in this level, will lead me to the Harrera, the main reception room, where visitors came to make requests of the Aguirre when this world was newly settled.

That’s where I find Her; Her presence a light in the darkness, yet wreathed in shadows.

I kneel. “My Lady.”

My Lady of Sorrows moves, a floating dance of black veils and haze. I see a small smile pass briefly across Her face.

“We are not what you make us, Duchess. You have these images much in your mind.”

I seek such sorrows as I may only bear with Her help.

“We are not what you seek. We cannot speak like this. Come…”

She shimmers and now the face that looks down on me is the one that I saw every day in the house where I was born. His portrait hung facing the main door. Xabat Abarran Aguirre, first of the Family to step onto Newyan. The man who made Aguirre a Name Among the Stars. He has features like a hawk, and I was always afraid of him.

He shakes his head, shimmers, fades, and in his place my grandfather looks disapprovingly down at me. I was afraid of him, too.

Another shimmer.

Shohwa, with her depthless eyes. Not so much afraid, but…

Another shimmer.

“Duchess Tremayne.” I know it’s not really her, but the shock startles the greeting from me.

“We only wear her face. You are Duchess Aguirre-Tremayne,” Keren replies and nods as if satisfied. “Come.”

I follow her down the stairs to the courtyard, where open arches channel the wind and tattered ghosts throng the echoing square. And out. Out into the Plaza Nagusia, to the great central fountain, its basin choked with dust and dreams.

“Why here?” Keren says, turning around and holding her arms up to encompass the ruins around us.

She has taken an image from the surface of my mind, and my mind has been lingering on abandoned Berriaren ever since I found the Terrans are intent on a Commission of Enquiry for Newyan.

“That building,” I say pointing across from where we stand. “The Auzitegi. That was the Court of Disputes when the Founding Families built this city.”

Keren frowns at it: the columned facade, the heavy-browed, blank eyed stare, the shouting mouth of the doorless main entrance. The Auzitegi is not an attractive building.

“You seek there for justice?” she asks.

I laugh bitterly. “That’s where people went for justice when it failed elsewhere. That’s where I went and where I must return. If I have the strength.”

The sea folk have brushed my mind. Some memories they have touched, but some are hidden from them, just as justice is hidden in the Auzitegi.

Keren waits to see if I will explain, but I do not.

“No matter,” she says after a while, with a sigh. “Few truly seek justice, Duchess. I honor you for that. Fewer take it on themselves to deliver it. But I feel your mind is made up on this. What is life without honor, and honor without duty?”

“My grandfather’s words.”

My eyes blur at the sharp edge of the wind.

“Learned at his own grandfather’s knee. As that grandfather did in turn, no doubt, all the way back to Xabat Abarran Aguirre who laid the foundations of that palace.” Keren eyes the Jauregia.

“The Jauregia is just a big house,” I say, “not really a palace.”

“Yet they called it a palace and laid the burden of leadership on your family. Except they called it honor and duty.”

“And shame.”

That knowledge, they have touched. I can tell they know why we bear this shame.

“It is not your shame,” she says. “At worst, not yours alone to bear.”

I know she is telling the truth as she perceives it, and that she has the wisdom of many generation of humans she has spoken with, but I am the first from Newyan. She cannot understand why the shame of the Founding Families does not diminish by being shared, nor why revealing it will break everything.

“You are wrong in other things, too,” she says. “As is your mind-meshed sister.”

Hwa enters the plaza and joins us.

“I’m sorry, Zara.”

“What for?”

“I wasn’t going to tell you. I thought if you knew the truth—”

“What truth?”

But Keren speaks before she can answer. “Look,” she says.

The dust in the basin of the great fountain stirs and begins to spin. It swirls out around us and when it clears, we’re on a hill. It’s the scene of a desperate fight and we’re surrounded by bodies.

There are two women left alive in all this.

The older one staggers to her feet. Better old ghosts than new ones, she says.

There’s the sound of a distant aircraft. I can see the women’s faces. They’re both streaked with dirt. The younger seems familiar, even with her head bowed down so I can’t see her face.

What is this I’m seeing?

Something Hwa knows about? Something that has actually happened? On Newyan?

The older one pushes the younger away.

Go now, she says. Run and hide, girl. Run where they will not follow. Hide where they will not look. The Goddess of Mercy guide your steps and hold you in her hands, Kattalin Espe Aguirre.

