Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 58

Snapshot: Amanda Rainey

Amanda Rainey is a graphic designer from Perth who designs books for Twelfth Planet Press and FableCroft. When she’s not designing books she is either: working on a PhD looking at election campaigns, working as a freelance graphic designer for clients who have slightly more money than Australian small presses, or – most likely – talking nonsense on Twitter.

1. You designed the striking cover for Kaleidoscope, the brand new YA anthology about diverse characters that will shortly be released by Twelfth Planet Press after a crowdfunding campaign last year – what was your brief for the project, and how did you get to the final design?

Kaleidoscope was such an exciting/terrifying brief! It’s such an exciting book, and important too – a lot of people were (literally) invested in it so I really wanted to get it right. The brief was that they wanted something that would fit a truly diverse book, both in the sense of the characters, but also the themes and styles of each of the stories. So, quite a bit of (terrible) freedom…

It needed to appeal to YA readers, and stand out on a bookshelf next to other anthologies, so there’s always that question of how similar and how different you should be from all the other books!

The first thing I did was rule out using faces or people. It was kind of a gut instinct, but using faces just creates so many problems when you’re making a book about diverse characters. There’s a danger that you just end up treating faces as “paint chips”, which would have absolutely not been giving proper respect to the book’s purpose.

Finally I just channelled my 16 year old self, and tried to make something she would like. I started playing with the idea of “sugar and spice”, and how just in that concept, which seems to imply that all girls are the same, when really – spices! – there’s so much variety there, right in the phrase.

I messed with the colours to give it more of an alien feel in keeping with the SF/Fantasy themes. Plus, hello, it’s Twelfth Planet Press. It always had to be pink! Then I just spent 1298 hours aimlessly changing the proportions and the patterns until I was happy/the print deadline arrived.

2. Which have been your favourite covers to work on for TPP and Fablecroft, and why do they have a special place in your heart?

I guess that depends on how you define favourite (don’t make me choose!!)

For me, the best thing about cover design is the process of thinking through the problem and solving it in a way that’s interesting and fun, so my favourite covers are those when the author and the publisher get involved in a discussion. One of the more recent covers I loved working on was with Kirstyn McDermott on Caution: Contains Small Parts. I also had a great time working on the Cafe La Femme series – they’re by Livia Day, I’m not sure if you’ve heard of her!? The best thing about small press is that you can collaborate directly, without all the middle men getting in the way.

3. What books/covers are you working on right now, and what do you have coming up?

Was it Alisa or Tehani who made you ask this? Hint taken ladies, I’m working as fast as I can!

The next of the Twelve Planets is coming up, this one by Angela Slatter and Lisa L Hannett. The Twelve Planets have been so much fun, trying to work within the restrictions of coming up with a set of books that are all distinctive yet still obviously part of a set. I’m so sad that the series is nearly complete, they are such a great project.

I’m also working on Fablecroft’s Insert Title Here, which is fun for the exact opposite reason. There’s no particular genre or theme, at all. Such freedom (wow)

4. What Australian works (including art/design) have you loved recently?

Does Twitter count? I follow a huge number of excellent Australian writers and artists on Twitter. Most of my reading these days is non-fiction and PhD related.

I just read Drowned Vanilla which is in layout now, and it is excellent (I am 100% Team Stewart)! I’m hearing really good things about Ben Peek’s new novel, which I’m looking forward to as well.

5. The publishing world has changed a lot in recent years, and continues to shift rapidly under our feet – how does this affect you as a designer? What changes do you think the community will be facing five years in the future?

As far as book design goes, there’s a lot more freedom to try new things, because you aren’t necessarily limited by what the major publishers’ marketing departments want. But at the same time, it can be challenging to create designs that work at thumbnail size online, as well as looking great when you hold the book in your hands.

In my other life as a PhD student I’m looking at the digital age and how it’s changing political communication, but those changes apply much more broadly. A lot of the restrictions on creating things are gone – publishing is more affordable, restrictions like word count are less rigid, and there are heaps more ways to promote and distribute your products. It’s also easier than ever for artists, writers, even game developers to collaborate – for example Stirfire Studios who are working with SF artists and authors to create new games with beautiful art and great storylines. So I’m excited to see all the mashups and experimentation that will continue to happen.

