Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 75

Tuyo World Companion: possible cover

Okay, so I just put this together myself using Canva. What do you think?

I tried to get a black border all the way around, but that was startlingly non-easy. And this border came out double, as you see. But it looks all right, I think?

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If You Need a Prompt for an SF Thriller

Scientific discovery gets kind of government seal of approval

Known as CNEOS 2014-01-08, the meteor measured only 1.5 feet wide and was hurtling toward Earth at about 45 kilometers per second, well over 100,000 mph, which is a clue that it’s not from this solar system. The meteor ignited into a fireball on Jan. 8, 2014, when it entered Earth’s atmosphere off the coast of Papua, New Guinea, with the energy equivalent to about 110 metric tons of TNT. It may have sprinkled fragments into the Pacific Ocean. CNEOS 2014-01-08 is now the third interstellar object that has been confirmed, along with Oumuamua and the comet 2I/Borisov. … the researchers are currently looking into an ocean expedition to search the ocean floor off the coast of Papua New Guinea for pieces of the 2014 meteor.

“If we were able to recover any fragments from this meteor, it would represent the first time that humanity has ever touched a rock from beyond our solar system,” Siraj said.

This reminds me strongly of the Egyptian sarcophagus — I mean the giant creepy black one that had been closed for 2000 years. The one that obviously constituted a prompt for a fantasy thriller. Or maybe a horror novel.

In the same way, here we are, an interstellar meteor that struck Earth and (probably) broke up into pieces. Or maybe not! Maybe if you go poking around on the ocean floor off the coast of Papua New Guinea, you’ll find something that didn’t break up in the atmosphere … This is making me think of the movie Alien vs Predator. Don’t go poking at the mysterious object that crashed to Earth!

***

As a writer, I will add, that headline would be more effective this way: Scientific discovery gets government seal of approval, kind of.

Stick the fun part of the headline at the end to increase visibility and add coolness to the whole headline!

Giant black sarcophagus to be opened Tuesday: “Not creepy at all,” claims lead researcher.

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Check this out:

Cover Reveal: Song of the Lioness Quartet 40th-Anniversary Reissue

How about that? A 40th Anniversary edition! Wow. This isn’t as striking for me as for a lot of readers, I’m sure, because somehow I missed these books in the 80s and 90s. I didn’t personally read anything by Tamora Pierce until I was an adult. Even so, look at that, a whole generation of fantasy fans probably grew up with Alanna as their introduction to fantasy.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the books, Atheneum Books for Young Readers is reissuing special editions, the covers of which are seen here for the first time. The anniversary editions include hardcover and paperback versions out on August 29, a reissue of the paperback boxed set with new art, and the first-ever hardcover boxed set, available September 26. All editions will include an afterword by Pierce.

This is certainly a nice thing to offer fans.

With the new cover designs, Jimenez said, the goal was not only to acknowledge Alanna as an iconic character but to focus on the power and strength that makes her so beloved. “Many of the previous covers for this series have either gone with a traditional ‘medieval fantasy’ aesthetic or have used a more symbolic approach that doesn’t visually center Alanna herself,” she said. “Designer Rebecca Syracuse and I wanted to show Alanna in strong, dynamic poses that cue how epic her adventures really are. And our incredible cover artist, Yuta Onoda, was right on the same wavelength with us.” The books “keep becoming relevant in new ways,” she added, and the new covers reflect the message that these stories are for “anyone who believes they can be something more than what society tells them they’re supposed to be.”

They’re nice covers, MG style of course, but very appropriate for that category. I like them, especially the last, Lioness Rampant. Somehow that image just really appeals to me.

There’s an interview at the link as well as all the covers, so certainly click through if you’re a Tamora Pierce fan.

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Update: Puppies are only getting more distracting, but progress is somehow being made anyway

First, the distractions:

Leda’s pups, I think three weeks old in this picture. The one most visible is Girl 1, the puppy I am most likely to keep from this litter. I am so ready for a puppy, and man, I am short of girls.

Below, the little ones again — here, they have moved from the living room playpen/crate to the actual puppy room. At three weeks, they need more space, more interesting things to do and explore. That will help them develop mentally and physically. Therefore the move. That cardboard box behind them is a den — if you squint you can see the opening. Very tiny puppies sometimes like a den to retreat into if they hear or see something scary. Or if they get cold, they may go into the den. As a plus, going AWAY from the den to do their business is a puppy instinct that should be kicking on just about now, and providing a den plus plenty of space helps that instinct come in properly and therefore assists in housetraining.

Here, the tiny ones are meeting Aunt Naamah. She is one hundred percent reliable. She won’t hurt them on purpose AND she won’t hurt them accidentally. Morgan is like this too. Just absolutely super with tiny puppies. You can’t always count on that, so it’s great to have adult dogs who are perfectly reliable with puppies.

Below, Uncle Conner meets Morgan’s Blenheim puppy. Actually I guess he’s Great-Uncle Conner, but gosh, that makes him sound old and he’s only six. Nevertheless, he’s Naamah’s father, so yep, Great-Uncle. Look how cute he is! He wants the puppy to chase him. This Blen puppy is SUPER confident. He’s not very fazed at all by Conner barking and bouncing at him. Little Blen boy would be … I hate to say this … but he would be a FANTASTIC show dog. Have I mentioned that I’m extremely tempted to keep him? In theory I have one puppy available for a pet home, but if I keep this little guy, I don’t, and wow, I am SO tempted. He has a lovely broad head at this age and his bite is correct so far. Honestly too early to evaluate structure, but there’s no reason he shouldn’t be excellent.

Trundling toward me outside. Honestly, what a great puppy! I think he is going to be a bit independent and something of a handful. The Tri boy back there isn’t heading toward me right that second, but in fact I think he is very person-oriented. He doesn’t so far want to explore. He wants to follow a person. He’s always moving toward a person, very seldom heading out and away. That’s a nice personality as long as he’s not shy. Which he isn’t, he’s quite bold for his age, it’s just the Blen puppy makes every other puppy in the world seem at least a little hesitant. The first move toward independence is supposed to develop about seven weeks, but I think it already has in the Blen puppy.

Wouldn’t Anara Quintessential be a great name for a show dog?

While on the subject of show dogs, check this out!

This is a boy from Morgan’s previous litter, full brother to Morgan’s current pair of boys — his name is Gimli and here he, right after winning his first major in the show ring this past weekend! Go, Gimli! Good job, Camille! His real name is Owain Lord Of Moria At Your Service, and I am pretty sure he will eventually be a “well-balanced dog” — that is, with a title at both ends. (Champion goes in the front, performance titles at the back of the name, hence the jokes about “well-balanced dogs.”)

One more dog pic from this weekend:

Morgan and Naamah are not sure what they think of Rover, my brand-new robot vacuum cleaner. I have thought about a robot vacuum cleaner for years, for obvious reasons. My primary vacuum cleaner jammed, again, and I can’t get it unjammed, again. My secondary vacuum cleaner is still functional, but I’m tired of taking my primary vacuum cleaner to the shop in town and paying for them to fix it. So this seemed like a good time to try a robot vacuum cleaner, especially since the prices have come down quite a bit since the first time I though about getting one.

So far I’m pretty optimistic about Rover. I have been following him around watching as he swooshes up leaf bits and the first oak flowers — man, I hate those things — and (this is probably not a surprise) dog hair.

The dogs are not super sure they like Rover, but I am cautiously optimistic that I am going to LOVE Rover.

Rover is filling up his teensy little dust compartment quite briskly. However, the real issue is that the entire downstairs is carpeted and, when placed downstairs, Rover is also picking up enough old ground-in dog hair to jam his roller. I actually think this is great! Who knew Rover would have powerful enough suction to do that? Also, it made me figure out how to take out and clean the roller, which fortunately is not at all difficult. (I hate hate hate having to figure out new technological appliances, so I am always really happy when an engineer somewhere makes something super easy).

I have a small scissors that is perfect for the task of cutting the pet hair so I can pull it out of the roller, and already Rover is jamming up MUCH more slowly. He has gotten stuck just once, not sure why since it looked to me like he should be able to back and turn and get out of that situation, but at the moment, I’m only running Rover when I’m home to keep an eye on him. I’m docking him downstairs, though that is not the primary living area, because I do not want the delicate power cord exposed to little puppy teeth. I’m fine with running Rover upstairs only at night, or only when I’m there to supervise, whatever turns out to be most useful.

