Hûw Steer's Blog, page 34

Salvage Seven: Chapter 10

Merry Christmas and all that. The contents of the Cradle are my present to you. Enjoy.

Prologue
Chapter 1, parts 1 and 2
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9

The room was white. That one aspect overwhelmed all its other features as Gideon stepped through the heavy metal doors; every surface painted or dyed a perfectly uniform white, the lighting soft and directionless, softening every angle, removing every shadow. Gideon reeled, his eyes refusing to comprehend what they saw, blinking furiously until some kind of floor resolved itself in front of him. He took a tentative step, and was relieved when his boot struck something solid, rather than simply falling forever into the endless expanse of white. The room seemed infinite, nothing but white, stretching on in all directions forever. Shaking his head to clear it, Gideon had a flash of inspiration, and pulled out his wallet of lockpicks again. Kneeling carefully, he set it on the floor in front of him. Now he had a reference point. With the anchor of the picks Gideon could gauge the real size of the room a little better, his adjusting eyes finally picking out what seemed to be seams in the white panels that arced up to the high ceiling – at least he thought they were seams. The room was almost as high as the hangar outside, seeming to his protesting eyes almost as wide as well. What the hell is this for? In a complex filled with the blinking lights and gentle hum of servers and supercomputers, this vast, silent room seemed utterly out of place.

For want of anything else to do, Gideon stepped forward. His footsteps, somehow, did not echo, the sound vanishing into the endless white walls. He wanted to shout, to try for an echo like a child in a cave, but he held back, afraid of he knew not what. Instead he keyed his radio, wondering if it would work here – but when he pressed the button he didn’t even get static, not even a warning whine. He had no signal whatsoever. It had been silent enough already in the abandoned lab, but now there was nothing. Even the sound of his own breathing seemed muffled, far away.

There was a faint sound behind him, and, turning, his heart jumped into his throat. The doors were gone – not just closed but vanished, absorbed into the perfect whiteness of the walls as though they had never been there at all. Gideon dashed back across the room and ran his hands along the wall, knowing where the door should have been but finding nothing, not even the thinnest seam. He slammed the butt of his shotgun against the wall, but nothing flexed, nothing rang like metal. The doors were gone.

He was trapped. And if the room had been like this all along, the doors locked from without, that meant that something else had been trapped in here too – and still was.

Gideon forced himself to breathe less rapidly, more deeply, trying not to hyperventilate. The white room should have been serene, perfectly calm, but Gideon felt anything but. Is there even enough air? Am I sealed in? Would he suffocate or starve first, before the rest of the team figured out where he was – assuming they could even get into the Cradle after him? He tried his radio again; not even a whisper; he debated shouting, screaming, pounding on the oddly soft walls, but knew it would do no good. He clenched his fists, gritted his teeth, breathed out slowly. It didn’t make him any less scared, but it made him calm enough to think. Ok. I’m stuck in here. Odds are something else is too, or was. Might as well find out what.

With no other direction to go in, Gideon stepped nervously towards the centre of the room, his discarded lockpicks still his only reference point. His finger hovered near the trigger of his shotgun, not quite touching it, ready to fire at something.

“Hello?” He tried speaking, his voice flat, deadened. “Anyone here?” There was no reply, not that he’d expected one – but he jerked the shotgun into his shoulder as he took another step, and the pure white floor moved without warning, part of it rising smoothly up and becoming a pedestal, its sides a soft, weirdly matte silver. It was waist-high, with no other ornament whatsoever, no switches or controls Gideon could see. Warily, he lowered his gun, and took another step, and when nothing happened another, until he stood next to the pedestal, close enough to touch it. He stood there for a long moment. But nothing had happened so far, and there were no obvious controls…

He reached out gingerly and touched the white top of the pedestal with his offhand, brushing his fingers over the smooth, white surface. They left behind trails of pale light, that faded slowly, but nothing else. Gideon flinched, but nothing happened. Ok. At least it does something. Fractionally emboldened he pressed his hand against the pedestal, firmly. When he removed it, his palm-print remained, every line and whorl picked out in wire-thin lines of light – and this time it did not fade, not completely; the light dimmed but Gideon’s hand remained, the light pulsing gently. He frowned, watching closely. Some kind of DNA scanner? Or just palm-print? Whichever was the case, he wouldn’t be able to crack it without someone like Collins. Maybe there’s something mechanical, though. He bent down, to examine whatever mechanism had raised the pedestal from the perfect flooring.

As he did so, the light pulsing through his palm-print deepened to a bloody crimson. He had just enough time to draw breath to swear, before the light flared, brighter than the sun, right in his eyes, and something reached behind his eyes and gripped his mind in a great, soft hand, and a voice that filled his ears, the whole Cradle, asked; “Hello. Who are you?”

*

 “Gideon! Wake up, you lazy bastard! There’s work to do!”

The familiar voice dragged Gideon back to consciousness, out of a dark and sunless sea, and he opened his gummed-shut eyes to see Handel’s leering face, far too close for comfort. Pure, ethereal whiteness surrounded the man, and a small part of Gideon’s conscious mind groaned in disappointment. If this is how I get greeted in Heaven, sign me up for the fire and brimstone. But above Handel stood Donoghue, arms folded, and just for an instant Gideon thought he caught genuine concern in her eyes – for him. I’m alive, he thought muzzily. No god would be so cruel.

“He’s back with us, Sarge,” Handel said, hot breath splashing unpleasantly over Gideon’s face, and there was just a flicker of relief in Donoghue’s eyes before her expression snapped back into irritation and condescension.

“Have a nice nap?” she said acidly, as Handel helped Gideon sit up. His head pounded in time with the beating of his heart, and he grimaced with the pain.

“…the hell happened?” he managed weakly. He was still in the Cradle, he saw, his eyes making sense of what they saw once again – but unlike before the door had been wedged open with a heavy server rack, letting the real world seep in. Wish I’d thought of that. It helped, immensely; no longer was the Cradle a liminal, unknowable space. It was nothing but a white room.

“Collins was fiddling with the radios,” Handel explained, offering him a water-bottle.  Gideon drank gratefully as he continued. “Caught the edge of your last call. Sarge here found the comms centre, Petra plumbed our vox into the internal system and boosted the range. When we couldn’t get hold of you again, we came looking.”

“And found you having a little sleep,” Donoghue grumbled. “You hit your head or something?” She indicated the silver pedestal, still extended.

“No,” Gideon said, but he wasn’t sure at all. He levered himself to his feet. “No, I… I don’t know.” He pressed his palm against the pedestal – but there were no lights this time, no impression of his palm. He frowned, then looked at Donoghue. “It lit up before,” he explained. “I came in here, picked the locks. The door shut itself behind me, so I went in, found this… thing…” He trailed off. After touching the pedestal, he didn’t remember a thing.

“And probably hit your head,” Donoghue finished, “like an idiot.”

“…maybe,” Gideon admitted. It was certainly possible – but there was something gnawing at the edge of his memory, like someone shouting from far, far away, trying to tell him something.

Or warn him.

“Or maybe it was this thing,” Handel offered, having been fiddling with the pedestal while the others talked. Gideon saw with a surprising flash of outrage that the man had pried off the side of the pedestal, revealing incredibly complex circuitry beneath. It seemed sacrilegious to break the skin of the Cradle.

“Some weird shit in here,” Handel continued, rummaging in the pedestal’s innards. “Some kind of DNA scanner, but it’s offline. Missing… something.” He shrugged. “Haven’t got a clue, if I’m honest.”

“We’ll have a look at the facility records,” Donoghue sighed. “Collins is working on accessing them now. Let’s get back to the others.” She glared at Gideon. “If you’re awake enough.”

