Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 47

Musketeer Space Part 40: Tea, and the Cardinal

It’s Musketeer Day!

I had a Robotech Rewatch disaster this week, accidentally skipping a disc and reviewing the wrong episode! Have no fear, I’ll be posting a double episode this Saturday to make up for it.

Check out this month’s Musketeer Media Monday post: Bat’Magnan & the Mean Musketeers (2001), in which a Musketeer adaptation gets almost exactly everything wrong, and is mostly forgiven because Catherine Deneuve.

Speaking of Musketeer adaptations, we’ve been marathoning our way through Leverage for the first time, and whenever Richard Chamberlain turns up, I convince myself that Aramis is immortal and training catburglars in the 21st century. Well, he would.

Start reading Musketeer Space from Part 1

Missed the last installment? Track back to Part 39

Read a festive Musketeer Space prequel, “Seven Days of Joyeux.”

Main Page & Table of Contents

PREVIOUSLY ON MUSKETEER SPACE: The Sun-kissed invaded the other end of the solar-system, and while her friends the Musketeers were waiting to be sent into battle, Dana managed to get into a whole lot of trouble including sleeping with the enemy, losing the Prince’s tailor she was hoping to have an affair with, discovering Athos’ dead husband wasn’t actually dead, and scoring a job that means she’s almost, but not quite, a Musketeer herself.

NOW READ ON!

This chapter is dedicated to Heather Berberet. Thank you for your generous support and I look forward to hearing what you want to name your spaceship.

Chapter 40 – Tea, and the Cardinal

The last thing Dana wanted was for all three of her Musketeer friends to follow her home and witness whatever Kitty had to tell her, but apparently she didn’t have any choice in the matter.

When they arrived at Madame Su’s Bed and Board, Dana was alarmed to see that Planchet was nowhere in sight, but Madame Su herself had cornered a dishevelled and cranky-looking Kitty.

“So this is your landlady, Dana!” Aramis announced, pouncing on Madame Su with delight which might or might not be feigned. “You didn’t tell me she was so fashionably turned out. Hello, Madame, I’m Captain-Lieutenant Aramis of the Royal Fleet, so glad to meet you at last!”

Porthos jumped into the charm offensive with both boots, giving Madame Su a hearty smack between her narrow shoulder blades. “I hear you’ve been taking good care of our little Dana,” she said heartily. “So nice when neighbours take care of each other. That’s what I always say about Paris Satellite – we might be a giant space station orbiting the moon of an over-heated desert planet no one in their right minds would ever visit, but we’re also a community.”

“You do always say that, Porthos, it’s true,” said Aramis, nodding. “But Madame Su, you must tell me where you got that darling silk suit – I’ve been looking for something like it for ages. Not that my figure is quite as dainty as yours, of course…”

Madame Su was helplessly pinned between the two over-friendly Musketeers, which gave Dana an opportunity to draw Kitty out of earshot, further into the workshop. Athos followed them, one hand hanging casually close to his pilot’s slice and a blank, vaguely harmless expression that was in direct contrast to the set of his shoulders.

Kitty darted a suspicious look at Athos, but got the picture very quickly that she wasn’t going to get to speak to Dana alone.

“I have your dress,” Dana blurted out, handing the sparkly cloth to the other girl.

“That’s a good start,” Kitty snarled back, and it was only then that Dana realised her eyes were red-rimmed beneath the sparkly pink eyelashes. Kitty had been crying. “How about finding me a new job while you’re at it?”

“I thought you were never going to leave Milord’s employ,” said Dana, genuinely startled.

Kitty stabbed a finger into the middle of Dana’s chest. “Well that was before you sent him absolutely apeshit. He accused me of helping you – which I did, by the way, you’re fucking welcome – and when I tried to leave the spaceship he attacked me and locked me in my own office!”

“How did you get out?” Athos asked in a low, measured voice.

“Same way Sergeant Grateful here did, through the ducts,” Kitty snapped. “He scares me, and I am not going back. So you had better find me somewhere to go, Dana D’Artagnan. You broke my funny, slightly morally dubious boss, and now I am stuck with some kind of weird rage maniac out for revenge.”

Dana sighed. “You know the maniac part was always there, right?”

“Not with me, it wasn’t!” Kitty wrapped her arms tightly around herself, looking more distressed than a girl wearing sequinned high-top sneakers ever should. “I have to get off Paris Satellite, somewhere safe, and you are going to help me.”

“Fine,” Dana said, folding her arms. “We’ll help you find a new position somewhere – far from here.” She faltered, and looked at Athos for help.

He sighed. “Aramis knows someone who works for the Daughters of Peace united government. Is that far enough?”

“You mean Madame Chevreuse?” Dana asked.

Athos nodded. “I’m sure she can help this young lady find work – but of course, we’d need good reason to give a reference.” He gave Kitty a stern look.

“I’m a fucking aces personal assistant,” Kitty said, continuing to stab Dana’s chest with a polished teal fingernail.”

“I believe you,” Athos said mildly. “But that’s not exactly what I meant.”

Dana caught on. “Kitty, you need to tell me now, exactly what you know about the kidnapping of Conrad Su, and where Milord is keeping him.”

Kitty rolled her eyes at her. “You mean you’ve got some other boyfriend on the line? How do you find the time?”

“Conrad’s not mine,” Dana assured her. “It’s Athos here who’s in love with him. I’m just being a good friend,” she added, giving Athos a pat on the shoulder to show what good friends they were.

Athos said nothing. This was probably for the best. Dana suspected that his sarcasm levels were currently broadcasting a frequency only robots could hear.

Kitty was unconvinced. “What’s this got to do with the old broad over there?” she asked, nodding at Madame Su, who had given in to the inevitable and was admitting Aramis and Porthos into her office to discuss pattern books and fabric imports over tea.

“She’s Conrad’s wife,” Dana admitted. “That’s why we have to be so discreet about his affair with Athos.”

“Yes, D’Artagnan, ‘discreet’ is the first word that comes to mind when I think of you,” Athos grated out.

“But she’s been working with Milord,” said Kitty. “And the Cardinal. You know that, right?”

“Well, we do now,” said Dana after a horrified pause.

“Quickly then,” said Athos, taking his chance. “Before she comes back and gets a good look at you, Miss Columbina. Tell us everything you know about the whereabouts of Conrad Su.”

“Aliens,” said Aramis slowly, as the four of them sat around a table on the Promenade. Athos and Dana had decided it was finally time to let Aramis and Porthos in on what had been going on, in case it was the last chance they would all be together for some time. It wasn’t exactly a story that either of them wanted to share over comms.

“You’ve both had sex with aliens,” Porthos added, looking just as bemused.

“The same alien,” Dana corrected.

“Yes, that is entirely the most important detail of the story,” Athos growled. He was on his second espresso, and it was obvious that he was deeply angry at the coffee for not being remotely alcoholic.

“I’m not trying to be insensitive here,” Porthos added. “It’s starting to make a lot more sense now, that’s all.”

“What is?”

Porthos nudged his shoulder with her own. “You, you miserable, self-destructive sod. None of this was your fault, you know.”

“Apart from my failure to properly execute an enemy of the solar system,” Athos said, staring at the table.

Knowing when a change of subject was warranted, Aramis drummed against the table with her long, tapering fingers. “Dana, I have your Kitty on the solarcrawler to the Daughters of Peace tonight, with a suitcase full of plastic unicorns, a reference stud for Chevreuse, and an assumed name. It doesn’t sound like she had much to offer you in exchange.”

“Kitty confirmed that Madame Su is working as a spy for the Cardinal, and has had dealings with Milord,” said Dana. “And she knows that there is an outpost called ‘the Tower’ where Milord keeps his enemies, but she couldn’t tell us where it was.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Athos flatly. “It’s too fucking late, D’Artagnan. We ship out tomorrow, and we wouldn’t have time to stage a rescue even if we did know where he was.”

“I know,” Dana said, squeezing her hands into fists. “At least I’ll be well away from Milord by this time tomorrow. He won’t be able to touch me in Truth Space.”

“No, he won’t,” said Aramis, but there was something odd about her voice. The others looked up: first Porthos, then Athos, and finally Dana.

Special Agent Rosnay Cho – Ro, to her friends and business partners – stood in the middle of the Promenade, in a peach flight suit. Her long black hair swept down her back, and her scarred face looked quite calm. She beckoned Dana over to her.

“So this is a trap,” Porthos said conversationally.

“Isn’t it nice the way they call attention to themselves so we don’t even have to wonder?” said Aramis.

Athos laid a hand on Dana’s arm. “No,” he said in a quiet voice.

Dana patted his fingers, and stood up. “I’ll be okay.”

“If you go anywhere with her, I will stun you, I’m not even kidding,” said Porthos.

Dana walked over to the special agent. So much had happened since they last saw each other, at the Fountain of Tranquility. They had felt almost like friends, that night. Still, Dana knew better than to trust anything that Rosnay Cho had to say to her.

“I hear you’ve been busy,” said Ro.

Dana’s immediate thought was how much does she know, oh hell, and she could feel her eyes widening like saucers.

“Wow,” said Ro with a laugh. “That bad?”

“Did you want something?” Dana meant for her question to sound businesslike, but a plaintive edge slipped in that she had not intended. Once again she felt twelve years old in the presence of this capable, terrifying older woman.

Ro smirked at her, and drew a paper envelope from one of the many pockets of her pretty flight suit. “I have an invitation for you. Thought I’d deliver it specially.”

“I was going to say that’s nice of you, but I’m pretty sure it’s your actual job to screw with my head, so – thanks, I think?” Dana was proud that her thoughts came out as intelligibly as they did.

Ro gave her a salute – an actual salute. “I hear you’re shipping out tomorrow, Arms-Sergeant D’Artagnan. Thank you for your service, and all that. Try not to get your baby-faced head blown off.”

“I -” said Dana, but she didn’t have the faintest idea what to say in response to that, not at all. As it turned out, her lack of a snappy comeback was fine because Ro was already striding away, her long hair fluttering in her wake.

Three pairs of Musketeer eyes locked on to her as she headed back to the cafe table.

“What is it?” Athos asked at once.

“Never mind what is it, what was that? Dana how many of your suspiciously hot sworn enemies have you been flirting with lately?” Aramis demanded. “Seriously, this one’s my favourite, she is sizzling.”

Dana opened the envelope, and took out a gold-edged card inviting her to take tea with her Eminence, Cardinal Richelieu, two hours from now. She stared at it for a long time.

“So,” said Porthos, sounding far too cheerful. “This is a trap.”

The Cardinal’s office at the Palace was an elegant salon, stylish and bright instead of the grim, ominously dark room Dana had pictured on the way over here. There were no historical portraits, no dusty religious statues and certainly no angry antique power desk.

Dana had been so sure the Cardinal was the type to have an angry antique power desk.

Instead, the ceiling was painted in a traditional sacred starscape, depicting the view of Honour from orbit, as seen through the viewscreen by the cosmonaut crew of the Third Venturer. The lovely mural was the only part of the room that appeared remotely religious.

A grey-haired woman in military dress reds sat by a window through which spilled a flood of artificial light. She looked like a scholar, or a teacher, with a volume of poetry open on her lap. At Dana’s approach, the woman looked up and smiled, and Dana gave up all hope that this was the Cardinal’s kind-hearted and motherly secretary. No, this was Richelieu herself.

“Arms-Sergeant D’Artagnan,” said Cardinal Richelieu. “We meet at last.” She was smaller than she looked on all the vid announcements.

“You honoured me with the invitation, Your Eminence,” said Dana, which was partly true. It was bizarre for the leader of the Church of All and closest advisor to the Regent to take an interest in a low-ranked pilot who didn’t even belong to her own Fleet – even if the Cardinal wanted her dead (which wasn’t out of the question), she would hardly be expected to do it herself.

“I thought we had better meet here,” said the Cardinal dryly. “Your friends are likely to panic less about the Palace than my private residence.”

Dana agreed silently. Athos, Aramis and Porthos were all standing guard along the gallery across this floor, with an eye to each of the possible exits. She had no doubt that they would have locked her in a cupboard rather than let her attend upon the Cardinal in her own home.

Bad enough that she had walked past several Red Guards and at least three Sabres on the way to Richelieu’s salon, and that several of them had given her an odd look as if in recognition.

“You are from Gascon Station, are you not, Arms-Sergeant D’Artagnan?” asked the Cardinal. She gave Dana a searching look, as if she could see every thought that passed through her head merely by observation. “Your mother was a Musketeer, and your grandmother before you.”

“That’s right, your Eminence,” said Dana.

The Cardinal waved her to sit. “They will bring us tea shortly, my dear, while we extend our acquaintance. I believe you stopped at Meung Station on your journey to Paris.”

That particular detail surprised Dana, though it should not have done. Of course, the Cardinal would know all about her first encounter with Rosnay Cho, and probably every time their paths had crossed since. “Yes, your Eminence.”