Oh! I’m also finally able to leave the mothers unsupervised upstairs at night and go down to sleep in a real bed instead of on the couch! The couch is not bad — good thing since I slept there for the past five weeks — but I am still happy about being able to go back downstairs to the bedroom. Big milestone for puppies. Three weeks and they’re no longer subject to chilling, too big to get accidentally squashed by their mother, mobile enough to move around if they need to, AND the puppy playpen/crate thing in the living room gives Leda enough room to move away from the puppies when she wants to, but keeps her close enough they can move toward her and nurse when they actually need to. So much better than last year, when I had to wake up at least once per night and order Leda to lie down and let her puppies nurse.

Meanwhile! What ELSE is going on, you may well be asking.

A) I’ve integrated yet another proofreader’s “finds” into TASMAKAT and uploaded the new! improved! manuscript to KDP. That was Hanneke, and sure enough, she found a bunch no one else had found. We are NOWHERE NEAR my predicted 180 typos, however. This is either an extraordinarily clean manuscript, or else proofreaders are all too absorbed by the story to notice typos. Possibly both!

You know how I warned you not to start chapter 40 at bedtime because you would not be able to stop at the end of the chapter? I am happy to report that proofreaders are uniformly telling me this is one hundred percent true. I am immensely pleased to make readers stay up till 2:30 AM, but seriously, let me reiterate, do not start chapter 40 at bedtime.

B) The audiobook narrator for TARASHANA finally completed the narration, MANY ECSTATIC CHEERS FROM ME

It took much much longer to complete than I had anticipated or hoped, but it is fantastic.

I instantly hit the go button from my side … well, I had somehow lost the audiobook cover, but as soon as the artist re-sent that to me, I instantly hit the “Approve” button. So, after a hopefully short review period, TARASHANA will suddenly become available in audio format. You ought to see it available at a good price if you already own the Kindle version. I hope you do! I have certainly listened to it several times and it’s great. I hear everyone’s voices in this narrator’s voice now.

This means I ought to be moving ahead with audio editions for SUELEN and TANO as soon as possible.

PRO TIP: If you are self-publishing, do not do a royalty share arrangement with the FIRST book in a series. You cannot control the price if you do that and therefore you cannot run promotions of any kind. You do get control back after, I believe, seven years, which is actually not that long! However, I will soon be asking ACX if there is any way I can pay the audiobook narrator for the first book a fee and reclaim rights to the audiobook immediately. That way I would be able to run price promotions via, I don’t know, isn’t there something called Chirp? I’m sure there are ways to do audio promotions these days. There is no real rush, as promotion is more worthwhile when all the books in the series are available in audio format.

C) I’m making progress on the story about returning Hokino’s knife, the story that is meant to be included in the World Companion. It is not going to be 15,000 words long, ha ha ha no. It’s that long right now and we are not near the end. Instead, a middle section unexpectedly appeared, which is making the story significantly longer than I expected. Will that middle section remain in the final version? Well, I hope so, given I have written most of it. Anyway, I am now aiming to bring that story in at 30,000 words, which is approximately 100 pages. I still maintain that there’s no way this is going to expand into an actual novel. No. Way.

If any other questions occur to you that you would like to see in the “interview” section of the World Companion, or indeed if anything at occurs to you that you would like to see in the World Companion, please let me know. You can check out previous suggestions in the comments here if you like.

D) FINE, I have approached an illustrator about making a map, maybe two maps. These will be world maps, probably focused on the parts of the winter country and summer country that we’ve seen in the most detail.

If any of you happen to draw and would like to produce illustrations, I would be very happy to consider whatever you draw and I would of course pay you for artwork that gets included. I do not really want illustrations of main characters, however, as I honestly prefer to let the reader imagine characters as they wish.

This is also going to force me to double-check where tribes’ territories lie relative to inGara’s territory (I needed to do that anyway), and where counties, towns, and villages are relative to each other, and mountain ranges and stuff, in the summer lands (yes, that too needed to be done anyway). I will just mention that this is really tedious and annoying.

I hope it’s easy to include drawings and maps and things in an ebook. Google tells me that you can just add images to the Word file in the ordinary way and KDP will take it from there. Why do I suspect that it may be more difficult than that in practice?

E) Did I mention I got a clean paper copy of NO FOREIGN SKY? Well, my mother is proofreading it now. She says it is heavy going, but as long as she just looks for typos she is okay. I’m pretty sure this is not going to be the book of mine she puts at the top of her personal favorites, though. (She puts the Death’s Lady trilogy at the top.)

F) Did I mention I included the first chapter of INVICTUS as a teaser at the back of NO FOREIGN SKY? Doing that caused me to re-read the first chapter, tweaking it to match the cover art that is already finished and finalized. And THAT pulled me back into INVICTUS. It’s been just about exactly a year since I finished the draft, and I guess that has been long enough, because it’s quite seductive, pulling me away from the story about returning Hokino’s knife. I’m letting this happen, working on the new story in the morning when it’s easiest for me to do new writing; then switching to INVICTUS in the afternoon when I don’t have the right kind of mental energy to work on anything new.

So, lots of progress in various semi-random directions over the previous week! I expect this week will bring more of the same, plus lots (LOTS) more distraction from the ever-more-distracting puppies! But with luck I will not have to spend time vacuuming, even if I do need to clean the pet hair out of Rover’s roller every day for the next week before the little guy gets caught up and is able to concentrate on cleaning up those dratted oak flowers.

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Gratuitous Puppy Pictures for Friday

Puppies really do like slippers. A minute after this incipient wrestling match, they were both chewing on one with their new little teeth.

Very first trip outdoors! You know why I start housetraining puppies so early? Because I don’t like cleaning up messes any more than the next person, that’s why. Yes, it makes later housetraining easier for us all. Sure, it’s also good for the new puppy owner. But it’s also just worth extra trips up and down the stairs to take the puppies out and let them do their business outside. Which they automatically do if given a chance, so that’s handy. Also, I’m really happy my knee is almost back to normal because I see a lot of stairs in my near-future.

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Setting and sense of place

From The Creative Penn, this article: Setting And Sense Of Place

Your job as a writer is to manipulate the reader’s imagination, to make them think and feel what you want them to, but too many writers forget the importance of setting in their books. … In fact, a common error for new writers is “talking heads in an empty white room,” where characters have great conversations and undertake significant action, but it’s unclear where it’s all happening.

This is true. “White room” settings are a common failure mode one sees in workshops. The linked post adds these examples:

Morgan walked along a path through the trees.

versus

Morgan slowly walked along a winding path that meandered through a dense forest of towering evergreens with needle-like leaves, interspersed with spindly birch trees with papery white bark. Their trunks reached up towards the sky like giant pillars, their bark rough to the touch with deep grooves and ridges that formed intricate patterns. Leaves rustled gently in the light breeze, creating a soft whispering sound as the scent of pine and earth filled the air. Sunlight filtered through the branches of the trees, dappling the ground with patches of warm light.

And there you go, that’s a good contrast. I mean, even I, who love description, would cut some of those adjectives, but nevertheless, sure, adding description is crucial. White room settings will just not work in a novel, and here I’m pausing to try to think of the most stripped-down possible fiction to see if I think I really mean “crucial.”

Yes, I really do. You cannot write successful fiction without including decent description to give your reader a sense of place. If the reader does not get a feel of the setting, the story will fail. If anyone can think of an exception, let me know.

Maybe flash fiction could do it. I mean things like “Baby shoes, never worn, for sale cheap,” or whatever that example was. But anything longer than that, I don’t think that’s possible.

Back to the linked post:

All stories, whether fiction, memoir, or narrative non-fiction, happen somewhere, so setting is a key aspect of writing.

From an epic fantasy world to a small room in a literary novel, to the open road of a personal travel memoir, your characters experience their journey in specific places. …

A scene in a story has one or more characters in a setting performing some kind of action toward a specific goal. The setting is the backdrop against which the scene unfolds.

In fact, a common error for new writers is “talking heads in an empty white room,” where characters have great conversations and undertake significant action, but it’s unclear where it’s all happening.

Here are three quick tips to help you write better settings, whether you’re writing fiction, memoir, or narrative non-fiction.

Use sensory detailsWrite from the character’s point of viewUse metaphor

I think all of these are good points. That is, I think the first is a no-brainer. It’s impossible to write description without including sensory detail. True, it’s possible to forget that any senses exist besides vision, but still, description is fundamentally based on the senses.