“I’m fine,” Gideon said, though he knew he wasn’t. Dejected, he followed Donoghue out of the Cradle, wishing that he could remember what had happened to him within.

His hand closed around something round in his pocket. It felt like crystal, but it was warm to the touch. It comforted him, though he wasn’t sure why.

Do not be afraid, a voice seemed to say, echoing strangely around his skull. You are not alone. All will be well.

It took Gideon almost a minute to realise that he had really heard the voice, and less than two seconds to start panicking.

Salvage Seven: Chapter 9

Belated but as promised, for the Christmas season, an appropriately cliffhanger-laden chapter of Salvage Seven. 

Prologue
Chapter 1, parts 1 and 2
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8

After the howling wind, the lab complex was eerily quiet. Gideon trod carefully as he made his way down his chosen corridor, his shotgun in his hands, primed and ready. The squad hadn’t been ten steps inside the vast hangar before everyone had had their weapons drawn, unspoken agreement trumping any embarrassment they might have felt. It was that kind of silence; a pregnant silence, a silence that was on the very edge of bursting into deafening, violent noise; and it had them all perched on that very same edge, hoping against hope that they wouldn’t fall and knowing in their guts that, inevitably, they would.

The hangar had been a terrifying spectacle, the teeth of the great doorway and the half-shadowed edges of the structures within only adding to the impression of a great and terrible beast. Torches had only made things worse, their beams picking out more strange shapes and figures in the shadows – but then Collins had gained Gideon’s eternal gratitude by finding the main light switches (not that he or any of the others would ever admit it). In the light, the hangar had become just that; a hangar, a vast chamber lit by blue-white overhead strips. It was like the Jeroboam’s repurposed vehicle bay – only this place was clean, and quiet, and orderly. There were no aircraft there, the scientists presumably having fled in them, but there was all manner of refueling and repair equipment that had Dawson practically salivating. Beyond the hangar, though, the laboratory complex looked to split into a labyrinth of tunnels – tunnels that led none knew where. They had no maps, no data, nothing. The only thing to do was to pick a corridor each, and split up – going alone into the utterly unknown.

It’s a science lab, Gideon told himself for the twentieth time as he pushed through an interior door, shotgun levelled. There’s not going to be anything dangerous. It’s a science lab. For the twentieth time, he refused to believe himself. On any other day, in any other place, he would have been pleasantly astonished at how easily his old infantry training had resurfaced. Today he was just holding onto soldier’s instincts he’d never thought he’d had with white knuckles. The corridors of the lab were, objectively, nondescript; neutral paint on the walls and bare concrete floors, overhead lighting in soft white; but their sheer neutrality put Gideon in mind of every horror story he’d ever heard. His imagination painted bloodstains on every white wall, claw-marks across every doorway. Most of the rooms themselves were just offices, containing nothing more exciting than locked computers and desks full of, to Gideon, incomprehensible paperwork. Even those unsettled him; strange formulae and symbols evoking dark incantations from the depths of fantasy. He logged them on his PDA, the system – its processors much happier in the warm – drawing a map for him of where he’d been so far. The squad would combine their charts later, and the lab would no longer be a mystery. In theory.

“Sitrep,” came the crackling voice of Donoghue. Gideon frowned and fiddled with his radio for a moment, adjusting the frequency. Their personal comms were short-range, not beholden to any larger transmitter or satellite, so the mountain over their heads ought to be no problem at all – but there was still a lot of interference. That worried him. It meant there were several feet of concrete and rock walls between them already – or even metal. And what kind of lab needs walls like that? The kind that’s making something dangerous.

“Four here,” Gideon replied. “Nothing so far. Offices.” He pushed through another door, gun-barrel first. He’d never fired the automatic at anything alive. He hoped he’d never have to.

“Sim – over here,” came Collins, choppy but audible. “IT lab, – much else.”

“Found some kind of chemical thing,” Petra crackled. “Having a look around.”

“Three, Seven?” Dawson, Gideon knew, had stayed behind in the hangar to check out the vehicular equipment – but the others were out in the lab like the rest of them.

“Three, Seven, come in,” Donoghue repeated. There was no reply.

“I’m closest,” Petra offered. “Shall I – ”

“No,” Donoghue interrupted. “Don’t worry. They’re fine. Must just be the walls interfering. I’ll try them again when I’m closer.” It was the least convincing excuse Gideon had ever heard.

“Yes, sergeant,” Petra replied.

“Carry on,” Donoghue continued. “Let’s – in – hour – ” The rest of her sentence vanished in a whine of static.

“Two,” Gideon said, “come in.” There was nothing. “Six?” Nothing again. Great. Now we’re all on our own. He told himself that it was just interference, that the storm outside had to be affecting things regardless of their cover. It didn’t help.

He kept on down the corridor, alone.

*

The rooms were getting bigger, and the computers too. In fact Gideon had barely seen anything other than computer equipment as he proceeded through the lab. He’d found several server rooms, stacks of drives eight feet high, all in standby mode but still humming gently, ominously. In one room there had been a veritable supercomputer, huge banks of circuitry all linked to a suite of monitors; in another, a full virtual reality rig. For once Gideon wished Collins were with him; the civilian would have known far more about what all this was for than he did; but he couldn’t get anything but static on the radio now. So far he had managed not to panic. So far. He logged the location of another weird-looking workstation, what looked like several ordinary computers linked together with a complicated arrangement of cables and valves – his map was growing ever-more detailed – and pressed on. Whatever these people had been working on, before they abandoned their research, it had clearly been something to do with software. He hadn’t seen a single piece of decent machinery on his whole journey. That was frustrating; he could have appreciated some CAD hardware or 3D printers – but apparently the scientists in the nameless mountain laboratory had been men like Collins, their minds filled with binary and hexadecimal.

The further he went, the more signs there were of the researchers’ hasty exit. Most of the outer offices had been left neat and tidy, but the workstations here sported overturned chairs, paperwork scattered across the floor, spilled drinks. In one room Gideon was overwhelmed by the putrid smell of rotting meat, and for a heart-stopping moment he had expected a body, proof of some far more tragic ending – but it turned out to be nothing more than an abandoned curry, half-eaten and entirely rotten, the facility’s filtered air sealing out all the flies that should have swarmed it. The researchers had definitely left in haste. That might be good news for the Salvage squad; the more hastily they’d packed up, the greater the odds that they might have left something valuable behind. And maybe then we’ll actually get some recognition. Gideon would just settle for a rest.

He was noticing signs now; mostly meaningless to him, pointing him in the direction of server rooms and render farms and other laboratories. Most of the rooms he had already visited, or thought he had – but one was new, its sign slightly larger, the typeface heavier.

Cradle.

Gideon frowned. What? For want of anything better to do, he followed the arrows, boots slapping on concrete. What could it possibly mean? He passed many open doors, glancing in to see more stacks of servers, yet more banks of computers. He ignored them. His interest had been thoroughly piqued. He tried his radio again, thinking to ask the others if they too had found something similar and strange, but once again he got nothing but static. Ah well. He could ask them later. At last, he reached a set of double doors – the only doors he had so far seen without inset windows affording a glimpse inside, and, he realised as he stepped close, the only doors made of riveted metal. Instinctively he pulled up his shotgun again. This had to be something more. It had to be.

The doors were, of course, locked – but not with a keypad or scanner. Instead, there was an actual, physical keyhole; three of them, in fact, forbidding black holes of various sizes. They gave Gideon pause for a moment. He hadn’t seen a proper lock in months – there were certainly none such aboard the Jeroboam, firmly a ship of the modern age (and set up so that all doors would open should power be lost) – but for once it wasn’t a problem. He dug inside his webbing for a battered leather pouch, one he’d brought with him all the way from home but hadn’t had reason to take out until now. Within it was a roll of shabby velvet. Kneeling, he unfurled it, and his lockpicks glittered nefariously in the harsh overhead lighting.