But at the same time I think we’re realising that maybe we actually like gatekeepers, such as publishers and booksellers. and sometimes we want to pay a bit more to keep those gatekeepers in business. It’s great to discover a new writer through social media, but that can never replace a real life, non-robot bookseller, who knows what you’ll love because they have the time and resources to do some of that research for you.

This interview was conducted as part of the 2014 Snapshot of Australian Speculative Fiction. We’ll be blogging interviews from 28 July to 10 August and archiving them at SF Signal. You can read interviews at:

Tsana Dolichva

Nick Evans

Stephanie Gunn

Kathryn Linge

Elanor Matton-Johnson

David McDonald

Helen Merrick

Jason Nahrung

Ben Payne

Alex Pierce

Tansy Rayner Roberts

Helen Stubbs

Katharine Stubbs

Tehani Wessely

Sean Wright

ROBOTECH REWATCH 10 – Even Educated Fleas Do It

Robotech will be rewatched after these messages!

This is the one with some snogging in it.

Episode 11 – First Contact

According to the narrator, Lisa bravely volunteered for this mission – which does not dovetail at all with my recollection, that Captain Gloval pushed her into it. Then again, this episode seems to be working quite hard to reinvent the story slightly from the week before. It’s almost like they didn’t know that in the future DVD machines (and YouTube) would enable us to watch episodes over and over again!

For instance, Max Stirling is now clearly part of the small posse being beaten up by Breetai, though I’m sure he wasn’t in the scene in the last episode.

Also we are told that Lisa had a pilot on the Cat’s Eye who was killed in action, even though there was no sign of him last week – really, had the script-writer for this one even watched the previous episode?

Breetai is so badass. He fights all three Robotech mecha almost a standstill, and is only knocked out right at the end. Max escapes in his ship, but the other three Micronians – Rick, Lisa and Ben, are taken prisoner by the aliens.

Rick starts blaming Lisa for their captivity with a side order of misogyny. Because girls can’t be trusted in combat, says the man who once got shot out of the sky while watching the Miss Macross pageant instead of looking where he was going.

As Rick and Lisa have a blazing row, the aliens watch them in fascination – they’re not used to seeing men and women interact at all, and have never been introduced to the concept of URST.

“Well let me tell you, Miss Commander, fighting those aliens was not a walk in the park!”

Rick’s winning argument, apparently.

When Lisa stops fighting with Rick (by pretending to agree with him), she reveals her small video recorder, with which she plans to carry out recon on the enemy during their confinement.

At which point, the Zentraedi execute a space fold, taking all the ships light years across space to their home base.

Back on the SDF1, Gloval and the others realise that there is no sign of Lisa and her support crew. Roy Fokker is given the job of informing Minmei that Rick is missing in action. Which gives us a brief shot of him smoking against a wall while waiting for her – something so very unusual on television at all these days, let alone in SF or animation, that it was a real ‘time warp’ surprise! Sure, there’s Gloval and his pipe, but mostly the joke is that he never gets to smoke it.

Minmei’s response is to yell at Roy because she doesn’t like to be told bad news. Oh, sweetie. You’re really not going to cope well with post-apocalyptic Earth, are you?

Time gap! It’s been ten days for Rick, Lisa and Ben stuck in the spaceship, still going through the fold process (which seems to take a lot longer than that one time they went to Pluto). They wonder what’s happening back in Macross City – and weirdly, what we get next is a montage of Minmei’s exciting career developments to date. This space could be used to tell us what’s happening while the team are away, but in fact Rick is in all the montage bits, which are used to illustrate how he has been playing second banana to Minmei’s rising career.

The important detail here is that she has written a song called ‘My Boyfriend’s a Pilot,’ and finds Rick’s confusion about this hilarious. Talk about sending mixed messages!

Max, meanwhile, has hitched a lift on the Zentraedi war ship, inside a giant broom closet. He’s still inside his mecha, and scares off anyone else who tries to use the closet. No one is remotely suspicious about the scary robot living in the broom closet and comes back to investigate.

It’s Dolza! The commander in chief of the Zentraedi interviews Breetai and the Zentraedi spies (who confess to funny feelings in the face of the beauty pageant) about their experiences with the Micronians. He then calls the three prisoners to be interrogated.