The girl turns, I see her face, and suddenly Keren, Hwa and I are standing beside the dead fountain in the ghost city of Berriaren again.

Kattalin!

“She’s alive?” My question comes out as a croak.

It’s Hwa who answers.

“Yes, as far as the Xian delegation on Newyan know. She survived a battle with the mercenary troops the Hajnal deployed near the city of Cabezón. The mercenaries were reassigned and there has been no news of her capture by local police forces.”

My little cousin Kat, who was sent away to Valdivia to avoid my bad influence. Still alive.

“I’m not released from my oath,” I mutter.

In my mind’s eye, my grandfather is looming over me during one of those arguments about what was happening on Newyan. He was berating me for refusing to believe that there was a force seeking to undermine and destroy the foundations of our society.

Swear to me, he shouts. Swear to me that you will never abandon the family so long as one of them is alive.

I swear, I shout in reply, and he goes silent.

Then that will suffice for me. He turns on his heel and marches out, leaving me with the usual trembling confusion of pride and anger.

Hwa takes my hand, and in that moment, our minds lock back together in the way they did when I hosted her in her ghostly quantum state.

We are, literally, of one mind.

“That was a true vision of what happened on that hillside,” Keren says with a wave at the dusty fountain basin. “Communicated in your way from spy drone to the Xian delegation, to courier ship and so to Hwa. But that is not what we are valued for.”

The dust in the fountain basis begins to spin again as if stirred by a whirlwind.

“The two of you are both meshed and individual. Successfully. That is what so fascinated us to begin with. So much that the shoal who saved you from drowning offered itself to the eldest shoals, that all might share this experience.”

I sense behind her words a merging, like the stately collisions of galaxies. But a loss of identity? Do the sea folk feel identity as we do?

“Morgen called you the Great Old Ones,” Hwa says.

Keren nods her head.

“We are no longer the Great Old Ones,” she says, as the dust-storm envelopes us all. I can’t see her any more, and her voice is now the voice of the wind, ever rising. “You are the agents of change. You have brought an end to a cycle that has lasted thousands of your years. You have brought us strange tales too deep and wide even for the Old Ones. There is now one voice in the deep. One dreamer of what may be, if you fail.”

 

Kernow: I’m on foot, masked and walking silently through the outskirts of Marazion with others behind me. Tense, alert. The city looks empty, but we know that can be deceiving. There are basements where the berserkers lurk, and they can boil out at any time. We wouldn’t be here, but the crops are failing again. Somewhere in the city there will be supplies. Hidden away in the back of some shop: fresh seed, uncontaminated with the viruses; tinned food; medicines.

It’s filthy. I can still smell it through the breathing filters. The worst of the stench, from when so many died, has gone, but berserkers foul the streets and there are still a lot of them around. The viruses rob them of all reasoning. Berserkers exist only to kill and eat anything living that’s not in their small, shrinking tribes. In another few years they’ll be gone, but we need the supplies now.

Something stirs way down the street and we freeze. Safeties click off. We really don’t want to kill any, not because they have any resemblance to humans, we’re long past that, but the noise of killing them will bring more. We don’t have an infinite supply of ammunition.

 

Newyan: Wrapped in triple layers against the cold, I walk around to check the fortifications again, worrying that it’s been so long since the last attack. We’re secure where we are: heavy neo-c walls, a deep well, a warehouse stocked with fuel, food, and clothing. Weapons and ammunition. A cleared area two hundred paces wide all around the fort.

Our supplies make us a target. Nothing grows out there after the kinetic bombardment—it’s a grey, freezing desert. Even the snow is still the color of ash. Of course, I’d like to take in some of the starving people from outside, but we’ve got just enough fuel for the hydroponics, and just enough food until the hydroponics start to produce an amount needed to feed us regularly. If we take any more people in, we’ll all die.

No one is coming to save us. There hasn’t been a whisper on the radios. No spaceships above with supplies. Nothing. We have to save ourselves. In the end, we might be the only humans left for all we know.

I open one of the firing holes and take a rapid look outside.

Movement.

I sound the alarm.

 

I don’t wake up at any specific point. Hwa and I are both locked together in the horror of the possible future that the sea folk have shown us.

Morgen understands. She and Talan have got everyone back on board the Low Lady and we’re heading for home with a following wind. No one else seems affected quite the way we are. Rhos and Alexis are quiet, but whisper excitedly up on the prow. Talan looks sad and thoughtful. Morgen is silent.

Half of me wants to go back and ask more questions.