Oh, let me pause here to mention an unusual series: The Blue Place and sequels by Nicola Griffith. That does not appear to be available as an ebook, which is a shame. The publisher should be embarrassed at not converting the books to ebook format. On the other hand, Griffith really ought to ask for ebook rights back given that the publisher isn’t using them. Regardless, I still recommend this series, even if you ordinarily read only ebooks. It’s a thriller or a crime novel or something in that general ballpark, not SFF.

I know I’ve said this before, but the protagonist, Aud Torvingen, is one of the very few sensualist protagonists I’ve ever encountered in fiction, and amazingly well drawn. This makes for a remarkable reading experience, especially for readers who ordinarily may like, for example, competence porn. Thinking of it that way, you know what would be super interesting? Reading The Blue Place and The Martian back to back. Both protagonists are highly competent people, but the sensory world is so central for Aud and practically absent for Mark Watney. Description is of course important for both novels. Andy Weir has to pull the reader into the limited environment of the Mars habitat and show the deadly inhospitality of the Martian environment outside the habitat. Of course description is crucial for that. But Griffith pours the sensory world of summertime Atlanta into the reader’s mind in a way that is just so purely evocative of place.

Also, The Blue Place is a character study, and of course The Martian has about the flattest character in creation.

Do I need to pause here and add that I loved The Martian? Probably I should say so with some emphasis. I loved The Martian and I’ve read it several times. I enjoyed it tremendously. I love well-done competence porn. I am not criticizing The Martian. I am pointing out that it is way out at one end of a specific curve and The Blue Place is way out at the other end. The way each book handles description is fine, but totally different: entirely filtered through the protagonist in Griffith’s novel and almost entirely independent of the protagonist in Weir’s.

Aud is a highly competent but very physical person. Maybe I should say she is primarily competent physically. That’s very different from Mark Watney. It means The Blue Place is a highly physical book, a sensory explosion of a book, while The Martian is much more cerebral. This is true even though both are high-tension stories at times.

The third suggestion made by the linked post is something different. Use metaphor. Okay, what does that even mean?

You can even use the setting itself as a metaphor. For example, two characters walk through a graveyard in the snow on a dark wintery day. “Let’s talk about our future,” one says.

The same dialogue, the same two characters, but the setting is now a white sand beach fringed by palm trees in the glorious sunshine. The setting changes the mood and the meaning entirely.

Yes, this is interesting because it doesn’t depend on the pov of the protagonist. It arises from the, um, the stage-direction of the author. I hadn’t thought of that aspect of description, but certainly the setting the author chooses may allow certain emotions to be evoked rather than others.

The linked post is advertising a course about setting. I’m not crazy about courses of this kind, though I guess some writers must find them helpful. I would suggest paying attention to setting and sense of place in books you love. Attentive reading is, in my opinion, much more use than tips, hints, tricks, hacks, methods, techniques, or anything else that the writer is supposed to consciously deploy while writing.

I probably feel that way because I write by feel and the idea of deliberately using some sort of technique, any sort of technique, seems so alien. Nevertheless, I hereby recommend The Blue Place for evocative setting, intense sense of place, and pulling the reader into the story through the sensory world of the protagonist.

An April night in Atlanta between thunderstorms: dark and warm and wet, sidewalks shiny with rain and slick with torn leaves and fallen azaliea blossoms. Nearly midnight. I had been walking for over an hour, covering four or five miles. I wasn’t tired. I wasn’t sleepy.

You would think that my bad dreams would be of the first man I had killed, thirteen years ago. Or if not him, then maybe the teenager who had burned to death in front of me because I was too slow to get the man with the match. But no, when I turn out the lights at ten o’clock and can’t keep still, can’t even bear to sit down in my Lake Claire house, it’s because I see again the first body I hadn’t killed.

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Well, that is always a tedious little job

Okay, so, I finally decided that I was ready to make the paperback version of NO FOREIGN SKY — the final version. I’m sure there will be typos to correct, but at this point I think it’s time to go ahead and make the paperback file and make sure the preview looks good and that every page is on the correct page, that the page numbers are correct in the ToC, that there aren’t any blank pages anywhere, all of that.

This does mean that all remaining typos will have to be corrected in two different files, but oh well, that adds some tedium to my day, but it’s not like it’s hard. The point is that the file now looks good and also I can tell the cover artist how many pages it is and send him a template so he can finish the paperback cover. It’s 450 pages, by the way. That does include a short teaser for INVICTUS at the back. But it’s pretty long. I wasn’t sure what font to use, but I wound up going with Garamond 11 because that dropped the length down from 500 pp. Honestly, 450 seems long enough, and I don’t want to force the paperback to be more expensive than necessary. I’m perfectly aware paper editions are expensive enough already.

I also needed a new, clean paper copy for my mother to proofread. If she proofreads it. She may recoil from the SF setting. We shall see! Regardless, *I* will proofread it again. With TANO, I found about a dozen more typos after it was published by re-reading it on my phone — if you sent me an email to tell me about a few typos, thank you, but I mean about a dozen more after that (!). So apparently I should also send the file to my phone and proofread it again that way. I will do that very last thing, after all other proofing corrections have been made.

I also loaded the current version of the ebook, which for the first time includes all the frontmatter and endmatter and the ToC and so on and so forth. I needed to get the preview of that and turn every page to ensure there aren’t any extra blank pages anywhere (I should have gotten them all, but let’s make SURE). This is also remarkably tedious because the preview function won’t let you turn pages any faster than about one per three seconds, which is PAINFULLY slow when you’re just checking formatting.

I’m dedicating it to Little Fuzzy, by the way. I’m aware not only of the original stories by H Beam Piper, but also of related works by Ardath Mayhar and John Scalzi. I love the art by Michael Whelan. I mentioned them all in the dedication, so I guess I probably need to check and make sure I spelled all their names right. Anybody know of any others I might reference?

Oh, by the way, I’m dropping the initial price for NO FOREIGN SKY to at least as low as $4.99. I may drop it further and in order to pick up more orders right away and get the right kind of data into Amazon’s algorithms. That means it could go down to $2.99, for example. It turns out you CAN change the price for a preorder, so everyone who preordered NO FOREIGN SKY at $6.99, thank you, and you will find you are not actually charged that much.

I will most likely put the price up again sometime in June, so if you would like to pick up NO FOREIGN SKY at a low introductory price, this is absolutely the time to do that. Again, if you preorder this book, your price might go down from where it stands now, but it certainly will not go up.

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Veterinary mysteries

At Crime Reads, this: VET’S WIFE, VET’S LIFE

While dating, I learned quickly that if we could finish our meal at a restaurant before being called out to an emergency, it was a bonus. I remember one date when we had to request our meals to go even prior to our plates being served. A dog had attacked a pony, and Charlie needed to respond immediately. The pony sustained numerous bite and slash wounds that were bleeding severely when we arrived. It took hours to clean and suture each wound, but Charlie worked patiently to piece the torn flesh back together. That pony lived, a reward in itself. …

That’s about what you expected, yes? All Creatures Great and Small, but from the wife’s perspective, more or less. This is certainly how the first part of this post reads. Then it goes off in a different direction:

In time, I sold my clinic and retired from speech therapy practice. Charlie and I had decided that I would take a year off and focus on writing. During our winter vacation, I wrote the first chapter of that nonfiction book titled Intuitive Communication, but then…I opened up a new document and wrote the first chapter of a paranormal suspense novel called Beyond the Abyss. Guess which one was more fun and even exhilarating. You guessed it. Once I tasted fiction writing, there was no going back. …

I decided to write a mystery, and again, my life as a veterinarian’s wife influenced my process. Since most people seemed to enjoy watching Charlie care for animals, I hoped that readers would like to observe a vet at work, too. Cole Walker, DVM came to me fully formed and ready to go to work on the page. I easily imagined a workaholic veterinarian whose neglected wife had left him and their daughters to fend for themselves. But even though vets might solve medical mysteries, they’re not often called on to solve murder mysteries. Soon Deputy Mattie Cobb and her K-9 partner Robo showed up on the page to help out. …

And here I am pausing to consider this backstory. Because, while I’m always happy to try a novel with a veterinarian protagonist or important secondary character, I am extremely tired of The Workaholic Protagonist Whose Wife Left Him. This is not just an unpleasant backstory, it’s also desperately cliched in murder mysteries and thrillers. There are, of course, worse variations on this theme, such as The Bitter Divorced Protagonist Who Fell Off a Cliff When His Wife Left Him and is Now a Recovering Alcoholic. Come to think of it, worse still: The Workaholic Protagonist Whose Neglected Wife Is Leaving Him Now And We Get to Watch the End of Their Marriage.

