Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 54

ROBOTECH REWATCH 23: Fastest Wedding Plot Twist Ever

Robotech will be rewatched after these messages.

THIS episode, people. THIS episode. Even knowing what happens, it blows me away every time. Of all the Robotech WTFery, and there’s a whole bunch of super uberWTFery still to come, this is the WTFest of them all.

And yet.

I ship it so hard.

Max and Miriya, you put the “whuh” in whirlwind romance and I love you to bits.

Episode 25 – Wedding Bells



Once Ms9 saw the title of this one, it was all I could do to make her watch it – and thanks to the spoilery Next Time announcement from last week’s episode, she knew whose wedding it was gonna be. Thanks for that, overly-invested and weirdly precognitive narrator. I only dragged her back to the show (words cannot describe how much she hates kissing and romancey stuff) with the promise of a knife fight.

Her eyes lit up. “With the happy couple?”

“YES, RAELI.”

“Well all right then.”

So Max is all dressed up for his date, worrying that his date might get mugged. This is hilariously ironic in so many ways, but only for about three seconds before Miriya attacks him with a knife, announcing herself as a Zentraedi who hates him.

Miriya: MAXIMILIAN PREPARE FOR YOUR DOOM.

Max: There goes our first date.

Max is not giving up on the possibility of getting to second base, and so he continues to be overly reasonable with Miriya while avoiding the angry thrusts of her wild stabby knife. He finally deflects her with a rock and runs for it, not wanting to hurt her.

Miriya: You might be a great man but what is a man compared with a Zentraedi?

Max grabs her spare knife from the tree trunk and fights her properly, beating her fairly. because Max is made of pixie dust and basically it’s impossible for him to ever fail at anything. Except reading body language. For Miriya this is the final humiliation and she bows her head, demanding he kill her.

Obviously that’s not going to happen, because while Miriya is aware this was an assassination attempt, Max is still firmly dedicated to the idea that they are on a date. He refuses to kill his would-be assassin on the grounds that she is beautiful and then…

Well, there’s kissing. (cue the URRRRGH from the 9 year old) But it’s weird anime kissing that involves Miriya literally floating in the air in slow motion as Max goes in for some tongue action.

And then, if that’s not enough…

Max: This might sound crazy but will you marry me?

Me & Ms9: THIS IS WHY WE NEEDED FROZEN, PEOPLE!

What follows is one of my favourite scenes ever, in which Max turns up to the officers mess/space canteen to explain to Rick that he is going to get married. Rick manages a spittake even before he finds out Miriya isn’t actually human.

Max claims that there are no problems that love cannot overcome and Rick laughs hysterically for a really long time which makes a lot of sense considering HIS LIFE EXHIBIT A.

Then Miriya turns up in a pink dress with her politeness A-game and Rick is suddenly convinced. Seriously. That’s what it takes. Hot girl wearing pink = true love.

Preparations for the wedding begin before even the mid-episode ad break. I’m not even kidding. It’s heralded as the first wedding in outer space as well as the joining of a human and a Zentraedi, and the SDF1 have pulled out all the stops to make it a day to remember as well as a clever piece of PR.

The honour guard of Battloids is especially awesome.

Oh and by the way? It’s televised, which means the Zentraedi get to watch Miriya Parino walk down the aisle.

Exedore trying to explain marriage to Breetai is kind of hilairawesome. I envision a future when the two of them are basically tooling around the galaxy in an interplanetary version of The Love Boat, bringing romance to all of their passengers.

Max and Miriya’s wedding cake is shaped like the SDF1. Your argument is invalid. Why are more wedding cakes not the shape of the SDF1?

Captain Gloval’s speech is… well. Political. It’s a lot less about the happy couple (who have been together for literally five minutes so, fair enough) and more about their current situation. His rant about Zentraedi atrocities is deeply embarrassing to Miriya, and Max and Rick both object loudly. The second part of the speech is a bit nicer, as Gloval continues that they can’t blame the individual Zentraedi for their actions.

Gloval: There is no reason that we cannot co-exist in peace.

On Earth, Admiral Hayes turns off the TV in disgust at Gloval talking about peace. Lisa tries to convince him that Gloval is speaking sense, that they need to try for a peaceful solution.

To her credit, she doesn’t turn a hair about the fact that Max has eloped with a Zentraedi. Lisa is unflappable in all things that don’t involve her love life.

Speaking of peace between their people, Konda, Rico and Bron have definitely paired off with the three bridge crew girls, who embrace them at the wedding and are delighted to represent human-Zentraedi compatibility with their new boyfriends.

Seriously, all this was BEFORE the ad break.

The wedding is not a symbol of peace for some – in fact, it convinces Dolza that the time has come to stop pulling their punches and wipe the humans out once and for all. I feel the need to pat him sympathetically on the head because hello, most military leaders would have done that months ago.

But never mind all that, it’s time for MINMEI TO SING.

AND ITS A NEW SONG.

After her describing the meaning of the upcoming song in great depth before launching into it, I was seriously geared up for ‘Stage Fright’ but we get ‘The Man in My Life/Here by my side’ which is a particularly dreadful song, like seriously awful, but is at least new.

It’s a bit exciting. Ms9 may have pretended to faint. She also claims very firmly that the actress (Reba West) playing Minmei is not the same as the one (still Reba West) who sings the songs, despite my claims to the contrary. Apparently both me and Google know nothing about these things.

Of course, the song is completely inappropriate to the wedding, unless the ‘he’ in the song is Miriya before the romantic knife fight, but let’s face it, Minmei’s songs are never about anyone but her.

The Man in My Life (lyrics)

Now that I’m sure I found

The man in my life I spend the days alone,

Chasing a dream

Why do hope and pray

That he will care?

He never stops to see I’m even there.

Why do I love him so,

He lives in a cloud.

Why can’t he hear my heart

When it’s shouting aloud?

If he could only see,

How I feel deep inside

He might come home and stay

Here by my side. Here by my side.

After a short break to listen into Breetai and Exedore plotting, we head back to Minmei just in time to hear a few strains of ‘To Be In Love,’ the only song in her repertoire that is actually vaguely appropriate. Aww, Minmei. Don’t ever change.

Several of the Zentraedi pilots under Khyron’s command have been shaken by the sight of Miriya’s wedding, not just because it’s one of their own marrying a Micronian, but specifically because it’s Miriya freaking Parino, total badass. If this squishy Protoculture thing has got to her, then nothing in the world makes sense any more, even (especially) the warfare that they have never questioned before. They feel as if they are attacking their own people, and many of them flat out refuse to obey the order to attack.

Sadly, not all of them.

A full scale alert sounds through the SDF1 and the wedding reception breaks up as the pilots all run for their ships. Max is given the option to sit this one out, but he doesn’t want to let everyone down. Miriya decides she will fly out with him, as she promised to stay by his side (and possibly because she was listening extra close to Minmei’s lyrics). Max is dubious but decides to “allow” it despite it being unsafe.

He does not comment on the fact that she might find it uncomfortable to be shooting her former allies out of the sky.

MS9 perked up a bit at the addition of spaceship battles to the episode. “Best wedding ever.”

Miriya, flying as copilot in Max’s ship, shows him a way to disable the Battloids without bloodshed. He agrees that it’s time to actually try to work towards peace. Rick asks what the hell is happening on that ship (“Snogging, probably” contributes my daughter) but understands when Max explains.

The other side is resisting as well, as the Zentraedi mutiny builds, Breetai is furious and pulls back the ships. Exedore is confused. Captain Gloval is confused. NO ONE KNOWS WHAT IS GOING ON BUT NO ONE WANTS TO FIGHT ANY MORE, CAN’T WE JUST BE FRIENDS ALREADY?

That’s Protoculture for you.

The battle is over. Rick lives in the apartment next to the newlyweds which means he gets woken up to the sound of Miriya setting fire to their kitchen and cooking the coffee pot (because of course your new wife should cook for you even though that is in no way in her skillset). Still, the chaos next door soon settles into giggling and wet kissy sounds.

So many reasons to wish they’d had a proper honeymoon somewhere else.

He muses on his own life choices, and his big brother’s advice about love – before you love someone, you should like them first. Rick likes Lisa, but he might never see her again. As for Minmei, he might have finally given up on her.

Because yeah, that’s going to happen.

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 Part 24: Hover-Chandeliers Are Forever

Another Musketeer Day!

This month’s Musketeer Media Monday post went up this week, with Musketeer in Pink (2009), a dip into Barbie’s complex work history. Remember that time Barbie was a Musketeer? She was great at it.

Over in the Robotech Rewatch, we just reached one of my favourite episodes – the one where Max tries to woo Miriya via video game pwnage and only manages to piss her off. Hell of a first date.

But on to this week’s installment – which brings the bling!

Start reading from Part 1

Missed the last installment? Track back to Part 23.

Main Page & Table of Contents

PREVIOUSLY IN MUSKETEER SPACE: It’s party time on Lunar Palais! Dana has successfully completed her interplanetary mission to bring back the diamond studs that the Prince Consort gave away to the Duchess of Buckingham. If only she hadn’t lost Athos, Porthos and Aramis along the way! Oh, and she met Milord De Winter on a train while pretending to be someone else. So that was awkward. Luckily she’s not important enough to come to his attention… yet.

NOW READ ON!

This chapter is dedicated to Scott Leis – thanks so much for your support of Musketeer Space!

Chapter 24 – Hover-Chandeliers are Forever

Dana leaned back against the arm of an embroidered couch in the Prince Consort’s dressing room. She was not asleep – she could not imagine herself managing to lose consciousness yet – but she was nearly home and there was something slightly wonderful about that.

Conrad was the very opposite of relaxed. He was dressed up for the ball, in a beautifully cut but undecorated black suit much like the one that the Prince had insisted upon wearing. The simple shade and lines of the suit showed off the golden-brown glow of Conrad’s skin and the metallic scale pattern that traced a line down the side of his neck.

His shoulders were tense, and his long, tailor’s fingers drummed in an anxious pattern against the back of the couch. His blue hair was a shade too long now, and kept falling in his eyes, forcing him to brush it impatiently away every few minutes. As Dana watched him, she could see that his thoughts were entirely on Alek, and the scene playing out right now in the ballroom. It was ridiculously attractive, how devoted he was to his friend.

“Oh no, he can’t just go out there like a normal person, he has to make a performance of it…” he muttered, talking mostly to himself.

Adrenalin still burned through Dana – the long venturer journey back from Valour had not dampened the excitement of the mission, especially as she had spent most of her time fidgeting in her seat and recounting the adventure in her head, when not using Planchet’s clamshell to research any information she could find about Milord Vaniel De Winter. Not that she had been able to find out much except that he was Private Secretary of the Interior and had something to do with government intelligence.

Ha. Something political. Hilarious.

As Milord, he had been working with Rosnay Cho and that meant he was working for the Cardinal. As Winter, he had apparently taken up residence inside Buck’s tortured mind. But what did any of that actually mean?