This can’t depend on Hwa and me alone.

What did Keren mean about me doing something, but not actually doing it myself? Who else could I call on?

The whole night seems to blur.

But there is no going back. Only forward, whatever the price.

It’s a fine morning, sunny, with clear skies and a cool wind. We sail into Stormhaven harbor. Moyle’s there to greet us. He gives the girls a piece of his mind before loading us all into his truck.

There’s a small crowd in the town square and we have to stop and wait.

Hwa and I are blinking. I know exactly what she’s thinking. There are people out enjoying the sunshine. The town smells of the sea and fresh fish and boat varnish. Everything is clean and neat. Everyone is well fed. No berserkers hide in the houses. No foraging parties, masked against viruses and grimly marching along the quay looking for supplies.

To make it all more bizarre, the reason for the crowd is there’s a mummer’s play in the square. The actors all wear tall, conical masks, woven from twigs, that balance on coils of rope around their necks. Sea shells are used to make huge eyes on the masks, and their costumes are covered with thousands more sea shells.

Everything feels as if it has another meaning beneath it.

“I’m still dreaming,” I say, and Hwa nods.

 

A Threat Among the Stars – Episode 4

Again, a bit shorter than intended. Busy times with daughter back.

BITE BACK 6: Inside Straight. Getting close to sending the first quarter to the beta readers. I’ve written quite a bit more than that, but there are a couple of scenes which I’ve left only sketched out, or I’m not happy with.

The Harvest of Lies, Bian’s Tale 1, is still just waiting for the cover.

So Many Doors is out now. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CXRLG6L/
It’s an excellent murder mystery set in Africa in 1948.

* * *

Chapter 8

Kernow

 

We arrive at a deserted Cardu airfield. Given how tired I am, Talan drives the truck.

At the headland crossroads, the road splits—straight for Cardu, right for Stormhaven Wyck and the harbor, left for the bay.

Talan turns left.

“Hey?”

“Morgen wanted the Low Lady brought around to the bay,” Talan says. “Wants to keep this quiet.”

Minutes later, as we zig-zag down the switchback dirt track to the isolated bay, I can see the boat as a dark shape on a sea turned to rippled silver by the light of the moons. It riding to anchor beyond the surf.

“We’re going to have to swim out?”

Talan grins and nods.

Great. That will wake me up.

Talan parks where the track levels out just short of the beach. With the engine and headlights switched off, the horizon seems darker and wider.

There are three-quarter length wet suits in the back of the truck and we strip and change quickly. I’m shivering, as much in anticipation of what’s ahead as the chill.

The wind is offshore, and in fact, it’s cool but not really cold. It smells of late summer – dusty harvests and sweet berry hedges, ripe fruit and sun-dried hay bales. I try and block out the messages the wind is bringing me of autumn duties abandoned and concentrate instead on tonight.

What will Morgen Golan be like?

Sea witch? Wizened old woman stirring a cauldron? That’s foolish, but she’s got to be something unusual. How do you become sea witch for a fishing village?

“She’s waiting on the boat?” I ask Talan.

She shakes her head, which is difficult because she’s making a braid of her hair.

Hwa points. “She’s not that crazy woman, is she?”

My eyes follow her gesture.

Out in the silvery sea, short of where the Low Lady waits, the waves make long, rolling shadows as wide as the bay and tall as the truck. When they’re not fishing or harvesting, Stormhaven folk come to the bay for swimming… and surfing.

And yes, there’s a crazy person out there, riding the midnight waves, wild hair sprayed out like a headdress behind her.

“Yup. That’s Morgen.” Talan is grinning again.

As well as apparently a serious addiction to surfing, Morgen has talent. It’s difficult to see her clearly while she rides in the curl of the wave, but just as it all starts to break, she crests it and pirouettes effortlessly, before letting the remaining swell float her gently toward the beach.

So exactly what kind of person becomes a sea witch? A surfer.

The woman hops into the water as the beach shelves up and carries her board to where Talan is trotting down to greet her.

They hug, laughing. Old friends. No wonder Talan was confident that Morgen would take her call.

She’s no old crone, but the sea witch is unusual. It’s difficult to be sure in moonlight, but I think her hair is red-gold and fine, a little like Rhoswyn’s. Thank the Goddess that Rhoswyn’s not here to see her, because Morgen’s solution to untameable hair is to braid it through sea shells. Her hair has a mass and it clicks as she moves. She’s wearing a wet suit like ours, but hers is decorated in patterns of dizzy swirls.