To the surprise of Lisa, Rick and Ben, Dolza accuses them of attacking the Zentraedi, and of knowing the secrets of Protoculture (yes, first reference to PROTOCULTURE!). Rick is especially outraged at the idea that the humans are the aggressors in this conflict – which, fair enough, really. Dolza points out that the Zentraedi have the power to destroy the SDF1 and the Earth if necessary, super easily. And before I can even type ‘so why don’t they?’ Lisa starts thinking exactly the same thing.

I love take charge Lisa. She is so much better than ‘we failed just leave me here to cry and die’ Lisa, and sadly her character tends to flip from one to the other with little nuance in between. Still, we get her being confident for at least a few minutes, calling Dolza on his bluff and all but daring him to show them how powerful he actually is

Unfortunately, she’s miscalculated the power balance in their relationship.

Dolza picks her up and squeezes her between finger and thumb, demanding to know how Micronians turn themselves so small. It’s pretty obvious that he doesn’t know how humans are made. Rick and Ben try desperately to explain the birds and the bees in panicked voices while Lisa gets horribly squished. They manage to get as far as ‘when a man and a woman like each other very much’ and move on to the concept of kissing. Dolza demands that they demonstrate ‘this thing called kissing’ on each other. Rick and Ben are so not into that.

Lisa takes one for the team by suggesting she and Rick kiss, because she wants to record the alien reaction secretly. Rick is mortified and asks why she doesn’t kiss Ben instead.

Lisa: Because I’d rather do it with you.

So Rick and Lisa have a bit of a smooch, purely in the name of science, and the aliens basically react like my daughters do when anyone on TV kiss – “URRGHGHGHGH! Go away, yuk, blerk, THAT’S SO GROSS.”

Now they all have funny feelings in their stomachs.

After banishing the icky kissy humans from their presence, the Zentraedi regroup. This gives the junior officers, Konda, Rico and Bron, a chance to ask Dolza about this Protoculture thing that is apparently super important to the plot, but has NEVER BEEN MENTIONED BEFORE. Dolza reveals that the Zentraedi were once like humans – they lived, loved and created children biologically. But somehow along the way of their long history and making themselves into giant stompy warriors with Robotechnology, they lost the secret of Protoculture.

THIS IS NOT AN EXPLANATION.

To survive the next year or so of Robotech Rewatching, it’s important to know this: you are never ever going to get a firm, solid, clear, non-metaphorical explanation of what Protoculture is, how it works, and why we care about it. There are many theories, all of which are revealed as if they are a true thing. It’s love! It’s the ability to change size! It’s flowers! It’s tasty Invid food! No one really knows what it is, including the Zentraedi, and anyone who claims differently is selling something.

Just don’t worry about it too much.

Back on Macross City, Minmei’s celebrity status continues unabated. She sings ‘Stage Fright’ in a major concert, because no one ever got around to setting ‘My Boyfriend’s a Pilot’ to music. It is not clear whether she has more than three songs at this point, and how this constitutes a concert. Possibly she also does some miming and stand up comedy when not singing.

In the audience, Roy is miserable and Claudia stays by his side to comfort him. Because no one should have to suffer Minmei’s music alone.

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.

1 – So Much For World Peace

2 – Who Put Pluto There?

3 – To Be In Love

4 – Welcome to the First Chinese Restaurant in Space

5 – Saturn Ahoy!

6 – Death by Flashback

7 – Dating in Deep Space

8 – Beauty Queens & Battloids

9 – It’s Not Easy Being Vermilion

Friday Links Meets Chris and Roz

A blast from the past for this week’s Friday Links – Big Finish are finally admitting that they really want to drag more New Adventures material into their stable, with a series of audio adaptations of the mostly-out-of-print original novel range from the 90′s. They recently announced that they were adapting the excellent Gareth Roberts novels featuring the Fourth Doctor and Romana – finally bringing Tom Baker and Lalla Ward in to work together for the first time since their divorce in the early 80′s – but the next announcement was even more exciting for me.

Big Finish recently recorded an audio adaptation of Damaged Goods, the only New Adventures novel to be written by Russell T Davies (and correct me if I’m wrong, but also the first canon appearance of a blowjob in the Doctor Who universe?). This is exciting because we finally get audio casting for Chris Cwej and Roz Forrester, who were the Seventh Doctor’s companions for a good chunk of the 90′s. Given the phenomenal success of Lisa Bowerman’s Bernice Summerfield as a flagship hero and all-around iconic character of the Big Finish range, it’s amazing that they waited fifteen whole years to bring back our favourite Adjudicators.