Dana didn’t want to think about any of it. What she wanted was to lean over and lick a wet stripe up Conrad’s throat. If he could stop being irritated by the Prince’s antics for five seconds, she might actually do it.

Conrad pressed both hands over his eyes now as if he was actually in pain. “You got in this morning, he could have worn the damned coat and the damned studs in the first instance, now he’s just drawing attention to the whole mess, and…”

“Conrad,” Dana said in a low voice.

“It drives me up the wall, you can’t tell him, it’s like if subtlety was a gene his was removed at birth, maybe it’s some kind of subtlety disorder…”

“Conrad.”

“You don’t know what I put up with…”

Dana gave up on getting his attention. Instead, she crawled along the couch and straddled his lap. “Conrad.”

He opened his eyes, huffing out a startled breath. Then, very slowly, he began to smile. It was an exceptionally charming smile, and it made her feel warm all the way down. She didn’t think he was thinking about the Prince Consort any more. “Hello there.”

“Hi,” said Dana, shifting slightly in his lap.

“Have I mentioned how grateful I am that you saved my idiot boss’s hide?”

“I’m sure you were about to mention it.”

Conrad walked his fingers up the back of her bare neck, drawing their mouths closer together. His lower lip made a teasing swipe against her own, a preliminary touch that made her shiver. More. She wanted more. “I was definitely about to do that.”

The door to the dressing room slammed open, and Alek marched in. “Don’t mind me,” he snapped, heading for where the peacock coat hung, freshly pressed, against the wall.

Conrad drew back from Dana with an apologetic look, and she pushed herself off his lap so he could get on with his job. “Ready for Stage 2?”

“Stage 2,” Alek agreed, holding out his arms.

Conrad slid the peacock coat on the Prince. The cut was perfect, of course, swinging against his hips in a fierce statement of beauty. The lapels of the coat glittered with twelve perfect diamond studs. Even knowing that two of them had been made as substitutes very recently, Dana could not tell the difference between them.

“Still don’t know why you needed to bother with Stage 1,” Conrad said, coughing as he spoke so that the Prince could choose ignore the insubordinate tone.

“Yes you do,” Alek said calmly. “I had to see if my wife really was testing me on the Cardinal’s say-so. I wanted to give her a chance to show that she had chosen to trust me.” He sighed, and eyed at the effect of the peacock jacket in the mirror. It was, of course, spectacular, though Alek gave no sign of being pleased. “Not that I have any right to complain.”

“We all know that the Cardinal’s objections to you have nothing to do with what you do or don’t do in bed,” Conrad said, brushing the coat one last time for the sake of professional pride.

“Still,” said Alek, his face set hard. “I’ve been given another chance to make this right. I’m not going to let my own weakness get the better of me again. I knew the deal when I signed the contract. Time to start making the best of this bloody marriage.”

He turned to Dana on his way out, clasping her hand for a moment. “I can never thank you enough, Captain D’Artagnan.”

Dana blinked with shock at the title. “That’s not – that’s a long way off,” she said finally, embarrassed at the thought of it. “I’m not even a Musketeer.”

“Well, I’ll have to see if I can do something about that,” said the Prince Consort with a grin that made him look like a cheery teenager for a split second. “In the mean time, please accept this token of my appreciation.” He pressed something small and sharp into the curve of Dana’s palm and then swung away, striding back to where the Regent was waiting for him in the ballroom.

Dana looked down and saw a jewelled stud in her palm. It gave off a very expensive gleam of white, shot through with coloured veins that swallowed the light around it. “Oh,” she breathed.

Conrad came to see, his blue hair falling in his face again as he peered over her palm. “That’s an opal,” he said. “They’re very rare. Only found on Auster. I think the prince likes you.” He looked up, then, his dark eyes catching hers before he smiled. “Not as much as I like you.”

Dana arched an eyebrow at him. “So you admit I was the right person for the mission, despite my lack of credentials?”

Conrad laughed at that, dropping back on to the couch beside her. His hand trailed up and down her wrist, a casual touch that nevertheless made her pulse pick up speed. “You can’t blame me for being careful.”

“Careful is good.” Dana leaned back against the back of the couch. “I suffered a lot for this mission. I wore a dress. Me. An actual dress.” She had sensibly changed back into a plain flight suit as soon as she was back in Paris. The thought of swishing one of the Duchess of Buckingham’s gowns around here where people knew her was enough to make her howl with embarrassment.

“I’d like to have seen that,” Conrad said, his eyes lighting up.

“It was horrible. A crime against humanity.”

“I don’t believe a word of it.” His hand stroked all the way up her arm, until his fingers brushed against her collarbone. “Dana, I can’t – you know about palace contracts, right?”

She leaned into him, her own fingers combing through his spiky blue hair. If he was allowed to touch, then so was she. “Are we talking about morality clauses here?”

“No one cares about that stuff, not really, you know what palace types are like, all so sophisticated that it makes you want to smack them in the face. But I can’t afford to give anyone that kind of ammunition against me, not in the middle of all this. If I get myself exiled, Alek will have no one left in his corner.”

Dana nodded, her fingertips drifting lower to trace the muscular ridges of his shoulder blades. “Are you saying we can’t, or that we have to be very discreet?”

Conrad leaned into her, nuzzling her neck. His breath was warm against her skin. “Discretion. Not the other one. The other one is a terrible idea.”

“Where?” she whispered. She didn’t want to stop touching him, but he was right – the Prince’s dressing room was not the place for this.

“I need to be here, tonight. What are your plans for tomorrow?”

Dana sighed, and pulled away from him because her brain worked better when she wasn’t thinking about the warmth of his skin against hers. Tomorrow was so far away. “I have to report to Treville – telling her what I can, which isn’t much – and then check for any sign of communication from my friends, the ones I lost on the journey. If there’s no word from any of them or their engies, I’ll have to retrace the trip and see if I can find out what happened to them.”

“Will you still be in Paris tomorrow night?” Conrad moved back against the other side of the couch, putting distance between them. Dana wanted to pounce on him, but she could be a grown up about this. She could wait.

“It should take a day or so to get everything sorted before I’m off again,” she said slowly. “So yes. I’ll still be here.” One day. They could wait one day to be together. It wouldn’t kill her.

Conrad gave her a hopeful smile. “I have tomorrow evening free, and I know somewhere we can go. Will you meet me at the Fountain of Tranquility, at 19:00 hours?”

“Yes,” Dana breathed. She tried to make herself stand up and walk out of here with her dignity intact, but she couldn’t help herself. She moved forward, just a slight arch of her back, and Conrad met her in the middle of the couch.

They caught at each other, one hungry kiss turning into another, and another. Waiting felt a lot less possible right now. One of them was going to have to be strong enough to pull away.

As Conrad’s tongue grazed against her teeth, Dana was certain it wasn’t going to be her. She curled her hand into the fabric over his hip and hung on tight.

The Marquise de Wardes had embraced the peacock and diamonds theme more thoroughly than any other guest at the ball. Her thick, black corn-rowed hair was adorned with ribbons and silk peacock feathers, fanning out as if she was about to take flight. She was wrapped in a gown that sparkled pale and gleaming against her dark skin, giving the effect that it was actually made of diamond.

The hover-chandeliers, programmed as they were to capture the most visually interesting moments of the Regent’s ball, clustered so intensely around the Marquise that they almost caused a collision.

All the media representatives who had been allowed into the ball (a very exclusive list) were focused firmly on the Marquise as well, hovering near her as devotedly as the chandeliers.

Lalla-Louise Renard Royal watched the scene that unfolded – the Marquise’s glowing smile, and her self-depreciating laugh as the solar system’s attention focused so thoroughly upon her. The Regent knew in that moment that the Cardinal was right. This was the woman that they wanted as First Minister of Valour. Never mind that the Marquise’s politics were for a united Solar System – though that was a definite bonus. It was her flair for PR, networking and fashion drama that made her someone to watch.

Almost as fun as having Chevreuse around again. Lalla-Louise frowned at that thought. She had never been able to find a good replacement for Chevreuse. But of course she had to go. A Minister of PR who cared more about the Prince Consort than the Regent Royal was not someone to be trusted.

She resolved to invite the Marquise to extend her stay in Paris. They had much to discuss, and she wanted to make it clear to everyone that the other woman had her support and friendship. If that meant sabotaging the Duchess of Buckingham’s attempts to win the Valour election and Lalla-Louise’s bloody husband in one blow, then all the better.

“Your highness looks sad,” said a voice, and Lalla-Louise looked up into the calm eyes of Cardinal Richelieu. The one person who was always on her side. The Cardinal wore formal silks and a long star-scarf which entirely wrapped her hair. It was rare for her to dress so traditionally out of church – though in a nod to the theme of the ball, the scarf was purple and she had matched it with dark green gloves picked out in gold embroidery thread.

“Your eminence should not be so concerned about me,” the Regent replied with a formal nod of her head.

“How can I not be? The Solar System rests in your hands, my dear. Your wellbeing is vital to us all.” This was the Cardinal as foster-mother and devoted longtime friend, then, and not the sharp-tongued, ruthless political advisor. It was not always easy to tell the difference.

Lalla-Louise made an effort to smile. “I’m afraid this anniversary ball hasn’t gone quite as we hoped.”

The Cardinal arched one perfect eyebrow. “Has it not? I think it’s going splendidly. But perhaps we had different outcomes in mind.”

Lalla-Louise found herself getting angry at Alek all over again. What on earth was he thinking, strolling in wearing clothes that were barely formal enough for dinner? Was she losing his respect as well as his love?

Not that she had ever been able to count on a great deal of his love, but she had hoped they would become a powerful team working in sync with each other by now, a partnership that strengthened her ability to rule the Solar System. She should not be worrying about any secret alliances his family on Auster might or might not have been making with the New Aristocrats of Valour behind her back.

It all came back to Chevreuse. The Duchess of Buckingham going rogue was one thing, but if Buck had Chevreuse working with her… that woman was dangerous.

“You will forgive me, highness,” said the Cardinal. “But I have a token that I think you should accept. A sign of my own loyalty. As you know, I am always thinking about the Crown.”

“Yes,” said Lalla-Louise. “Of course you are.”

“I know that your highness has been wondering why I suggested this ball in the first place. I was startled – no, dismayed, when a concerning rumour reached me, and I set one of my agents to discover whether there was any basis of truth in it. I think you’ll find that the answers lie here.” And the Cardinal spread her gloved palm wide.

Two perfect cut diamond studs gleamed beneath the light of the chandelier.

Lalla-Louise stared. “Those are the studs that my husband should be wearing tonight.”

The Cardinal smiled sadly. “I hate to be the one to break it to your highness, but this is an important reminder that even those with whom we are most intimate can become compromised.” She tipped the diamonds into Lalla-Louise’s own hand.

“You’ll excuse me,” said a voice breaking into the sudden buzz that Lalla-Louise heard in her ears. “But I would very much like to dance with my wife.”