Talan introduces us. The sea witch is polite and speaks with the soft Arvish tones I expected.

It’s also difficult to see her eyes. Trying to peer at them without being rude, I get the strange feeling I’m looking into a star field, like it is with Hwa sometimes.

Morgen and Hwa greet each other with equal interest.

“I don’t want to give offence,” I say looking out to sea, “but we’re expected back by the afternoon. I don’t know what this meeting entails.”

Morgen raises her head as if scenting the state of the sea. “Can’t say as being busy would offend them,” she replies. “Should be good on timing too: we’ll be running ’fore the wind both ways. Best be about it, though. We can talk more on the boat.”

She puts her board in the back of the truck and we swim out to the Low Lady, a long effort which tells me I’ve spent too much time sitting down in an office.

On board, there’s no time to rest to begin with. Anchors and sails need raising, and then we take turns drying ourselves while Morgen steers. There are some salty windbreakers in the cabin which the three of us put on, but Morgen doesn’t appear to feel the cold.

The first part of her prediction is correct—the wind is steady and we make about ten knots heading straight out. I’ll be interested if her prediction is right about the wind on the way back in.

We settle down into the course but Morgen shows no sign of stopping. The Low Lady was anchored much further out than where I was when I had my life saved by a piskateller, and we’re quickly further out even than when I left an offering for them.

“They don’t mind being called piskatellers,” Morgen says in answer to my question. “They don’t have names that we could easily use, but sea folk is as good as any for them all together.”

“The one who saved us doesn’t have a name?” Hwa asks.

I forget, when I think of the piskatellers saving me, they actually saved both of us.

“No name or number.” Morgen sees our confusion and continues. “The sea folk aren’t what you’d call unitary beings. There is no ‘one’ who saved you.”

“I saw…” I begin.

But what I saw was the Lady of Sorrows. A projection, as oxygen starvation induced hallucinations in my brain.

“A kind of mirror of what’s in your mind,” Morgen fills in the silence. “They share your thoughts, take images from your mind. That’s how they talk to us.”

I shiver; nothing to do with the temperature.

“Maybe that’s the reason they want to talk to us again,” Hwa says.

Very few people know what happened with Hwa; the way she was downloaded from the Xian delegation’s servers into my brain. The whole process and its similarity to the sort of mental invasion used by Jackers still terrifies me. I’d just about got used to having Hwa sharing my head, when Shohwa separated us. Now it seems the piskatellers want to use the same method to talk to me, by burrowing into my brain.

I owe them for saving my life, otherwise I’d turn the boat back now.

Hwa and Morgen are still talking.

“It may be you’d want to think of them as shoals,” Morgen is saying. “Younger shoals merge and split and merge again with the seasons and the need of the Tellings. But the old shoals keep their cores, even as they take and give parts of themselves, they keep what land folk would say was their identity. The blue water shoals are people like you or me. The Great Old Ones out in the deep…” she shrugs.

I heard the weight of the word as she said it. “Tellings?”

“The sea folk have a need to speak.” She grimaces. “All rivers flow down to the sea. The weight of water cannot be borne. It must be released back to feed the land.”

Her phrases have the cadence of a recitation. She shrugs again. “That’s how they describe it.”

“I don’t understand,” Hwa says.

“Everything that happens in or near the oceans, everyone who visits the sea folk, all tell them their tales, big or small. These tales pass among the sea folk, mingle and merge with other tales, grow or shrink. Then they have to tell them back. It’s what makes the sea folk what they are.”

Talan had been silent so far. Now she speaks: “I always thought of them like the weather monitoring system. After all, that’s one of the things they do for us. The lesser shoals all over the oceans sense the changes, and pass the information to the Old Ones who use it to predict the weather and pass on warnings back to us. Like our satellites and weather monitoring stations pass information to the central computers to produce the forecasts then send to us.”

Except the piskatellers are much better at it.

“Hold on a moment,” I say as another thought catches up. “Shoals? Like fish? Don’t we…”

“Yes, we eat the individuals, which doesn’t harm the shoal. The sea folk and the land folk who know honor each other in this way.”

I shudder. Goddess, that sounds so strange. I’m not even sure whether I’ll be able to eat fish pie again. And we honor them? I’d heard burials at sea are popular on the coast…

“But you two,” Morgen is saying, “you’ve brought them tales from far away. The sea folk will be hungry for more.”