It wasn’t like he had a criminal past, Gideon reflected as he set to work, examining the size of the keyhole and selecting the appropriate rake and wrench. Not really, anyway. He’d trained as a locksmith in his early twenties, when he’d just been getting started as a mechanic and had seen an opportunity for a man with nimble fingers to make a little extra money. Almost every lock he’d picked had been for practice or for pay, letting people back into locked apartments, opening old fuse-boxes and simple safes. For most of the Union the physical lock was a dying breed, but out on the backwater colony world where Gideon had spent most of his life the old ways had clung on a little longer. It had helped him make a living. He’d gotten rather good at it. So good, in fact, that when the opportunity to make somewhat more than just a living had been presented to him he hadn’t really been able to turn it down.

It had gone very well – right up until the moment he’d cracked the lock in question, at which point things had rapidly gone very wrong indeed. Gideon hadn’t had to go into hiding or anything so extreme – but he had had to put his picks away for good. When he’d been conscripted into the army he’d packed them as an afterthought; by the time he’d joined Salvage he’d almost forgotten that he carried them.

The final pin clicked into place, and the lock turned with the smoothness lent only by good oil. Gideon grinned. Still got it. He moved onto the second lock. It was stiffer, the pins harder to reach, clearly designed for a very different kind of key. One of his weirder picks did the trick, though, a custom piece he’d machined himself for a specific antique cash-box. As he eased each pin into place, cramp beginning to grip his fingers, he felt an old, familiar calm settle over him. By the time the lock swung open, he had quite forgotten the creeping anxiety of being in the abandoned lab. For once, he was doing something that wasn’t going to kill him if he got it wrong. It was a very pleasant feeling.

The third lock was even stranger than the second; dimple pins and false gates lining every millimetre of its interior; but Gideon was on a roll now, and it fell apart before him as though it were made of tissue paper. Methodically, he put his picks away, tucking the wallet back into his webbing, feeling very self-satisfied indeed.

That feeling evaporated as he stood up and beheld the door to the Cradle; at least two inches of riveted steel, separating the missing scientists – and now Gideon – from something that had to be dangerous. So dangerous that they didn’t take it with them. If the researchers had extracted their experiment from its ‘Cradle’, why would they have bothered to lock the doors behind them?

“Salvage, this is Four,” Gideon said, keying his radio. He could only hear static, but he spoke anyway, just in case. “I’ve found something… interesting. Nice big locked door. Going in now.” He didn’t beg for help, for backup, no matter how much he dearly wanted to – it wouldn’t come, and even if his pleas were heard he doubted anyone would exactly come running.

“Wish me luck,” he said to nobody in particular. Then he pushed open the Cradle doors, and stepped inside.

Oops

Bugger. Sunday night, I’m out with friends and I’ve not got my laptop. Apologies for the long delay. New Salvage Seven tomorrow. Probably.

Star Wars

I’m going to see Star Wars this evening. And it’s a big deal.

It’s not like anything’s actually ending. There’s been a new movie every year for the past five; The Mandalorian is out, Rebels and new Clone Wars and all these wonderful things that I haven’t had time to watch (yet). The Obi-Wan show is coming soon. Rian Johnson has a whole trilogy. Disney has made it pretty clear that we’re getting Star Wars forever. Which is just fine by me.

But this is an ending. It might well be the last film of the ‘Skywalker Saga’, as it’s now being called. Oh, I’m absolutely certain that Finn, Poe and Rey (assuming they survive IX…) will turn up whenever the sequel-sequel films happen, as they inevitably will.

But thematically, spiritually, this might be it.

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Context is probably important. When I was about five years old, my dad sat me down in the front room and said that he was going to show me something very important. Then the immortal words appeared on the screen, and I was hooked.

I loved Star Wars, and so did my friends. We’d run around with lightsabers and blasters without a care in the world. I grew up playing Star Wars: Starfighter and the glorious piece of history that is Lego Star Wars. I had half a ton of the actual Lego, too. I’ve still got my lightsabers. And the Lego. And everything else.

And I remember coming out of Revenge of the Sith, when I was 10. I remember how amazing it felt. I still have a soft spot for it, truth be told. But I was only 10, and so I didn’t really realise then how important that moment was. That, to all intents and purposes, was the end of Star Wars.

As I grew older, I kept rewatching the movies, playing the games. I started reading more of the books. I wanted more Star Wars in my life, and I could get some. But like everyone else I sort of assumed that there wouldn’t be any more films. Not after so long.

And then there were.

The trailer blew my mind. I was older, at university, away from the friends I’d run around and duelled with all those years ago – but we were all still excited beyond belief. We managed to get IMAX tickets. I even dragged my dad down on a three-hour drive to come with us.

If I remember rightly, my jaw dropped at some point in the first ten minutes of The Force Awakens, and remained firmly on the floor for the next two hours. The first sequence with Kylo destroying the village was spine-chillingly good. And then, a little later, the camera panned around to reveal the Millenium Falcon, and I was five years old again.

Having Star Wars back has been amazing. I’ve seen them all, and liked them all – yes, even The Last Jedi. Rogue One was a glorious war movie, Solo a seriously underappreciated heist piece. I’ve grown to love the new heroes and what’s been done with the old.

But now, tonight, the saga ends.

I’m sad about that.

But also, it’s Star Wars. And I’m still five years old. And no matter what happens, it’s going to be glorious.

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Review – The Story Scriptorium

“ The writing is sleek, the characterization is nuanced …”

David Milton Samuels‘ review of The Blackbird and the Ghost is up, and it’s very kind indeed! My thanks to David for reading the damn thing.

Check out the review on Goodreads here.

Review: Three Nights in Faral-Khazal

I’ve done another book exchange – this time with David Samuels, author of various tales in the world of Euvael. We’ve swapped books in order to review them – as in my previous exchange, I’ve saved the in-depth version for this blog.  Without further ado, here are my thoughts on Three Nights in Faral-Khazal.

Short stories are tricky things. Many are the times that I’ve had a nice idea for something self-contained only to have it spiral out of control into a novella – or, if I had a word limit, be unable to cram all the worldbuilding I’d like into so small a space. Even when you go up to novelette length the same problem remains: how does one fit proper worldbuilding into a short without running out of room for an actual plot?

It’s difficult. But David Samuels has nailed it.

Three Nights in Faral-Khazal is, as its title suggests, a trio of short stories set in Samuels’ world of Euvael. I haven’t read his previous offerings – which would usually pose a problem, as I wouldn’t know the basics of the world into which I was diving. But from the very beginning of each tale Samuels conjures his setting masterfully – I was absorbed from the very start. This in itself is worthy of serious praise. The Arabian-inspired world of Faral-Khazal is beautifully described – sultans lounge in sumptuous harems, wizards lurk in rickety towers, thieves leap from cages dangling far above the ocean – and it is a world in which Samuels deftly weaves three stories, each following different inhabitants of the many different corners of this world. But despite the separate narratives, nothing feels out of place, like it doesn’t belong. The three threads instead expand our horizons, letting us see more of Faral-Khazal than any one long tale could easily manage.

The characters are as diverse as can be – a master chef, a young thief, an ambitious businesswoman. Each has their own story to tell. I’ll now give my thoughts on each one.