Honest to God, how about something unusual? How about, for example, the dedicated protagonist whose wife is supportive? How about THAT protagonist? He can be a detective or a veterinarian or whatever you want, but how about a supportive family and a wife who thinks his job is important and his dedication is awesome? You know what, maybe his wife has a career of her own to which SHE is dedicated and they BOTH support each other in their careers?

Wow, heads would explode all over the field of crime fiction. No no no, we have to have the dedicated male lead, the whiny wife who can’t bear that he doesn’t put her above the dying horse or kidnapped child or whatever, the acrimony, the bitterness, the divorce, and if all that’s in the backstory, then the alcoholism.

Then I go read something by Ilona Andrews because her families aren’t so unrelentingly toxic.

HOWEVER, that isn’t to say that I won’t take a look at a mystery series where the protagonist is a K9 handler and a veterinarian is an important secondary character. Here’s the debut of this mystery series, if you too find this potentially interesting.

Good reviews, many comments about the excellence of the dog character, I’m trying a sample on that basis.

But, I’m telling you, if I ever write a detective novel or a mystery of any kind, you now know what is NOT going to be in the backstory.

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Update: Wow, puppies are distracting

Okay, in order to make up for last weekend, Morgan’s Difficult Puppy once again became Morgan’s Easy Blen Puppy.

After utterly refusing to nurse at all last Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, this Blen puppy suddenly swiveled another 180 degrees and decided that nursing was fine! Not only that, but when I tried him on different foods, he thought everything in the world was delicious and is proving to be the easiest puppy I have ever weaned. His Tri brother, asleep behind him in this picture, is a Normal Puppy, which means he is not very interested in real food. He will take a bit and then spit it out. THAT is normal at this age (four weeks today). Blen puppy will eat little bits as fast as you can hand them to him. I’ve started them on soaked kibble with some formula added for enticement. Generally I have to add something else for further enticement. I’ll try that with the Tri puppy, but obviously, barring further unanticipated weirdness, that’s not going to be necessary with Easy Again Blen Puppy.

That’s Naamah playing with him, by the way.

I am so very tempted to keep this puppy, even though he is a boy. I think he may be really, really nice. He might be the kind of puppy who is highly competitive, a real delight to show, the sort of youngster who has a good chance of winning against practically any competition. I’m telling myself not to get too far ahead of him. It’s really impossible to evaluate structure at this age. But I think his head is going to be really pretty. His bite is good right now. It could go off, of course, but it’s a good sign that it’s correct right now. The Tri looks nice too, but I suspect this Blen dude is going to be better.

I can now lose twenty minutes of my life at any time, just by gazing at these puppies. AND IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE.

Meanwhile!

It’s very difficult to take pictures of super-young puppies. You face their little heads toward the camera and they wobble their little heads away again. Also, as I have mentioned before, the camera on this phone is absolutely terrible. Nevertheless, I managed to get a few decent pictures of Leda’s little ones. They will be three weeks old in two days, but of course they are a full pound smaller than Morgan’s Big Puppies at that age. They’re doing great, but it makes a big difference that there are four rather than two. Leda’s got plenty of milk, but these puppies aren’t going to be fat. Anyway, pictures —

This is, top to bottom, Boy 2, Girl 1, and Girl 2.

Boy 1 is below Girl 2 in the bottom picture, but you can’t see his face, of course.

Their eyes are open, but you can’t tell because they’re asleep or nearly so in all these pictures. They sleep nearly all the time they aren’t nursing. It’s remarkable to think of how fast they’ll change over the next week. They’ll show the very first play gestures any day now; they’ll probably toddle up to their feet in another four days or so. They’ll stay awake longer and start to look like real puppies. In another two weeks, they’ll be hitting ultimate cuteness, like the big puppies. They won’t be able to play with the big ones, not at that point. They will be much too far behind in their physical development. Nine days, ten days, makes an enormous difference right now. By the time the older ones are ten weeks and the little ones about eight weeks, they’ll be better matched. Another month after that and they’ll be practically identical. Wait yet another month and probably the size differences will have evened out.

Boy 2 has the best markings. A little kiss mark, you can’t see it in this picture, but symmetrical markings. Good body markings too. He is the smallest of the four, but that doesn’t mean a lot because this is a very even litter, hardly more than an ounce apart in weight. Girl 1 is not nearly as symmetrical, sigh. I think she will be passable if her structure is particularly good. Girl 2 has the worst markings, but I suspect she may be quite cute. I think she’s rather appealing in this picture. I like how round her head is, too, though heads will change so much over the next month that there’s not a lot of point in thinking about it yet.

Well, we’ll see.

In the meantime: wow, they are interfering with my ability to get work done. Nevertheless, I am getting proofreading comments back on NO FOREIGN SKY and even on TASMAKAT, which is stunningly fast for that monster. Proofing is easy to do in little dabs of time, which is great.

I’m also making progress on the story I want to include in the Tuyo World Companion. Not a lot of progress. It’s laughable compared to how fast TANO was. But given the many little distractions I have right now, that’s probably inevitable. I’m counting any progress at all as adequate at the moment.

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No Foreign Sky

Okay, whew, now that it’s the middle of April, I feel it’s reasonable to look forward. All those sales in March made it awkward to look ahead, and of course I have been fairly distracted now and again recently, but now that the release date for No Foreign Sky is just a month away, how about a teaser?

What I’m going to do is make this a real teaser; that is, I’m going to give you the first bit of Chapter One and break off at a cliffhanger.

In the next newsletter, which I’m putting together now for release on May 1st, I’ll include the entire first chapter, which will resolve the cliffhanger.

Anyway, here we go, the introductory scene for No Foreign Sky, which carries you immediately into the action in an unfamiliar world.

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Twelve Disks and forty Blades, right here in this ordinary juncture system – right here, in this utterly unimportant, empty system between living worlds, at the near edge of Ka’ Taand space, where no serious danger ever came.

Twelve Disks were too many even without an escort, a lot too many – forty Blades were a whole lot worse – and worst of all, that enemy formation had come raking through the outer-system slide only after Nkaastu was already far too close to shear off, shield up, and hide.

For that first stretched instant, while the computers resolved inputs and built increasingly horrifying images in the display, everyone on the bridge, including Daamon himself, stood frozen in shock.

“Daamon!” Paaol snapped, first to recover. “Give me a hundredth chime, I’ll get the heart-Disk spotted and get you a firing solution!” He had been lounging back, his eyes half closed, bored and probably half asleep, letting his main-crew partner, Aanhk, support most of his weight with her left arms. The blazing icons in the display had snapped him to attention; now he was on his toes, leaning forward, almost vibrating with eagerness, skimming fingertips across the console he shared with Aanhk, not waiting for her to drop the console to comfortable uman height.

Paaol had to know this was disaster, obviously everyone understood it was disaster. But that was Paaol, ready to leap into even the most horrifically unequal fight, convinced they’d win or – in this case – ready to die trying. That wasn’t an attitude Daamon had ever thought he’d need on Nkaastu. But, gods beloved and forsaken, he was grateful for it now, especially as Paaol’s urgency snapped him, out of that shameful heartbeat of paralysis.

Tightening his grip on his cane, Daamon took the instant necessary to strike the battlecommand signal hard with the heel of his right hand, taking priority command of the ship and summoning the rest of the battlecrew. The emergency lights across the high ceiling of the bridge flared to life, black enamels threaded with bright purple and crimson against the ordinary bridge displays, warning tones ringing with the slowly gathering resonance that signaled the emergency transfer of command. Across the bridge, all the primary consoles automatically dropped to uman height, leaving secondaries for the turun crew.

Beside Daamon, Nkaastu’s captain, Kuotaan, had stiffened into a defensive pose, leaning forward, gripping the railing with one lower hand, setting her other lower hand on Daamon’s back in support as she ran her own swift calculations of possibility and risk on their shared console with both upper hands. All the turun across the wide bridge were responding to imminent threat in the same way, opening their golden eyes wide, leaning forward, bracing their four powerful legs, gripping the crash railings, supporting their uman partners. That was how nturun responded to a threat: by bracing to defend. The males, the uturun, were more than aggressive enough to face any enemy, but uturun could not work together and were never khand – crew – only allied passengers. Flexible, fast-moving, adaptable, and above all cooperative aggression was the entire purpose of the uman battlecrew.