And the roles go to… Travis Oliver and Yasmin Bannerman, both of whom have appeared in New Who.

If you’re wondering who Chris and Roz are, check out this post from my WHO50 blogging project in which I reviewed the first book in which they appeared, and talked about my love for this crimefighting odd couple: Chris, Roz and Original Sin.

I’m pre-ordering the hell out of this sucker.

No other links for today, I’m awash in sci-fi 90′s nostalgia!

Snapshot: Alexandra Pierce

Alexandra Pierce is a reviewer (www.randomalex.net), one third of of Galactic Suburbia, and an interviewer with Galactic Chat. She also teaches History and English.

1. Congratulations on your Ditmars! Tell us about your recent work on Galactic Chat, and how the project has developed over the last year.

Thanks! Galactic Chat started as the sister podcast of Galactic Suburbia – the idea was to interview Australian authors, and especially Australian women. I never got involved, really, when it was officially run by GS… but when Alisa and you, Tansy, were sensible and offloaded it to Sean Wright, it seemed to coincide with me having more time and I jumped on board to do some interviews. The goal is still the same – to lean towards Australian women – and as far as I can tell, we’re succeeding. I’ve had a great deal of fun in the interviews that I’ve conducted thus far. Probably my two favourites so far have been Rosaleen Love and Nike Sulway, mainly because I was in total fangirl mode. Many of the other interviews were with people I had already spoken to at cons and the like, but not these two! The other contributors, and there are a few of us, have also done some very fine work – and Sean puts in an enormous amount of time to make us all sound good, and deal with issues like Skype dropping out in the middle of an interview…

2. You’re mostly known in the community as a reviewer and commentator on the field – what’s the main difference between doing this in written form and in a podcast like Galactic Suburbia?

In blogging, I can write something and go away and come back to it later to find better words. In a podcast, it’s one take, and sometimes that means I repeat myself (or, ahem, repeat something I’ve said in a blog review…), or just end up saying “It was really good!!” The really positive side about talking about books etc on the podcast is being able to interact with other people who might have already read it and have a different perspective (this is why I adore our spoilerific episodes), or who make connections that I would never have made which add to my understanding. And it’s a different audience, too, so different people respond with suggestions of new things to read or, again, new connections.

3. Now that you’ve been nominated for a Hugo, won many Australian awards, and have a ton of readers and listeners – what’s next for you? What goals have you still got on your bucket list?

I’m not really much of a one for setting goals, to be honest. That said, one day I’d like to go to Wiscon, and/or Readercon, in America – but I’m inherently shy and introverted, so I don’t think I could go by myself! I would really like to go back to Worldcon, too, so SUPPORT THE NEW ZEALAND 2020 CAMPAIGN EVERYONE. I have a lot of books on my to-read pile (literally and metaphorically); since discovering that HAV, by Jan Morris, which had been sitting there for several years is one of the great books of the last few years, I keep wondering what other gems I’m missing. And just to make that harder, there are also some books I really want to re-read – like the entirety of Simon R Green’s Deathstalker series…

4. What Australian works have you loved recently?

In terms of new books, I adored Secret Lives of Books, the new collection by Rosaleen Love from Twelfth Planet Press, and I made my way through Angela Slatter and Lisa L Hannett’s Midnight and Moonshine really slowly because it was just so gloriously beautiful that I didn’t want it to stop. Rupetta, by Nike Sulway – which won the Tiptree Award this year – is one of my favourite books of the last few years; I also really enjoyed Max Barry’s Lexicon. Plus, I love reading older books: I’m on a (slow) Greg Egan kick, so I recently read both Quarantine and Diaspora, while waiting for the third in the Orthogonal series.

5. The publishing world has changed a lot in recent years, and continues to shift rapidly under our feet – how does this affect you as a reader and reviewer? What changes do you think the community will be facing five years in the future?

I remember reading novels on my computer, back in the day – books that were out of copyright and had been scanned and put on some website. It wasn’t very comfortable but it was pretty convenient.