She was numb all over, and yet she felt Alek’s arms come around her. He drew her into the dancing with that same fluid grace they managed at no other time in their lives. Dancing. They had always been good at dancing.

At least three of the hover-chandeliers broke away from the splendid vision that was the Marquise de Wardes, and tracked the royal couple as they moved in perfect synchronicity across the ballroom floor.

“I’m sorry,” Alek said, and as Lalla-Louise leaned back in his arms she saw that he was wearing the coat, finally. The colour looked gorgeous over the plain black suit, and he had put some kind of gold glitter gel in his emerald-green hair that made him sparkle beneath the lights. “I was feeling rebellious, and took my anger out on you. It was unfair of me, and it won’t happen again.”

He took her breath away with his beauty. Lalla-Louise rarely craved physical touch, even that of her lovely husband, and yet she could look at him all day. “Angry, dove?” she said in a softer voice than she had intended. “What on earth made you angry?”

There was a different energy about him tonight. Alek was dancing with her like he played that wretched zero gravity game – as if there was a winner and a loser, and one of them was about to be struck by a pole. “I got the distinct impression that I was being tested,” he said with an edge to his voice. “I did not like it. I don’t think it was your idea – but that doesn’t make me feel better.”

Even as her wrist rested elegantly on the back of his neck, Lalla-Louise’s hand was still curled around the two diamond studs that the Cardinal had given her. She was not entirely sure what the point of them was. “I’m sorry, darling. I had quite convinced myself that you had involved yourself in – something political.”

Alek twisted his mouth in exaggerated distaste. “Have you met me? I leave the political to you, dear heart. I’m sports and entertainment.”

She laughed, and let him sweep her onwards with no further words. The dance could speak for them now. More hover-chandeliers clustered above them, now, capturing their warmth and happiness from every angle. Finally, the song ended and they came to a stop near the Cardinal. “Did you lose these?” Lalla-Louise asked, opening her hand and brushing the new diamonds against her husband’s chest.

He looked down, counting exaggeratedly. “All present and correct.” Sure enough, there were six diamond studs weighing down each of the long lapels of his beautifully tailored jacket.

Lalla-Louise was confused. “Your eminence, am I missing something? We should have twelve diamonds, and we appear to have fourteen.”

For a single flash of a moment, the Cardinal looked as if someone had poisoned her precious atrium garden, and burned down her favourite cathedral for good measure. Then a surprising warmth shone out of her eyes, and she smiled like the proud mother figure she had always been to Lalla-Louise. “A gift, your highness. A token of my esteem for the Prince Consort on the occasion of your anniversary. May you celebrate many more.”

Lalla-Louise did not believe a word of it, and she was certain Alek did not either, but they were all friends here. The hover-chandeliers were broadcasting every moment to the solar system at large, and smiles were called for all around.

“Surely it is not appropriate for me to outshine my beautiful wife,” said Alek, and promptly took the new diamonds out of Lalla-Louise’s hand, pressing them to the lapels of the jacket she had worn to match his. “We are quite out of balance, my love,” he added, and seized more diamonds from his own jacket, pressing them to hers, then pulling them off and rearranging them so that it was impossible to tell which were the new and which belonged to the original set.

Lalla-Louise laughed in a moment of pure enjoyment, and when the music struck up again, she let him lead her in another dance. The hover-chandeliers trailed above them, capturing every secret smile and casual touch between husband and wife.

You could not hold the Solar System together by dancing in public, but here and now on the brink of another terrible intergalactic war, it could not hurt.

It could not hurt at all.

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 a special Yuletide prequel story to be released in December. My next funding milestone ($300 a month) will unlock ART.

Musketeer in Pink (2009)

It’s Musketeer Media Monday! This month, I’m reviewing Barbie and the Three Musketeers (2009), a direct-to-DVD computer animated feature which was already on our shelf because Ms5 loves it kind of a lot.

I’m not even sorry.

I have a ridiculously soft spot for this particular movie, because I watched it with my daughters multiple times before I started this whole Musketeer Media project, and once you’ve seen all the Barbie movies about princesses and fairies and surfer girls and so on, the idea of one that’s about swords and adventure feels pretty progressive.

Also, how can I complain about the movie that did gender-swapped Musketeers long before I started my story? Hell, this movie is the reason that the shops were full of Barbies with swords for a while there.

Corinne (daughter of D’Artagnan though she never uses a surname) is a fairly standard Barbie avatar – sweet and blonde and determined to succeed at whatever she tries her hand at. This time around, she opens the movie practicing her swordwork, and then convinces her mother to let her leave home to become a Musketeer. All we are missing is a surreal slow-mo fencing shot like in the opening to Musketeers Crack Me Up Seventies Style (1973).

Barbie may be taking D’Artagnan’s place in the story, but there isn’t much of the original character left now he has been Barbiefied – none of the anger and reckless stupidity that is actually quite essential to the character. She compensates partly for this with pluck and gymnastics, but she’s a little too smart and coherent to be a gentuine D’Artagnan avatar. Also, she has a talking cat (Miette) and a talking horse (Alexandre).

Let’s not talk about the talking cat. I find the talking cat distressing. The particularly weird part is the interactive portion of the DVD where you can play a version of the movie that creates some kind of unholy reaction in the toy version of the cat you might have bought, causing it to erupt with cutesy catchphrases. The very thought of it brings me out in hives.

I thought we agreed we weren’t going to talk about the cat.

In Paris, Corinne comes across a small gang of Musketeers fighting in the courtyard and takes up their challenge to all comers. She makes a good go of it and almost looks impressive for the first five seconds, but is sabotaged by some rolling barrels and gets laughed at by the mean men. There’s no doubt at this point that while D’Artagnan struggles to be taken seriously because of his youth and rural origins, Corinne’s cross to bear will be institutionalised sexism.

“Why don’t you run along and leave the Musketeering to the big boys?”

In other news, Rochefort is a dog. Well no, not really – the sneaky, unnamed man in a black eyepatch hovering near the Regent at all times is probably the real Rochefort.

But it’s the dog Brutus who takes Rochefort’s narrative role in the story when he steals her letter of introduction and eats it, ruining her first impression with Treville. I hope Christopher Lee isn’t too offended at how easily his part can be played by a cranky bulldog.

To Treville’s credit, he turns Corinne down because she doesn’t have the experience, not because she’s a girl. It’s the same reason that the original D’Artagnan doesn’t get his dream job – he has to work on his CV first.

On to the traditional Musketeer meet cute! Corinne chases Brutus, who is chasing her cat Miette, and manages to knock over (in quick succession) three women who look exactly like Barbie with different hair, skin and frock colours: the purple, who is admiring some cloth; the green who is being romantic about a rose, and the blue who is playing the violin. That makes them Porthos, Aramis and Athos in that order. As usual, she knocks them all over, messes up their stuff and ruins their day.

A note about Barbie characters: it’s traditional in these movies for all the female characters to look as if they have all been poured out of a literal Barbie mould, with different hair colours just like the Barbie Friends in the toy range. It’s for this reason that all older female characters (like Corinne’s mother) look really weird, because they’re Barbie with wrinkles drawn on.

The other girls in this story are Viveca the fashionista (purple) “played” by Teresa, Aramina the dancer (teal green) “played” by Summer, and Renee the violinist (purple) “played” by Nikki. Teresa, Summer and Nikki are Barbie’s friends in the real world, which is to say, the toy shelf. If you want to understand this complex ecosystem further, check out the surprisingly awesome web series Barbie Life in the Dreamhouse. That was not an ironic recommendation. I have been causing bemused expressions all month from people I have tried to convince that this show is a bit awesome.

While the original D’Artagnan managed to score a job in the guards in his story, Corinne falls into a cleaning job at the Palace (institutionalised sexism!) where her ambitions to be a Musketeer make her an object of derision. Girls have never been Musketeers before!

Corinne also performs her fairy tale duty by being kind to an old woman in the kitchen (again, Barbie with wrinkles painted on and grey hair). To her dismay, it turns out that her three main co-workers are the Barbie Friends she knocked over on her way to the Palace, and they’re not happy with her. Instead of a duel, she ends up cleaning a marble floor with a toothbrush.

The girls take pity on Corinne because Barbie movies are all about friendship and none of them are allowed to be angry for long. They take her home – they have an extra bed since ‘Constance’ left – she was the girl we spotted briefly being fired before Corinne was given the job. They’re still skeptical about the newcomer, but after she shows Renee a small act of kindness by repairing her violin bow, they decide they adore her unconditionally.

Viveca has the vanity and love of pretty clothes of Porthos. Aramina is romantic and soppy like Aramis. Renee brings the snark which must make her Athos. This watch-through is the first time I’ve ever been able to tell the difference between them! And yes you have to look at them very closely and squint a bit to make those character connections.

Louis is not a King (or married) in this version, but an eligible Prince whose Uncle Philippe is about to lose the Regency when he turns 18 in a few days. Which means that the plot is actually a lot closer to Mickey Mouse the Musketeer than any other version of the story. Yep, the Regent is the bad guy.

Turns out that Louis is a bit of a daft inventor type, who is happy building fun gadgets and is particularly obsessed with air travel via balloon. When the assassination attempts begin, he’s going to need someone strong and brave around to protect him…

A falling chandelier almost takes out the Prince, and all four of the cleaning girls reveal their hidden martial arts skills as they save him from being crushed. Later, Corinne finds evidence that the rope was cut. She confesses to the other girls that she longs to be a Musketeer and they admit the same – they all came to Paris to become Musketeers and ended up as cleaning ladies!

There’s a message in that somewhere.

The elderly and mysterious Helene overhears them and takes them through a secret passage (by way of a brilliant slide ramp) to a training room once used by Musketeers. They all show off their skills to Helene, who turns out to be something of an expert. Viveca fights with accessories (ribbons twirling), Aramina with grace (fans) and Renee with a catapult and snark. Barbie fences with her gymnastic moves – and Helene is better than all of them.

Luckily, she’s also willing to teach them.

“In my day, no one thought a girl could be a Musketeer. They still think that. You must prove them wrong.”

Training montage time! Fencing drill after fencing drill.

Corinne has a bonding moment with Prince Louis when something goes terribly wrong with his prototype hot air balloon (more rope severed in interesting places) and it launches by accident. She saves his life, and the two of them manage a rather pleasant trip together.

She is impressed with the Prince’s skills of invention – they both have what seem like impossible dreams, which gives them a lot in common. He’s a bit miserable that he’s going to be King soon which means no more fun inventing and lots of boring paperwork. So the country’s in good hands then. She gets up the courage to confess her own dream to him and is crushed when he laughs at her.

“You can’t be serious. Girls can’t be Musketeers!”

She yells at him and huffs away after they crash land, which is obviously a thing he likes in the ladies. Being yelled at, that is, not crash landing.