Daamon had not expected to need any of those qualities here.

Uut should never be here, not along the near edge of Ka’ Taand space. Definitely not anywhere along the simple run from the heart-star of Gaatuu to long-settled Hanaa, through this empty juncture system to the settlements at newly discovered Aam and back again.

Rival matrilines might attempt half- or near-piracy, yes. True pirates had become a significant threat, yes. That threat was excitement enough for a man who’d nearly died – twice – in the fighting along the far edge. That was where a person expected to encounter uut, Blades leading Disks as they probed for an unguarded opening through the complex, weird geometry of the slides that wove space together into a lacework of junctures. Out there, distant from home and hearth and family, a ship might run into any gods-be-forsaken disaster. Not here.

But here they were: twelve Disks blazing red in the display, cutting through the outer reaches of the juncture system straight toward Nkaastu, every one of them larger and more heavily armed than a small half-fighter. Worse, those viciously fast Blades were so small they were much harder for targeting to acquire, still showing mostly as white flickers of extrapolated positions, only a handful of the closest burning steadily in the display.

No blue or green anywhere. No full-fighters passing through the juncture who might have better matched this level of threat, which was going to lead to disaster. But at least no tradeships to fall helpless prey to the uut.

Fall prey to the uut first. Everyone at Hanaa was in deadly peril now. They just thought they were safe, exactly as Daamon had thought they were safe until this moment.

“Got it!” cried Paaol, and then, shook his head in frustration, feather clips swinging in his long hair. “No – sorry, that’s not the heart-disk, forsaken uut are playing hard to tag. But I’ll get it, Daamon, don’t worry!”

“Four thousand worries, that’s not one,” Daamon promised Paaol, with perfect sincerity. He’d bent his own attention to throwing Nkaastu onto a different course, one that would skate them at an angle away from the uut, delay engagement, but keep Nkaastu between the uut and the Hanaa slide. If even one Blade got through to Hanaa, then got away again, that might be worse than half-disaster or near-disaster. That might be absolute disaster. There was no way a single half-fighter could take out a formation like this. But whittle the numbers down to something whoever was at Hanaa might handle … maybe. If the beloved gods were merciful.

“Got – no, gods be forsaken, who’s taught the uut to scramble their patterns like that?” Paaol sounded seriously offended rather than upset or afraid. Battle-keen even for an uman, Paaol had his saaom tournament feathers coated in protective lacquer and wore them all the time. His partner Aanhk, alone among the primary crew, wore three clips of her own, the feathers swinging from rings through the edge of one pierced ear, showing her pride in her battlecrew partner.

Daamon left them both to sort out priorities for the computers. He was running different scenarios as fast as he could, modeling tactics. No great options, no good options, no mediocre options … he set interdicting the Hanaa slide as first tactical priority and disabled every other possible priority, including Nkaastu’s own survival, and that finally did the job. In a sense. Daamon looked up at Kuotaan, looming beside him.

Matriline before every other consideration, that was ever and always the nturun priority. But Kuotaan had been out there too, on the far edge. She, along with Daamon, had faced the uut during those very first battles, when the Ka’ Taand had suddenly discovered they were in a war, fighting an enemy they did not know. Both of them junior, both of them painfully inexperienced, neither of them expecting to take command. But their primary captain had fallen, and half a chime later their secondary captain, so Kuotaan, youngest and least experienced of the captains, had shouldered the burden of command horrifyingly alone. Then word came echoing from ship to ship that uman crew might do best against the uut, and Kuotaan had – personally, without support from secondary commanders – risked everything to throw battlecommand to a very young uman crewmember whose own uman seniors were dead.

She’d been desperate. But she’d been right. Daamon had gotten their ship and the remnants of their tradeship group out of that mad, desperate, bloody series of disasters mostly because the beloved gods had been merciful and the worst of the fighting had passed on and left them on the periphery, but partly because he’d made decisions that were just barely fast enough and good enough to get their ship, and half a dozen others close enough at hand to tie into a defensive formation, out of the far edge and back into familiar space.

Daamon remembered vividly the long, limping nightmare journey through the lacework of juncture systems, the nuclear flares as, all along the far edge, slide after slide was deliberately destabilized behind them to stop the uut following them toward the heart-stars. He remembered rather less clearly the long recuperation afterward. He had returned home. Everything had been the same. Nothing had been the same. Every time he looked at the sky, every time he closed his eyes, Daamon had seen again the fire running through the dark lacework of the far edge, the bloody coruscation of the destabilized slides that warned of monsters waiting in the dark.

A year later, the Aanuku matriline had sent an offer of alliance to Kaamharaa, and a separate specific offer to Daamon. A new settlement at Aam; a routine, easy run out from Gaatuu and back again. They needed battlecrews. For half-fighters, not a full-fighters. To face ordinary threats, not uut. Kuotaan wanted him. Would he come?

Daamon had not exactly thought he would return to space. But in all that year, he had not managed to find or make a real place for himself within his sep’ family. The offer of alliance was a good one, good for Kaamharaa, good for their family. He had said yes.

Kuotaan had trusted his judgment then. Now, nine years on, they each had confidence in the other.

Daamon had better not be wrong. But he wasn’t wrong. The priority had to be keeping the uut away from Hanaa, gateway to the heart-stars and the entirety of familiar space.

“Yes,” agreed his captain, her voice a low rumble. “Nda Daamon, we approve.” She inclined her head to look down at him from her one good eye. She also tapped the console, formally accepting the priorities as he had set them.

Daamon acknowledged with a nod and locked in the priorities.

A heartbeat later, Kuotaan’s secondary captain, Tuutka, slammed onto the bridge to take her place beside and behind Kuotaan. Daamon hardly noticed. All his attention had gone back to the displays.

Aanhk, Paaol’s partner, threw a look over her upper shoulder toward Daamon. She’d followed that reorientation of priorities, but she didn’t say a word, only braced Paaol with a lower hand against his back as he rapidly figured priorities and firing solutions. Left to himself, Paaol might move too fast and commit too early, but Aanhk would keep him from running too far ahead of the action.

Daamon braced himself with one hand on his cane, glad now for every moment he’d spent studying the maneuvers and mistakes of real battles, those early disastrous battles he’d been caught up in and those less desperate that had taken place afterward. He was grimly glad as well for every saaom tournament he’d entered since taking his place as battlecommander of Nkaastu, glad that his sep’ brother Paaol had practically submerged himself in the games. Saaom was deadly serious practice for battlecrews, but mostly that meant the battlecrews of full-fighters, not half-fighters.

He was even grateful for every single pirate they’d ever faced, and he certainly hadn’t expected ever to be grateful for pirates, but those sharp, vicious battles had provided crucial real experience for himself and his battlecrew. Their situation here was terrible. But Daamon thought they might yet manage to do something useful with the handful of dice the beloved and forsaken gods had thrown their way. Tactical options tumbled through his mind as the tactical displays changed and changed again. Mostly not very good options.

Even as he watched the tank, the computers reordered the display, updating the positions of the icons. The Disks had taken on an attack formation and pairs of Blades were cutting away below and above the plane of the formation’s ecliptic to wait their chance for independent runs toward the half-fighter. Worse, most of the Blades, all but eight, had already slashed away along the line of Nkaastu’s original course.

Saraa arrived, out of breath and panting, throwing herself toward her station, letting her partner Tsumon catch her and swing her into position. “A bit of a mess,” was her comment as she assessed the situation. “I expect you want every option we can develop.” She was speaking to Daamon, not her partner, so her tone was cool.

“As fast as you can work them out,” he confirmed. “Priority every option that takes out a good number of that formation. The Disks, not the Blades.”

Genru, a decade older than anyone else in the battlecrew, came onto the bridge hardly a twentieth chime behind Saraa. He took in the displays with one appalled glance, but made no comment as he settled in beside his partner Suumat. Those two were a great deal alike, though Suumat was turun and Gen uman. They were both gifted with signals work, but more important, they were both calm and unruffled in every situation. That was a valuable counterpoint set against Paaol’s volatility and aggression on the other side of the bridge.