“Such a shame that your paperwork was lost, and that you were not able to present yourself properly to Amiral Treville,” said the Cardinal, with a sympathetic smile. “Still, our fearsome Amiral would have been hard-pressed to find employment for you among her troops. The Musketeers have so few resources these days.”

“So I believe, your Eminence,” said Dana, wondering where this was going.

“And oh – so many adventures since then. Your friendships with the infamous Inseparables, your romance with a certain tailor, even your journeys – two journeys, no less – to that picturesque planet Valour. You see, I know all about you, young D’Artagnan. I believe the Prince Consort has particular reason to value your adventurous spirit, and your loyalty. It is to be commended.”

Dana shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Your Eminence is too kind.”

The Cardinal looked deeply into Dana’s face and was obviously amused by what she found there. “Oh, my dear. Did you think I had called you here to reprimand you? What authority is it that you think I have over one of the Regent’s own Musketeers?” She laughed, her eyes dancing.

Dana was more confused than ever. “May I ask – why exactly did you want to see me, your Eminence?”

The tea arrived, brought in by three servants with impeccable manners who tidied the Cardinal’s book away and set a table between the two women, resplendent with a silver teapot, vintage china cups, and a towering display of pastries.

The Cardinal poured for them both, adding milk to the dark, fragrant tea in the cups. “You are brave, D’Artagnan,” she said. “Though I think there is more to you than that. Youth, bravery and talent make such a compelling combination. The best pilots – and the best soldiers – are strong of head and of heart. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes,” said Dana helplessly. She could do nothing now but surf alongside this conversation and hope that she came out alive at the far side of it.

Cardinal Richelieu smiled warmly, as if Dana’s agreement had meant something else altogether. “Splendid. I believe that you need guidance, my dear. So far from home – and grieving the recent tragic loss to your family. That is why I would very much like to take you under my wing.”

Dana had judged it safe to bring the cup to her lips and take a sip of tea; in actual fact, it now took all of her personal reserves to hold back from insulting the all-powerful Cardinal with a classic spit-take. “Your Eminence?” she said, pouring enough confusion into her words to make it clear that she was asking a question, but didn’t know enough to be sure what question that was.

Richelieu sipped her own tea with infinite grace. “Why, D’Artagnan, I would like to invite you to take up a commission as a Sabre in the Red Guard. What do you say to that?”

You have been reading Musketeer Space, by Tansy Rayner Roberts. Tune in next week for another chapter! Please comment, share and link. Musketeer Space is free to read, but if you’d like to support the project for as little as $1 per month, please visit my Patreon page. Pledges can earn rewards such as ebooks, extra content, dedications and the naming of spaceships. Milestones already unlocked include the Musketeer Media Monday posts, the Robotech Rewatch posts, and “Seven Days of Joyeux,” a special Christmas prequel novella which was released in December 2015. My next funding milestone will unlock GORGEOUS COVER ART.

Bat’Magnan and the Mean Musketeers (2001)

I wasn’t sure what to expect from The Musketeer (2001) but the title didn’t give me a lot of confidence – after all, while the number of Musketeers in the title is canonically questionable, it’s the plural that’s important. I mean, last time I reviewed a piece of Musketeer Media that was only about a single Musketeer, we got Athos being sad on the moon.

This time around, we have Tim Roth in a hat, and a script that thinks it’s okay to tell the Musketeer story without Milady and, for the most part, without giving Athos anything to do.

It’s not okay.

We are introduced to the young Bruce Wayne D’Artagnan as a small boy, fencing with his father, until an arch Tim Roth in a glamorous all-black ensemble turns up to snark about taxes and kill both D’Artagnan’s parents for shits and giggles.

Just as I was wondering why you would cast Tim Roth as Rochefort and not give him an eyepatch, newly-orphaned Bruce Wayne D’Artagnan went at him with a sword and made an eyepatch supremely necessary.

The kid is left in the charge of Jarvis Alfred Planchet, a kindly servant who will do his best to raise him without anyone building a Batcave, creating a utility belt, or dressing up in silly costumes to fight crime.

Well, two out of three isn’t bad.

After a truly awful opening credits sequence which seems to be demonstrating how someone found a computer filter to turn the least interesting still images from the movie into “oil painting style” but ended up with something a bit closer to “crayon pixels,” we meet the new and grown up D’Artagnan (Justin Chambers) with his effortlessly ageless butler servant Planchet.

This D’Artagnan has a knack for arranging fight scene set pieces. One small bar brawl quickly transforms into a rolling concoction of barrels and Hong Kong style swordplay with jumps and flips. Seriously, don’t let this kid near any more barrels.

The budget for this movie is so low that Rochefort can’t afford a proper eyepatch. The scenery is pretty but otherwise they spent all the money on swords and Tim Roth.

That’s not… the worst decision a production crew has ever made, I suppose.

For some reason, however, he is called Febre instead of Rochefort. Also, there’s a different character called Rochefort who does not have an eyepatch. Why would you do this to us, movie?

Porthos is played by Big Al from Stella (Steve Speirs), which makes me almost forgive them for rewriting the traditional meet-cute so that it’s a vaguely threatening conversation instead of a three way challenge to duels. Aramis (Nick Moran) is – okay. Aramis is often done terribly, but this one is particularly hard to take given that he has none of the characteristics of the character in the book at all. He’s a bit more whiney than Porthos, they’re both drunk for most of the movie, and no one seduces anyone or makes even a passing reference to God.

Also, there is no Athos. At this point of the movie, I chose to believe that this was because he was honouring the spirit of Oliver Reed by refusing to leave the pub just because they’ve already started filming. My theory proved to be… overly optimistic.

Mena Suvari plays Constance, only she’s called Francesca and is a chambermaid, and the daughter of a dead seamstress (THEY FRIDGED CONSTANCE BEFORE THE MOVIE STARTED). She and D’Artagnan are so boring on screen together that I may choose to ignore them entirely.

SO DULL.

Stop talking stop talking stop talking just stick to the fight scenes.

The second attempt at a meet-cute between D’Art, Porthos and Aramis (still no Athos what the hell) has him knocking them over with a barrel (did I not say to keep this kid away from barrels?) while dressed as a Red Guard. They end up teaming up to free the imprisoned commander of the Musketeers, Surprisingly Elderly Treville, despite Aramis and Porthos being drunk, and D’Artagnan not being a Musketeer.

It’s an excuse to blow things up. Also, the Red Guards run very slowly which is why they can’t catch up with the world’s slowest carriage.

Even the actors are bored with the talking parts. Big Al is the only one prepared to put a bit of oomph into it. He is my favourite.

Athos finally turns up, possibly because this scene is set in a bar, appearing as an extra-drunk tramp who challenges D’Artagnan to a pub knife throwing competition. When D’Art refuses to put up with his slurred challenge, everyone cuts him like it’s high school and he just failed to impress the Mean Girls.

A grumpy D’Art returns to his dodgy lodgings where he is traumatised by giant cockroaches, falls through the floor and ends up half in Constance’s Francesca’s bath.

The story keeps jumping weirdly between set pieces, often failing to glue them together with any logic. Somehow D’Art convinces the Mean Girl Musketeers to accompany him through a sewer to get to the palace, in the hopes of preventing a diplomatic incident.

Because yes, sewer-smelling drunk Musketeers turning up in the kitchens during a palace banquet, that’s sure to improve DIPLOMACY.

Disguised as a wine-pourer, D’Art suffers workplace sexual harassment form a lusty lady who doesn’t mean sword when she’s talking about his sword. Athos, dressed as a baker, learns grumpily to make bread (he would rather be the butcher) while taking instruction from his hostage in the cupboard, and Aramis has too soft a heart to butcher a pair of live geese. This is the best bit that doesn’t involve fighting, and literally the only good bit with Athos.

So much better than anyone else in this movie.

This is the point at which I realised there was really truly going to be no Milady in this story, and Athos is being written as a disposable character because as far as they’re concerned, he really is. Sigh.

A peasant flashmob attacks the palace and a very underwhelmed Cardinal doesn’t seem especially invested in saving the situation.

The Musketeers reveal themselves and lead the King, Queen and Ambassador Buckingham to safety, away from the riot.

Sewer time!

Now I see why the kitchen was reconstructed with such loving detail – it becomes the setting for a glorious fight scene in which pretty much every prop gets used including fire, soup and pot racks.

Never mind Big Al Porthos, the Queen (Catherine Deneuve) is now officially my favourite. Sloshing through the sewers in her pretty dress with the King and Buckingham, she gives an impish smirk and says she’s heard there might be crocodiles down here.

The Queen is a loveable smartass.

Later, D’Artagnan sees off a horde of Red Guards from his lodgings with a fine display of ‘my choreographer got the memo that I’m the main character’, and Not-Constance deals with her own sexual harassment in the workplace with a knife held at Bonancieux’s privates.

A knife to the privates is, as we all know, the universal sign of ‘strong female character.’

“How shit is the lighting in this movie?” “I know, right?”

Cardinal Richelieu (Stephen Rea) would rather be in another movie, I think. He says lines like ‘men without greed make me nervous’ in the same tone of voice he says everything – flat ennui with a side order of ‘le sigh’. Tim Roth would be better off emoting his own speeches to an empty room.

In a series of dull and weirdly shot scenes, the Musketeer extras are all arrested by the Cardinal’s men.

The actual interesting part of the movie – the change they have made that genuinely makes an improvement instead of sucking all the life out of the room – is the tension between the king and queen, where she’s genuinely trying to be involved in political discussions, and he and the Cardinal pat her on the head and send her out of the room.

The Queen’s rebellion, then, is not to sleep with Buckingham but to sneak out of the palace and Do Diplomacy with him.

Constance pulls D’Art out of bed and takes him to a carriage where the Queen is dressed like a serving wench and playing cards with Planchet SHE IS THE BEST.

The Mean Girl Musketeers turn up to bring D’Art in on a fun romp to free their compatriots and he has to refuse because of the Secret Queen Job. They get huffy at him and start defriending him from all their social networks.

Best Queen Ever. Accept no substitutions.

I’m starting to see why this movie is called ‘The Musketeer’ because it’s not about awesome bromance and friendship, it’s about how this one kid who isn’t even a Musketeer is better than the rest of them, and it actually sells the concept. He might be an entitled brat, but they’re all twice his age and I want to smack them.

So far, the only bromance is between the Queen and Francesca.

Queen Deneuve has far too much fun for D’Art’s liking on their road trip, including “helping” during a bar brawl and hiding a pistol in her skirts. Mena Suvari has heart eyes and “I want to be you when I grow up.”

Then, in an elaborate carriage attack involving many examples of what I now call the Peggy Carter (fighting on top of a car) the Queen saves D’Art with a well placed bullet.

My daughters at that point decided that she was their favourite and their best, and the only good thing in the movie. I can’t argue with that.

Once she is ensconced in a safe house in the country the Queen sends the kids back to Paris without her. D’Art and Not Constance interpret this to mean romantic picnic.

Febre attacks them, kidnaps Not Constance, then finds the Queen off camera and threatens a servant child to make the Queen sign a letter to lure Buckingham somewhere, even though he could probably have just waited since she was going to meet Buckingham anyway.

I don’t even know what’s going on here, the editing is confusing and there’s a lot of angry riding. D’Art actually rides his horse to exhaustion, something that BBC D’Art would judge him so hard about.

Febre is crazycakes. He sets fire to a bunch of things (Ms10 was particularly upset at him endangering Surprisingly Elderly Treville’s moustache, as part of her ongoing anti-moustache agenda) to find out a thing that he basically should already know about D’Artagnan, then shoots Treville dead.

Ms10 was so traumatised at this point she asked to leave the room, despite the fact that she rages at Musketeer movies that fail to kill Constance as is (according to her) only right and proper.

The bored Cardinal is driven to shouting at Febre when he realises that the man in black is basically out to start a war with Spain out of sheer punk rock anarchy. Even shouting, he sounds disaffected. I think the Cardinal needs a holiday to get his groove back. If he ever had a groove.

Aramis’ hair is full of secrets

When D’Artagnan finds Treville’s house on fire, Aramis shrieks at him like a bratty younger sibling with a grudge, blaming him for ditching them without explanation (even though he’s not a Musketeer), and making him feel as bad as possible about Treville’s death, plus the off screen deaths of a couple of extras.

Aramis you are a tool.

D’Art and the Cardinal have a discreet and strangely intimate rendezvous to discuss about how Febre is off the rails, and he’s no longer working under the Cardinal’s orders, if he ever was. D’Art takes his angry self to the Musketeer extras pub to shame them all into helping him save France.

They taunt him for being overly romantic and he drops a sarcastic ‘all for one and one for all’ and his Dad’s Musketeer shirt at them before storming off to be a lone wolf superhero who possibly has some sort of flying rodent theme.