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The Deadliest Dish is the first tale, and the one that explores the widest range of locations in Faral-Khazal. Kaira, chef at the royal palace, is tasked with cooking an impossible dish for the chief concubine. If she fails, she will die, like several chefs before her – so she will have to pursue alternative means of preparing her masterpiece. Namely, magic. What follows is an elaborate fetch-quest that wouldn’t be out of place in a finely crafted RPG: the Anchorite, a sinister wizard in a tower high above the city, demands that Kaira find him a roc in return for conjuring the ingredients she needs; in order to get the roc from the royal menagerie she must bribe its keeper, which requires her to steal from the chief concubine…

Kaira’s quest takes her all over the royal palace, which is in itself a place big and varied enough to be a world all of its own – yet it sits beautifully within the larger world that Samuels paints so beautifully. And the characters who walk within it are fully realised even in so short a space – the Anchorite is truly repulsive, the chief concubine sinister and domineering, Lemon the potboy truly endearing. Kaira’s trials are very well told indeed – and the final twist was a satisfying one. The ending of the tale, however, I felt was the weakest part. While the twist was well done – I certainly didn’t see it coming – the last few paragraphs of the tale confused me far more than they should. Kaira’s ultimate fate is only implied, and not all that well. It took me several re-readings to actually figure out what Samuels meant by his last words – and I’m honestly still not quite certain exactly what happened to her.

Second comes the much shorter Banquet of the Embalmer. Where its predecessor was an epic quest, this story is a mystery, a thriller. Tariki, an ambitious embalmer, shows off his latest commission – the recently defeated Reaver Queen – to guests after a celebratory dinner-party, only to discover that the corpse in his cellar isn’t who it should be. In order to keep his contract, and his reputation, intact, Tariki resorts to desperate measures.

The story is tight and tense, an effect aided by its tight confines. Though the mansion is large and opulent, with open balconies and grand rooms, the fact that the protagonists are trapped within its walls exacerbates the tension, especially following Kaira’s travels all around the vast palace. When the action comes it is swift and bloody, and the reveals of the various secrets and motivations are handled neatly. I do wish some more time could have been lavished on setting up some of the motivations, but regardless the story is a skilfully wrought and thrilling piece.

Third and finally is Ups and Downs. This story introduced me to the protagonist of Samuels’ previous Euvael novel, Emelith the Finder – and it did so beautifully. As my own writing might imply I’m a sucker for a well-written rogue, and Emelith is certainly that. Within the first few lines her relationship with the less lovable but still roguish Liyento is established, and Faral-Khazal’s criminal underworld hinted in just enough detail. Both thieves are after the same amulet, and the chase that ensues as they continually pickpocket and misdirect one another across the city brings the last piece of Faral-Khazal – the streets, the city itself from ground level (or not, as the case may be) – to vivid life.

The verticality of Faral-Khazal had been hinted at before, with the high balcony of Tariki’s house and the soaring tower of the Anchorite, but Emelith’s chase across the Hanging Graveyard, bridge of dangling tombs, really brings it home. The death-defying leaps across precarious coffins are seriously tense, and Samuels never lets the pace of the action let up, which, after the slower speed of the previous tales, is as refreshing as the fresh air Emelith leaps through. The hints at the wider universe of Euvael, and Emelith’s past and future adventures, made me really want more. I’m glad that she, of the three, is Samuels’ main character. He writes her well and clearly enjoys doing so – it’s infectious, and made reading this story, of all the three, a real joy.

Three Nights is a great piece of worldbuilding and a great window into a new and exciting fantasy world. Though there are flaws in the stories themselves, it’s Faral-Khazal that’s the real star of the show, and Samuels’ descriptions, from soaring spires to seedy underbelly, are genuinely excellent. I look forward to reading more tales from the world of Euvael.

Salvage Seven: Chapter 8

Back out into the cold… but this, I’m afraid, is where things really start to get interesting.

Prologue
Chapter 1, parts 1 and 2
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7

They had abandoned their little sanctuary all too soon, stumbling out into the miserably grey mountains early that morning. In a way, Gideon was glad to see the back of the shipping containers and the plateau, as comfortable as they had been. Everyone’s good humour had been ruined by Petra and Dawson’s fight, and though Handel had attempted to claw it back over a delicious meal and a few more beers he had been unsuccessful. There had been no real conversation, no attempt at recapturing their brief, genuine camaraderie. When the squad had assembled for Donoghue’s briefing, nobody besides the sergeant had offered more than three words to the others. On the narrow mountain tracks, freezing as they might be, as much as his feet might ache in his gradually disintegrating boots, and his lungs labour in the thinning air, Gideon at least had an excuse to keep to his own thoughts. They all needed the space from one another.

Donoghue had been entirely unenthusiastic about their unexpected assignment that morning. Their objective was another bunker higher and deeper into the mountain range – some kind of research facility funded by the Union but staffed by some of Arcadia’s more scientifically-minded scientists. What they’d actually been doing nobody knew, not even their financiers – and when the war had come knocking on Arcadia’s door they had, sensibly, abandoned their lab and gotten the hell off-planet. As far as Donoghue and anyone else she’d spoken to knew, the labs hadn’t been building weapons or anything else military, but they were still an unknown quantity, and one that Union Command didn’t want to leave unexplored. Salvage Seven, pretty much by bad luck, had been the first ones to get close enough to remind whoever was looking at the deployment maps that the lab existed at all. Their orders were to get up to the lab, search it thoroughly and identify anything useful for later pickup. Handel was perversely excited by the thought of so much expensive and experimental scientific equipment – but nobody else was.

It was freezing this high up, and the terrain was slow going indeed. They had had to abandon the jeep almost a mile back, the battered four-wheel simply unable to cope with the steep rocks, and had carried on climbing on foot. Any steeper and they would need actual climbing gear – but there was, at least, a kind of path that wound its way back and forth up the sheer mountainside. They had bundled up in whatever cold-weather clothing they could scrounge from the artillery barracks and set off. But it wasn’t just freezing, Gideon reflected as he stumbled over a few loose stones, catching himself on the cliff face – it was slow. Handel’s artificial limbs, slow at the best of times, had been rendered even more sluggish by the cold, and Yaxley was having to half-drag him up the path just to keep pace with the others. And the longer it takes us to climb, the longer we’re out in the cold. Wonderful.

Donoghue was on point with Dawson, manhandling a paper map that, while hopelessly out of date, was their only backup. At this altitude their PDAs were connecting to the Jeroboam’s mainframe via satellite link once in a blue moon. Even if they had been connected, they were sluggish in the cold and their screens were almost freezing over – hence the low-tech approach. Gideon was third in line, then Collins, who was fretting over his drones, having swaddled their case in as many rags and blankets as he could scavenge, his pack bursting at the seams. They had enough gear to carry besides; without the jeep all their rations and necessary heavy equipment had to be carried with them, split among all their packs. Gideon’s own was cutting into his shoulders already. After Collins struggled Handel and Yaxley, the veteran struggling on despite his ailing limbs, and at the rear Petra stalked, a scarf over her face, her long rifle ported across her chest. She didn’t seem to be feeling the cold in the slightest. In (mostly) single file, Salvage Seven clambered higher and higher up the mountain without a name, shivering and struggling in equal measure. The rain had turned to sleet, almost to hail. Gideon had almost never felt as miserable as he did now.

Over the whistling wind, Gideon caught the edges of Donoghue’s call to halt. He stumbled up to her and Dawson, groaning gratefully as he stepped into the half-cave they had found – by no means protected from the cold, but just deep enough for them all to cluster out of the worst of the wind. One by one, the others joined them.

“Coffee,” Donoghue ordered through blue lips. They all rummaged for their flasks and drank. Gideon’s lips and fingers prickled with pins and needles as warmth flowed through him; they’d been so numb he hadn’t realised just how cold they were. The seven stood in silence for a moment, savouring the moment of half-heat as best they could.

“Should be,” Donoghue said, her teeth chattering slightly, “about two klicks to go. And four hundred yards up.” She scowled weakly at their morose expressions and groans. “We make it today or we don’t make it at all. Your choice.” The sobering thought certainly shut Gideon up. “Handel,” Donoghue continued, “how are your legs?”