That was the full battlecrew at last, and Daamon tried not to waste time wishing he stood on the bridge of a full-fighter, with at least twice the battlecrew and a minimum of four times the firepower. He definitely did not let himself wish some other battlecommander stood right here on this bridge with this battlecrew – someone more aggressive, someone eager. Someone who hadn’t tucked himself away on a half-fighter that flew nearly safe routes on the near edge because saaom was one thing, near-pirates were a second thing, full-pirates were a third thing, but he had not wanted ever to face real battle again.

Daamon took a breath, let it out, and shoved all that stupidity out of his head, hard.

“Leftmost Disk!” Paaol called, setting the one he meant as a double-priority for targeting, painting it a much brighter red in the display.

“Huh.” Genru raised his eyebrows. “I guess you’re sure.”

Paaol made a scornful sound. “I’m sure all right – I’ve got it now! That’s the heart-Disk, I’m telling you.”

That was definitely not the usual position for a heart-Disk, and Daamon hadn’t picked that one out himself, but Paaol was the best of them all, so fine, left Disk. He began to calculate an intercept solution between the formation and the Hanaa slide that would give Nkaastu a reasonable shot at that specific Disk, then more sensibly shunted his half-completed solution to Saraa’s console.

“Check the priorities,” he told her.

“Teach your grandmother,” Saraa answered coolly.

Even under the circumstances, Daamon had to smile at the rebuke. She didn’t actually mean Stay out of my business. She meant, I’ve got this.

Saraa was a viciously clever battle navigator. She wasn’t like Paaol, running on instinct and sheer ferocity. No, Saraa’s mother was the north wind. Nothing could knock her off fast, steady assessment of upcoming possibilities. The computers handled the instant-by-instant maneuvers, of course – but Saraa would set upcoming battlefield priorities and present Daamon with plausible choices for the tactical goals he handed her.

Genru said over his shoulder to Daamon, “Gods beloved and forsaken, what’s this big a formation doing on the near edge? What are any uut doing on the near edge? We can’t stop this many, Daamon!”

“You know you love a challenge,” Daamon answered. Genru told him in pithy uman cant what he could do with his challenges. Like anyone sensible, like Daamon himself, Gen preferred overwhelming superiority rather than any kind of challenge.

Paaol, who did love a challenge, said, “Who cares why they’re here? We’ll turn ’em into stripped particles, Gen! Think of the glory accents we’ll win from this!”

His show of confidence wasn’t an act. Paaol really did feel that confident. Daamon wished his sep’ brother’s delight in battle was based on realistic odds. But it wasn’t Paaol’s job to come up with a brilliant strategy that would let Nkaastu take out a good proportion of those uut fighters by herself. That was his job.

“Saraa?” he asked.

“Disks are shedding vee, angling for an intercept. Forget the thirty-two Blades, they’re way out of reach, they’re going through and we can’t stop them, but we can get in front of the rest of the formation if you want to do that. I don’t think it’d be great for Nkaastu, but looking at the priorities you’ve got locked in, I guess that’s all right with you.” She paused. Then she said crisply, “Okay, here we go, we can get in front and cut them off from the slide in two point two one chime-down. Or we can cut and run, then come around behind them and try to pick off the ones in the rear. Or something else if you’ve got a brilliant idea I haven’t thought of. We need a decision within point zero nine.”

All that with perfect calm. Daamon was glad of every drop of glacier melt in her veins. He said, “Assume the intercept, options for the Disks, priority the heart-Disk,” and let her alone to figure that.

The swarm of Blades that had already gotten past them, cutting toward the Hanaa slide, were a serious threat to everything in Hanaa system. But, depending on who was flying what on the other side of that slide, maybe thirty-eight wouldn’t be too many. If his own people played this right, if Nkaastu managed to cut through the rest of this formation hard enough, then whatever full-fighters and half-fighters might be at Hanaa right now might be able to finish those thirty-two Blades plus however much of the rest of this formation got through.

They had to do that. Because some Blades carried worldbreakers. That was something the people of the Ka’ Taand had learned on the far side. Not all Blades carried those, but some. You never knew which. If just one Blade got through to Hanaa … Daamon cut that thought off, because that kind of terror was just too paralyzing.

He tried even harder not to think about what losing Nkaastu would mean. Kaamharaa himself was on this ship, one of the first and few turun males to establish residence on a matrilineal ship. Daamon’s own little sister Taya was on this ship. He could hardly bear to think of losing either of them, far less both.

If Kaamharaa died, their sep’ family would almost certainly shatter and dissolve. Worse, every tentative attempt to bring individual uturun into permanent alliance with major matrilines, an effort supported by every sep’ uman in the Suund but only a few turun matriarchs, might shatter as well. The hard-won progress uman people had made toward pulling adult turun males into broader society might very well begin to fail, setting the whole effort back – who knew – a hundred years, two hundred, more than that.

All that was true, but at the moment Daamon cared less about that than the risk to his own and Kaamharaa’s family, to Taya and Paaol, who also belonged to sepu Kaamharaa; to his own battlecrew; and to the primary crew and Nkaastu.

No choice but forward. He shoved all that aside too because at the moment, he could not afford to care about family any more than ship.

“Paaol,” he said. “Defer the heart-Disk, set immediate priority on the central Disk, range that one as loud as you can, let’s persuade them we missed the real heart of their formation. Saraa, take the intercept, get us in front of the main formation.”

The eight Blades that hadn’t headed straight for the in-system slide were directly in front of the formation of much larger Disks. No surprise there, that was just how uut liked to arrange formations. Daamon went on. “I’ll try to give the word in time for it, but if I don’t, call it yourself, got that, Saraa? Get us right in front of the Blades, right in front, point zero zero in front of the Blades if you can manage it. Gen, assume they’ll try to target us with energy weapons.”

Probable. Missiles fitted with insystem drives were higher-vee once they got moving, but much slower to target extremely close targets; Blades usually relied on energy weapons for short-distance battle and saved their missiles for use against stations and worlds and other stationary targets. Daamon added, “Saraa, set up a skip-path that’ll blink us out of their way the instant the Blades fire, but drop us right back again behind them, in front of the Disks. Paaol, range the Blades and the central Disk, but the instant the Blades are past us –”

“Got it, good plan,” said Paaol, with a satisfied little lift of his head; he loved risk and riding the knife’s edge of disaster. Paaol would have done just fine out on the far edge, battlecrew on a full-fighter, working to keep uut out of a handful of truly crucial juncture systems that linked important settlements. He’d only joined Nkaastu because Daamon was already battlecommander and Paaol knew he’d be able to join the battlecrew right away – and a little because he didn’t want to leave Kaamharaa.

“Oh, yeah, great plan,” said Saraa, but her hands flew over her console, setting up the break he’d asked for and, knowing her, probably three more for good measure.

Daamon said, “If we cut down the number of Disks, whoever’s at Hanaacan handle the rest of them, plus the Blades.” They would have to.

“Maybe. If,” said Saraa.

Paaol ranged the uut ships Daamon had specified; the whole hull rang with his marks. The formation of Disks cut away “up” and “down” to evade the attack that ought to have followed, then tightened their angles to a sharper, more direct course when no attack was forthcoming after all.

“They must think we’re fools,” said Paaol, grinning tightly. “Or empty and trying to slow them down with a bluff. They’re in range, Daamon. Fire incoming –”

“Break,” said Saraa.

There was no sense of movement; there never was any sense of motion aboard ship, of course. Only the tank display showed Nkaastu’s change of position and course as they shifted from a straight course to a random walk, sharp shifts in vector, acceleration, velocity – very difficult to target, though sheer bad luck could still drop them directly in front of enemy fire. But random walking was still the best tactic for a smaller ship, less well armed and a lot less heavily shielded than a full-fighter.

The insystem drive made one or two peculiar maneuvers possible, as well as bringing whole systems within convenient reach. From a near-star slide to the far reaches of a system took chimes or days, not months or years. That was important for tradeships and matrilineal envoys. But the capacity for skip-courses and slip-courses was the part that mattered to a battlecommander. The Blades’ first attack missed as Nkaastu’s course and velocity flickered and stuttered, random and therefore comprehensively unpredictable. A pause drew out as Daamon waited for the true uut heart-Disk to come within range.

This was one of those moments that occurs during battle, when everything was set and there was nothing to do until the chime rang down. Daamon glanced up at his captain, whose ship he was planning to risk and most likely sacrifice. Kuotaan angled her blunt-jawed head to gaze down at him, her single golden eye meeting his, the white seams of the scars across the other side of her face a reminder of horror.