Another shudder. Hungry mouths in the water. What have I let myself in for?

“That, and I guess they may have something to say back to you, for you to carry—”

She stops, startled by the noise of something banging against the wood of the boat. It’s coming from below us.

 

 

Chapter 9

Newyan

 

Kattalin jerks awake and immediately freezes in position, heart racing.

No one can see me.

She’s lying under a camo-net, which is itself hidden under a leafy branch. She looks and breathes through a filter of twigs and leaves. She’s as invisible as she can make herself in the electromagnetic spectrum from IR through to UV. She has no electronic equipment switched on. The plasma rifle ran out of charge a long way back and she buried it. She’s emitting nothing but breath and heartbeat. And smell, no doubt.

A saying from a truly ancient holovid, reputedly older than presence of humans on this planet, drifts through her mind.

It is said a Shaolin priestess can walk through walls. Looked for, she cannot be seen. Listened for, she cannot be heard. Touched, she cannot be felt.

She snorts quietly and wonders whether those priestesses ever had to hide from dogs. Dogs are what she’s really worried about now.

The Syndacians had seekers, instruments which were almost as good as dogs, but Ohana had been right; they weren’t really interested in chasing her into the mountains.

What they had done instead was to inform the villages in the hills.

No doubt, the message had been about a dangerous, unstable criminal heading your way.

Each little village up here had Sierra Rangers; two or three fit young men of the community who supplemented their income with part-time police work and environmental protection duties. And most of them had big mountain dogs capable of fighting the Hartzak, if one of them should come down from the high ranges.

Hidden from view, she runs a sweaty hand over her face. She’s heading to those high ranges. She wonders if that’s a sign of madness, but she’s become obsessed by Ohana’s words: Someone must live. Someone must know.

She needs to keep moving. She shouldn’t have fallen asleep, but she’s run out of stim tabs and her body is trying to compensate.

Now she doesn’t know if she slept while a whole group of Rangers walked past.

She’s looking down a gentle slope at a dirt road. The road is long and straight. The cleared area is wide. Very wide. There’s no place to hide when crossing.

It seems wider every time she looks at it.

She should have crossed straight away. It’s not as if she’s in sight of a village.

All she’d intended was to pause, to see if anyone was coming. But she’d felt sleep dragging her down. She’d had just enough time to cover herself.

She knows she can’t go on like this, but she thinks this road must be the last one, connecting the last couple of villages, surely. Surely. No one lives higher up the mountains than this—they say the high sierra is empty except for ghosts and shame. And animals.

How appropriate she’s heading up there, dragging ghosts and guilt behind her.

She has made herself a bow and arrows. She’s not bad up to about thirty paces, but it’s more for show than anything. She will not kill any Newyan, even if they’re trying to kill her. She’s not sure if she can kill even a Syndacian now.

Her bow will be useless against the Hartzak too, and stalking the little bouncing deer that dart between the trees is too hard. No, the best results will come from traps, when she has time to set them. She can’t afford the time yet, not anywhere near a village.

Berries, leaves and roots. Water from streams. That has to be enough to keep her going.

And she must be going now. She can’t rest here, and lack of it is making her delirious.

She’s about to move when she hears distant voices on the road.

Two rangers, and a dog.

There’s no point running away now—they’ll definitely see her if she moves. She just has to hope her camouflage works, and the dog…

Well, there’s nothing left to hope for with the dog, except maybe it’s too old to scent her.

She’d pray, but she’s been too ashamed to speak to the Goddess after the battle.

She’s so tired. She lets her head sink back down until she can see nothing but a thin strip of road.

The voices get closer. She has to listen hard over the pounding of her own heart. The men are talking about a girl in the next village. If they’re supposed to be looking for her, they really aren’t trying.

They walk into the strip of the road she can see and her heart stops. The dog is a huge young animal with a tawny ruff—a real mountain dog. He must knows she’s there. He’s looking straight at her.

He can’t see me. He can’t see me.

She doesn’t breathe. Doesn’t blink.

The rangers pass out of her line of sight. She closes her eyes, breathes again. Listens to them wandering down the road with their dog until finally she can’t hear them.

The dog doesn’t care about her. As far as he’s concerned he’s just out for a walk unless something dangerous threatens his humans. And she’s not dangerous any more.

Or maybe the Goddess is still looking down on her.

She gathers her camouflage net, sweeps dead leaves to hide where she’s been lying and crosses the road, swift and grey and quiet as a phantom.