D’Artagan sets off to destroy another horse, because that’s what he does. He is also contractually obliged to only ride during sunset, so he can be properly silhouetted.

Just as he is looking wistfully at a rain drenched castle which is possibly Hogwarts, Porthos turns up in blue livery, followed by Aramis and Athos. I like to think their horses look so well rested because they all caught the train.

Does Athos even have a speaking part in this movie? He hasn’t had a line of dialogue in an hour.

The rest of the Musketeers turn up to be an army and invade Hogwarts, because this kid told them that they should. They also let him put on his Dad’s Musketeer shirt even though I’m pretty sure only the King can say he’s allowed to.

Their horses are all so pissed off at them right now. Also – is riding on horseback really the best way to invade a castle on a hill?

Turns out the answer to that question is: not when Hogwarts has cannons.

Luckily they seem to have an almost limitless source of fresh Musketeers, which is good because Febre’s men are apparently armed with magical gunpowder which works just fine in the pouring rain.

The Queen, because she is awesome, makes Francesca help throw a marble bust out the window of the Astronomy Tower to tell D’Art where they are. The editing totally made it look like the bust was going to brain Febre for a second there, which would have been a hilarious way to end the movie.

Because he hasn’t done the Hong Kong thing for a while, D’Art throws a line and Batclimbs up the Astronomy Tower. Sadly, amusing celebrities don’t pop their heads out of windows to make snarky comments as he goes up and to thoroughly date the time in which this was made. I guess for 2001 it would have been Ross and Rachel from Friends, or maybe Sarah Michelle Gellar?) Also, when a couple of Red Guards turn up on their own ropes to attack him, my daughter yelled “reverse Bat climb!” which made me forcing her to watch this bloody movie seem completely worth it.

Francesca takes a bullet for the Queen, which is my favourite Constance-killing method of all time and should be the only one allowed. When D’Art leans over to kiss her goodbye she whispers “I’m not dead, now will you please go kill him?” which is pretty cute.

D’Art and Febre then fill out the rest of the squares on their fight scene bingo card, including ‘across the battlements’ and ‘ladders’ which brought back some great Xena memories.

I wish I was watching Xena right now.

Xena and Catherine Deneuve’s Queen would have got along like a house on fire.

Finally, Tim Roth is dead, to be reincarnated as all the other villains in historical movies through the late 90’s and early 00’s. We don’t get to see the final sword thrust, because editing.

It’s the end! King Barely Appearing in This Picture gives medals to the Muskteers while the Queen eye-flirts with Planchet and his trick card deck from across the court. I know where she’s sneaking off to next Saturday night.

Oh, and Francesca is alive with no actual explanation of how she survived the bullet. No strategically placed Bible or dented drinking flask, nothing. Maybe she’s an android. My daughter liked this theory so much she pointed out that it also explained why Francesca didn’t strip off to hop into the lake with D’Artagnan during the picnic.

The Cardinal tries to get in on the ‘D’Art is my bro’ action, but Dart whispers ‘One of these nights I will come for you’ which is either a threat or a highly seductive promise.

D’Art then breaks the Cardinal’s heart by riding off in a Just Married carriage, without questioning why his new wife is bulletproof.

I kind of wish I’d watched the movie that made it explicit that she was a robot duplicate.

It’s almost enough to demand a sequel.

No, no it’s not.

Androids make exceptional ladies-in-waiting.

This Musketeer Media Monday post is brought to you by the paid sponsors of Musketeer Space, all 50+ of them. You guys rule! Previous posts in this series include:

Musketeers in an Exciting Adventure With Airships (2011)

Musketeers Are All For Love (1993)

Looks Good in Leather: BBC Musketeer Edition Part I (2014)

You Can Leave Your Hat On: BBC Musketeer Edition Part II (2014)

It’s Raining Musketeers: BBC Musketeer Edition Part III (2014)

Mickey Mouse the Musketeer (2004)

Musketeers Crack Me Up Seventies Style (1973)

Musketeer in Pink (2009)

Musketeers Break My Heart Seventies Style (1974)

Musketeers in Technicolour (1948)

Musketeer on Mars (2008, 2012)

Galactic Suburbia 114 Show Notes

New Episode is up! You can get it here.

In which the Champagne and Socks podcast casts on, Cranky Ladies is about to be launched, and it’s that time of year again, DITMAR CENTRAL.



Ditmar awards ballot is out

And the Sir Julius Vogel too

Champagne and Socks

Cranky Ladies launch March 8

What Culture Have we Consumed?



Alisa: Years Bests for Database, PhD Research, Helen Merrick

Alex: Of Mice and Men (National Theatre Live) – because I want an SF version; The Greatship, Robert Reed; Veronica Mars (season 1); Osiris, EJ Swift

Tansy: Daughters of the Storm by Kim Wilkins LOOK A REAL BOOK, Reign (Season 1), Agent Carter again. Operation: S.I.N.

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook, support us at Patreon and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!

ROBOTECH REWATCH 39: “Debriefing” the Dreamboat

Hold your position. Robotech transmissions will now resume.

43. A New Recruit

So they captured Zor last week. I totally missed that. When they said they found the remains of a Bioroid pilot I was assuming – like a humanoid smear, not an actual person.

Dana is doing exhaustive sit ups when she hears her name called over the PA. She is called to Emerson’s office where she finds their prisoner of war standing all pretty in a uniform, his purple hair freshly curled. Oh, and his memory is completely gone, which is inconvenient for everyone hoping to drag useful intelligence out of him.

Zor is handed to Dana as a new recruit, on the grounds that making him part of a secure military unit might help jog his memory and allow Dana to debrief him properly. (Would also expose him to military secrets but… okay)

From this point on every time someone says “debrief,” it’s important to imagine inverted commas around the words, and Bow-chicka-bow-wow music going in the background. Because everyone is shipping Zor/Dana already, including the top brass.

Dana’s Zentraedi heritage is mentioned as one of the reasons why she has been given the job. Like – her perspective of having alien blood will help her understand this amnesiac who everyone’s going to hate and resent? Okay, then.

The 15th are pretty pissed at having an enemy pilot in their midst, except Louis who is already making heart-eyes about the possibility of little Dana-Zor alien babies. And finding out more about Robotech Masters tech, of course.

Zor beats the simulator with his amazing gun skills, and is subjected to extensive bullying by Eddie, a member of the 15th previously never really mentioned. I guess they didn’t want any of our regular guys to be a jerk about this, even though they all have a pretty good reason to resent Zor?

Sean and Dana, both dressed up for dates, bump into each other. He has an armful of flowers, and when Dana presses to find out which girl he’s after this time, it turns out that Marie Crystal is due out of hospital today and he wants to impress her.

Dana is amused, because Marie isn’t his usual type at all, and isn’t going to be “as easy as shooting skylarks” (?? Is this a metaphor for his usual brand of sexual harassment?)

Sean isn’t bothered on the grounds that he’s good at shooting (is that a metaphor? Everyone put your hormones away!) and changes the subject to point out that Dana is wearing a pretty dress. Does she have a hot date too?

She tells him she is “debriefing” Zor, giggles in an “it’s totally a date” way and runs off.

SEAN: A genuine space cadet.

I’d call him out for sexism in the workplace, but he’s not wrong. Dana, you make Minmei look deep.

In her pretty pink dress, Dana takes Zor to an amusement park, calls him a dreamboat, and falls in love with him in soft focus. Yep, “debriefing” officially means hot date.

Zor actually says: “You sure this is what the general meant by debriefing?”

Later, he gets overwhelmed at a repeated visual pattern on the roller coaster and gets vivid, traumatic war flashbacks. Dana, concerned about him, takes her seatbelt off (WTF!) and falls out of the roller coaster. As he lunges to rescue her, Zor remembers another woman, falling.

Dana’s fine, no thanks to herself. You’d think a woman who knows how to drive a hover tank would get the basics of seatbelt technology.

Back at the base, Bowie is jealous of Zor, because both Louis and Dana won’t shut up about him. Dana is looking for her dreamboat, but he’s found a different lady to assist him.

Nova Satori, whose duties as the Fun Police Military Police seem ever more varied and interesting, helps Zor run through a bunch of VHS tapes of battle footage. Something snaps inside him and he ends up in bed, raving about Earth being the source of protoculture.

Nova puts the doctor under strict security protocols and quarantines Zor as he continue to blurt out sensitive information while screaming, topless, in a bed.

The Robotech Masters are watching a reality clip show called ‘what’s happening in Zor’s brain’ including lots of battles, internal yelling, and snippets from Dana and Zor’s date. One of the Masters refers to Dana as a juvenile female which, frankly is pretty accurate.

They are worried that Zor might give the humans too much information, and are sick of the waves of weird emotion coming off him, so it’s time to go in and take control of him. CREEPY.

Zor starts being weird and harsh to Dana, fed up with her attempts to debrief him and also to “debrief” him. Sean should probably give him a sexual harassment pamphlet right about now. Zor is attacked again by shout Eddie, who it turns out is super aggressive because his brother was killed in action against Zor’s bioroid.

Overwhelmed with guilt and confusion, Zor angsts about killing his own people and decides he doesn’t want his memories if they have that sort of thing in them. He yells at Dana to leave him alone, and she gets angry and kicks a screen that shatters, sending Zor into yet another whirl of hallucinations.

He has a memory of a beautiful green-haired girl called Musica, and the two of them being shot at. He used her as a human shield and got her killed. When he wakes up, he’s lying on top of Dana on the floor.

Devastated by realising what a monster he was, Zor declares he is a manufactured clone, and that the Robotech Masters controlled him completely. He needs answers about who he was – but when he goes to Emerson’s office, he overhears that they hoped they could use Zor as leverage against the Robotech Masters. Now, however, the information they have got out of his head makes it ever more likely that war is their only option.

Sucks to be Zor.

This weekly rewatch of classic animated space opera Robotech is brought to you as bonus content for the Musketeer Space project.

Thanks to everyone who has linked, commented, and especially to my paid patrons.

You can support Musketeer Space at Patreon.

Musketeer Space 39: Milord, and his secrets

It’s Musketeer Day!

When all this is over I’m still going to be waking up every Wednesday morning thinking about fleur-de-lis jpgs and last minute proofing. And hats, obviously.

The Ditmar ballot came out over the weekend – I’m delighted to be nominated across several categories for “Cookie Cutter Superhero,” Galactic Suburbia, the Snapshot etc. As always, I’m a little relieved I won’t be able to attend the awards ceremony where I’m sharing a ballot with Cat Sparks (Best Short Story), because I’m pretty sure she means it when she yells SCRAG FIGHT, and as I learned at the Zombie Apocalypse party I attended last Friday night, I’m not much of a survivor.

Those of you going to Swancon this year, have an awesome time. I’ll be up to my kneecaps in chocolate-stained children and the gruesome remains of edible Easter bunnies, so spare a thought for me.

This chapter’s only slightly NSFW for language/content. Your mileage may vary.

Start reading Musketeer Space from Part 1

Missed the last installment? Track back to Part 38

Read a festive Musketeer Space prequel, “Seven Days of Joyeux.”

Main Page & Table of Contents

PREVIOUSLY ON MUSKETEER SPACE: While waiting for orders to ship out to war halfway across the solar system, Dana D’Artagnan has discovered a terrifying fact about Milord De Winter. She totally should have listened when Athos said: “Don’t sleep with a man just because you think he might have kidnapped your boyfriend.”

NOW READ ON.

Chapter 39: Milord, and his secrets

For a moment they grappled together, Milord’s body pressing Dana down, his hands pinning her shoulders to the floor of his fancy spaceship parlour.

Who even has a parlour in a spaceship? She should have known he was an enemy alien, just from that.

Dana lay very still, waiting for him to make the first move. Athos had taught her that. If she took nothing else from her fencing lessons, it was that patience paid off.

Do you think I won’t kill you to protect my secret?



For one long moment they lay there together, each waiting for the other to break. Dana breathed, regaining her centre, and Milord took control of himself again. His skin paled to its usual pinkish white, and the bright constellation of stars faded back into darkness. His hair lengthened and poured forward over his face, metallic silver.

She had once mockingly thought of it as his secret agent hair, but there was nothing funny about this. With Vaniel De Winter there had always been a promise of danger under his affable, friendly surface. But he was pure Milord now, sharp as a knife.

Dana breathed, and waited for him to shift his weight.

“It would be in your interest,” he said in a low, threatening voice. “To come quietly, sweetness.”

He had never used pet names in bed, but was willing to pull them out when trying to kill her? Oh, that wasn’t creepy at all.

“And what?” Dana said, borrowing the bored, ‘you can’t touch me’ tone that all three of her Musketeer friends employed shortly before leaping into bar fights. “Surrender like a good prisoner? You really don’t know me at all.”

“I’m starting to,” said Milord. He pushed up from her, his hands hard on her shoulders, as if his strength was enough to keep her down.