She knew what he was doing. Nturun would never, could never, subordinate the needs of their own matrilines to any broader priority. As the saying went, it was nturun who made the matrilines, but it was uman who made the Ka’ Taand – the great civil society of familiar space, the accord that kept the heart-stars from breaking into four hundred competing polities. Kuotaan would never deliberately sacrifice Nkaastu.

But she wouldn’t stop him from doing it. Even though she saw it coming.

He said to her, quietly, “Tsaa Kuotaan, I thank the beloved gods I was blessed to fly with so diligent and meticulous a captain.” There was no time for her to answer. In lieu of further words, he set a hand on her muscled lower shoulder while he turned his attention back to the Disks.

“In-and-out in point zero four,” Saraa said coolly from her station. She shunted the finished maneuver to Genru to carry out so that she could turn her own attention to predicting what sort of maneuvers they might need next.

The eight Blades flashed through the tank display, glittering white. The slower Disks came inexorably onward, glowing a dull red – the color dull because they were hardly bothering with defensive countermeasures. They thought Nkaastu had targeted the wrong Disk. They were perfectly ready to let Nkaastu focus on that one, take the opening that mistake gave them to swat the half-fighter and follow the Blade swarm in-system.

“Ready to engage,” Daamon said to Paaol, not a question.

“Ready, holding ready,” Paaol said tensely, poised over his console. Aanhk rumbled in wordless encouragement and braced both herself and him, setting one of her big lower hands on Paaol’s shoulder, ready to steady him against the unpredictable acceleration and velocity of the skip-course.

“Mark, point zero zero two,” said Genru.

“Saraa,” said Daamon.

“In and out,” She answered in a crisp tone, and the skip-jolt came, sharp and sideways, out and instantly back into normal space, with the eight Blades past Nkaastu and the Disks much closer. But now six of the eight Disks couldn’t fire on Nkaastu without risking their own Blades, and the other two were far enough away they could be evaded. Paaol, grinning tightly, had already triggered his firing solution against the Disks.

They did not take out all twelve. There had never been any hope of that. But Daamon had the satisfaction of watching the glittering icon that represented the heart-Disk disintegrate into dusty sparkles in the tank display, and three of the Disks closest to it as well. Targeting failed with the Disks farther from the heart-Disk; those had been painted with a lower priority and the uut had good confounders. Better than a turun ship, especially at close range.

It wasn’t true, as Daamon knew very well, that taking out the heart-Disk would leave a formation helpless. But generally uut tactics afterward were simplistic. Only the heart-Disks were actually flown by living uut; that was the theory. The others might be controlled by automated routines; or by mechanisms; or by another, less decisive species. Or maybe by subordinate uut. Even after eleven years of battle, no one really knew.

Destroying the heart-Disk did not create enough confusion this time. Return fire raked Nkaastu all down one side as a Disk found a firing solution that nearly worked. Saraa almost but not quite got Nkaastu clear, the ship staggering as the primary gravitics failed and the secondary gravitics took the load. Kuotaan supported Daamon and kept him from sprawling, as all across the bridge turun supported uman battlecrew.

“Random walk!” said Daamon.

Saraa said tersely, “Can’t, we’ve lost half our ventral propulsion and lateral’s not so great either, too many crossconnections down, I’m faking it by hand.”

They all knew neither uman nor turun could generate a true random walk, and the remaining uut ships wouldn’t be fooled long: the moment their computers spotted the inevitable pattern Saraa put into her evasion, Nkaastu would be gone.

“Gods be,” said Genru, from his tone a fervent prayer rather than an exclamation.

Daamon agreed, though silently. He’d believed Nkaastu could at the very least take out several more Disks; now he feared that might not be possible. He should have done better than this, he had needed to do better, he was furious at his inability to do better. But he said, absolutely deadpan, “I’ll be embarrassed for us all if we can’t take out more than three Disks after striking the heart-Disk. Saraa, options?”

“I don’t think there’s any course that’d set us up to take out more than one at a time. Anything I can see, we’d be setting ourselves up for return fire.” She didn’t need to say that Nkaastu couldn’t handle another hit like the last one. She said instead, “But since, looking at your priorities, we’re apparently willing to take return fire, maybe that’s okay. I’m shooting everyone a course; see what you think.”

“I like it!” Paaol exclaimed almost at once. “Daamon, we can do this! We should do it!”

“Yes, this is why no one asks for your opinion in actual battles,” Daamon told him. The attack run Saraa had suggested did not look very survivable, but taking it might give them a chance to take out several more Disks – up to four, if Paaol gamed out targeting just right.

Paaol ignored that. “We should do it! I’ve got firing solutions, Daamon!”

Destroying eight Disks out of this formation might make all the difference at Hanaa. Against that – against that, his own stabbing fear and grief for himself, for them all, could not be allowed to make the decision for him.

He didn’t look up at Kuotaan. He took a breath and said, trying to keep his voice steady, “On my mark, do it. Saraa, give us a good kick out of the ecliptic a thousandth chime after we fire. Gen, throw everything into taking us dark the second after Saraa kicks us out of the way of return fire. Ditch accel, weapons, shields, everything but basic gravitics. We’ll run dark as long as we can, see if inertial drift carries us clear.”

Pouring every bit of available power into darkmasking was the only tactic he could think of that might give them a chance to survive the inevitable counterattack. Not a great chance, especially since every bit of power they could divert would still only hold the darkmask for a chime or so. But it was still the only chance he could see. Maybe every single uut ship would head out instead of sitting right here to wait for Nkaastu’s mask to fail.

Saraa’s hands flicked across her console, preparing to implement the course the instant Daamon gave the order. Paaol had already programmed the firing solution and hovered over his console, ready to adjust priorities on the fly if necessary. Genru looked at Daamon, signaling his readiness for the maneuver.

Daamon drew breath to say Mark! —

—And at that moment something new came through the Aam slide. Something big, flashing sharply into the display with the brilliance that meant powerful energy signature, and the lavender that meant unidentified.

“Unknown ship’s fired!” Paaol cried, almost before the stranger had cleared the slide. For once he sounded rattled. In the display, every single remaining uut Disk and Blade flared and dissolved, one after another, so fast it was hard to say which had gone first and which last.

Genru said, his voice hushed, “Beloved gods be merciful, did you see that? Whoever they are, they must’ve painted juncture space for uut before they were all the way out, did you see, they had solutions before they were all the way out of the slide!”

“As they solved for the uut and not us, we have no complaint,” rumbled Suumat. She had wrapped her lower left arm around Genru’s shoulders, steadying him through his first instinctive recoil at the newcomer’s blazing display of violent efficiency.

All the turun crew were rumbling deep in their chests, the sound at once reassurance for their own people and warning for any enemy. Kuotaan was rumbling too. It did help. Every uman knew that sound meant safety. Even a battlecommander whose actual job involved protecting the people of his ship – or, if necessary, spending their lives to protect others – felt that deep promise of safety, of protection, right in his bones.

Daamon drew a breath, let it out, patted Kuotaan’s lower shoulder, and demanded, “Gen, what is that? Do we have that in records anywhere?”

“First pass search isn’t kicking up anything. I’m trying to get a visual –”

“We’re being ranged!” said Paaol.

“Don’t range them back!” Daamon ordered urgently. “Paint them if you can, but very, very quietly. Kill our accel, keep our relative vee just as it is. Saraa, lay out every course you can think of that we might need. Gen, can you get us a visual signature?”

“Suumat?” Genru said to his partner.

Even during combat, primary crew were allowed to assist battlecrew if requested, and Suumat had obviously already been working to sort out incoming signals. “Yes,” she rumbled. “Visual!” She loaded her images into the display.

It was black and silver, that stranger, with sharp, raking lines and a narrow prow and lights flaming crimson and gold along its flanks. It was huge; Suumat had tagged the icon with an image of Nkaastu for comparison, and this new ship was at least six times the size. More. Daamon shook his head, comparing chunky Nkaastu to that monster. Ten times bigger. At least.

“That’s designed for atmosphere,” Genru said softly. “Who builds something that big for atmosphere?”

“Who builds something that vicious for atmosphere?” muttered Saraa. “Did you see it take out all those uut practically all at once?” She was throwing courses into her console, mostly different options that would get them away from this strange ship and back toward the Hanaa slide.

“Yeah, you think maybe we blinked and missed it?” said Paaol. “Daamon, you know what I think, I think that monster chased those uut through the Aam slide, that’s why it had solutions so fast. Who goes hunting uut with just a single solitary ship?”