“Shit,” the quartermaster replied bluntly. “Lot of input lag. It’s like walking through jelly. Motors can’t draw enough power.”

“Gid,” Donoghue asked, turning to Gideon, “anything you can do?”

Gideon frowned, thinking. It wasn’t the first time he’d had to fix Handel’s legs in the field, but they were as complicated as any machine he’d ever fettled with.

“They’ve got backup batteries inbuilt, right?” Handel nodded. “Could just connect them directly, then. Double the power output.”

“That’ll burn them out pretty quickly,” Dawson warned, but Handel shook his head.

“I’m only getting about half output as is, it can’t hurt. Besides, this is a lab we’re going to, right? Must be some kit there we could use to fix ‘em.” Dawson nodded reluctantly, conceding the point. Gideon shared her sentiment. If there wasn’t anything usable, and if his legs did burn out, then Handel would be left a true cripple – at the top of a mountain, in the middle of a storm.

“Do it,” Donoghue ordered. “Sooner we reach the lab, the sooner we’re out of this shit.” Gideon nodded and set down his pack, kneeling in front of Handel, who obligingly hitched up his trousers. He worked as quickly as he could, fingers stiff from the cold and the tiny batteries in his tools complaining – but with a hasty bit of soldering the backup cells were wired in. Gideon could feel the wires beginning to get hot as he snapped the legs closed – this was an arrangement that wouldn’t last long at all. Handel, seeing his expression, nodded solemnly. He understood.

“Let’s go,” Donoghue ordered, and Gideon shoved his equipment back into his webbing and reluctantly followed the others back out into the bitter wind. On they climbed, yard by yard, bowing their heads into the wind and struggling up. Twice someone almost slipped and fell; the path had narrowed, in places little more than a ledge, forcing them to shuffle sideways, staring into the void. Gideon was one of those who slipped – but Yaxley caught him with one massive hand, and he was safe. Relatively. The fact that Handel’s overclocked legs let him move at normal speed was almost irrelevant, so sluggish was their progress. It took them more than two hours to creep around the mountainside, climbing the short distance upwards – but eventually, their teeth chattering and fingers numb, ice in their hair, Salvage Seven dragged themselves over the last ridge and onto the plateau where the laboratory was supposed to be.

Supposed to be.

There was a plateau; broad enough for a VTOL or two to land comfortably, if they could make it through the storms; but the cliff face that rose up to the peak was completely featureless. There was no building, prefabricated or otherwise, no generators, not even a shipping container – just barren rock, and ice, and emptiness.

“The hell is this?” Donoghue demanded of nobody in particular, grabbing the map from Dawson and examining it closely. “We’re here. We should be here. Someone check the coordinates.”

Collins coaxed his PDA into life, and, somehow, managed to find enough signal for a GPS reading. He shouted the coordinates over the wind. Donoghue swore.

“That’s right. Where the hell is it, then?” She folded the map angrily. “Supposed to be a multi-million research facility, not just a bunch of rocks.” She looked at the rest of the squad, but nobody appeared to have any ideas – until Collins tentatively raised his hand.

“Yes, Collins?”

“It could be hidden,” the technician offered, wincing at the sergeant’s razor-sharp raised eyebrow. “In the mountain. A hidden facility.”

“A secret fucking lab?” Donoghue asked, sneering. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” came a voice on the wind. Handel had wandered across the plateau to a nondescript cluster of boulders. As everyone turned, he held up a battered security camera, trailing broken wires. “Eyes on the outside. Lab must be on the inside.”

Donoghue sighed heavily.

“A secret lab. Give me strength.” She clapped her hands. “Alright! Split up, cover all the ground, find the doors. Must be here somewhere. Let’s go!”

The squad scattered. Gideon made for the cliff face at the rear of the plateau, as the others spread out across the stone. If the lab was this high up, they’d have to have aircraft to bring supplies and get to and from the real world. That meant a landing platform – on which, he presumed, they stood – and, somewhere, a hangar. A hangar meant big doors, and big doors meant a big wall, and on the freezing mountaintop there was only one that fit the bill. Unless, of course, it sinks into the ground or some shit. Or it’s not actually here. He tried not to think about that possibility.

The cliff face loomed over him, brooding black stone, its sharp crags worn smooth by the howling winds. Sleet spattered from the sheer rock, soaking Gideon even more as he came up to the wall and ran his sodden gloves over the stone. Up close it was no less featureless than it had initially appeared – there were no hidden hinges, no painted panels of metal that he could see. Gideon walked slowly along the cliff, eyes peeled, feeling for any irregularities, anything that felt man-made. There was nothing. Looking across the plateau, he could see that nobody else was having any more luck than him – six more frustrated expressions greeted his eyes. Come on. It can’t be that hard to get in. But as Gideon continued to search, the creeping feeling that there might not be anything here at all grew ever-stronger.

He was examining the stone up close, searching for artificial grain, when he heard a faint sound over the rushing wind, barely catching it; a scraping sound, of stone on stone. Puzzled, he turned around – and saw a recess in the rock wall, just a few feet from where he stood, a recess that had not been there before, a recess too even in shape to be anything but man-made. He darted over to it, but before he could get a proper look black stone slid up, seemingly from nowhere, and the hole was gone. What the… Gideon pressed the wall all around where the recess had seemed to be, running his hands across every inch of stone he had just touched, searching for the hidden keypad or scanner that surely had to be there. He found absolutely nothing, and the recess remained resolutely hidden. Frowning, he keyed his short-range radio. Static burst painfully in his ear, but there was a signal.

“This is Gideon. Did anyone just find a switch? Or something like one?”

“No,” came Donoghue’s reply. “Why?”

“I just saw… a hole. Something. It closed up, but it was there.” It sounded ludicrously weak – but Donoghue seemed to think it was enough.

“Everyone, repeat what you were just doing. Touch the same stuff, whatever. Maybe there’s a scanner hidden somewhere.”

There was a chorus of acknowledgements, and then the radio fell silent for a moment. Gideon stared intently at where he thought the hole had been, waiting… and then it slid open again, a recess in the cliff a foot square, and within it what looked like a keypad/retinal scanner combo, a red light flickering into life.

“There!” Gideon called down the radio, far too loud in his excitement. “There it – ” But the hole was already closing again, the scanner powering down. “Damnit, gone again!”

“Ok,” Donoghue crackled, “one by one. By the numbers. Let’s figure out who triggered it. I’m first.” There was a pause. “Anything?”

“Nope,” Gideon said, grimacing. He heard Donoghue sigh.

“Fine. Petra, you next.” Gideon rubbed his hands together, trying to nurse some feeling back into his fingers through the pitifully thin and sodden gloves.

“Anything?” Petra asked, a painful spike of static piercing Gideon’s ear.

“Nothing.”

“Yaxley,” Donoghue ordered. Gideon glanced around, hoping to see what the big man had been doing – but the sleet was thickening, and he could barely make out his silhouette halfway across the plateau. He looked back at the wall – and the stone slid aside again, revealing the scanner.

“There!”

“Hold whatever you’re doing, Yax,” Donoghue snapped. “Gid, we’re coming over.” Whatever Yaxley was doing kept working, and the hole stayed open. It was below eye-height, and Gideon had to stoop awkwardly, shucking his pack and peering into the recess as the others arrived. It was as he’d thought: a scramble keypad, digital numbers glowing scarlet, and a retinal scanner – neither of which they would be able to activate by ordinary means. Donoghue tapped Gideon on the shoulder, and he stepped back obligingly, letting her peer inside. The others clustered behind them both. The sergeant cursed quietly.

“Proper security, then. Figures. Anyone know how to bypass a scramble pad and retina?”