Yes, he was strong. But Dana was pissed off, and that counted for something. She dropped one hip, knocking his balance off by a fraction, and then head-butted him in the face.

Milord’s skin did not change this time, but he fell back just enough that Dana was able to slam an elbow into his neck and slide out from under him.

Clothes, she had to grab her clothes and her weapons and get the hell out of here, because running naked out of a spaceship dock was completely not on her list of things to do today. As she put some space between them, she saw his feet, his bare feet, and a dizzying memory swept over her, and oh fuck, how had she not put it together before now?

Milord lunged for her and Dana picked up the pace, rocketing across the room away from him.

A weight slammed into her bare back; and he grappled her around the ribs. She dug a punch into his side and swung her shoulder into his entire arm, hard enough to break a bone though she did not hear a reassuring crack.

Did aliens even have skeletons?

Milord could not get purchase on her hair, his nails sharp against her scalp, but he threw all his weight on her and Dana went down beneath his body, the air bursting from her lungs as she hit the floor again.

His arm wrapped around her throat, hard enough that stars sparked behind her eyes.

They were on top of her clothes, and that meant her weapons were right there. Dana slid her hand beneath her own stomach, hoping that the hard lump she could feel under her hip was the Pilot’s Slice and not a random candlestick or whatever other ridiculous rich people accessories Milord kept in this parlour.

No, Dana realised as painful black circles spun in her vision, and her whole body battled to breathe. Not the Pilot’s Slice at all. Her fingers had closed around the handle of the pearl stunner.

Good enough.

She brought it up wildly, hoping not to catch the rebound as she sent a burst of bright white energy directly into her attacker’s face.

Milord collapsed on top of her, a dead weight hitting her shoulders and spine. As she sucked in air with relief, Dana angled herself to shove him off her, not caring that his head hit the floor with a hollow sound.

It wasn’t like he was human.

She pulled on her underwear slowly, not daring to take her eyes off the unconscious alien. He hadn’t reverted to his Sun-kissed form in unconsciousness – of course not, that would have been a giveaway every time he fell asleep. He had only lost control of his his disguise image when he was hurt or really lost his temper.

His silver hair fell in soft tangles around the back of his neck. Dana knew that neck, but not from any of her own interactions with Milord. She had to summon up quite a bit of courage to examine his feet again, to confirm that fleeting impression she had gained during the fight.

Milord’s hair, his bare feet, the back of his neck – she had seen him in a dream, long before the train on Valour. She hadn’t been looking for the similarities before, had known him so thoroughly as ‘Vaniel’ that she had missed a glaring, obvious fact.

Dana could not deny it any more. Milord Vaniel De Winter was not a Sun-kissed spy like Athos’ pretty husband. It was the same man. It had to be. The ghost who drove her friend to drink and occasional misery, the sleeping lover he kept locked tight inside his guilty conscience. The traitor who had married the Count de la Fere.

And Dana was still sticky from having sex with him.

“Shit,” she said aloud, because really, what else was there to say?

She had to get off this ship. She had to get less naked, and she had to get off the Matagot, and she had to get well clear of the ship so this traitorous Sun-kissed spy didn’t murder her to protect his secret.

Basically there were lots of steps to go through before Dana had to start panicking about how to break it to Athos that she had fucked his dead husband.

Milord lay crumpled over Dana’s clothes. She shifted him with her foot, reaching down to grab the Pilot’s Slice. It felt better, to have that in one hand and the pearl stunner in the other, even if she was still only wearing a pair of black knickers.

She reached for her cargo pants next, but as she leaned over his body, Milord’s eyes snapped open.

Alien biology, Dana realised. The pearl stunner must not work on him for long. But by the time that thought had sunk in, she was already running, crashing out of his bedroom and along the corridor.

This damned ship was so big, and she didn’t dare take the most direct route to the hatchway, not if he was coming after her. Once she was two twists of the corridor away from his room, she leapt up the walls and levered open an air duct panel, slipping up and into the narrow space in the ceiling. She pulled the panel closed behind her, as Athos had taught her to do, then slithered quietly along the crawl space.

She heard shouting, and at one point lay still and terrified as Milord thundered along the corridor, calling for the Red Guards stationed outside the ship. She heard words like ‘treason’ and ‘assault’ and was glad she hadn’t tried to brazen it out by the main hatch.

No, she would be better off dropping out via one of the storage hatches underneath the ship, once the fuss had died down and they thought she was gone. But she would be even better off if she was wearing clothes.

After a couple of false starts in the wrong direction, Dana finally got her bearings enough to slither into the air duct directly above Kitty’s office. There was no sign that Milord was nearby – and given how furious he was, she was pretty sure she would know about it.

Kitty, wearing a purple lace coverall with spiky silver earrings, sat at her desk, apparently absorbed in some kind of social media site rating celebrity hair styles. The Marquise de Wardes, Dana could not help noting, was top of the poll.

She whistled between her teeth and then, when Kitty did not look up, rapped lightly on the inside of the grate.

Kitty frowned, and tipped her head up.

Dana loosened the panel and smiled hopefully down at Milord’s assistant. “Hi.”

“I seriously don’t want to know,” Kitty said in a scandalised whisper. “I am so not helping you escape, he’s spitting spark plugs. I did not see you.”

“Um,” said Dana. “I’ve figured out an escape route, but I need -”

“WHAT?” Kitty demanded.

“Clothes.”

There was a long pause, during which the bubbly assistant rolled her eyes hard enough to make Dana wince with embarrassment. “Really?”

“I’ll take anything,” Dana begged.

Kitty smirked, and stood up, then walked to the cupboard on the other side of the office. “You’re lucky. I keep a spare outfit for nightclubbing emergencies.”

“Um,” said Dana, wondering if she wouldn’t after all be better off escaping through Paris in a pair of black knickers and nothing else.

“Don’t worry,” said Kitty, opening the door to reveal a sparkly mini-dress covered in a print of happy baby dragons in astronaut costumes. “I have the matching shoes, too.”

The Buttercup was docked only two floors from the Matagot, and Dana hid out there for an hour or two until her breathing had calmed down. She couldn’t get the printer to produce more than basic supplies, though – no replacement for the ridiculous baby dragon dress, no shoes, not even decent coffee – and that was the first thing she was going to get Planchet to fix up for her before she went to war.

It felt somewhat surreal to be thinking about going to war while wearing a sparkly space dragon frock.

The sensible, cowardly option would have been to call Planchet to bring her a flight suit and a pair of boots from her place, but Dana didn’t even think of that until she was halfway across Paris Satellite. To be safe, she crossed through the public areas only, which meant a whole bunch of people got a good look at her in the sparkly dress, walking barefoot through the piazzas and boulevards of the city.

Talk about a walk of shame.

It was faster to reach Aramis’ apartment than any of the other Musketeer digs in the city, including Dana’s own lodgings. She told herself firmly that she was making this decision out of pure practicality – it had nothing to do with the fact that she was not ready to look Athos in the eye, or that she would literally rather die than have Madame Su catch sight of her in this get-up.

Aramis opened the door to her, and the expression on her face as she took in the sight of Dana and the sparkly space dragons was about what Dana had dreaded.

“So,” said Aramis after a moment to collect herself. “There’s a story behind this?”

“I need to borrow your sonic shower and a change of clothes and please don’t ask,” Dana rattled out as she pushed her way into the safe privacy of Aramis’ living room – only not so safe or private, because there was Porthos on the couch, and Athos printing coffee at the kitchen bar, and no, Dana was completely and utterly not ready to look him in the eye. She made an embarrassed squeaking sound and all but dove for Aramis’ bedroom.

“Borrow whatever you like,” a bewildered Aramis called after her.

Dana found a spare black flight suit and threw it on the bed to change into after her shower, then stepped into the tiny cubicle and turned on the sonic spray. She couldn’t have her meltdown just yet, couldn’t even think about all the ramifications of what she had learned when Milord turned on her.

About what he was, and who he once had been.

She wanted to throw up and die, possibly not in that order.

When she stepped out of the shower, wrapped in one of Aramis’ ridiculously fluffy towels, she found Athos waiting for her. He sat on the bed, leaning casually against the headboard.

Dana swallowed.

Athos turned politely away, his back to her so she could get dressed without being observed. “I have been nominated,” he said in a resigned kind of voice.

Dana dressed quickly, relief washing over her as she disappeared into the soft, protective black folds of the flight suit. She felt like herself again, even if she had to roll up the sleeves and ankle cuffs because Aramis was so much taller than she was. “I can’t talk to you about this, Athos.”

“Believe me, I don’t want you to. I can get Porthos -”

“No,” Dana blurted out in horror. “I don’t want to talk to anyone. I’m not ready even to think about it in my own brain, let alone inflict it on the rest of you.”

Athos glanced over his shoulder at her, then settled back against the headboard once he saw she was respectably dressed. “We’re worried about you, D’Artagnan. All this running around, playing at spy – you’re out of your depth.”

It was so true that it was hilarious, and Dana found herself laughing hysterically, her hands pressed to her mouth. She was so close to crying, she could feel the sobs surging up inside her.

Athos stared at her in horror. “I’m calling the others in -”

“No,” she said, hands still pressed to her mouth as she calmed herself down. “Give me a minute. It has to be you.” When she felt she could finally breathe without breaking down, she climbed on to the bed, sitting beside him with her head tilted back against the headboard. She had to tell him now, or it would eat away at her until there was nothing left of their friendship. But no one said she had to look at him while talking.

Dana had reclaimed the sapphire from her hiding place on the Buttercup between the Matagot and here, and now held her wrist out to Athos. When he did not react, Dana peeled the antique stud off her wrist and placed it on his, beside the vein. “It’s yours,” she told him.

“I know that,” he said, unflappable as always. “I recognised it. But that was in another life – it’s probably passed through a dozen pawn shops since then.”

“No, I need to you to take it now. It’s yours.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

Of course he didn’t. Dana tried to make the words come, but they stuck in her throat. What if she was wrong? She could break him into pieces for nothing. “Have you ever seen a picture of Milord Vaniel de Winter?” she tried.

“Your pretty kidnapper? I don’t think so. I don’t pay much attention to politics, especially their politics. I left Valour behind for a reason, and I don’t exactly wallow in nostalgia for it these days.”

Dana grabbed a tablet from Aramis’ side table and ran an image search. Milord had covered his tracks well – there were hardly any pictures of him in the network, no official portraits attached to the Valour government website, or anything like that. But his ‘Vaniel De Winter’ name brought up a few shadowed candid shots from social occasions at the Palace, or the De Winter estate on Valour. There was a portrait of his wedding. He looked younger, his soft brown hair worn long down one side of his neck, in an aristocratic braid.

There were no images of him with his silver secret agent hair, but it would do. She pushed the tablet at Athos. “He’s a shapechanger,” she said flatly. “A Sun-kissed. And I think – I recognise him from the visions we shared back on the Parry Riposte. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe – I don’t know. Is it a ridiculous idea? I really want to be wrong.”

Athos sucked in a slow breath, looking at the images. There was a long and terrible silence as he scrolled through them.

“You’re not wrong, D’Artagnan,” he said, finally. “There are – subtle differences about the face. But – ” He stopped and fell silent. “He looks like the man I married,” he said finally, as if he could barely get the words out.

Not husband, Dana noticed. The man I married.

“Maybe they all look like that,” she said in a small voice. “I mean, they’re shape-changers. It could be someone else using his face, or maybe they all use the same mould, or -” Was that worse? Maybe it was worse. She should shut up now.

“But he had the sapphire,” said Athos, tilting his wrist to look at it.

“Yes,” said Dana.

“He’s alive,” he breathed, in something like wonder.

“Alive and dangerous,” she said, not wanting Athos to forget that part.

“Yes, of course. Alive and dangerous.”

Dana turned away, not wanting to see Athos looking at pictures of his dead husband like a miracle had happened. “He’s going to try to kill me. He can’t afford to have me tell anyone who and what he is.”

Athos moved behind her, laying the tablet aside on the bed. He pressed his hand firmly against the back of Dana’s neck for a moment, a reassuring touch. “D’Artagnan, I will not let that happen.”

There was a knock on the door, and Aramis opened it. “We’ve had our orders,” she said cheerfully. “Day after tomorrow, we ship out to La Rochelle.”

Dana looked down at her wrist, where a message light was blinking on her comm stud. She passed her thumb over it briefly, and read the contents. “All of us, it seems.”

Athos nodded, checking his own message to confirm it. “Well, that’s good news. You only have two days to avoid the alien secret agent who is trying to kill you, and then we get to go into battle against his people.”

Aramis blinked. “We are totally getting drunk later so I can get that story out of you both.”

“Later,” Athos promised, sounding oddly chipper. “First, I have to pawn a sapphire. I think this particular stud will bring in enough to cover the restoration bills for both of our darts, D’Artagnan. Nice to start a war without too much debt to hold us back.”