In 2009, I toured around the UK for four months by bicycle. I read a lot of books, of course; making sure I had enough to get me to the next town with a book shop of some kind, but not so many that it was a struggle to pack them, was quite a thing.

And then there was the iPad, and the world changed.

Ebooks have definitely changed the way I read – making books from small presses such as Aqueduct actually accessible, for instance, when previously the shipping would have made it prohibitive. The costing is a weird aspect, though, and I think this is something that will confront all of us into the future. I have friends in publishing so I know that the cost of making an ebook is about the same as making the paper book, and I therefore know that I should pay appropriately for it. But at the same time, I’m still affected by anchor-price ideas: if I don’t have a physical thing in my hands, why should it be as expensive? Which of course ignores all the work that’s gone into it, and I’m not suggesting is a reasonable reaction! So I think the question of the place of ebooks – and along with that, self-publishing – is an on-going discussion that the industry and readers will be feeling their way through for a while.

That said, five years ago there was no iPad. I should know better than to try and make any predictions.

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This interview was conducted as part of the 2014 Snapshot of Australian Speculative Fiction. We’ll be blogging interviews from 28 July to 10 August and archiving them at SF Signal. You can read interviews at:

Tsana Dolichva

Nick Evans

Stephanie Gunn

Kathryn Linge

Elanor Matton-Johnson

David McDonald

Helen Merrick

Jason Nahrung

Ben Payne

Alex Pierce

Tansy Rayner Roberts

Helen Stubbs

Katharine Stubbs

Tehani Wessely

Sean Wright

Snapshot: Ben Peek

Ben Peek is the author of Black Sheep, Twenty-Six Lies/One Truth, Above/Below, Dead Americans and Other Stories, and The Godless. He can be found at www.theurbansprawlproject.com and @nosubstance on twitter.

1. Your epic fantasy novel The Godless will shortly be released from Tor. Given that I completely stuffed up the details last time I tried to describe it publicly, can you tell us about your book and what you are trying to achieve with this series?

Ha!

Nah, you didn’t do too bad a job, but either way, here it is: The Godless is the first novel in the Children Trilogy, my ensemble cast fantasy set in a world where the bodies of gods lie across the ground, in the ocean, and orbiting around the planet. They are both dead and dying, and their divine essence is bleeding into the world, infecting men and women. In some parts of the world, this is known as a curse. In the part of the world Ayae lives in, it is known as a curse, and unfortunately for her, she is going to find out exactly what that means as an army marches up the mountain she lives on. For Bueralan, a saboteur, he has taken on a job to find out what the army marching on Mireea want, and how to stop them. Unfortunately for him and his band of mercenaries known as Dark, they are worn out, emotionally exhausted from their last job, and they should have stayed home.

And then there is Zaifyr, for who the less is said about, the better, really.

The series is a kind of love letter to my teenage years, where I lived on a steady diet of fantasy novels, but written by my adult self, who perhaps would have very little to do with the person I was, then (which, really, is what most of us think, I assume). The adult me took a much more measured view to the world building, and began it from an ideological point of view. When I say that, I don’t mean the bit about the gods being dead, but I mean the world beyond that, the interactions of men and women, and race. A lot of fantasy is, either through design or not, conservative. Monarchist, patriarchial societies filtered through psuedo christian values. Not all of it, mind you, and sometimes that’s the exact point – but in a genre where dragons can appear, personal hygiene is of a higher standard than usual, and people kill without any real pause, I don’t really see much of a point to adhering to that conservative side. Which is a long way round of saying I approached my world building from a point of equality in terms of race and sex and sexuality, and I have used that as the base from which I have grown everything in the book, both in terms of basic prose, and in terms of plot, themes, etc.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t monarchies, or patriarchial societies, because there are, but there are also the opposites, and the things in between, and everything that comes from it. For most people, none of it should mean anything, to be perfectly frank – it all happens on a level behind the events of the book, but for goals within the fantasy genre, that was and is mine, and hopefully it’ll work.

2. Dead Americans was released at the beginning of this year. What was it about the idea of stories based on iconic dead Americans that appealed so greatly to you? And now the book is out, does that mean you’re done exploring this theme?

I would say it was mostly due to the influence that American society has had here in Australia, and on myself, personally. I grew up with a lot of American culture – literature and entertainment, primarily. I suspect I’m not alone in this, though I am perhaps alone in thinking that the way to explore that influence is to take certain dead Americans and craft a story around them.