“Let me have a look,” said Petra.

“I guess you’ve broken a lot of locks in your time,” muttered Dawson none too quietly. Donoghue shot her a glare.

“Shut it, Dawson.”

“What did Yax do?” Gideon muttered to Handel as Petra examined the keypad closely.

“Twisted some bit of rock,” the quartermaster replied. “He’s still holding it.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Standard scramble,” Petra reported as she pulled her head out of the recess. “Four to seven digit code on this model. We used to brute-force them with a software bypass.” Dawson smirked, vindicated, but Petra ignored her. “Trouble is I don’t have one with – ” She paused, as Handel produced a slender portable drive with a universal connector from somewhere in his webbing.

“Rated for anything up to level eight,” the quartermaster said with an evil grin, “if what my… friend told me is accurate. What’s this?”

“A six at best,” Petra replied, and Handel’s smile broadened.

“What about the retina scanner?” Donoghue asked. “You got a scientist’s eyeball in your pocket, Handel?”

“A strobe might do it,” Collins offered. He blushed a little as everyone looked around at him, surprised. Innocent Collins, the burglar? “I used to write software for a security firm,” he continued, a little protest in his voice. “These locks read light. A rapid enough flash in different colours used to overwhelm older models.”

“Let’s hope this lot forgot to update their kit,” Donoghue said. “Gideon?”

“On it,” Gideon replied. “Borrow someone’s torch?” One was produced, and Gideon set to work, peeling back the rubber housing and digging into the simple wiring underneath, as Petra set to work with Handel’s brute-force program. The LEDs were simple to rewire. Collins talked him through the right speed, the different colours, offering a couple of spare LEDs from his drone kit. Within five minutes, the torch was bulging with extra bulbs, crudely wrapped back together with electrical tape.

“Pad is… open,” Petra called, her voice muffled with her head in the recess. Gideon passed her the modified torch.

“Here goes,” she mumbled, and flickering light spilled over the edge of the recess in a maddening lack of pattern, red and yellow and blue-white coruscating. Petra cursed – forgetting, presumably, to shield her eyes. There was, on the edge of hearing, a faint beep. Then Gideon felt the stone beneath his feet shudder.

“I think we got it,” he said, but his words were drowned by the squealing of old metal moving, the scraping of stone on stone, as half the cliffside split apart before their eyes, revealing the dark and cavernous hangar behind, yawning like the maw of some great beast, warm air rushing out in a great, hot breath.

The squad stood motionless for a long moment, staring into the dark. Gideon didn’t think he’d ever wanted to walk through a door less, and, glancing to his left and right, he could see that everyone else felt the same way. Even Yaxley, stumbling over from his post at the nondescript rock, had shrunk back, just subtly. Then Donoghue clapped her hands, the sound muffled by her gloves and the wind but still very much audible.

“Come on, then. Let’s get out of the damn cold, shall we?”

She led the way into the belly of the beast – and, despite her brusque words, Gideon did not fail to notice that she adjusted the strap of her rifle so that the grip was nearer to her hand.

Salvage Seven: Chapter 7

You know how things seemed like they might be looking up for the team two weeks ago? Yeah. About that.

Prologue
Chapter 1, parts 1 and 2
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6

The only thing louder than the superlifter’s engines was the sound of Donoghue shouting.

Gideon tried not to listen, as he and Collins carried crates of munitions – sorted meticulously by Handel – onto the huge metal platform, where the huge lifter’s crew were waiting with all manner of straps and webbing harnesses to tie everything into place. He tried not to listen, as the spluttering engines of those artillery tractors that would still move under their own power grew louder, as Dawson and Petra drove them onto the lifter platform one by one. Gideon kept trying not to listen as he followed Collins back to the rough barracks where the rest of Handel’s neatly organised supplies waited for them – but he couldn’t not listen, because Sergeant Donoghue’s shouting-match with the superlifter captain could have drowned out a thunderstorm.

“What the hell do you mean we’re to stay out here?” she yelled, the engine noise from above not even a slight factor in her apoplexy, her face scarlet with rage. The ‘lifter captain was a tall man, clearly an experienced leader of men – but he cowered before her anger, stammering out an explanation as best he could.

“Orders… orders were to pick up the salvage, to- to relay messages to your team.”

“This shit?” Donoghue held her PDA up, eyes ablaze. “This shit is what they sent? We freeze half to death getting up here, we find enough live armour for a whole damn regiment, and their thanks is to send us further in?”

“I just relayed the message!” the captain replied, raising his hands to try and placate the sergeant. “Sorry. We’re not taking you back.”

Donoghue swore loudly, launching into another tirade of invective – but Gideon could tell that the battle was lost. By the time he and Collins had lugged another crate over to the platform, Donoghue had assembled the rest of the squad around her.

“Word from command,” she said, bitterness in every syllable. “They’re very pleased with our finds. Some manner of commendation down the line, noted in our performance reviews, yadda yadda.”

“So we’re getting a lift back?” Collins asked, blindly optimistic to the end. “Some leave?”

“We’re getting,” Donoghue replied acidly, “the privilege of going further into the mountains. Some bunker another thousand feet up. On foot. Alone. That’s our reward.”

Dawson swore, as did Gideon. Petra cursed more quietly, but with twice the venom; Yaxley was as impassive as ever, Collins wide-eyed with childlike sadness. Handel scoffed.

“Typical brass. Don’t know why we expected anything else.”

“Please tell me your… friends will see us right,” Dawson said to the veteran. Handel nodded.

“Oh, they will. Some of them aboard this very bird. It’ll all make its way to the right people, no worries about that.” He looked up at the gigantic aircraft. “Just wish we could do the same.”

“Well, no use crying about it now,” Donoghue said, sour words from chapped lips. “Let’s get this shit loaded, and then can it for the day. I’m not going anywhere without a decent night’s sleep.”

The squad dispersed again. One by one, the artillery pieces were loaded aboard the platform – ton upon ton of armour squeezed onto what amounted to a big lift. It looked far too much weight for even a capital ship to lift from the ground – but the superlifter’s crew seemed entirely confident. There had only just been enough room to drop the platform down on the plateau, not enough to actually land the vast VTOL aircraft – but, according to one of the ground crewers, they hovered for longer all the time. Gideon couldn’t help but be impressed by the colossal machine, over two hundred feet long, vast engine pods at each corner and on the spadelike wings spewing exhaust gases downwards onto the misshapen rock below. Gideon could have sworn that some of the rock was glowing hot. They were designed for rapid deployments, the superlifters, with enough cargo capacity and lifting power to drop a small fortress ready-made onto any battlefield, or to move huge amounts of materiel – and occasionally men – between ships in a fleet, if they were rated for vacuum. Command had been eager to press them into salvage service. And if the war flares up again, they’re ready to drop us straight into the field. Hooray for efficiency.

The last tank clattered onto the platform, dragged by a heavy-duty winch, its engine crippled by rust. Gideon shoved the last crate into place, as Dawson clambered out of the last gun and the ground crew finished strapping everything down, thick webbing straps looped through steel rings.

“Get clear!” shouted one of the crewers, flapping his hands at the salvage crew, shooing them away. Gideon scowled but obeyed, the squad gathering at a safe distance, as the crewers tightened straps, attaching their own safety harnesses to hardpoints at the corners. One of them spoke into his radio – and then above them, the superlifter moved. The airborne behemoth moved slowly, almost gracefully, its engines twisting just a little until it sat perfectly above the platform. Its underbelly yawned dark and open, a vast mouth like that of a creature of nightmare.