“It’s yours,” Dana said, a little shocked. “I mean, if you need the money – that’s fine, pawn it, sell it, whatever, but you said it belonged to your family. Don’t you want to keep it?”

“Believe me,” said Athos, tapping idly at his wrist. “I’m not currently in a mood to be sentimental about my family.”

“I won’t take your money,” she said stubbornly. She was feeling guilty enough about this Milord business without profiting from it.

Athos arched an eyebrow at her. “I could throw the dratted stud in one of the ornamental fishponds on Lunar Palais, see if we can bag ourselves a trout instead…”

Dana glared at him and he stared back, unmoving, not quite smiling.

Forgiveness, then.

“Fine,” she muttered, looking away first.

He clapped her around the shoulders. “Good choice.”

“Dana,” called Porthos from the other room. “You have a visitor.”

Dana and Athos both tensed in the same moment. She had not yet put on her belt or her Pilot’s Slice, but was gratified that Athos’ hand went straight to his.

“Who is it?” Athos asked, guarded. He stepped through the door ahead of Dana, and on any other day, that protective instinct would have annoyed the hell out of her.

Porthos glanced up. “Not here,” she said. “Planchet just called me, because you haven’t been answering your comms lately? Some girl has turned up at Madame Su’s, asking for you.”

Aramis raised her eyebrows. “Is this business or pleasure, Dana?”

“Apparently she’s very sparkly,” Porthos added.

Dana sighed heavily. “Kitty.”

What on earth did Milord’s assistant want with her now?

“Could be a trap,” Athos mused.

“Excellent,” said Porthos. “We haven’t walked into a trap for ages. It’s important to keep in practice, you know.”

You have been reading Musketeer Space, by Tansy Rayner Roberts. Tune in next week for another chapter! Please comment, share and link. Musketeer Space is free to read, but if you’d like to support the project for as little as $1 per month, please visit my Patreon page. Pledges can earn rewards such as ebooks, extra content, dedications and the naming of spaceships. Milestones already unlocked include the Musketeer Media Monday posts, the Robotech Rewatch posts, and “Seven Days of Joyeux,” a special Christmas prequel novella which was released in December 2015. My next funding milestone will unlock GORGEOUS COVER ART.

New Who In Conversation: A Good Man Goes to War/Let’s Kill Hitler

We would like to thank everyone who nominated our “New Who in Conversation” series for the William Atheling Jr Award again this year – it’s a great honour to be on the ballot! Voting for the annual Ditmar Awards (which the Atheling is included in) is open to all members of Continuum X (2014 Natcon – Melbourne) and Swancon 40 (2015 Natcon – Perth), and can be done online.

DAVID:

I really enjoyed the introduction to “A Good Man Goes to War”. I do think that there are times when Amy puts the Doctor in roles that by rights are Rory’s, and it was great that he was the subject of her speech and, unless, I am way off, the “good man” of the title and the prophecy. The scene where they confront the Cybermen is quite effective, though you do have to ask about the ethics of blowing up so many of them just to get information – it’s even more casual slaughter than we are used to. I actually had already seen this scene when it was played during the Hugo ceremony, but I had managed to blank it out and it didn’t diminish my enjoyment of this.

TEHANI:

Rewatching the beginning I’m just all “RORY ROCKS”! Which is, almost certainly, the idea.

TANSY:

I love that Rory uses his Roman Legionary costume and identity when he needs to kick ass, and I do like this scene very much – of course, as soon as you start thinking about the ethics of exploding the whole army it’s a bit icky. Looking back to 2011, when this episode aired – this was the point very much at which fandom accepted Rory as officially awesome instead of complaining about him being a doormat or another Mickey. I’ve always given a bit of a side-eye to this group reaction, as it seems to me that Rory became a lot more popular as a character as soon as he became more traditionally macho – waving swords and uttering threatening lines. Which is a shame, because I love squooshy, sensitive Rory too.

I am very glad that they seem to now have dropped the whole thing with Rory feeling jealous of the Doctor – it feels like discovering Amy’s abduction has led him to finally drop that very boring narrative thread, so he can concentrate on what’s important.

PS: the ‘A good man’ of the title is the Doctor I think, but it also refers to Rory, and takes on different meanings for each of them.

DAVID:

Interesting. To me it is far better fit for Rory. But, that’s the joy of prophecies, right? Discussion fodder!

So, were these Mondasian Cybermen? I get confused by all these alternate timelines etc!

TEHANI:

That’s quite clearly a question Tansy needs to answer, because I don’t even know what you’re talking about!

TANSY:

I don’t know that it’s clear at this point – there’s one school of thought that the Mondas Cybermen have still not been officially brought back in New Who (apart from the head in Dalek), but it’s clear there are plenty of them surfing around ‘our’ universe at this point, and they have ditched the Cybus industries logo as of The Next Doctor, so… NO ONE KNOWS, GUYS. Peter Capaldi recently stated that bringing back the Mondasian Cybermen was a priority for him.

TEHANI:

On that note, Tansy, do the opening scenes make any sense at all in terms of continuity? I mean, there are characters who are familiar but not as themselves I think, and the events we see them in seem like they come from Doctor Who past, but I don’t think they all are? I think it’s all fabulous, but I don’t know it makes any sense?

TANSY:

Ah, that’s the clever part. All of these characters feel like they belong solidly to the Doctor’s past – they obviously all have a past with him, but certainly in the case of Madam Vastra, Strax and Jenny, we’ve never seen them in the show before. I love this opening, it’s like a proper heist film, with characters who have a murky past with each other.

Something Moffat has done very well, which RTD only started allowing for in his later seasons, is allowing lots of gaps and spaces between stories, including long periods in which the Doctor lives a life we don’t get to witness. In this case he’s had these friends whose lives he has completely changed, who owe him favours, and we get to walk in on the middle of the friendship.

TEHANI:

Which is super smart for the fandom side of things, because it allows lots of (authorised and non-authorised) opportunities to play in the history. Big Finish is going to have an absolute ball fiddling around in this era in ten years or so!

DAVID:

One of the things that has concerned me with New Who, especially the later seasons, is that it sometimes crosses the line with portraying the Doctor as a darker, more powerful figure into something that is far too potent. I kind of liked the Doctor when he was a mysterious wanderer, and where people did not know who they were messing with, rather than someone whose name so well known as to cause armies to panic and flee. There have been times this has been done well (such as “The Eleventh Hour” and “The Pandorica Opens”), but it can also get a bit too self congratulatory and back slappy. This episode walked that line, and came close times to stepping over.

TEHANI:

By gosh Matt Smith was marvellous in this though. I came back to rewatch after way too long and fell in love with him all over again in this. He’s pitch perfect as the madcap showman in the start of the battle, but that underlying anger, fear and sadness coming through at points (and the gorgeous “I speak baby” stuff too!), oh, so good.

TANSY:

I think this is the Eleventh Doctor at his darkest, and his most morally compromised – as is telegraphed quite heavily in the story! The theme of the Doctor as warrior is carried through, and we finally see the potential for him to be a war leader but also his deep dislike of the very idea that he might do such a thing. Now that we know (CLOSE YOUR EARS DAVID) so much more about what happened to him during the Time War, this story has extra resonance, because this is what he promised himself he would never do again.

DAVID:

I quite liked River Song’s speech at the end where she lectures the Doctor on the dangers of the legend he has created, and just like in Pandorica Opens, we can understand why races might decide the Universe would be safer without the Doctor in it – though of course their methods are inexcusable and completely reprehensible. I think that the modern incarnations of the Doctor have sometimes lost sight of his moral core, and act as if the measure of whether things are right or wrong are whether it is the Doctor doing them.

TEHANI:

It’s all about River Song though, really. Both these episodes are about solving the mystery of River, and I love the way that starts, with her lovestruck and whimsical then thrust into events that she clearly knows the outcome of. Paradoxes, they break my brain.

TANSY:

I was spoiled the morning that the episode aired (still bitter) but yes I think this is a great River Song story – if anything, the revelation is only a small part of the episode (though a huge part of the season). Some of my favourite River scenes are in this episode, particularly the one at the beginning when Rory comes to her and asks for help, and she turns him down. You can see in her face, watching this in retrospect, that she’s searching for the person she knows is her father, and that this is the last time she’ll see him before he knows who she is.

It’s a great disappointment to me that the River-Rory relationship was given so little exploration in stories afterwards, because while I think the awkward-loving vibe between her and Amy is so interesting, I think the most interesting scenes between River and Rory were basically in this episode, and back in The Impossible Astronaut.

DAVID:

I was more than a little confused about who the bad guys were in this episode. I thought at first it was the Church Militant from the last Angels episode (which would have bothered me as I thought that was a great concept). Then there was a mention of a Papal directive, as well as Anglican soldiers and the Headless Monks confusing things. The Silence’s doctrine has nothing in common with Christianity, so I will be interested to see where the threads all come together. New Who has had interesting relationship with religion, so I will await with great interest to discover the logic behind all these connections.

TANSY:

Oh, sweetie.

TEHANI:

I think I gave up entirely trying to sort out the continuity, if there is any! Without spoiling, some of this is (somewhat) explained over the next seasons, but here, nah, not so much.

TANSY:

Yes, the church militant and the Papal mainframe are heaven neutral (I love this term though no idea what it means) and I think that’s important – they are neutral, they just happen to be under orders currently from characters who are working against the Doctor.

TEHANI: That said, for my mind the only villain is Madame Kovarian – the scene where the baby turns out to be Flesh absolutely shocked me the first time, and it upsets me every single time I watch it.

DAVID:

Yes, I actually shuddered when that happened.

TANSY:

I found the baby plot incredibly stressful the first time around – this screened in 2011 when my youngest was still toddler, so the whole thing with Amy and Rory losing baby Melody was genuinely devastating – though it was actually the stress of not knowing what was going to happen that made it worse for me. In retrospect, now that tension is gone, I can watch the episode without my heart in my throat.

TEHANI:

It’s still completely awful. Too many babies in my life for this ever not to be ridiculously sad.

TANSY:

A lot of people hated the Amy abducted subplot, and there was something really horrible about the idea of her being pregnant in a box for so many months, while her mind was still cheerfully travelling around with the Doctor and Rory. I do like the strength of how Amy is portrayed here as a mother – a role that by no means comes naturally to her, and which she has had no preparation for. I like that she’s not softened by having a baby in her arms – she’s harder than ever, like when she’s so sharp to Lorna Bucket because the idea of sentiment in this situation makes her want to stab things.

DAVID:

I really enjoyed the three characters introduced here, Madame Vastra, Jenny Flint and Strax (though I assumed he was the Sontaran from a much earlier episode at first). I’ve heard that they pop up again a few times, and I will look forward to that. Strax especially appealed to me, and I thought both hilarious and believable that the Sontaran idea of penance might involve being forced to “help the weak”. His conversation with the boy was comedy gold. And, I so want to know more about that war and that time zone, it looked like a steampunk fan’s dream come true.The idea of a Sontaran breast feeding was pretty amusing too, I would love to see a cafe owner tell him to cover up!

TANSY:

I love these characters so much. Always and forever. It’s rare for a single Doctor Who story to launch so many memorable, worth-bringing-back characters – this one has four and I won’t tell you who the fourth is, yet. Spoilers!

TEHANI:

The arch looks Vastra and Jenny exchange in that scene in the control room! *dies of love* They are so awesome, and I’m still waiting for that Vastra and Jenny spin off please and thank you! They are all brilliant in this. And though I maybe felt, particularly on rewatching again, that there are perhaps a few too many characters that were really somewhat extraneous, I really genuinely loved this episode. It makes me laugh and cry and ache for them. So much good.

TANSY:

It’s amazing how epic this story feels considering that it is a one-parter – I know we’re here to talk about both stories, but you both did not have to WAIT TWO FREAKING MONTHS between episodes like those of us who were watching it live! (Or wait, Tehani, were you watching it live by this point? I lose track).

TEHANI:

I was TOTALLY watching it live by then! The pain…

TANSY:

The big cast of characters makes it feel like a big, sprawling space opera and I love that – also how well the various characters are set up, even with only a few lines.

DAVID:

I know I am a conservative fuddy duddy, and I don’t think that New Who should be completely constrained by the continuity of the old show, but I am not sure that I approve of throwing out established canon for a one liner and a minor plot point. I am sure that temporal grace has been an important part of the show and a wonderful concept that deserved better.

TANSY:

To be fair, David, the idea of temporal grace has been contradicted in Classic Who at least as often as it has been relevant to the plot! Let us not forget Susan and the scissors in Edge of Destruction. I personally think that the temporal grace idea is something a bit like the Randomiser from the Fourth Doctor’s era, or the isometric controls – something that has occasionally been active in the TARDIS, but is not a permanent, always-taken-for-granted feature.