 

 

What’s up – new serials – writing progress

New Serial Books

It’s been too quiet, too long here. I’ve been busy, as explained below, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel. So this post is firstly to warn you that a direct sequel to A Name Among the Stars will commence here on Friday 27^th April.

ANAtS has been a great success, and so many reviews have gently nudged me for another story featuring ‘Zara and the gang’, that I have outlined book 2 (project name A Threat Among the Stars). It follows on shortly after the closing scene of book 1. Zara has returned to Kernow and is trying to get her head around the role and responsibilities of being Duchess Aguirre-Tremayne, thankfully leaving the resolution of the Hajnal Conspiracy to the Terran authorities. But a Terran warship en route to her old home planet of Newyan stops on a ‘courtesy call’ at Kernow, and Zara finds that the anticipated resolution is far from accomplished. She must visit Newyan, where the conspirators are still in power, and where she has serious charges laid against her. To survive, she will have to beg more assistance from Shohwa, putting the Xian Self Actuated Entity’s great secret at risk, which could in turn threaten the peace between the Xian Hegemony and the rest of humanity. Then, even before she has a chance to leave Kernow, an unexpected summons arrives. She can’t afford the diversion, but she owes her life to the mysterious beings that live in the oceans of Kernow, and she must honor their request for a meeting with her and Hwa, out in the deeps, where the Great Old Ones dream their strange and terrifying dreams…

Here. Weekly episodes. Cliffhangers. Starting Friday 27^th April. Fasten your seatbelts.

 

Matoka

Serial books, plural – this is the other one. This ‘sequel’ (project name Matoka) I have outlined is in the same universe, at the same time, but a different cast of characters. I anticipate the two will meet up in another book’s time. Matoka will be released on one or more of the specialist serial novel platforms such as Wattpad and Royal Road. I have no schedule for this as yet.

Sam’s a solo merchanter, stranded in a dystopian city run by criminal gangs, on a marginally habitable moon, out in the depths of the Frontier; the realm of space where the laws and morals of Inner World society have all the substance of dreams and fairy tales. She has a dangerous plan to steal from one of the criminal gangs, repair her ship Matoka and get the hell away, but out here in the Frontier, plans seldom survive contact with harsh reality.

Because Slick Eddie can’t keep it in his pants, even on his wedding day, it turns out Sam has to save the girl, only to find that she’s a sex slave belonging to a senior member of the bride’s criminal gang. There’s no chance for Sam to carry out her quiet electronic heist in the middle of what may be a war between gangs instead of an alliance by marriage, let alone repair her ship and escape a system quarantined by a pirate fleet hunting for a piece of Xian battle tech so valuable they’ll kill everyone to retrieve it.

Can Sam, an escaped sex slave, an obsolete cyborg soldier and a old freighter held together by duct tape and prayers, defeat the criminal gangs and evade the pirate fleet?

 

I’ve been busy…

I have completed editing The Harvest of Lies and the text is now done. I had a lot of feedback, partly because I used two beta reader groups and this forum to gather it. The second beta reader group my daughter recruited for me from young, Asian females. Given that Bian is a young, Asian female and my standard beta group has only one person matching that description, I thought I wanted more, and I have to say, it was an interesting project!

I’ll talk more about The Harvest of Lies in a post at another time. Suffice to say, it’s not the book I thought I was going to write and it’s not particularly ‘written to market’.

I am still working on the cover. No one has ever done anything like this, so standard covers just seem to miss the message.

I’ve also nearly completed editing my late mother’s unpublished book, So Many Doors. All that remains is some foreshadowing, a final polish and a read-through from people in the anticipated demographic. It’s a cosy British mystery set in 1950s colonial Africa.

Jessica and I are also working on a booster re-launch for A Name Among the Stars. This will include a video trailer being made by her, and a social media promotion of the printed book. All the sort of stuff we should have done for the initial launch, but schedules didn’t allow.

 

Writing progress

I’ve been writing Bite Back 6 – Inside Straight. Putting this at the bottom of the list of tasks I’ve been working on does not mean it’s the lowest priority. Quite the reverse. It has been going well, and I guess I’m about 1/5 of the way through. The whole book gives Amber’s world a twist, and writing it is giving me chills. I hope for release at the end of summer, but you all know how hopeless I am at estimations this early in a project.

Writing Inside Straight is my main weekday 9-5 priority. The serials remain weekend entertainment and writing exercises for me, as it was for A Name Among the Stars.