Meanwhile, Helene’s hardcore fencing lessons continue. When Corinne tells the other women about her day they that this was another dangerous near miss for the king – it could be sabotage! Helene trusts no one, not even Treville, and won’t let them call anyone for help.

Miette meanwhile is miserable because she wants to train to be a Musk-cateer like the big girls, and isn’t allowed inside the Palace. She confesses her sadness to Alexandre the horse. Brutus the dog threatens her, letting her know that when his master is the King, Miette will be banished forever. Miette is scared, but Alexandre helps her sneak into the Palace to be with Corinne.

Cue the next training montage! The girls use mops and other kitchen utensils to practice their moves while they’re working. But when it’s playtime, they can practice properly in the secret training room. Which by the way includes some extraordinary gear including clockwork suits of armour for them to train against. It’s all to the tune of ‘Unbelievable’ – or a version of the EMF song with slightly different but not actually Barbie specific lyrics. By the end of it, Barbie finally disarms Helene.

The montage has done its job, and they are SO ready to rumble.

“Nothing can stop us!” Corinne declares.

But on their way to celebrate, the girls spot Creepy Eyepatch man and others of the Regent’s men doing something mysterious with crates. His dagger has a gem in it just like the one that Corinne found near the chandelier. And apparently, the crates include swords for the upcoming masquerade coronation ball – or “party favours.”

The swords are really pretty colours that sort of match the dresses our girls like to wear. I thought this would be super significant to the plot but apparently no, that’s just the colour of pretty weapons in this universe. This universe is so stylish.

Corinne and the girls storm their way into the Palace but the cranky housekeeper refuses to let them anywhere near the Prince. They pick her up bodily and hurl her out on the grass, and race through the corridors to tell Treville about the plot – in front of the Regent himself which shows an extreme lack of subtlety on their part.

When asked for evidence, Corinne points to the crates – which turn out to be filled with sword-shaped decorations for the sword dance at the party. The Regent shows her that they’re fake and laughs at her for her concern. Treville refuses to support Corinne in her embarrassing ramblings, and tells her to stay away from the ball and the prince.

So they’ve probably all lost their jobs, then.

Oh yes, there’s the housekeeper reassuring them of that fact. If they ever return to the Palace they will be thrown in the dungeon.

Sucks to be Barbie.

The other girls are ready to give up but Corinne begs them to stay with her and protect the Prince – it’s what they have been training for. And of course, as cleaners, they know the Palace better than anyone.

Viveca is in charge of costumes, Renee in charge of inventing new covert weapons that match their outfits, and Aramina is going to teach them all to dance. Another montage, then!

Yes, they have to learn how to DANCE before they can save the Prince. And of course, to fence in ball gowns. Barbie never does anything half-arsed.

The Regent Phillipe claims he is going off to live in seclusion now that Louis is properly the King – as is only right and proper. But as soon as he leaves, he turns around and returns secretly to the Palace with a mask and his scary bulldog.

Everyone’s using the secret passages today – not only Corinne and her friends, but also Phillipe, Eyepatch Dude, and their men. Their plot of course is that they have real swords for the dance, and no one else does. But the real swords are candy-coloured like the fake ones.

Corinne and the others make their appearance at the ball, masked and gowned. Treville doesn’t recognise them despite their distinctive hair and frock colours, because he’s obviously lost his touch.

The guest announced before them is Countess De Winter. Yikes!

The girls are briefly panicked before they realise they can use fake names – and thus they are announced as Lady Barbie Q, Ivana Party, Abbey Birthday and Countess Hedda Lettuce. Class all the way.

The ceremonial sword dance begins. Weirdly everyone is still calling Prince Louis a prince, and not a king – has he not been crowned yet? Is this his pre-coronation? I’m confused. Naturally he picks Corinne to dance with, because she’s the main character and he has a subconscious interest in blondes wearing pink.

Everyone else at the ball stops to stare at them while they dance. I guess because he’s the Prince? Louis keeps trying to figure out where he has met her before and Corinne evades him with the skill of a highly trained teenage girl.

The sword dance, it turns out, involves the prince dancing with his chosen lady in the centre, and everyone else dancing slowly around them with their swords pointing directly at the prince. It seems like an occupational health and safety nightmare, frankly, and that’s without the real swords.

Aramina cuts in on the lady dancing with the masked Phillipe, and manages to kick him in the shins. I’m not sure if she suspects something or if that’s just a thing she did randomly. But when the fireworks go off and everyone stops to gaze at them, Phillipe makes his move. Corinne moves in to stop him and gets hold of a real sword. Phillipe calls out that she is the threat, and hustles the Prince away while his men take on the mysterious masked women. (Treville, by the way, was knocked unconscious some time ago, and apparently there is no security working the Palace tonight who isn’t in Phillipe’s pay already).

With what can only be classed as sparkle power, and a repeat performance of “Unbelievable” (also available as a karaoke film clip in the DVD extras, featuring Miette and a bunch of other computer generated cats) the four women go into an extraordinary dance routine, ripping off their long dresses and fighting with fans, scarves, jewellery catapults, etc. They’re pretty awesome with those accessories.

Also, Miette takes out Brutus with a tiny wooden sword. It’s cute and disturbing. It’s cutesturbing.

Even Helene, busily cleaning up the mess at the orders of the offensively pompous housekeeper, manages to clobber a couple of blokes with her broom.

Corinne and the others realise too late that they lost track of the Prince – but they know which way they went, through the secret passageways. They escape their aggressors with a perfumed sparkle spray and take off after their man.

Louis, it turns out, isn’t quite as dumb as he looks. In between figuring out how to improve on the elevator he is being kidnapped with, he works out that Phillipe is deeply suspicious.

Corinne and the girls find Treville and all the Musketeers tied up in the cellar. They don’t hold back on how smug they feel right now.

The final showdown between Corinne and Phillipe happens on a rooftop where he’s trying to get Louis to walk the plank on the grounds that he is a starry-eyed inventor and will make a terrible king. Which is actually true. I think I’m on Team Phillipe with this one.

Corinne swoops in to rescue the Prince, fencing the Regent on the edge of the rooftop up until the point that he disarms her. Ah. That montage wasn’t infallible, then. Phillipe is delighted that she’ll make a great patsy to blame the Prince’s death upon.

Louis flings a sword at Corinne, allowing her a second chance to defeat Phillipe. When he comes back for a third try, Corinne and Louis defeat him together, both hands on the sword hilt, which seems…unlikely but romantic, I guess?

The bad guys and the bad dog are all shipped off to prison, and the Prince unmasks the women who saved his life. He is genuinely startled to see Corinne beneath the mask of Lady Barbie Q… but he knows a movie resolution when he sees one.

Time jump and suddenly look the newly crowned King (check his pretty hat) is announcing the first female Musketeers – all four of them.

Rose petals are flung down upon Corinne and her friends by several of their new male comrades, up in the flying balloon. Helene, now in charge of the castle cleaning, gets to order the rude housekeeper around to sweep everything up.

Oh, and the King shyly asks Corinne to come up and see his balloon again some time (slightly more original than etchings) but she has to give him a rain check on their date because Treville has uncovered a plot, and it’s time for the new recruits to go to work.

Corinne, Viveca, Aramina and Renee ride off into the sunset to save the day, and the King is left smiling ruefully behind them.

Musketeer in Pink (2009) is a silly, ribbon-bedecked and petticoated version of the Musketeer story, but it leaves Mickey Mouse the Musketeer (2004) in the dust on many counts including having a narrative that mostly makes sense, not being enragingly sexist, not featuring that asshole Donald Duck, putting a sword in Barbie’s hand, and actually addressing/challenging a few gender conventions along the way. Ms5 did fencing exercises pretty much through the whole movie, with a few dance steps thrown in.

I’m kind of glad this one exists. Considering some of the awful movies out there “for girls” it has a better message than most. Also, it has a fake Bloopers reel which is the DVD special feature I always want in everything.

Lyrics from the Barbie song ‘All for One, One For All’ as distinct from the Sting version.



We may look beautiful

We may be dutiful

But don’t be fooled of our finesse

We’re here to save the day

Come on, en garde, touche

We’re no damsels in distress

Don’t mess with the dress

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)

ROBOTECH REWATCH 22: Video Game Romance

Robotech will be rewatched after these messages.

We’re up to one of my favourite subplots, the Max-Miriya romance. In my head, it always takes a lot longer for the two of them to, uh, settle things between them. But this episode is one of my favourites, and the game duel between them may have inspired an early scene in Musketeer Space…

Team Miriya all the way!

Episode 24 – Showdown

Lisa is off on her secret mission to convince the top brass on Earth that it’s a good idea to let the Zentraedi deserters integrate with their own society. Sami is taking her temp gig seriously, and she’s on fire with new confidence – so much so that she ends up chiding Captain Gloval for interrupting her. It’s adorable the way he lets the bridge crew scold him.

On impulse, Lisa calls Rick from the shuttle as she takes off, telling him what’s going on, and nervously adding how much she has enjoyed spending time with him. He’s outraged that she is leaving and this is the first he has heard about it.

Lisa’s little shuttle comes under attack, and she ends up wrapped in several layers of protective metal while a battle breaks out around her. Hunter’s Veritech crew are called in to add some firepower, but Rick doesn’t understand any of Sami’s instructions in the field. He wasn’t supposed to be on duty until tomorrow, so Sami hasn’t given him the new codebook yet! Oops.

When Lisa finally climbs out of her protective egg, Rick calls her shuttle to have a deep and meaningful about the bomb she dropped about maybe not being allowed to come home. He’s too shy to talk about more than military matters over the radio, so ends up flashing an entire heartfelt speech at her in morse code with his spaceship lights. Because that’s discreet.

Speaking of romance, Miriya Parino is still wandering around Macross City as a glamorous green-haired spy, and she’s in love… with a video game arcade. She’s finally figured out how the Micronians get so good at flying, by practicing on games like this. It’s also a good way to earn some currency, which shows she is much better at the whole undercover spy thing than Konda, Rico and Bron. No wonder she’s dressed so nicely.

Max tries to cheer up an obviously depressed Rick when he finds him at the restaurant, and drags him off to the Game Center. Yes, it’s the same arcade. THIS MAY BE SIGNIFICANT!

Rick and Max clean up on the games, thanks to their pilot skills and making a bundle of cash. This is not happy-making for the owner of the arcade.

“Oh boy I knew should never have opened this kind of business by the base.”

Understatement of the year.

Meanwhile, Admiral Hayes is delighted that his “little girl” has returned to Earth. Lisa’s Dad is a lot more cuddly this time around, happy she is properly away from the dangers of the SDF1. He attempts to be openly affectionate to her, but Lisa was burned last time around and refuses to treat him with anything but chilly military formality.

Max is delighted to see the beautiful green-haired woman he has been noticing around the place, and challenges her to a game because that’s the closest he can come to flirting. Miriya eyes his winnings and agrees if he bets all that, since it suggests he’s worthy of her skill. The two of them end up in a play off that is highly challenging – but Max beats her surprisingly easily and they move up to the next level.