As for being done, no, I don’t think so. However, Dead American stories sorta come on their own terms, regardless of what I think, and there can be large gaps between them, before one decides to appear. I have one in the back of my mind about David Carradine, which I had wrote a little of and then got stuck, but the idea has never left me, so I think I might go back and play with it sometime soon, again. Likewise, I have an Orson Welles novel I’d like to write, and my girlfriend would like me to write a sequel to Norman Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost, which may well become my default answer whenever someone asks me what I plan to write next. But they’re often difficult, time consuming stories to write, and so I let them just naturally emerge. But the pieces, when they’re done, are often among my favourites – ‘Octavia E. Butler’, my novella built around Octavia Butler’s body of work, is perhaps one of my favourite pieces I’ve written.

It’s also the one everyone seems not to understand, but that only makes it more my favourite, really.

3. What comes next after the Godless – how is the rest of the series shaping up, and what are your writing plans for when it is done?

Well, y’know, I’m working on that sequel to Norman Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost…

Anyhow: I handed in the second book recently, and I imagine it will come back with edits in a few months, and I’ll get into ripping it apart and rebuilding it, which is all part of the process, and I am working on the third novel now. While I’m working on the Harlot’s Ghost sequel – do you know, there’s a musical bit done in a sequence resembling Dante’s Divine Comedy – I’ll finish all this stuff and see where I am. I’d like to write more fantasy novels, actually, since I’ve been having a real good time with this trilogy, and living the dream that I imagined myself living when I was sixteen, and it gives me endless pleasure, really, but I imagine it will depend on how these books go first.

4. What Australian works have you loved recently?

Rjurik Davidson’s Unwrapped Sky and Anna Tambour’s Crandolin.

5. The publishing world has changed a lot in recent years, and continues to shift rapidly under our feet – has this changed how you work, and do you think it will change how you work in the future?

Well, yeah, it’s changed how I work. It has changed a lot of people, I imagine – given more opportunties to some, less to others. I’m concerned about the shrinking of publishers, both at the top, and at the bottom, and I’m concerned, as always really, that we don’t reward risk and talent, and that we are, instead, nurturing a reading public who are comfortable at best when reading beneath themselves, and I’m concerned about methods of distribution, politics, and etc, in it all. All the outcomes and changes in that will impact on me, just as it will impact on you, and all of us, and it will probably change how I work in the future. I mean, everything changes how we work in the future, but the future is unknown, so who knows what it will look like?

Look at all these snapshots that have been done – you go back right to the first one and see the people in it and what they thought, and read it through the years, and I doubt the majority of people picked what they would be doing now, or what it would be like.

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This interview was conducted as part of the 2014 Snapshot of Australian Speculative Fiction. We’ll be blogging interviews from 28 July to 10 August and archiving them at SF Signal. You can read interviews at:

Tsana Dolichva

Nick Evans

Stephanie Gunn

Kathryn Linge

Elanor Matton-Johnson

David McDonald

Helen Merrick

Jason Nahrung

Ben Payne

Alex Pierce

Tansy Rayner Roberts

Helen Stubbs

Katharine Stubbs

Tehani Wessely

Sean Wright

Musketeer Space Part 11: The Friand of Aramis, the Espresso of Athos, and the Convenient Boyfriend of Porthos.

Musketeer Day again! For those of you who listened to the SF Signal podcast on space opera, we had a discussion on how space opera needed more bagels – and I claimed that mine, at least, had friands.

Friand, by the way, is a terrible word to try to type if you have any kind of predictive text activated.

But they taste good.

This is, by the way, my favourite chapter title so far in the Musketeer Space project. It’s going to be hard to top. This is also a month with five Wednesdays in it, which means I was totally entitled to skip a week and take a small Musketeer holiday. But I didn’t, because I

50 Patrons! And only $8 away from that tantalising Christmas festive story that I am dying to write. I accidentally started plotting it the other day. Had to sit on my hands to stop myself typing…



Start reading from Part 1

Missed the last installment? Track back to Part 10

Main Page & Table of Contents



PREVIOUSLY IN MUSKETEER SPACE: Dana D’Artagnan is a Mecha cadet who longs to be a real Musketeer like her friends Athos, Aramis and Porthos. Dana’s landlady Madame Su has begged her to find her abducted husband, Conrad, who works for Prince Alek of Auster, consort to the Regent. Intrigue is afoot, involving an old scandal, zero gravity sports, the Duchess of Buckingham, and the sinister Captain Rosnay Cho. It’s really getting quite complicated now, isn’t it?