TEHANI:

So we’re kind of cheating with this one, because it’s not really a double episode. However, the program originally aired with a two and a half month gap between the episodes, so technically, as well as “A Good Man Goes to War” being Hugo nominated, we could call them a season closer and a season opener, yes? I just think we really REALLY need to talk about “Let’s Kill Hitler”, so we’ll justify it!

DAVID:

It’s probably long overdue that a TV show about time travel needed to address the elephant in the room. If you had a time machine and a gun, why wouldn’t you travel back in time and try and kill Hitler? Of course, all know it is never going to go to plan!

TANSY:

I don’t know that it is overdue in that it’s a trope that has been referenced and discussed almost as often as the JFK shooting or the grandfather paradox. But then it is supposed to be ridiculous in this context – the whole idea is that it’s what an adrenalin junkie teenager would come up with, given a gun and a time machine.

The actual elephant in the room is that the Doctor gets hugely judgmental about all kinds of atrocities when he’s faced with them – he even brought Harriet Jones down for shooting one spaceship out of the sky. So why doesn’t he kill Hitler? Why didn’t he save Adric? How can we actually put our faith in a hero with near-unlimited power to change time, who allows himself to choose his battles?

DAVID:

Well, and a hero who has done far worse things than shoot one spaceship out of the sky!

The problem with Nazi references in a lot of movies (and in political discourse) is that there is a danger of minimising evil and of weird moral equivalences. The idea that River’s crime of killing the Doctor is somehow comparable to Hitler’s crimes made me uncomfortable and I think that they should have made it clear that there were levels of punishment/crime that they were enforcing.

TANSY:

It is uncomfortable – again I think it’s supposed to be uncomfortable, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay. The British have a long history of turning Hitler and the Nazis into a joke, from World War II propaganda onwards, as a way of coping with what they represented and what the potential invasion of Britain signified, but I think we’re at a point in history where a lot of that humour is pretty misguided.

DAVID:

Because I am so far behind, I don’t know whether we get the story of where the Doctor went looking, and what happened in the time between the start of his search, and meeting in the cornfield, but I am a big fan of these gaps as these can be filled with all sorts of wonders from new companions to homicidal super computers and leather clad savages.

TEHANI:

The first time I watched this, it was really weird to see newly regenerated River suddenly being a psychopath – it didn’t make sense that Rory and Amy could have known Mels so well and yet she turns into this lunatic so quickly. But rewatching, it was more palatable. The idea that the brainwashing imperative to kill him didn’t actually kick in until she encountered the Doctor makes sense, if you squint at it, so I can hand wave other stuff to make it work.

TANSY:

I like many parts of this episode – particularly Alex Kingston’s portrayal of the very young River Song/Melody coming into her new body for the first time – but I think the search part of the story is disappointing mostly because the Doctor promises he will get their baby back, and he fails. He fails terribly, and we don’t see him fail – we don’t even see him try. Instead, time travel catches up with them – but while I normally support gaps in the story, this one is pretty massive and means that all the emotional punch of “A Good Man Goes To War” is allowed to fizzle. It feels like maybe he just put his feet up in the TARDIS and had a cup of tea then came to collect them at the end of the summer.

DAVID:

River Song being Rory and Amy’s daughter certainly introduces some weird family dynamics, especially if her and the Doctor end up together. One wonders how Amy would feel about that, and the Doctor is continuing his run of entirely inappropriate relationships. Fortunately, the power dynamic between River and the Doctor is much more balanced than some of the other ones we have seen.

I wasn’t sure about the shoe-horning of Mel’s character into Rory and Amy’s past, but that conversation where Amy tells Rory he is gay made it worthwhile. I wonder if there are any expanded universe adventures of the incarnation of Mel’s floating around, whether books or Big Finish? If not, maybe there should be. They didn’t really explain why she was simultaneously wanting to kill the Doctor, and had grown up idolising him. Did the brainwashing only kick in at a certain point? Was there a trigger word? Did she come and find Amy and Rory because they were her parents or because they were a way of getting to her target. I am sure all will be revealed.

TANSY:

Oh, sweetie.

TEHANI:

I’m so ambivalent about Mels. On one hand, I think she’s awesome, and I could watch an entire spin off called The Amy, Rory and Mels Adventures played by their younger selves (with a few cameos from the “teenage” selves just for giggles). On the other, without that background, without ever seeing or hearing a single thing about Mels for the entire season and a half we’ve known Amy and Rory, unfortunately it just falls flat for me. I get why we HAVE Mels, but it’s so obviously a plot device and it’s one of the few times I’ve been disappointed by a random add-in.

I think part of the problem I have with it is the way Rory and Amy have basically got over the loss of their baby, and it’s so unfair that they basically just give up on getting baby Melody back again. Just because River was Mels and they kind of grew up together, and they know how things work out (basically), it’s not at ALL the same as being parents to a baby who they were clearly so invested in THE LAST EPISODE.

TANSY:

Yeah, I think a single line earlier in the season to say that Amy named the baby after her best friend Mels (which would make sense and actually would have distracted from the melody – song connection) would have signposted Mels a little better. But then this whole second half of the season is characterised by episodes which needed one or two lines of dialogue to FIX THEM.

By the way there was a great comic in Doctor Who Magazine – I think the December issue in the same year? Which showed a hidden adventure of Rory, Amy and Mels at Christmas. I think the three of them and their odd childhood together is absolutely a goldmine of missed storytelling opportunities.

TEHANI:

Look, in all, I think this episode is a bit over-the-top and melodramatic, but Alex Kingston is as always fabulous, there are some very good parts interspersed with the bits that don’t make complete sense, and there are some really nice callbacks to past episodes and tidbits that are picked up in later episodes.

TANSY:

Alex Kingson and Matt Smith together are amazing in this. And while I know very much that feminist Doctor Who fans all over the world were infuriated by the “I’m looking for a good man” line at the end of this episode, and the reframing of young River as someone obsessively shaping her life around the Doctor…

I actually really like this piece of their story, because the power imbalance between them with him knowing more about her and their relationship is an important bookend to the early episodes where she was all-knowing and he was innocent. Their relationship is much more fun to watch in stories when they’re both somewhere in the middle, but this piece of the puzzle is important. The fact that she is vulnerable, erratic and less confident here, in her youth, does not take away from how awesome and extraordinary she becomes, just because we’ve seen it in the wrong order so it feels like regression. If that makes sense?

DAVID:

Definitely. To me, all this is doing is showing how she became the River Song we meet when she first appears in the show, not retconning her character or diminishing it. If we went from the River Song we first met to Mels, yes that could be seen as a step backward for a great character. But that River Song hasn’t changed or gone anywhere–we are just getting an extended flashback showing us her backstory! It’s actually a pretty clever idea.

TEHANI:

Definitely! Like, you know, people (even fictional ones) can grow and change – nicely done I reckon.

PREVIOUS “New Who In Conversations”



“Rose”, S01E01

“Dalek”, S01E06

“Father’s Day, S01E08

“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10

“Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, S01E12/13

Series One Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani

“The Christmas Invasion,” 2005 Christmas special

“New Earth”, S02E01

“School Reunion,” S02E03

“The Girl in the Fireplace”, S02E04

“Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel”, S02E05/06

Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, S02E12/13

Series Two Report Cards: David, Tehani, Tansy

“The Runaway Bride”, 2006 Christmas Special

“Smith and Jones”, S03E01

The Shakespeare Code & Gridlock, S0302-03

Human Nature/The Family of Blood S0308-09

Blink S0310

Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Timelords S0311-13

“Voyage of the Damned,” 2007 Christmas Special

Series 3 Report Cards: David, Tehani, Tansy

Partners in Crime, S0401

The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, S0405 S0406

Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, S0408 S0409

Turn Left, S0411

The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End, SO412-13

Series 4 Report Cards: Tansy, Tehani, David

The Specials

The End of Time

The Eleventh Hour, S0501

The Beast Below/Victory of the Daleks, S0502-3

The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone

Vampires of Venice/Amy’s Choice, S0504-5

The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood

Vincent and the Doctor/The Lodger

The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang

A Christmas Carol

Series 5 Report Card: Tansy, David, Tehani

The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon

The Doctor’s Wife

ROBOTECH REWATCH 38: I’ll Patrol the Discos!

Robotech will be rewatched after these messages!

Episode 42 – Danger Zone

A newscast reports on what’s happening with the invading fleet. Weirdly, the broadcaster seems to be aware that the military commander of the Robotech Masters (Prince Charming) is called Zor, even though no one has been formally introduced. The standard of investigative journalism in the post-apocalyptic robot universe is surprisingly high.

The 15th Squadron have patrol duty in a city which is jam-packed with seedy recreation as portrayed by neon signs and hot ladies. The boys are all delighted at this turn of events and Dana is amused enough to let them have a little fun – all except Angelo, of course, who would rather have a proper patrol somewhere with no discos or strippers. Poor lad, all he wants is for everyone to take things seriously.

That he has Dana as his superior officer is a tragedy for them both.

The top brass have a meeting about the fact that the Robotech Masters are totally pwning them. Emerson tries to talk everyone out of sending all of Earth’s remaining ships on a suicide mission because no, getting all your troops destroyed is NOT better than sitting around doing nothing. Seriously, humans. This is what we mean when we say you make the Zentraedi look good.

Sadly, Emerson the Chief of Staff (really, so like Leo in the West Wing?) but not actually in charge, all previous appearances to the contrary. So a lot of ships get destroyed, and the space battle only doesn’t end in the complete military destruction of Earth Forces because the Robotech Masters call it off before everyone’s dead.

[actually, hang on, speaking of the West Wing... does anyone think it's weird that there isn't like a President or anyone civilian in charge of the Earth government? It's military, which makes sense, I guess, but who does the day to day administration?]

Earth forces manage to get hold of a shot-up mecha after the battle, and hand it over to the scientists to see what they can figure out. Turns out it had a pilot inside – and not a miniaturised Zentraedi, but a human.

Emerson is depressed about this, not only because it means they’re currently involved in yet another civil war, but also because it means Dana was right again – she picked from the start that Zor was a human, purple hair notwithstanding.

Louis, the 15th’s resident science geek, has his own theories about how the Robotech Masters’ mecha works – they seem to be technobabbling something with protoculture instead of actually having engines. There’s also space folding involved. Louis is pretty sure he can figure out how to wreck their ships using – TECHNOBABBLE to blast them out of whack using biomagnetics.

Dana is determined that they should go on a mission to put his theory to a test. She encourages Bowie to use his pull with General Emerson to get it to happen.

We have our first acknowledgement here that Emerson is friends with Bowie’s dad who asked him to ‘keep an eye’ on Bowie while he was gone, and Bowie slips up once and calls him Uncle Rolf. Still, this all sounds a lot more casual than a proper foster kid arrangement, so – what did happen to all the kids when the entire 20-35 age bracket of the military went off into space and left them all behind? Were they kept in full time military school? Where did they go on weekends and holidays? No wonder they all levelled up to join the army the second they came of age.

Emerson is hesitant but allows the kids to go into space and do their thing on the grounds that why not?

It works! The entire invading army is destabilised by bio-magnetic LOUIS USES WORDS I DON’T THINK THEY MEAN WHAT HE THINKS THEY MEAN, the alien flagship is brought down to earth and the Southern Cross finally get themselves a definitive win. Explosions and bits of alien mecha everywhere.

Louis just hacked the Robotech Masters, didn’t he?

Age of the geek, baby.

Dana celebrates with a brand new pink space frock, irritating Marie and Nova who both intended to buy it for themselves (it would totally not suit either of them) and rides off on her dirt bike in triumph.

Mic drop. Sterling out.

This weekly rewatch of classic animated space opera Robotech is brought to you as bonus content for the Musketeer Space project.

Thanks to everyone who has linked, commented, and especially to my paid patrons.

You can support Musketeer Space at Patreon.

Friday Links is Batty About You

Is Valentines Day even a thing in Australia? My 5 year old is weirdly obsessed with it. Me, I love the geeky Valentines that pop up at this time of year (Pinterest and Tumblr, what did we do before you?)

Chirravutever presented some cute Flash & Arrow chibi Valentines for each of the characters. I don’t know why Picnic with the Sisko is my favourite, don’t judge me.

I also wanted to point readers towards Check Please! an adorable webcomic about a college hockey team with a tiny, gay social-media-obsessed protagonist. Here are the Check Please! Valentines which probably make no sense unless you’ve read the comic. Read the comic, it’s all sports and pie-baking, I love it.

Though of course when it comes to funny, weird fandom valentines, the classic is always Gingerhaze. Can’t be beat. (prove me wrong in the comments, send other links!)

In more love-and-stuff related links, the Angriest has put up one of his best essays yet on Fiction Machine – about the classic movie The Princess Bride. If you haven’t read Grant’s media essays, you’re missing out – he tells a great story of behind the scenes production history, while reminding you everything you loved about the movie itself. Glad he’s not restricting himself to Bad Film Diaries these days. You can support Fiction Machine at Patreon.