A crowd gathers, and Miriya is impressed by Max’s skills as they duck and duel. She wonders if this is the pilot that Khyron taunted her with, the one who bested her in battle.

Meanwhile, Max is completely smitten with Miriya. But because his default setting is smug asshole (he smiles so sweetly but has SUCH a big head) he manages to turn the whole game into a humiliation for Miriya instead of a successful flirtation. As she tries to leave, utterly mortified, Max grabs her hand and forces her to agree to meet him in the park, because he’s INCAPABLE of reading body language and doesn’t realise how badly he’s screwed up.

I’m restraining myself from suggesting if Max spent a little less time playing video games, he might have more of a clue about how people work. But hey, it’s worked for him so far. This can’t possibly backfire, right? He’s pretty, it’s all bound to be fine.

Lisa is pleased that her father is supporting her argument about the Zentraedi being of similar biological origin to humans – but despite a successful meeting and a cozy father daughter chat about her love life, he shows her the Big Space Cannon they have waiting to shoot at the Zentraedi before they open peace negotiations.

Nothing Lisa has to say can change her father’s mind on this. She is horrified that the Earth government are planning to try to make themselves look tough before entering peace negotiations – they obviously haven’t taken any notice of the intel about how outnumbered and outgunned they are.

Back on the SDF1, the media are shipping Minmei and Kyle like whoa in a press conference, bullying her to confirm that she and Kyle are a couple and on the brink of marriage. After a brief diversion into her previous romance with Rick, the cameras capture Kyle admitting that he’s thought about proposing to her.

Minmei is shocked and a bit grossed out, and so is Rick watching on the TV. (and yes, you know Ms9 is shrieking at the TV right now, ew cousins, wtf?) As if that isn’t bad enough, Rick then has to put up with Max babbling about tie choices for his own date. Later he bumps into Claudia who asks him gently why he was so stuck on Minmei anyway, and hints that Lisa would be a much better match for him.

The Next Week on Robotech announcement completely spoils the biggest plot twist in the entire show thus far – but you’ll have to wait until next week to find out the details because *I* am not that mean. (psst, there’s gonna be a wedding…)

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 Part 23: Something Political

It’s Musketeer Day! I can’t tell you why I’m particularly excited about this chapter without spoiling the hell out of it, so just assume it’s part of my usual excitement about train transport. Trains are awesome.

I’ve been meaning to write a special post about my adventures in Perth last week, but apparently that’s not going to happen (time why do you DO this to me) so I want to give a shout out to Linda and the CrimesceneWA crew who made me so welcome at their convention. The concept of the con – combining crime fiction writers and readers with actual forensic and legal experts – is brilliant, and I hope we will see Crimescene back in some form in the future.

I loved getting to meet up with my Perth people and to meet so many new crime authors and readers. It was also ridiculously exciting to get to visit Stefen’s Books which I have heard so much about. Thanks everyone who came to meet me and especially those who joined us for a lovely drinks & dinner hangout afterwards. It was the perfect way to finish up my trip to Perth – and that day also included 2 affogatos, cuddles with baby-of-my-heart Mackenzie, watching Dawson’s Creek in person with one of my best friends in the world and watching Doctor Who in person with one of my other best friends in the world so honestly, it is RIDICULOUS how good that day was.

It was also exciting for me to see pre-release copies of Drowned Vanilla, my new murder mystery (under the Livia Day byline). Early orders will be filled shortly, and there is an e-edition coming soon. The book will be formally launched at the Hobart Bookshop on 20th November by my good friend and awesome YA writer Kate Gordon.

I posted earlier today about the #Fight4Raphael campaign, to help the daughter of a good friend attend a cancer trial in Melbourne. Please donate if you can.

Now, a little later in the day than usual but still absolutely present and correct: the continuing adventures of Dana in a dress!

Start reading from Part 1

Missed the last installment? Track back to Part 22.

Main Page & Table of Contents

PREVIOUSLY IN MUSKETEER SPACE: Dana D’Artagnan signed up for a mission to save the solar system by reclaiming a coat with diamond studs that the Prince Consort should never have given away to the Duchess of Buckingham. So far, Dana has lost her three best friends, crashed a spaceship, and helped a New Aristocrat drug herself into oblivion. Also she’s wearing a dress which is a thousand different kinds of wrong. This train trip she’s on, though, the people seem nice.

NOW READ ON.

This chapter is dedicated to Dr Helen Merrick, a dear friend and new Tasmanian. Thanks so much for supporting my gender-swapped space opera antics.

23 – Something Political

Dana – or rather, her cover identity, Alix Charlemagne – learned more about her travelling companions over the next few hours than she ever needed to know about anyone. Unfortunately, the charming Bianca was just as interested in Alix’s story as she was in her own, which meant that Dana had to busily invent all kinds of details and then try to remember them.

Still, it kept her awake for the journey to Arguerinne, and the venturer that would take her off this planet and home to Paris Satellite.

Bianca, Countess of Clarick, paused only briefly after introducing herself, then laughed and forbade her new friend from ever referring to her title. She embodied everything that Dana had ever heard about New Aristocrats. Bianca was an elite hobbyist sportswoman with more money than sense who occupied her days attending parties, travelling for shooting competitions, and duelling in the back streets for kicks.

Here at least, Dana was in safe territory, and she confessed her own taste for the sword. The profile she had built up was one of a spoiled daughter of a wealthy family on a Grand Tour across the solar system, and she managed now to incorporate an unnamed Athos in her tales as an extremely grumpy swordmaster. Aramis, likewise not named, became her poetry tutor, and Porthos, mentioned only as ‘Madame Polly,’ was her governess.

After a while, she realised that she was actually enjoying herself. Bianca had a talent for card games as well as gossip, and it was the first time Dana had relaxed since she was last with her friends, back when the adventure began.

Vaniel, whom Dana assumed to be Bianca’s husband, was more of a mystery. Bianca described him as ‘something political in the city’ and he offered nothing to add to that, busily working away and ignoring them both. The only time he interrupted their conversation was when he threw himself half across Bianca’s lap to call up a newscast on the back wall of the carriage.

“Oh not now, Vaniel,” Bianca moaned. “Turn it down, at least. I don’t have the least interest in whether the Marquise De Wardes is running for office or if she’s been named Best Dressed Politician for the third week in a row. Your obsession is boring.”

“Put a cake in it, Bee,” was all her charming companion replied, then stood there in the aisle watching the newscast with an odd, burning hunger in his face.

Later, when their sumptuous supper was delivered, Dana nodded towards the other side of the carriage where Vaniel had exiled himself as part of his ongoing interest in the political ramifications of whatever it was that this Marquise de Wardes had said in her public address. “Will your husband want to eat as well?”

Bianca stared at her in open-mouthed shock and then all but killed herself laughing. “Oh, that’s PRICELESS, Lexie,” she bellowed. Somehow, ‘Alix Charlemagne’ had become ‘Lexie’ somewhere round about the third hour of the journey, just as Bianca demanded she call her ‘Bee’ in return. “Vaniel, she thinks we’re married! Isn’t that a kick?”

“How precious,” said Vaniel in a light drawl that almost, but not quite, reminded Dana of Athos.

“He’s my brother-in-law,” Bee said when she had herself under control. “Widowed, when my poor sister died a few years ago. But I keep him around since he had the good taste to sire the Clarick heir – saved me the trouble of having my own children! Who can be bothered with all that nonsense?”

Dana smiled politely and saved herself from answering by filling her mouth with a smoked salmon blini.

“Of course,” said Bee thoughtfully, eyeing Dana up from head to toe. “It would all make us very happy if he married again. I don’t suppose you’re in the market for a husband?”

“Bee,” said Vaniel warningly from the corner, which showed he was keeping at least half an ear on proceedings. “Don’t marry me off to strangers on the train.”

“Fine,” Bee said, then mimed ‘we’ll talk later’ to a horrified Dana.

By the fifth hour of the journey, even Bee had exhausted all topics of conversation. She collapsed against the window with a selection of fashion magazines she had managed to apply to Vaniel’s tablet. Only minutes after she started flicking through the images, she fell asleep.

To Dana’s surprise, Vaniel surfaced from his work long enough to order tea from the food printer, and offered to play a game of chess with her. “Clears my head,” he said with a smile that was almost charming.

He beat her twice in quick succession, all the while explaining to her why the political aspirations of the Marquise de Wardes were significant – she was a staunch loyalist to the Solar System, and she had announced today that she was in the running for First Minister. Her platform was currently unclear, but everyone knew she opposed planetary independence for Valour, supporting the continued rule of the Regent Royal.

Also, the Marquise’s talent for personal PR and her reputation as a fashion icon apparently gave her massive popularity among the all-important demographic of voters who hated politicians.

To Dana’s surprise, once she realised that the Duchess of Buckingham was the other proposed candidate for First Minister – running on a platform of planetary independence based on an upcoming referendum – she became rather interested in the whole matter, and was more than happy to listen to Vaniel’s spiel.

He in turn enjoyed having someone to bounce his thoughts off, and the two of them spent a pleasant hour or two batting politics back and forth.

It was very late at night when they finally arrived in the city, and Dana rose with her suitcase full of frocks and peacock coat and diamond studs. The venturer on which Alix Charlemagne had booked her passage would leave at midnight.

“Perhaps our paths will cross again,” said Vaniel with a brief smile, his political face restored and his hair combed neatly. “You’re on your way to Paris Satellite, yes?”

“I’ve always wanted to go,” said Dana with a smile that she didn’t even have to fake.

“I’m sure you’ll find many amusements there.” He shook Bee awake with a brotherly carelessness, and the other woman hurled herself at Dana with apologies and lipstick-smearing kisses and promises to keep in touch.

Dana had already half-forgotten the Claricks and the diversion they provided her as she stepped on to the platform. The sooner she got back to Paris and completed her duty to the Prince Consort, the sooner she could reunite herself with Porthos, Aramis, Athos and their engies.

A small delegation of secretaries and assistants were waiting to greet Vaniel and Bee. Several of them swiped wrist studs against Vaniel’s to share files instantly. “Milord de Winter,” said one. “The press conference has been pushed back an hour, but the Freedom delegation has priority depending on…”

Dana almost lost her footing and fell under the train.

“Goodness, darling,” said Bee, leaning back to clasp her elbow. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Dizzy,” Dana whispered. Oh God and All. Milord De Winter. Winter. This charming political obsessive was the man who had supposedly put a psychotic copy of himself inside Buck’s head, to spy on the prince. Worse than that. Milord. She knew who he was.

He had been dressed differently, and acting differently, that night on Meung Station: all silver hair and aristocratic drawl. But it was him, of course it was. The agent working with Rosnay Cho. You know there are two Winters? The silver and the brown. The silver lives inside my head, but the brown – he’s the dangerous one. You won’t even see him coming.