Who was definitely the question. Daamon asked, “Tsaa Kuotaan?”

“That is no people we know,” Kuotaan stated, her deep voice rolling out with slow assurance. “That is nothing built by the Ka’ Taand. We have no record of any such ship. That is some foreigner.”

Daamon gestured acknowledgment. He asked, mostly for courtesy, “Captain, do you want command?”

Kuotaan flicked an upper hand in a gesture of negation. She answered, still in the nturun plural. “We do not. This assuredly remains your command.”

Daamon nodded. “Saraa, forget subtlety. Lay in a course that will take us back to the Hanaa slide at our best possible vee, but just hold onto that for now.”

Saraa nodded, but warned him, “Even if that ship out there lets us go, there’s no way we can catch up to those Blades.”

“Give me a course that’ll make the best possible try at it. I also want a slow course toward the stranger, minimal vee, but hold that, too. For now keep us just as we are. Paaol, quick, what would you think if you were them and we picked up just a little accel on an approach course? Would that look aggressive to you? If we head back toward the slide, would you think we were trying to run away, and if you did, what would you do about it?”

Paaol gave him a look. “Gods be, I should know?”

“Gut feeling. Give it a try.”

Paaol raked a hand through his hair, stroked the brilliant feathers that gleamed in the accent clips, and shrugged. “I wouldn’t head toward them. If we slowly add accel toward the Hanaa slide, that couldn’t be taken as an attack, at least I don’t see how, so nobody over there ought to take it as a reason to turn us into stripped particles, unless they want to do that anyway. If I were them and I wanted us to stop, I’d shoot across our path with an energy weapon.”

Daamon nodded. That sounded right to him, and if Paaol, the most aggressive uman on the battlecrew, thought a slow retreat shouldn’t prompt attack, that might be good. But he knew uman instincts might not predict this stranger’s reactions. They all knew that.

“I’ve got a solution,” Paaol added. “But I wouldn’t use it if I were you, because if we don’t look like a threat over there, I sure don’t want to change anybody’s mind.”

“Absolutely do not fire on that ship, no.” Daamon scrubbed his palms across his face. “Those thirty-odd Blades that cut off first, they’ll certainly get through to Hanaa.” They were out of scan range by this time. Possibly they’d already found the slide. If there weren’t enough full- or half-fighters currently in that system, then the world itself must be in deadly danger. And here was this foreign ship, hunting uut, and here was Nkaastu, perfectly placed to show it exactly where the Hanaa slide lay and lead it through. Obviously this stranger would have no difficulty at all dealing with even a fairly sizeable Blade swarm like that one. What this ship might do on its own account once these strangers saw they’d come to a green and glowing world … Daamon had no idea. No way to guess.

But they had no need to guess about what those Blades would do, or try to do. Daamon realized he was gripping the head of his cane so hard his fingers hurt, and deliberately eased that grip. He said to Genru, “Can you ping them?”

Gen shrugged. “I can, sure. Whether they’ll answer, that’s a different question. Who knows if they’re in the mood for a chat?”

“Yeah,” said Daamon. “Saraa, give us just a touch of accel back toward the Hanaa slide. Roll us to point our main weapons away from that ship. No, you know what? Roll us to show them our damaged flank.” That ought to be taken as acknowledgement that they knew the other ship was much stronger. It might even be taken as a request for help. He would take it that way. He added, “Gen, ping them, just one ping, we’ll hope they can tell a courtesy when they hear one. I sure hope you can make sense of any signal they broadcast –”

“We’ve got one,” he said, mirroring the signal to Daamon’s console. “Not a ping, and I don’t think it’s broadcast – I think it’s a directional signal, meant just for us. Oh, it’s binary. That’s good. How complicated can a binary signal be?”

“So they want to talk,” Daamon said confidently, as though he were certain this was a good thing. “That’s hopeful.”

“Them not firing, that’s what I find hopeful,” Paaol said.

Genru, ignoring Paaol, said, “Saraa, I’m mirroring you what I’m getting. Look at the variation in intervals. I’m not sure this is binary after all.”

“Huh,” said Saraa. She turned to Tsumon. “Look at this signal, Tsu’, and see if you can help me figure it out faster than Gen, right?”

“Suumat, help!” Genru exclaimed, and bent over his console.

Daamon privately bet on Saraa and Tsumon; Gen was the signals expert and he worked well with Suumat, but Saraa and Tsumon had grown up together, half-sisters, with the advantage of close familiarity. He left both teams alone to work on the problem, studying the foreigner. They had set a parallel course. Matched vee, maintaining distance and orientation. That didn’t seem like an aggressive move. He glanced up. “Tsaa Kuotaan, how would a turun interpret all these events?”

His captain gazed at the visual display of the foreign ship, cupping one of her upper hands and then the other in a gesture of turning over alternatives. She said at last, “It is our feeling that no turun could mistake our actions for either challenge or hostility. Any turun would understand a slow retreat, turning our wounded flank toward them, as the gesture of a subordinate entity. We believe that this is also your uman perception, yes? This was your intention to convey.”

Daamon opened a hand in assent.

“To our eyes, the response of this foreigner signifies a like understanding,” stated Kuotaan. “We see their act in following and paralleling our course as an act of dominance, directed toward an entity they believe is inferior.”

At Kuotaan’s side, Tuutka inclined her head and added, “Though these actions are not necessarily hostile, we yet wonder if they believe that they may claim this territory and intend to escort us away from the region they claim.”

Daamon thought about this. “You don’t read their parallel course as curiosity?”

“Curiosity,” Kuotaan rumbled. She and Tuutka exchanged a glance. “Curiosity,” Kuotaan repeated. “Perhaps. We had not considered that possibility. Interesting. Perhaps it may be so.”

Daamon studied the narrow, elegant foreign ship. Dominance, aggression, maybe hostility. How would one distinguish any or all of that from curiosity? Or from some other unknown, unknowable, alien motivation? “Paaol, time to intersect the Hanaa slide at our current vee?”

“Uh –” Paaol worked it out, not quite as fast as Saraa would have. “Two point six two.”

That seemed a long time, under the circumstances. Daamon added a touch more vee. Then a little more.

“Got it!” said Saraa, and a hairsbreadth behind, Genru snapped, “We have it!” They looked at each other, Saraa with an ironic quirk to her eyebrows and Gen with a mute shrug that conceded the contest.

“So, we can ping the foreigner now, and talk to them if they answer. Want me to do it?” Gen looked at Daamon, expectant, waiting, his hand hovered over the glowing enamels of the primary signals console.

Daamon took a deep breath and looked around the long smooth arc of the bridge and its stations. The stations, rising in parallel curves, were sized to the primary turun crew. Yet the uman battlecrew did not look out of place. Small relative to the high arches of the stations, yes, but not out of place. That impression might have been created by the supportive attitudes of their turun partners. The walls and consoles glowed, turquoise and dark loam-brown, pearl and sea-green, translucent taupe and dawn-pink; the soft hues reflecting from the polished brown turun hide and glowing against the softer and more variable colors of uman skin. The emergency lights still glimmered in a delicate tracery of violet-lit black. Even those were beautiful. The image of the foreign ship rode in the display, all raking lines and aggressive angles. It, too, was beautiful, in the way that the great predators that hunted the oceans of Gaatuu were beautiful.

Daamon opened one hand and then the other. “Saraa, can we pick up a random walk yet?”

“Not yet. I can set up a series of skip-courses in case we detect incoming fire, try to duck if they get mad.” She was doing that without waiting for his assent.

Daamon tipped his chin up anyway. “Set an automatic trigger. Signal Gen when you’ve got that set up. Gen, when you get the signal, send your ping.”

“Right,” Gen agreed, tense but steady, and a moment later sent the signal: one ping whispering softly out through silent space to the other ship, which might respond with curiosity or hostility or maybe some other unguessable alien reaction. Daamon laid his hands gently on the face of his console, waiting.

“They’re responding,” murmured Gen. “We should have visual and sound, if we got the translation right. I’m fairly certain they’re trying to give us a real-time feed from their ship. I’m answering with our standard real-time bridge feed. I think that’s best, don’t you?” He glanced at Daamon, who nodded, hoping they weren’t making a terrible mistake, but what else was there to do but try to talk to this powerful stranger?

“Right,” said Gen. “I’m feeding their signal directly into our display … now.” He stroked her console, and the image of the foreign ship flickered out. For a moment that stretched out painfully, the display was blank. … … …

***

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