Apparently the big Valentine’s movie this year is 50 Shades of Grey which – okay. I’ve seen lots of critical commentary about why this film is a problem, but I particularly liked this piece on The Mary Sue which talks about the responsibility of fiction writers to present sex, kink & BDSM in ways that won’t endanger readers.

I wanted to point again to these great cartoons drawn for Black History Month, emphasising the kind of cool adventurous characters that make kids interested in history.

Speaking of Black History Month, No Award pointed me at this interesting article about the introduction of Franklin as a Peanuts character: the woman who persuaded Charles Schulz to include a young black character, the reasons he had for resisting, and the historical context at the time (which means that even showing Franklin in the same classroom as Peppermint Patty was controversial).

Since it’s Agent Carter week on the blog, what with my surprisingly popular Reasons To Love Agent Carter, plus my review of Issue #1 of Peggy’s new comic miniseries, Original S.I.N., here’s Hayley Atwell talking about sexism. Isn’t it great when the people who play your heroes are also smart and awesome?

Agent Carter is my Valentine.

Issue #1 – Operation: S.I.N.

Apparently it’s Agent Peggy Carter Week in this household. LIKE EVERY WEEK.

Title: Operation: S.I.N. #1 (of 5)

Writer: Kathryn Immonen

Artist: Rich Ellis

The Buzz: This mini-series is another one I hadn’t heard anything about before it popped up on Comixology but it’s pretty clear that this 1950’s espionage comic featuring the double act of Agent Peggy Carter and playboy scientist Howard Stark is designed to appeal to fans of the Agent Carter TV show. Check out this interview with writer Kathryn Immonen.

All You Need To Know: Peggy Carter was a secret agent working for the US government during World War II and beyond. She’s amazing. Howard is a genius millionaire inventor and kind of an asshole, but he’s smart enough to value Peggy’s skills as an operative. If you’ve seen the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of these characters in Captain America: The First Avenger, or in Agent Carter, then there are no surprises here except that comics Peggy is blonde.

Story: It’s 1952. Howard lures a semi-retired Peggy into adventure by blowing up her house and promising that exciting things are happening in Russia. She refuses, but goes to Russia anyway because ADVENTURE. There are hijinks, aliens, spies and glamorous 50’s fashions, not to mention the tantalising possibility of Peggy punching Howard in the face at any moment. Also, banter and tailored slacks.

Art: Once I got over the whole thing with Peggy being blonde (I just realised I have literally never seen a comic depicting Peggy Carter before this), I really enjoyed the noir movie style, the muted colour palette and the adorable, elegant fashions. Not to mention the glam covers. Peggy wears PEARLS AND GLOVES when visiting Howard’s office. The character faces are lovely, very expressive, and apart from the blonde thing (it took me so long to get over this it’s almost embarrassing) fit very clearly with my idea of these characters from the MCU. Overall this has the feeling of a vintage comic with less overt sexism than the originals, which is pretty great.(okay there are several pages in which Peggy fights off an intruder in a skimpy nightie and a headscarf, but the positioning in these scenes is genuinely awesome – emphasising her strength and capability as much as her bare thighs)

But What Did I Miss?: Apparently Operation: S.I.N ties into a 2014 Marvel comics event called Original Sin but apart from having one character in common I don’t know much about how they connect. Guess what – you don’t need to either!

Would Read Issue 2?: It has a picture of Peggy punching Howard on the front cover, plus bear fighting. I am going to read this comic like no comic has been read before!

Would Read Issue 2?: As long as Simone is writing it, I’m reading it.

PREVIOUS ISSUE #1 POSTS

Thor #1 (2014)

Spider-Woman #1 (2014)

All-New Captain America #1 (2014)

Captain America & the Mighty Avengers #1 (2014)

S.H.I.E.L.D. #1 (2014)

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #1 (2015)

Bitch Planet #1 (2014)



Secret Six #1 (2014)

Musketeer Space Part 38: All Cats are Grey (in cyberspace)

It’s Musketeer Day! I feel it’s important that you picture me, the author, wearing a genuine Musketeer hat while typing. Also a sword.

If you’ve been enjoying the story so far, and you want to support the project for as little as $1 per month, please visit my Patreon page.

The NSFW poor life choices of Dana D’Artagnan continue in this chapter. Be aware that some scenes in this chapter depict violence and sex in fairly close proximity to each other, so you might want to skip this one if that’s likely to be distressing.

Start reading Musketeer Space from Part 1

Missed the last installment? Track back to Part 37

Read a festive Musketeer Space prequel, “Seven Days of Joyeux.”

Main Page & Table of Contents

PREVIOUSLY ON MUSKETEER SPACE: Dana D’Artagnan has had a busy few months befriending Musketeers, training in space mecha, saving the Prince Consort from a terrible scandal, romancing a slightly married tailor (now kidnapped), drinking, duelling and generally getting into trouble. Meanwhile, aliens exploded half of the space station where she grew up and are hovering in Truth Space waiting for war.

Flirting under two different identities with Milord, the agent she suspects to be behind Conrad Su’s abduction, was a mistake, but at least she wasn’t stupid enough to fall into bed with him – right? RIGHT? Oh, Dana.

NOW READ ON.

Chapter 38 – All Cats are Grey (in cyberspace)

Dana awoke slowly, groaning as the soreness of yesterday’s bruises made themselves known again. She was an idiot for refusing to heal them. But then the secondary pain hit, the realisation all over again that her Papa was gone.

The fact that she was alone but unmistakably naked in the decadent, king-sized bed of the man who had kidnapped Conrad Su was only the third disastrous thing that swum into her consciousness. Because now she didn’t just have an inappropriate crush on Milord Vaniel De Winter, she also had the intense, visceral memory of his mouth and his hands and the hot, slick feel of his body pressing hers into the bed.

Athos had officially lost his ‘king of poor decisions’ crown.

Dana found a shirt which was not hers in order to cover herself, then took a deep breath before committing herself to the mildly embarrassing process of locating every item of clothing she had discarded between the antique desk and the bedroom.

Milord actually sat at that desk in the living area of the hotel suite, tapping away at a shiny black clamshell. His eyes followed her as she made the rounds of the room, and his mouth creased into a small smile. Dana could not help returning it, rolling her eyes at him.

Would the situation be funnier if he knew that she knew that they were enemies?

“I’m just going to -” she said, jerking her elbow and her armful of clothes in the general direction of the bedroom.

“Take your time,” he said, as if this was any other random hookup.

Keep it light, Dana. Don’t get weird. Just because he dragged you home from a bar fight does not mean he trusts you.

Asking about Conrad Su right now would be far too obvious, but when was she going to get another chance? It wasn’t like she was going to let – this – happen again.

Dana left the bedroom door ajar as she dressed herself, tossing Milord’s shirt back on to the bed. She could hear his fingers tapping over the clamshell, and couldn’t help wondering if he was attempting to contact the “Marquise.”

“Hot piece of correspondence that couldn’t wait?” she asked as she strolled back into the room, attitude firmly back in place. She was the brash young wannabe Musketeer with a crush on him, time to act like it.

“A correspondent who won’t write back,” said Milord, frowning at the screen.

“Sucks to be you,” Dana said unsympathetically.

He rolled his eyes at her. “So kind.”

“I’ll be -” she started to say, because extracting herself from this hotel room with the minimum of ‘walk of shame’ cliches was her highest priority right now. The door chimed.

“Enter,” said Milord before Dana could protest, and in strolled Miss Kitty Columbina.

Kitty wore lavender today, a tulle skirt beneath a tiny crop top that stretched the image of a space unicorn around her impressive cleavage. On anyone else, that shirt would look entirely ironic. Kitty didn’t bat an eyelid at Dana’s presence, but held her empty hand out to her boss, making grabby motions. “Since apparently a Raven isn’t good enough for your highness?”

“This gift requires the personal touch,” Milord said calmly, and placed a small box wrapped in gold tissue into Kitty’s hand.

“Just reminding you that I have this afternoon off,” she said and trotted back out the door, her heels clicking against the polished floor. “This is non-negotiable, because pedicures are involved. Don’t call me!”

The second she was gone, Dana gave Milord a sheepish grin. “I should go too.”

“I highly recommend it,” he said, his voice as impersonal as if she had stopped in for tea. “My sister and her awful friends will be coming back to the suite shortly.”

“How’s Sheffield doing?” she asked, not entirely caring except that she didn’t want Athos carted off for murder. Not everything could be fixed by medipatch.

“He has been cured of his interest in authentic Parisian duels,” said Milord with a smirk.

Oh no, not this. She couldn’t let herself like him again, not even a little. Dana gave him a small wave, oh let’s be so casual about this, and let herself out of the hotel suite.

Well, that was actually less awkward than it could have been.

“Sergeant D’Artagnan!” called out a voice, not three paces from the hotel entrance. Spoke too soon. Dana spun around and realised too late that she should have kept on walking.

Kitty Columbina stood leaning against a decorative pillar. She looked utterly unimpressed.

Dana could see her point.

“Playing with fire, aren’t you?” was all Kitty said.

Dana winced. “It’s complicated.”

“I’ll bet.” Kitty marched forward and handed the small parcel to Dana.

Startled, her fingers curled around it. “What’s – I don’t understand.”

“Milord de Winter sent me to present this to the Marquise de Wardes, as a token of his ongoing affection and interest,” said Kitty, reciting it as if it was a poem. “But I’m not an idiot, so.”

“So,” Dana repeated, because apparently she was an idiot. “Hang on, what?”

“I know,” the assistant said slowly. “You ended up with that clamshell, didn’t you? The Matagot screens all electronic devices taken on and off the ship. You’ve been carrying on some kind of – weird fake romance with Milord via text message as the Marquise and to top it off you decided to jump his bones as yourself as well.” She batted her glittery eyelashes at Dana. “Don’t freak out, I’m not going to snitch. But I am going to judge you very hard, just so you know.”

Dana shifted on her feet. “Why would you keep my secret?”

“I told you. Little rebellions, that’s how I sleep at night.” Kitty crossed her arms under her unicorn boobs and pouted. “Also, you’re not a completely terrible lay.”

“Thanks, I think.”

Kitty leaned in. “If he catches you out, don’t you dare take me down with you. I need this job, and I also quite enjoy breathing in and out on a regular basis. If it ever comes down to you or me, I will sell you out in an instant.”

“Understood,” said Dana, swallowing.

“Fine, then,” said the assistant, turning around with a sniff. “My work here is done. Enjoy your present and don’t feel super guilty that you basically stole a priceless gem under false pretences.”

Once Kitty was out of sight, Dana tore the tissue off the little box and stared at the gleaming blue stud inside. Apparently, Milord was so enamoured with the false Marquise that he had decided to express his affection via an antique sapphire.

Dana’s fictional love life had turned out to be embarrassingly profitable.

Dana headed for the Musketeer dock, rather than going directly home which would have been the more sensible choice. It was early, and she didn’t see anyone she knew on her way. Even Treville was not yet ensconced in her plexi-glass office.

The dock was deserted. Dana kept walking until she reached the four familiar ships, lined up in berths next to each other. Morningstar. Hoyden. Pistachio, freshly restored and ready for war. Buttercup.

She walked all the way up to the ship that her friends had found for her, and leaned her chin against the hull, like she used to when she was a little girl, getting underfoot and begging Mama and Papa to tell her stories of the old days, of the Royal Musketeer fleet.

A discreet cough alerted her to the fact that she was not alone. Athos stood at the open hatch of the Pistachio, holding a freshly brewed pot of coffee. “Breakfast?”

For the first time in two days, Dana thought she might be capable of letting herself cry without the solar system coming to an end. Not in front of Athos, of course. That much emotion might damage his circuits. But soon, perhaps.

She gave him a wavering smile instead. “When you say breakfast…”

“I basically mean coffee, yes.”

“Works for me.”

Dana sat on the narrow bunk in Athos’ aft cabin, holding a cup as he poured the coffee for her. “I am obliged to tell you,” he said formally. “That Porthos and Aramis and Engineer Pigtails are all rather concerned that they upset you yesterday. I present this information without comment.”

“Noted,” said Dana, sipping the hot, black coffee gratefully. “You know her name’s not actually Pigtails, don’t you?”

“I’m using it as a placeholder until I care who she is. Do you need medical attention?”

“No, I’m good,” said Dana, flexing her bruised hands. “Not good. I’m – medically attentioned, though. Not running off the rails any time soon.”

“Fine.”

She leaned her head against the curving outer wall and grinned at him. “You are so terrible at this.”

He nodded gravely. “It is a crime and a tragedy that I found you first, but we shall have to make do. There will be no hugging.”

“Understood. That’s what Aramis is for.”

“Exactly.”