Dana had liked him. She had played chess with him, and his sister-in-law had tried to set them up and OH GOD she had the diamonds here in her suitcase, only metres away from him. She had escaped right under his nose.

He wasn’t even looking in her direction. She wasn’t remotely interesting to Vaniel de Winter now that he had people around him who actually understood the Valour political system. Still dazed, Dana exchanged a final air kiss with Bee and fled the station, heading across the city she didn’t know to reach her berth on the venturer.

Home, she was going home. Away from politicking Milords and drug-addled Duchesses and charming Countesses and the sodding planet that was capable of making Athos furious merely by raining on him.

Home, to Paris. Everything was going to be all right.

Lalla-Louise Renard Royal, Regent of the Solar System, bit into a peach. She was surrounded by peacocks, a host of beautiful people in bright, preening colours, and she had never been so bored in her life.

The Hunt called to her, as it often did. But she pressed down the urge to flee this crowd and bury herself in her beloved chemicals. She had a duty to perform tonight. She had to find out if the terrible thing that the Cardinal believed about her husband was true.

Not that Cardinal had indeed said anything at all to condemn the Prince Consort. A word here, a comforting touch there, a frown at the wrong time, a word or two more. Nothing solid, nothing concrete.

But a hint in the wrong place could bring down her government, and Lalla-Louise could not let that happen.

She had to trust that the Cardinal knew what was best. She had always believed that, even when ‘what was best’ meant taking power and funding away from the Musketeers who had always served the Crown so diligently.

Still Lalla-Louise maintained her independence. She shared breakfast chocolate with Amiral Treville as often as she did with the Cardinal. She listened to many advisors, not just the one woman who had been there for her since the beginning. She had married against the advice of the Cardinal, thinking that she knew better when it came to choosing the right alliance.

No, she had known better. She knew that having that connection with Honour and the Elemental faction was important, and those facts had not changed. Lalla-Louise still believed in her marriage. She had wanted her union with Alek to prove to the Solar System that she could unite them all, Church and Elementals, dirtsiders and space dwellers. She had wanted for once to make a decision that would not prove that the Cardinal was better equipped to rule than Lalla-Louise herself. If they had an heir by now, even the Cardinal would not be able to raise objections to the choice she had made. A baby would have been the perfect way to unite all of the most divisive groups in the solar system.

Lalla-Louise was going to have to put her foot down about that soon. She knew that Alek’s religious and cultural beliefs made it hard for him to accept such a natural process as capsule-born babies, but surely he must realise by now that they were not going to get an heir any other way.

Assuming, of course, that the Cardinal’s hints about tonight came to nothing, and Lalla-Louise was not going to be forced to put her entire marriage aside. Lalla-Louise did not want that, not at all.

On the other hand, the idea that the Cardinal might be wrong about something was deeply terrifying. If the Cardinal was wrong, then the universe did not entirely make sense.

But if the Cardinal was right about everything, then Lalla-Louise’s marriage was more of a lie than she had ever imagined. And Alek – her sweet, beautiful boy, was not hers after all, but another conspirator out to end her reign.

As if in a dream, Lalla-Louise heard the chime that indicated that the Prince Consort had entered the ballroom. She rose to stride through the crowd of masked beauties, all gleaming in peacock colours scattered with diamonds and diamante beading.

The ballroom was decked out as a glorious jewelled garden, with crystal hover-chandeliers lighting every corner. The hover-chandeliers were equipped with cam feeds, capturing the glorious costumes and dancing of the Regent’s chosen guests so that the party could be broadcast live across the solar system.

Lalla-Louise was garbed as a huntress of olden times, with a gilded bow strung across her back and long trousers made of deep green suede. Instead of her usual army of dressmakers, she had summoned Alek’s own tailor Su to make her a long silk coat that would perfectly complement the one he had made for her husband’s birthday.

She had taken the opportunity to examine Su’s face for any hint that he knew of a betrayal, but his hands had been calm and his manner perfectly pleasant during their fittings, as if he knew of no reason why that coat might someday cause her pain or public embarrassment.

Lalla-Louise cut through the crowd and finally, finally saw Alek. He stood in polite discussion with a group of political types from Valour. Of course, he was not surrounded by his friends. He had so few left on Lunar Palais, as most of them had been exiled for political reasons, or had chosen to distance themselves from him for their own protection.

He was as handsome as ever, a prime example of his world’s beauty. And yet, Lalla-Louise felt a chill taking over her body as she approached him.

He wore black from head to toe. His hair had been recoloured so that it fell in feathery locks of purple, green and gold like the fanned tail of a peacock, and he wore diamond beads that hung from each ear. But there was no sign of the peacock coat, nor the diamond studs. She was furious at him, so furious that it felt as if there were no air left in the room.

It was all true. She had made a terrible mistake with him. And the Cardinal would hold this over her forever.

“Husband,” she said, ice dripping from her voice. “How plain you look this evening.”

“Wife,” he said politely, taking her hands to kiss them both. “I hope you don’t mind that I chose to dress simply tonight. How can one peacock stand out in a crowd of hundreds?”

“On the contrary,” Lalla-Louise snarled. It was rare for her to feel any emotion outside her beloved game, but this made her so angry she couldn’t see straight. “I particularly chose the theme of this ball so that you could display the diamonds I gave you. I chose my own outfit to complement your own.” And now she sounded like a petulant child. If only she had a glass of champagne in her hand, she would throw it over him.

Alek’s face changed, as he realised how angry she was. “Oh, my darling, forgive me. It was a thoughtless jest. I did not wish to risk eclipsing your own appearance.” He kissed her hands again, more passionately. “I shall change at once.”

“See that you do,” she said, barely getting out the words. Her husband made his exit with a bow that infuriated her as much as everything else about this evening.

To make it worse, the moment that Alek was gone from her sight, Lalla-Louise turned to see the Cardinal regarding her with great warmth and sympathy.

She wanted to break things. Everything. But instead she smiled and nodded and accepted the congratulations of her guests as if this party was everything she had ever hoped it would be.

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 a special Yuletide prequel story to be released in December. My next funding milestone ($300 a month) will unlock ART.

#Fight4Raphael

This was going to be the preliminary ‘catch up on what Tansy’s doing’ message before today’s Musketeer chapter, but then that felt weird and tacky and there was too much to say. So I’m saying it here. The chapter will go up later this morning.

While I was away in Perth, my dear friend Rowena Cory Daniells sent our writing group an email with great news – her eldest daughter Raphael, a teacher and talented jazz singer who has been going through chemo all year for her advanced bowel cancer, was finally showing very positive signs of recovery just in time for her wedding. Rowena has been keeping us up to date regularly as she supports Raphael through all this, and I was so glad to hear things were finally looking bright.

Sadly within the week the situation went very rapidly downhill. Raphael’s cancer is no longer responding to current treatments, and her last hope is a medical trial of a new drug in Melbourne. Raphael’s partner Clint has set up a GoFundMe campaign to help raise money towards the expenses of them relocating for the duration. The generosity of donators has been amazing so far, well beyond their expectations, and they have extended their target accordingly.

Rowena Cory Daniells is not only a wonderful fantasy writer but one of the kindest and most generous people in the Australian SF writing scene. So many of us have had our careers or our creative spark encouraged by her one way or another, over the last several decades. She is one of those people who always helps others above and beyond her own needs My heart hurts for what Rowena and her family have been going through all year, supporting Raphael through this battle. Please donate if you can.

#Fight4Raphael

ROBOTECH REWATCH 21: Breaking into the Asylum

Robotech will be rewatched after these messages.

I think I just had my first day off in about three years, not counting that time I got pneumonia. And I shouldn’t count that, right?

Regardless, at a quarter to midnight I only just remembered my Robotech post should have gone up. Whoops! Here it is, better late than never.

Episode 23 – Reckless

The battle is still going on inside the ship, carried over from the previous episode.

To Khyron’s confusion, the pilots of his Battlepods all start fanboying about Minmei instead of concentrating on the opportunity to shoot Micronians. His own men stage a mass revolt against him, squeeing and waving their metaphorical autograph books.

My daughter Ms 5 (who doesn’t normally pay a lot of attention to what is going on in this show but is on Team Minmei) notes that the fleeing Battlepods look a lot like running chickens. She’s not wrong.

Rick, still in his Robotech suit, gets to the amphitheatre in time to see Kyle and Minmei alone on stage, proving yet again that they are incapable of getting to a shelter under any circumstances. To his horror, Rick sees Kyle kiss Minmei and his brain basically shuts off.

Lisa gets through to Rick and he tells her to send a rescue crew to pick up Kyle and Minmei – he goes off morosely after that and so doesn’t see Minmei push Kyle off her and tell him never to kiss her again.

Rick is now dedicated to defending the SDF1 and nothing else, having given up on romance.

A group of Zentraedi soldiers discover a broken Minmei doll in the rubble of the city and are so distressed by what they have done that they all start trying to desert. Most of them don’t get very far. Exedore gives Khyron orders to capture the deserters rather than kill them – Khyron is not happy about this, though to be fair he’s very rarely happy about any of his orders ever.

Rick is called to Gloval’s office to find Konda, Rico and Bron waiting for him in a formal meeting. (Max was there ahead of him, which amused me – he is such a ninja, sliding sideways into scenes) Lisa explains that these three Zentraedi are requesting asylum. Rick is shocked, but questions them about why they want to stay.

The boys confess their prior experience as spies and explain how happy they think the Micronians appear. They want to be here because of Minmei and because the humans have Protoculture, though they refuse to explain what they mean by that.

Rick concedes that the Zentraedi should be allowed to stay and the random top brass (who all look identical and have no names but generally disagree with Gloval about everything as a matter of course) are cranky at how quickly he changed his mind. He explains that in his original report he explained about how war-obsessed they all were when he made first contact, and this change has been pretty rapid since the spies learned about human culture.

This might be the only way to make peace between their cultures – to teach them that life can be good without war.

“Well there’s some nice emotional logic.”

Lisa then repeats everything Rick just said, in case anyone didn’t understand it the first time. aThe meeting is still skeptical. But then Science Dude arrives and presents Gloval with a report.

After the ad break, during which everyone has read the report, they learn that the cell structure of the Zentraedi is the same as humans. Gloval takes it to mean they are technically not aliens and the boys can be granted asylum on political grounds. Hooray!

The random top brass officers continue to be cranky, and threaten to get the earth government to overturn Gloval’s decision. Given the extreme lack of interest that the earth government currently has in anything they do, Gloval isn’t bothered.

Rick and Lisa survey the damaged Macross City and find Minmei’s aunt and uncle who are looking for Kyle. Rick tells them about Kyle and Minmei being taken to the hospital and volunteers himself and Lisa to look after the restaurant while they’re gone.

Domestic moment ahead! They clean up the place together and Lisa goes to make tea. Rick has a flashback when he sees a photo of Minmei – disturbingly in his memory of the scene back at the ampitheatre it is very clear that Minmei is being forcibly kissed against her will and not remotely enjoying it, though Rick doesn’t seem to notice.