“Now they show off,” Donoghue muttered, only barely audible. Collins frowned at Gideon, but he simply nodded upwards. He’d seen this done before – and though it was impressive, he didn’t feel especially inclined to cheer the ‘lifter’s crew on. We could be going back to base. Could have had a weekend off. Instead, they were going God-knew-where, their faint hopes of reward dashed utterly.

Collins gasped, and Gideon looked up again, as the cables dropped. Huge drums unspooled, the four anchors descending slowly, steadily, on lines as thick as Yaxley’s thigh. With them dangling below it, buffeted by the wind, the superlifter went from airborne whale to colossal jellyfish, dangling its tendrils into the deeps. The anchors were massive steel hooks, the weight of a man, and Gideon held his breath as they swung nearer and nearer to the ground crew, heavy enough to take off their heads – but they were practiced, and they grabbed the hooks in groups of three, manhandling them down and locking them into place. The slack was taken in, the superlifter bobbing briefly in the air as it took the weight – then, its engines straining, it stabilised, and the winches lifted the whole platform, tanks and all, at least a hundred tons of metal, cleanly off the ground and up into the air. Slowly, steadily, engines roaring, the superlifter dragged its cargo up into its vast underbelly. Collins whooped as the platform clicked home, huge clamps locking it in place, the whale’s belly closed again. He would have applauded, had he not caught a filthy look from Donoghue.

The radio crackled.

“Salvage Seven, we’re good up here. Thanks for your help. And… sorry. For what it’s worth. We left you a little something by your shelter. Safe travels.”

And with that, and a renewed roar of burning fuel, the superlifter lumbered up and away, ponderous but still graceful, beyond the mountains and out across the plain.

The squad watched it go in silence, until the roar of its engines had faded completely and they were left with only the rushing wind against which to test their voices.

“Good riddance,” Donoghue muttered, shaking her head. “Right.” She checked her watch. “Fifteen-fifty. Orders say we ought to get started towards this next place as soon as possible.” She looked at them all, her expression leaving no doubt as to how she felt about those orders.

“The jeep,” Petra said, “needs refuelling. And a tune-up. Can’t really go anywhere without that.”

“We all need to recalibrate equipment,” added Collins, holding up one of his drones, which beeped forlornly, starved of battery. Donoghue nodded, unsmiling but satisfied.

“Good enough for me. I’ll spin it. Let’s get inside and take the evening. Get something hot on.” She grimaced. “Damn, I miss proper coffee. Handel, those flying fucks leave us any?”

“Better than that, Sarge,” Handel called, shoulder-deep in a single crate next to the barrack door. He emerged with a gleaming bottle in each hand and a gleaming grin on his face. “They left us beer.”

Donoghue finally let herself smile.

“Maybe they’re not total arseholes after all.”

*

It wasn’t just beer. Thanks to Handel’s friends in the quartermaster corps, the superlifter crew had brought Salvage Seven a glorious care package filled with everything they could have wished for – and more besides. Mostly there was food, real food, or close enough: ration packs of the kind that only senior officers would usually get, properly flavoured and textured; bread that, while not fresh, was at least not hard as a rock; chocolate that was only slightly melted; and, best of all, fresh fruit and vegetables, obtained from who knew where, crisp and ripe and beautiful. As Yaxley and Handel, working with the rudimentary portable stove that graced the artillery barracks’ ‘kitchen’, began turning the rations and vegetables into something closely related to an actual meal, Gideon sat back in a camp chair across the container and bit into an apple. The sharp juice struck his tongue like ambrosia, cool and delicious.

“Catch,” came a voice, and Gideon almost fumbled the beer Donoghue had thrown, the bottle – actual glass, not the battered tin that every Union-issue drink was stored in – cold and slippery. The sergeant came into view, swigging from her own bottle, four more swinging from her hand in their carry-pack. Gideon raised the beer in salute.

“Thanks, Sarge. Cold, too.” He raised an eyebrow, making it a question.

“Collins got the freezer running,” Donoghue explained, setting two more beers down on the counter where Yaxley was chopping vegetables with a combat knife as sharp as sin. It was clean – but Gideon suspected it hadn’t always been. The big man took his beer with a silent nod of thanks. Handel stopped stirring the big pot – something else the artillerymen had left behind – to take his.

“Just what the doctor ordered,” he said, and he popped the cap off the bottle effortlessly with his artificial thumb. He took a long drink, and sighed. “That’s the stuff alright.”

“Three each,” Donoghue ordered. “No more.” Handel scowled, but Donoghue’s face was firm. “You can have another if you’re on watch. One more. We’re still on duty.” She took another drink, grinned. “In theory, anyway.”

She wandered out into one of the other rooms. Gideon sat for a little while, finishing his apple as Handel and Yaxley cooked. He’d offered his help, but Handel – sensibly – had refused it. That left him, for the first time in weeks – even months – with genuinely nothing to do. Those had been Donoghue’s orders: Clean up, eat something, have a drink, and be useless. He finished the apple, got up, stretched, and wandered over to the narrow stairs, leading into the second layer of shipping containers. They were all bunk-rooms, enough for dozens of soldiers to sleep in shifts, hot-swapping every few hours. For the artillery crews they would have been cramped and uncomfortable – but the salvage squad could have had four bunks each. Collins looked up as Gideon approached, his tech kit spread out across the floor, taking advantage of the new space. His beer was unopened and untouched.

“Alright?” Gideon asked, fumbling in his belt until he found the right shim, popping the cap from his beer and taking a swig. It was the most refreshing thing he’d ever drunk. “Thanks for the freezer.” He felt better disposed towards Collins than he ever had in that moment.

“No problem,” Collins said with a smile. He had a jeweller’s glass over one eye, was fiddling with the innards of a drone. His laptop displayed line after line of impenetrable code, its meaning utterly lost on Gideon. Collins moved a wire, frowning at the circuitry. He tapped a few keys, but whatever he did had no effect.

“What’s wrong?” Gideon asked, moving around beside his bunkmate to peer at the drone’s internals. The code might mean nothing, but this much he did know.

“Repulsor keeps cutting out,” Collins explained. “I’ve done a reboot and a patch but the software seems fine.” He grimaced. “Really not sure what else it could be. It all looks fine, but…”

A week ago, Gideon wouldn’t have even started this conversation, let alone leaned in to take a look – but he hadn’t had a drink in months and the beer was already going to his head, and despite their being stuck in the mountains he was feeling better – at least today – than he had in far too long. For once he didn’t want to shove Collins into one of the mountain passes.

“Let’s have a look,” he said, taking the drone from Collins and leaning in closely. He traced the gleaming copper lines, finding the little repulsor engine’s path. There. The corrosion was subtle but it was present, enough to cut off a circuit intermittently. He plucked an insulated probe from his belt and scraped it away almost automatically.

“Try that.”

Collins took the drone, tapped a few keys. The engine’s power lights lit up a steady green. The technician looked up at Gideon, a wide smile spreading across his face.

“Thanks, Gideon.” Gideon nodded back, suddenly embarrassed. Had he ever helped Collins out before, just because he could rather than because he had to? Had any of the squad?

“Don’t mention it.” Really, please don’t. “I’m going to lie down.”

“Alright. I’ll see you in a bit.” Collins smiled again, and Gideon left before he embarrassed himself further. The next section of bunks was empty, and Gideon flopped down on one of the low, narrow cots gratefully, pulling off his boots and flak jacket. Lightened, he lay back, setting his beer on the treadplate floor. It felt eerie to just… rest; to not be constantly worrying about their next foray, to not be cleaning his kit or carrying supplies or standing watch. But all those tasks were already accomplished. He was almost free. Almost. He knew that this pleasant peace could not and would never last for long. Tomorrow, they would be off again, but tonight… tonight, it almost seemed like everything would be alright. When Gideon closed his eyes, he didn’t even see the bloody mess of Corporal Atwell’s face. Even she had given him a break, just this once.