“Papa died,” Dana blurted out, all at once, not making eye contact with him. “I didn’t – but the ship – that’s why – it’s all still sort of recent. But I’m fine, or I will be, I just.” She stopped talking.

Silence came from Athos. After a moment, Dana risked a look in his general direction. His face gave her no clues as to what he was thinking.

“I was wrong,” he said eventually. “I am the right person for this one.”

“Really?” she said in astonishment.

Athos joined her on the bunk, setting down the pot of coffee between them in case she tried to change her mind about the hugging thing. “Dying was the worst thing my father ever did to me, too.”

“Oh,” Dana said softly. She had not expected that.

Silence unfolded between them, like a coffee-scented blanket.

“I don’t think the others would understand,” Athos added. “They’d try to be sympathetic, but Aramis’ family were terrible to her; she was relieved when she finally cut off all contact. Porthos never had a family to speak of in the first place. But believe it or not, I once had a father that I loved very much.”

Dana nodded. This was useful information. “When did he die?” she asked.

“I was twelve. Away at school. Suddenly he was gone, and I was expected to be him. To be…”

“The Count?” she supplied, remembering what she had learned about the Count de la Fere in the basement of the Gilded Lily.”

“I won’t talk about that side of it,” Athos said sternly. “But yes. I hated him for a while. And I’m well aware that he would hate the person I have become. Yours wasn’t like that, I expect. But I can share the general father-mourning experience, if empathy is at all useful.”

“Papa would be proud of me, even if I’m not really a Musketeer yet,” Dana admitted. “He’d – be happy to know you got the Buttercup back for me. I’ll pay you for her,” she added firmly. “I have the opal, and a sapphire now too, I suppose. I know the three of you didn’t let Planchet bankroll the purchase.”

“It’s probably a good thing you’re keeping the ship. Pigtails is attached already, and I’d hate to see her cry.”

Dana stared at her hands, tracing the bruises with one finger. “Athos, I’ve done something really stupid.”

“What are you, twenty?” he scoffed. “You’re barely getting started.”

“No, I mean specifically today. Last night. I made a mistake which I probably can’t even count as a mistake because I knew what I was doing the whole time and I still did it.”

“And yet you’re richer by a sapphire? I should make such mistakes.”

“It was a present.” Frowning, she showed him the new stud on her wrist. “You remember how you told me not to sleep with the bad guy?”

But there was something awful about Athos’ face as he saw the square-cut sapphire set into her wrist. He reached out, his hands closing around her forearm as if he wanted to snap it in two.

“Athos,” she whispered. “Athos, breathe.”

He gasped once, and squeezed her arm painfully tight. “D’Artagnan, where did you get that thing?”

“From last night’s mistake,” she said, still not understanding what had got into him. “I spent the night with Milord.”

“Oh,” he said, and there was an odd twist to his mouth, not a smile, but something cruel and self-mocking. “Your pretty Milord de Winter. Yes, that makes sense. Sorry, I just – I had one like it, once. Don’t mind me.” For a moment, he leaned into her, his forehead resting against hers. “You have to stop this. Throwing yourself at dangerous men is not a solution to anything. We have a war to fight.”

“So what?” Dana said, her voice shaking. She would not cry in front of him, she had promised herself that. “I should just let Conrad go?”

Athos tugged her sleeve back down, so he didn’t have to look at the sapphire in her wrist. “No man is worth this. If Conrad Su is still alive, let him damn well rescue himself.”

Some time later, over-caffeinated and swamped with emotions that she really wanted to jettison directly into outer space, Dana returned the Buttercup.

It wasn’t the same – there had been some work done here and there, and a few panels had obviously been replaced. She wondered how many hands the musket-class dart had passed through, between Meung Station and Paris Satellite.

The sonic shower worked, which meant Dana could clean her clothes and remove the last traces of her night with Milord. She refused to let herself dwell on it, every kiss and touch and groan, though it was nearly impossible to think of anything else.

After that, she lay on the familiar old bunk and composed the chilliest, least-affectionate break up text that she could summon. Not for herself – he would not expect to hear anything from Dana D’Artagnan, but from the woman he was actually fascinated with.

Athos was right. It was time to let this ridiculous game go. She had come too close to disaster, and Kitty knew too much, and it wasn’t like Dana had managed to acquire any useful information at all, except that Milord was more dangerous to her than she had ever imagined.

She had to get her head into the war, or she wouldn’t last long. Conrad and Milord were distractions from the one thing she had come to Paris for, so many months ago.

To serve Crown and Solar System.

Milord De Winter.

I thank you for your gift, though I hardly think our acquaintance so intimate as to make jewels appropriate. I think perhaps you have misconstrued our recent correspondence.

I shall consider the sapphire an appropriate parting token.

Yours,

Marquise Illehandra Concita Mullholland de Wardes

It was the meanest thing Dana had ever written. She kept reworking it, trying to soften the words, before remembering that Milord was basically (probably) evil, and it wasn’t a real relationship she was ending here. Athos had been right all along.

There was something genuinely sinister going on here, and it was time for Dana to stop screwing around with what she did not understand.

When Milord did reply, a full 24 hours later, it wasn’t a reply at all, in that he communicated with Dana rather than “the Marquise.”

It was a stark command for Dana D’Artagnan to attend him on his ship. Dana stared at the blinking message for a long time. It didn’t make sense for “Dana” to blow Milord off too, and it might be suspicious if she did it too soon after the epic breakup.

She would have to keep up the pretence that she was still crushing on Milord for a while longer, maybe until the Musketeers went to war. Any day now. One more visit, to throw him off the scent, that couldn’t hurt.

And no sex. Their night together still gave her the shivers to think about, but Dana was only willing to give herself one pass on sleeping with the enemy. More than that and it became a very embarrassing pattern. One visit, no sex. Easy.

Dana hid the sapphire stud and the mother of pearl clamshell in a storage compartment on the Buttercup (having her ship back felt good, now she had come to terms with what it symbolised to her; she felt more herself than she had in months).

With her valuables concealed, she set out to play Dana the Admirer one last time. Her only concession to personal safety was to dress as much like Dana the Musketeer-in-Waiting as possible – a tunic and cargo pants, and her fleur-de-lis dogtag, with the pearl stunner in her pocket and the Pilot’s Slice swinging in a business-like fashion from her belt.

She would have worn the blue Arms-Sergeant uniform if she thought she could get away with it, but it was hanging freshly-printed in her rooms, waiting for the final order to come through. Dana didn’t want to risk not being ready when the call came to fly to Truth Space.

“He’s not in the best mood,” said Kitty. She wore three star-shaped piercings in her lower lip today, and worried at them with her teeth as she showed Dana into Milord’s private parlour on the Matagot. He must have evacuated the hotel suite again to avoid his sister and her New Aristocrat entourage.

“He asked to see me,” said Dana, deliberately not saying ‘he clicked his fingers like I was a German Shepherd and look at me, I came running.’

Responding to his summons was a terrible idea. Why hadn’t she thought of saying she had a cold?

Milord was a streak of fury in a beautiful suit. He paced up and down in front of an exquisite false fireplace (a vintage fireplace, on a spaceship, who even does that?) and waved his hand impatiently when Kitty announced Dana as if he could not even bother speaking to his assistant.

His eyes gleamed with anger and for one awful moment, Dana thought he knew exactly what she had done. Kitty disappeared around the door in a swish of glitter and hairspray, closing it behind her.

“You like duels,” Milord grated out between his teeth, barely even looking at Dana. “Would you take on a celebrity for me? I have someone I want publicly humiliated.”

Dana approached him cautiously. Damn it, she could feel the danger rolling off him as if he was a snake about to bite. And yet… she still wanted to stroke his head and make him feel better.

“I’d do anything for you,” she murmured, and didn’t have time to think about whether she meant it or not (in too deep, Dana, get out while you can!) because he had grabbed her around the waist, and was kissing her with a savagery she could not help but respond to.

All her good intentions fell away as Milord pushed her into a ridiculously uncomfortable antique chair, and began to kiss her out of her clothes, one piece at a time.

Damn it all, but he was good with his mouth.

It wasn’t until she lay sprawled and naked in the chair, with Milord’s tongue opening her up, his fingers pressed hard into her inner thighs, that it occurred to Dana that this was it, her last chance to find out what she needed to know.

She was never going to let herself set foot on the Matagot again. She would stage her own intervention if she had to, call in Athos and Aramis and Porthos to ensure she kept her word, that she stayed away because obviously she couldn’t – couldn’t be trusted – ohh – and there –

Was he vulnerable during sex, or twice as dangerous as at any other time? There was only one way to find out.

A minute later, she dragged him into the chair and rode him hard, gaze locked with his. It was the first time they had actually made more than perfunctory eye contact during sex.

“Does she look like me?” Dana breathed in short gasps against his mouth. “The woman you’re feeling so vengeful about. The one you want me to – challenge.”

Milord flexed his fingers hard against Dana’s scalp, as if he wished she had hair that he could pull. “What makes you think it’s a woman?”

She tipped her head back, moaning quite genuinely as he pulsed inside her, though it saved her from covering her mistaken reveal, that she knew exactly who he was angry about. “You want me to challenge someone in a duel, to humiliate them, shouldn’t I know more about who they are?”

“I don’t see why,” he said, grazing the dark curve of her shoulder with his teeth. “You don’t need to know someone to pierce their heart with a sword.”

He genuinely thought she would act as his assassin? Damn, she had been convincing.

“Who – is – it?” Dana asked, her breathing speeding up as they quickened their pace together.

“The Marquise de Wardes,” he said, with deep venom.

Dana laughed as she came, the vibrations hitting them both, and Milord was only a minute behind her, groaning into her breasts so that she could not see his face.

Interesting. Dana caught a handful of his brown hair and tipped his head up, catching a flash of an unexpected colour in his pupils – bright red, of all things. Even as they settled back to their usual grey, there was a brightness to his face that wasn’t entirely normal. “What will you give me, if I kill her for you?”

Dana still held him in place with her thighs, though she knew he could push out of the hold if he wanted to. She had more muscle tone, but she had learned from their previous dalliance that he was surprisingly strong for a man who spent most of his life at a desk.

“Anything,” said Milord, and kissed her almost politely on the mouth.

It was that final courtesy that reminded Dana that he wasn’t the only one who was angry. She was so damn tired of pretending to be someone that she was not. “The only thing that I want, you can’t give me,” she said, and her voice came out hard.

He tilted his head back, curious. “What is it you want, Dana D’Artagnan?”

She pushed off him, backing away on bare feet, the frustration and resentment rising up all over again. “I want Conrad Su, alive and well.”

Milord’s face changed, and for a moment she could see nothing of the gentle, sarcastic Vaniel De Winter. His eyes blazed silver, and he looked her up and down with an expression of contempt that he had never allowed her to see before. “How much do you know?”

“I know everything,” Dana snarled, and punched him because what the hell else was she going to do at this point? She was naked and her weapons were – much like her clothes – scattered half across the room.

It was a good hit – she had been aiming for the jaw, but over-compensated for the height difference and got him in the nose. He doubled over in pain, hands shielding his face for a moment.

Again, that flash of red, though it wasn’t blood. Lights reflected in tiny motes from his skin – no, the lights were part of his skin. For an instant, he lit up like a constellation of stars against a scarlet sky. A terrible, overwhelming realisation rushed Dana like a sonic engine to the face.

Milord lunged for her, and she was ready for him, her calculated punches jabbing at his throat and solar plexus even as he slammed her to the ground. She clawed at his face, going for the sensitive parts of his mouth and eyes, and there, where her short nails dug into his lip, she saw it again.

“I know what you are,” she choked out as red and silver burst across his skin, like she had thrown boiling water on him, like there was an explosion inside him trying to get out, like he wasn’t human.

He wasn’t human.

Sun-kissed, sun-kissed, sun-kissed.

She could no longer deny it. It made too much sense. Milord was one of them, an alien spy, just as Athos’ husband had turned out to be. Dana had known she was sleeping with the enemy but this – this was worse than she had ever imagined.

“Do you think I won’t kill you to protect my secret?” Milord hissed at her, his body pinning hers to the floor.

Dana stared at the silver hair pouring out of his scalp, at his bright red skin from hairline to fingertip. His eyes burned with hatred.

“Well,” she said reasonably. “You can try.”

You have been reading Musketeer Space, by Tansy Rayner Roberts. Tune in next week for another chapter! Please comment, share and link. Musketeer Space is free to read, but if you’d like to support the project for as little as $1 per month, please visit my Patreon page. Pledges can earn rewards such as ebooks, extra content, dedications and the naming of spaceships. Milestones already unlocked include the Musketeer Media Monday posts, the Robotech Rewatch posts, and “Seven Days of Joyeux,” a special Christmas prequel novella which was released in December 2015. My next funding milestone ($300 a month) will unlock GORGEOUS COVER ART.