They share a cup of tea and Rick wonders why Lisa isn’t at the hospital already, mooning about Kyle. Lisa confesses that the political excitement of the asylum question distracted her and actually she’s not that into Kyle for his own sake – she was mostly aroused by his weird pacifist ideas and what they sparked in her head, plus the whole Karl Riber thing.

She gently asks about Minmei and encourages Rick to explore the relationship with her given that it is closer to an actual relationship than her crush on Kyle had been.

Another attack comes and Rick runs off to join his squadron. Lisa locks up the restaurant and then goes to relieve Sami on the bridge. Later, Lisa and Rick share a cute moment over the radio where she wishes the aliens would just go home and he yells at the aliens (on her behalf) to go home.

“Oh well it was a good try.”

Some girls expect flowers, but Lisa is all about the empty gestures during combat.

Lisa wants to go back to Earth to defend the asylum of the defectors and explain how important it is that they find a way to make peace between their people and the Zentraedi. Gloval agrees it’s worth a try, though they are both aware the government and Lisa’s father in particular may not allow her to ever return to the SDF1.

Rick and Lisa manage to just miss each other in the corridor as they return to their corridors – she is musing about how he might react to her leaving, possibly for good, while he is planning to ask her out on a date.

Bad timing, sweetie pies. But I think we’re all relieved that Lisa has talked herself out of that whole Kyle fancying debacle. Now we just need Rick to figure out the Minmei thing. I’m sure he won’t waste too much more time on it…

Famous last words.

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 a Small Business

Yes there will be a Wonder Woman movie. Still thinking through my thinks about this one. But it’s well overdue, so…

Hark! a Vagrant has updated this week with a great piece on the noir trope of the Femme Fatale.

Kameron Hurley has written some great pieces this week. Here, she talks about the importance for writers of treating themselves like a small business, and being cautious about the rights they sign away. She also addresses the recent Requires Hate controversy with a beautifully-constructed personal essay looking at the complexities and consequences of reinventing yourself on the internet.

Leigh Sales interviews Annabel Crabbe about her new book, The Wife Drought. It’s a lovely, casual piece between two women who obviously know each other very well and share strong feelings about how difficult it is to be a working mother. I particularly liked what Crabbe had to say about the different but equally unfair expectations placed upon men and women in the workforce once they start their families. I’ll be buying her book!

I’m not convinced that this Washington Post article is really “the only guide to GamerGate you’ll ever need” but it certainly works as a good starting point if you need to catch up. Since then, of course, things have become far worse, with Anita Sarkeesian recently cancelling a university appearance after a gun massacre was threatened. Sarkeesian made it clear to her public that she did not cancel the appearance purely because of the threat, but because security on campus was inadequate – and the Utah State laws would have allowed any member of the audience to carry concealed in the venue.

Finally, I’ve enjoyed Season 2 of the comedy-drama Please Like Me, with its sexual frankness, realistic humour and exploration of how mental health issues can affect everyday lives – here’s a Q&A between actor-creator Josh Thomas and his co-star, showing how alarmingly similar they are to the characters they play on the show. NSFW or indeed for watching with kids in the vicinity.

Musketeer Space Part 22: The Making of Alix Charlemagne

Home and safe just in time for Musketeer Day! I had an amazing and inspiring trip to Perth which I will write about more thoroughly when my jetlag has climbed off my back and stops punching me in the back of the head.

But here’s some Musketeers I prepared earlier.

REMINDER: If you read last week’s chapter super quickly, within the first 12 hours I posted it, chances are you missed a lot of dialogue because I did an HTML thing by accident. So it might be worth checking back to read what Dana and Athos were saying to each other while they were linked via the ship.

Start reading from Part 1

Missed the last installment? Track back to Part 21.

Main Page & Table of Contents

PREVIOUSLY IN MUSKETEER SPACE: Dana is almost at the end of her quest to reach the Duchess of Buckingham, collect the diamond studs and save the Prince Consort’s marriage, but along the way she has lost all three of her best friends, and crashed a spaceship. So it hasn’t been a GREAT day.

NOW READ ON!

This chapter is dedicated to Karen McKenna – thanks so much for reading and for supporting Musketeer Space via Patreon!

22. The Making of Alix Charlemagne

It took six hours for Dana to find civilisation – a large enough town to have a bullet train node – with the assistance of Planchet’s clamshell.

From there, it took several hours of travel and changing connections before she reached the duchy of Buckingham. It was surreal, to be surrounded by people and white noise and all the amenities of a heavily populated planet, so soon after ditching into a lake in the middle of nowhere.

Athos had done a good job, getting them this near before they made planetfall. If Dana thought too much about that, she might cry or hit something and break her hand, so she concentrated instead on what an idiot he was to be taking nexus for every flight. Did Aramis and Porthos knew he had been doing that to himself?

Of course they knew. They had to know. The three of them were the inseparables, had been for years. Dana was the stray puppy they had adopted. She had not let herself wonder too deeply about why these close friends had bothered to let her into their tight group.

On this damned bullet train, there was too much time to think. She didn’t even need to waste much time locating the Duchess of Buckingham, thanks to Planchet’s app which consolidated all social media references to the political, sporting, celebrity dynamo that was “Buck.”

All Dana had to do was check the app occasionally, to be sure she was on the right track. Buck had addressed the Elemental Separatist Union earlier in the day, signing autographs outside the Hall of Communications in the largest city in Buckingham, and then returned to her country estate where she had been hosting a house party all week.

Dana was underdressed for the occasion. But there was no going back now.

It rained again, as Dana approached Villiers Manor. A light mist of water descended from the sky in a haze leaving droplets clinging to her eyelashes and stubbled scalp. Villiers Manor was a ridiculously palatial house, if you could even call it a house when it was twice the size of the palace on Luna Palais. Obviously it was the way of decadent dirtsiders to sprawl across the planetary surface as if they had all the room in the world.

The gravity felt better to Dana than her previous dirtside experiences, and she put that down to Valour’s history of being terraformed. Perhaps the planet had been designed to appeal to the needs of the spaceborn.

There was nothing else about Valour that was familiar, for a person who spent most of her life encased in metal. The scenery continued to look fresh and green, which made Dana feel somewhat itchy and suspicious.

Still, she had told the truth when she admitted to Athos that she liked this planet. For the first time, she thought maybe she saw what the whole dirtsider fuss was about.

The mountains surrounding Villiers Manor were grey and looming in their rocky formations, which reminded her of Freedom except for the green fringing around every peak.

A servant allowed her in through the front door, as Dana claimed to be a messenger. Her plain black flight suit was obviously not a formal Raven uniform, but the servant was polite enough to not point this out.. Dana hovered awkwardly in an entrance hall which was about the size of Marie Antoinette plaza back home in Paris.

Oh, that was an odd thought. Paris was home. That was enough to make Dana smile for a moment. Her face was still holding the expression when a woman dressed like a mermaid hurled herself down the staircase.

Buck trailed copper silk and sequin scales behind her, in a long train that formed a tail. Her impressive bosom was clasped in two bronze seashell shapes, picking up the highlights of her reddish-brown skin and bright golden eyes. Her hair was braided into long metallic chains that fell almost to her feet. “You’re from Alek,” she said, her voice warm and inviting, and she hurled herself into Dana’s arms. Her own arms were sturdy and muscular, gripping the other woman fiercely “I remember you. You were at the mecha graveyard, with Conrad.”

Dana was unprepared for an armful of duchess, and clasped her closely so as not to fall over. “Um,” she said, and then looked more closely at the other woman’s face.

Georgiana Villiers, the Duchess of Buckingham, was high as a kite.

“It’s an urgent message,” Dana said firmly, setting Buck on her feet before she felt it was safe to let go. “Do you think – would you have a dose of Sobriety handy?”

Something like fear flitted briefly across Buck’s face. “Can’t do that,” she said, and put her finger to her lips. “Ssssh. Worked very hard on this chemical balance. He can’t see me when I’m like this.”

“Do you mean – the Pri -” Dana started to say, but Buck lurched forward and pressed both of her perfumed hands across Dana’s mouth.

“No no, don’t say it, walls have ears. Come on.”

Dana allowed herself to be dragged up a staircase that could have housed about ten Musketeers, and into a room which was probably a library because the walls were covered with antique books from floor to stupidly-high ceiling.

“I only come in here when I’m flying,” said Buck, her pupils so large that there was no other colour visible in her eyes except for the tiniest streak of brown. “So he doesn’t see. He mustn’t know that I’ve worked out how to – “ she paused, unsteady on her feet. “He doesn’t know that I remember him when he’s not here. Been working on it. But I forget sometimes, and then – I come here to remember.”

She reached out a hand to a touch-sensitive light on the wall, which illuminated the room more brightly than before.

“It keeps me from losing all the pieces,” Buck whispered, and there was a tremor of fear in her voice as she looked up.

Dana followed Buck’s gaze, and saw a single word blazing across the ceiling, spelled out in golden light from the wall panel.

WINTER.

“He got into my head,” said Buck. “He sees everything I see. He made me betray -” Tears were bright in her eyes all of a sudden. “I have to remember him, or I can’t fight him when he gets inside my head. He’s not here now, though. Be quick. Give me the message.”

Hesitant, not knowing if Buck would even remember this once she had sobered up, Dana reached down to extract the stud from her ankle. It had been burrowed there so long that it felt like part of her.

She passed it over, and waited as Buck pressed it into her own wrist and listened to the message within, her eyes closed. She swayed a little as she all but inhaled the sound of her lover’s voice. Then her eyes snapped open again. “The coat. It never made any sense that I took the coat. Come on.”

Dana followed Buck from room to room – she guessed that she was in Buck’s private quarters now. Apparently duchesses needed multiple wardrobes in which to keep their many outfits. Every room on this floor had one or more cupboards dedicated to ridiculously fancy dresses, boots, hats, trousers, jewellery and other trinkets.

So much space. So much wastage. On Paris Satellite or any other space station, even the most dedicated party animal would have most of their clothes dissolved and reprinted based on the needs of the day. Why on earth would you need to keep so many things?

Dirtsiders were crazy, and wealthy New Aristocrat dirstsiders were crazier than most.

“Here!” Buck crowed, diving into yet another room full of massive antique furniture and lush carpets that made Dana’s feet feel like they were being softened up for bad news.

The duchess pulled a garment out from under her bed, a soft heap of purple silk shot with gold, green and midnight blue. An embroidered pattern of feathers covered the silk in an intricate design. This had to be the peacock coat Conrad had made for his Prince.

Diamonds glittered ferociously from the lapels of the coat. Dana blinked as she took them in. Prince Alek had tossed the coat away as an impulsive gift to his lover, not thinking about the value of the studs, and the danger if it turned up in the wrong place.