He kept his eyes closed, let fatigue wash over him. His sleep lasted for a glorious ten minutes, before his peace was shattered by the sound of Petra and Dawson trying to kill one another, again.

*

By the time Gideon stumbled into the other bunk-room Yaxley was already holding the two engineers apart, one gripped firmly in each massive hand at arm’s length. Handel was presumably still downstairs, but Collins was peering around one bunk, keeping out of range of any wild blows – and out of Donoghue’s furious gaze.

“What the hell are you two playing at?” she snapped, her glare hot enough to melt metal. Dawson, Yaxley’s huge hand wrapped around both her wrists, spoke first, venom in her every word. The skin around her eye was already blackening, swelling, courtesy, Gideon presumed, of Petra’s fist.

“She was messing with the jeep,” the engineer snarled, shooting daggers at Petra, whose face was as cold as glacial ice. “Sabotage. She was fucking with the engine, would have made it cut out on us fifty miles from anywhere.”

“She has a name, Private,” Petra said calmly, though her white knuckles told a different story, Yaxley’s hand gripping her shoulder firmly, his reach much longer than hers. Her words came clearly despite the split lip she was sporting, still oozing blood quietly.

“And she needs to start talking, Corporal,” Donoghue replied pointedly, turning her glare on Petra. Gideon grimaced as Petra held Donoghue’s gaze silently for a long moment. The sergeant had only a limited amount of patience to spend at the best of times – this had not been a good time for Petra to pick a fight.

“I was recalibrating,” the corporal said finally, her icy gaze melting before the heat of Donoghue’s rage, “the fuel injectors. For greater efficiency.”

“By ripping out the engine management system?” Dawson snarled.

“I needed to do it manually,” Petra said, her voice dripping with condescension, “because your stupid management systems can’t tell a simple repair from deliberate sabotage. Because you need your tech to spell it out if anything goes wrong, instead of just taking a look for yourself.” The ‘you’ was clearly not just directed at Dawson, and Gideon felt a stab of irritation. He was a practical man – he trusted only what his own eyes told him. Just because we’re Union doesn’t mean we’re idiots. He kept quiet, though – the last thing this argument needed was his input.

“So,” Donoghue continued, the raw heat of her anger fading a little but none of its intensity, “you took the jeep apart.”

“Yes, Sergeant,” Petra replied sharply. “And I was quietly getting on with the business of making our lives easier when this one,” she pointed at the restrained and glowering Dawson “decided to take offence.” She reached up with her offhand to wipe blood from her lip. A little spattered on the floor.

“I decided to stop you crippling our only means of transport and leaving us stranded here,” Dawson snapped. “There’s nothing wrong with the damn jeep. I’ve kept it running perfectly well so far.”

“Well, just keeping it running isn’t good enough,” Petra countered. “It’s a piece of shit. I’ve dealt with plenty of them over the years. I know what I’m doing.”

“When you were throwing civilian cars into the battlefield?” Dawson said, derision dripping from every word. “Some of us trained on actual military hardware. Some of us know how modern technology works, and can fix a damn engine without ripping out anything newer than a carburettor!”

“And some of us actually know how a carburettor works!” Petra snapped back, her fists clenching even tighter, and Yaxley flexed his huge arms, keeping the two women firmly at a safe distance.

Donoghue raised a hand, using her other to pinch the bridge of her nose, grimacing.

“So. You were arguing over nothing, basically. As per usual.” Her glare left no part of her irritation to the imagination. “Who punched first?”

Both women were suddenly reluctant to speak, their arguments dried up. Donoghue looked from one to the other like a schoolteacher, anger blending with disappointment.

“Who hit first?” she demanded. “Come on!”

“I did,” Dawson muttered reluctantly.

“Of course you did,” Donoghue sighed. “But you threw the second, Petra?”

“I did,” Petra confirmed, sounding far prouder of herself than her counterpart.

“Then you’re both fucking stupid,” Donoghue snapped. She turned to pace a little, back and forth, fists clenched tightly, anger still plain on her face. “The war is over. And yeah, we all know how that’s likely to go, but right now it really is over. And we’re stuck together, for better or mostly worse. None of us want to be here, but we are, and while we are the least you can do is to stop trying to kill each other for the hell of it!” She was red with rage, Petra and Dawson both looking away, flushed themselves with embarrassment.

“If this happens again,” Donoghue continued, “then I will actually use my authority as a sergeant to come down on you like a ton of bricks.” She sighed, and for a moment her anger was gone, a deep sadness in its place of a kind Gideon had never seen from her before. “But I’ll let it go for now. For now only, understand? We’ve all had a day. We’re about to have another. But we’re in this together, like it or not. I don’t care if you like each other. You just have to work together.” She brought her voice back up to parade-pitch. “Are we clear?”

“Yes, sarge,” the two women mumbled. Donoghue glared.

“Yes, sarge!” the engineers repeated, louder, clearer, before the sergeant had to ask again.

“Good,” Donoghue said curtly. “Now clean yourselves up, get the jeep ready to go, and then come and eat something. Handel should be nearly done by now.” At her nod, Yaxley released Petra and Dawson, silently walking away back down to the kitchen. Neither woman looked at the other, instead walking away in opposite directions, to lick their wounds and let their frustrations simmer privately. Collins looked at Gideon, shrugged, and went back to his drone, leaving Gideon and his sergeant alone. Donoghue’s fists were still clenched, as was her jaw, as she stared down at the floor. She said nothing. Knowing he would regret it, Gideon cleared his throat.

“Sarge? You ok?”

“Technician Gideon,” Donoghue replied, her voice simmering with rage, “I suggest you leave. Those two fuckwits aren’t the only ones who want to hit something right now.”

Gideon got the hint. He left Donoghue in the room, alone, staring down at the floor, where a few tiny drops of Petra’s blood still glistened crimson in the harsh overhead lights.

SPFBO: Final Update

Alas, this is indeed my last update – at least about The Blackbird and the Ghost – concerning this year’s SPFBO. I got to the semi-final list, which was honestly far further than I ever expected to get. To hit the top 50 of so many amazing books is just fantastic.

Unfortunately for me, however, that’s as far as I’m going. The Qwillery announced their finalist a couple of days ago, and the honour has gone to Virginia McClain’s Blade’s Edge. Thus, I am eliminated. But it was by a worthy opponent, so I’m not too fussed!

Huge congratulations to Virginia for making the finalist list! I’ll be watching and reading in great anticipation to see who claims the crown this year.

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In other news, chapter 7 of Salvage Seven will go up at 7pm (GMT) this evening. Watch this space for your regularly scheduled programming.

November Update

Apologies for the lack of Salvage Seven this week – it’s been a busy weekend, but for nice reasons (was my birthday, woo). I’ll have the next chapter up this coming weekend.

In general news, various projects are ticking over. I’m taking a break from Salvage for a little while (don’t worry, there’s still plenty written up and ready for you to read) just to avoid burning out. Some editing might need doing on the last few weeks of work, I think. But in the meantime I’ve written an SF short based around submarine warfare, but in space (because why not).

For the Boiling Seas readers among you, I’m currently writing a little more Tal and Max! Definitely not the sequel to Blackbird just yet – this is a short piece for RockStarlit BookAsylum‘s Tales from the Asylum series. I’ve been taking far too long to get it done, but Timy over at the Asylum has been very kindly taking stories from lots of SPFBO authors. I’m almost finished. Honest. It may take a while to get posted, but it’ll happen, honest.

Other than that, not much to tell. I’ve been blessed with many book tokens and Amazon monies, so I intend to do plenty of reading in the immediate future (including of the wonderful first volume of Planetes, thank you parents). Think I’ll start with Ravenor for now.

Speak to you all soon.