“I shouldn’t have taken it,” said Buck, handing it over. “Of course I shouldn’t. But Winter was in my head and – I don’t remember much about why it made sense at the time.” She sighed deeply, and sat on the bed. Her pupils were still blown out and dazed, though her voice was steadier now. “I don’t know why he didn’t take it off me at the spaceport. You know there are two Winters? The silver and the brown. The silver lives inside my head, but the brown – he’s the dangerous one. You won’t even see him coming.”

Dana smoothed the silk out between her hands. “It’s all right now. I will get this back to Conrad and the Prince in good time for the ball…” But then she stopped, and laid the coat out on the canopied bed, stretching it flat so that she could count the diamond studs. “Ten. There are only ten here.”

Buck frowned, a gleam of intelligent thought passing briefly across her glazed, drugged-up expression. “No. There were twelve. Of course there were twelve. For the twelve continents of Auster.”

Dana wanted to shake her. “Has anyone touched this coat? Since you left Dubois’s ship?”

“Winter,” Buck moaned, and slid down on to the floor. “Winter must have taken them. He’s going to use them against Alek.” She buried her face in her hands. “I am way too high for this. Can’t think straight. But if I get straight, he’ll come back and he’ll know.”

“Okay,” said Dana, thinking fast. She was apparently the only person in the room who could be trusted to do the thinking. “Assuming that you’re right about having a spy implanted in your head – and I’m taking a lot on trust right now…”

“Agreed,” Buck said softly.

“He won’t be expecting you to return the coat at all, with any luck. But if Alek wears it at the ball, with only ten diamond studs showing, it will be a disaster. Especially if your Winter has passed on the other two to someone in a position of power.” The Cardinal, Dana thought with a shiver. The red guards who jumped them on the Calais had to have been working for her. Rosnay Cho was working for the Cardinal, and other agents too. That mysterious Milord.

Her brain finally caught up with her mouth. “We need to replace the diamonds. Conrad didn’t want to risk it on Palais Luna or Paris Satellite, but that was when he thought we might have to replace all twelve.”

You couldn’t just print diamonds, it was one of the few substances that couldn’t be replicated. But if the Duchess was willing to bankroll it, and they had the right craftsperson, they could perhaps have a couple of studs made from scratch in the time available.

Buck nodded, caressing the coat with one hand. “I know an electro-jeweller in Liberte who should be able to – do a thing.” She waved her hand vaguely.

“Can I use your credit?” Dana had no shame in asking. This was Buck’s mess and Dana was already doing more than enough to clean it up.

Buck waved her hand again, to indicate that she didn’t care.

Dana cracked open her clamshell again, plotting a course.

The bullet train could get her to the nearby county of Liberte. It wasn’t even going too much out of her way – from there she could go on to Arguerinne, the largest spaceport in the region. There were closer ports, but she needed a big crowd to get lost in.

She would miss the connection with the Calais’ return trip, but that was just fine with Dana, especially if she could use Buck’s credit for passage on a venturer instead. She had no doubt that the red guards would be well aware now of the name Dana had been travelling under with the Musketeers – better to choose a new identity and let the Calais passage stand as a false trail.

“Won’t this Winter of yours be able to see everything we’ve planned when you sober up?” was the next thing Dana though to ask. Hopefully Buck’s plan was not to never sober up, as that didn’t seem sustainable.

The duchess reached for her locket, which snapped open to reveal a cornucopia of pharmaceutical delights. “This little black pill is Oblivion. Can knock me out for a day or two. Should lose – about a day of memory. I’ll forget all about you, brave little Musketeer. Also that incredibly boring conversation I had with Madame Pinquenot this evening. So win-win.” She preened a little, looking delighted with herself. “Winter will never see what we talked about here today.”

Dana didn’t correct Buck about being a Musketeer. She rather liked the assumption. She reached out to close the locket before the duchess got too enthusiastic about popping pills. “Let’s get that credit line and travel pass sorted out first, yes? And -” This last request was deeply embarrassing, but she had to ask. “I think I might need to borrow a frock.”

Two days later, a woman whose travel pass named her as Alix Charlemagne waited impatiently on the platform to catch the bullet train from the Liberte node to Arguerinne. She had spent most of the day pacing up and down the sales floor of a high end electro-jewellery emporium which was so exclusive it didn’t even have a name. An elderly self-described genius named Mr Emil had taken seven full hours to blast-cut and engrave two diamond studs to match the others on the Prince Consort’s coat.

They had decided together to fill the studs with ancient opera tracks, cave paintings and century-old social media memes, to complement the content of the other studs which were apparently stocked with the ‘culture bank’ of the planet Honour.

Emil’s work was excellent, and it would pass, but Dana was pretty sure she had almost lost ten years off her life waiting for the studs to be ready.

The dress wasn’t helping. Thanks to the over-enthusiasm of a drugged-up Buck, Dana had come away from Villiers Manor with a suitcase full of frocks, shoes, baubles and even a cosmetic wand, which made her feel like an alien playing dress-ups. But she put up with it, because she needed to look as different as possible to Dana D’Artagnan.

The fashion among New Aristocrats on Valour at the moment was for retro-glamour, long sweeping skirts and jewelled collars. Dana had come this close to putting a corset on under this particular travelling gown but decided at the last moment that there was only so much ridiculousness she could tolerate.

Athos might actually laugh if he could see her now. Assuming he even recognised her. The other two would certainly be rolling on the floor – Dana had muttered enough about Porthos’ vanity when it came to covering her pilot’s buzz cut with elaborate wigs on her days off.

Now here was Dana with long black curls spiralling around her ears, a pearl choker wrapped around her throat, and a jade green gown covering her from muscular shoulder to pearl-buttoned ankle boot.

She had never dressed so ‘femme’ in her life, and she felt like a complete idiot. Especially when she tangled the back of the gown in the automated doors, and needed two of her fellow passengers and a conductor to help her free it without ripping.

All she wanted to do after that was to throw herself into the nearest seat and nurse her embarrassment quietly, but the conductor caught sight of her travel pass and waved her all along the length of the train to the first class carriage.

Cheers for that, Buck.



The other occupants of the carriage were a white couple who were heartily ignoring each other. The man, who had untidy brown hair, a rumpled business suit and a near-permanent frown, leaned against the window with all his attention given to a gleaming chrome clamshell. Dana didn’t let her eye dwell on him despite a vague sense of deja vu. Where had she seen him before? Perhaps the two of them were celebrities, like all those yahoos at Buck’s party or in her photostream.

His companion, who wore her auburn hair with style and pearl-clustered hairpins, and actually did have a corset beneath her own tailored silk travelling gown, looked delighted to see Dana. “Finally, someone to gossip with!” she exclaimed, all but clapping her hands with glee. “I’m Bianca, Countess of Clarick, and I just know we’re going to be the best of friends!”

Dana considered it a great personal triumph that she didn’t turn tail and run instantly. Time to suck it up and become Alix Charlemagne, as convincingly as possible.

Oh, God. She was going to have to talk about shoes.

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 a special Yuletide prequel story to be released in December. My next funding milestone ($300 a month) will unlock ART.

ROBOTECH REWATCH 20: Old Songs For New

Robotech will be rewatched after these messages!

This is the one where the aliens think Kyle is magical, and Minmei sings a song.

Episode 22 – Battle Hymn

Dolza catches up on the Micronian kung fu movie via Netflix – and once again, Kyle’s magic powers and anti-gravitational kicking ability impress him. He’s a teeny bit concerned that all Micronians will have these skills. Meanwhile, the rest of the Zentraedi soldiers are melting at the heart about the tinny voice of the Minmei doll that Konda, Bron and Rico have been showing off behind the bike sheds.

Soldier: This singing really makes me feel funny.

Konda: Just wait until you hear the next song.

Soldier: Oh there’s another song?

My daughter: Nope.

Khyron isn’t all that interested when his 2ic reports about the new fad for Micronian tat until he finds out that many of their soldiers actually want to defect in order to find out more about this earth thing called Minmeisongs. That is quite an alarming development, really.

Dolza has his own plan to sort the issue, demanding that Breetai brings some Micronian prisoners over to his place for him to examine. Guess which ones he’s particularly interested in nabbing?

Konda, Rico and Bron are worried when the attack is ordered, because they don’t want to hurt the Micronians and risk damaging either Minmei or the source for awesome stuff. The spies and a bunch of their friends all plan to defect at the same time, during the attack, and they bully Korita the specialist in charge of the shrinking machine into helping them.

Back on the SDF1, Rick is being contemplative, wondering if he’s going to die in battle. Then a convenient poster of Minmei fires him up, and he remembers that he’s fighting for her and can’t afford negative thoughts.

At a concert, Minmei announces a new song. Ms9 and I are on tenterhooks. Really, a new song?

She sings To Be In Love and we explode into laughter. THESE ARE NOT NEW SONGS, MINMEI. She is scary good at rebranding and no one calls her on it. Except Ms9 who has lost what little respect she had left for her.

The bridge crew get giggly about the romantic song, while Claudia sighs and remembers her loving relationship with Roy (the one which, pineapple salad aside, we have now seen more of retroactively than when it was actually happening). Lisa meanwhile is still feeling soppy about Kyle (STOP THAT, LISA) and his challenging pacifist thoughts, but refuses to be changed by a man (GO LISA!).

Minmei’s songs are counteractive to productivity. They cause people to stare into the distance and get nothing done.

Kyle is having grumpy thoughts about all the attention that Minmei is getting, while no one pays any thought to all the fighting and killing going on. (Wow, maybe if her lyrics were about something other than stage fright and that loving feeling, they might get some political communication across, there’s a thought)

Exedore and Breetai plan an operation around the popular Micronian Daedalus manoeuvre – they want to deliberately let the Micronians punch a hole in their hull this time, in order to smuggle their own people aboard. Bad news, humans, you’ve become predictable.

Meanwhile the rogue Zentraedi cult led by Konda, Rico and Bron are ready for their own infiltration, desperate to get back to the SDF1 and their former happiness.

Minmei’s concert is interrupted by the battle just as she announces her next song. Everyone panics and screams. Kyle forces her to keep singing to keep everyone calm instead of, you know, getting everyone to shelters.

“Put your heart into it, Minmei.”

Kyle, always with the priorities.

She sings Stage Fright. Ms9 collapses in outrage.

Zentraedi Battlepods break through to the SDF1, causing damage and destruction everywhere. Rick and the other pilots are recalled urgently, and Rick makes it clear that he only really cares about rescuing Minmei.

Kyle at this point is pushing Minmei to keep singing To Be In Love over and over as some kind of endurance test for everyone. The audience have fled, and Kyle and Minmei both collapse on the broken stage.

Macross City is a literal war zone, and the concert hall is on fire. Minmei cleans blood off Kyle’s face and pulls funny faces to makes him laugh.

“Minmei’s stronger than I ever felt possible. I’m so proud of her.”

Kyle thinks of something other than himself for five seconds.

“I’m coming for you, Minmei!”

Rick has a one track mind.

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.