NOW READ ON!

This chapter is dedicated to Terri Sellen, because all space opera should come with delicious baked goods. Thanks for your support!

PART 11: The Friand of Aramis, the Espresso of Athos, and the Convenient Boyfriend of Porthos.

“I’ve never broken into a spaceship before,” said Planchet excitedly. “At least, not a spaceship that belonged to someone who might turn up at any moment and shoot us.”

“Oh ye of little faith,” said Porthos over the comm. “I’ve have you know that Edwin and I…”

“Edmund,” corrected the helpful and convenient boyfriend of Porthos, who worked for station security and was letting her take a few liberties with the cam feeds.

“Ed and I are on the job,” said Porthos smoothly. “And I can tell you right now that the glamorous villain in the pink flight suit is currently drinking mocha shots on the Stellar Concourse. Her engie, meanwhile, is taking in some adult entertainment at the Ishtar Club. Oh, and the security cams on E Dock are all mysteriously glitching, and will continue to do so for the next hour or so.”

“No idea why,” said the deadpan voice of Ed.

Planchet consulted her clamshell tablet, checking the manual specs one more time. “Keep watch, Cap,” she said cheerfully. “I’m going in.”

“I’m not a Captain,” Dana sighed. Technically, her rank was Mecha Cadet, but when she was at work, she was generally referred to as Squaddie, because Essart was the sort of jolly commander who liked everything to be informal and friendly. It was horrible.

“I keep forgetting,” said Planchet. “Don’t worry, boss. You’ll get there in the end.” She had moved capably into the role of engie, despite Dana not having a dart to offer her, Musket-class or otherwise.

As Dana watched, Planchet stuck a small steel stud on the side of the Moth. When she activated it from her clamshell, a bright neon web swept across the entire ship and pulsed three times before disappearing.

“Interesting,” mused Planchet, peering at the info dump as it peeled across her screen.

“Can we hurry it up?” Dana said anxiously. “The cams might be off, but anyone could walk on through…”

“There’s one warm body on this ship.”

Dana blinked. “Is it Conrad Su? Can you tell? Or another engie?” After last time their paths had crossed, she had no intention of underestimating the resources that Rosnay Cho had at her disposal. Which made a lot of sense, if she was working directly for the Church of All, and her Eminence the Cardinal.

“He’s got blue hair, if that helps,” said Planchet, biting her lip.

“Sounds promising. How do we get in? What’s the weak spot?”

“The back hatch,” said Planchet. “No, wait.” She ran around the back of the Moth, and Dana followed her. “Look at that!”

The beautiful curve of the ship’s rear end had a gleaming, perfect surface. As Dana watched, though, it bubbled and bent outwards. “I suppose that’s a weak spot,” she said doubtfully. “Is there something wrong with the ship?”

“That’s not the ship,” said Planchet, sounding gleeful. “That’s the prisoner. I think he’s set off a melt-mine.” She leaned forward in fascination. “I’ve never seen one used except in simulations, that’s extreme!”

Dana pulled Planchet back beneath the landing gear. As they watched, a hole tore itself in the back of the Moth fighter, leaving ugly edges of twisted metal. On the one hand, it was a crime to cause such damage to a thing of beauty like this Moth fighter. On the other hand, the ship belonged to Ro, and that made it hilarious.

A head of bright blue hair stuck out from the twisted hole, and then a stocky athlete of a man, barely Dana’s age if he was a day, catapulted out of the informal exit and rolled neatly on the ground.

“Hey,” Dana called softly. She was going to follow this up with “Hey, I’m Dana and I’m here to rescue you today,” but she was distracted by how ridiculous that sounded. Besides, Conrad Su was not in the mood to be receptive to a stranger.

“Stay away,” he warned, and leaped up on to the wing of the Moth. “I’m done with you bastards. If the Cardinal really wants to lock me up without trial, she can bloody well do it herself.”

“Your wife sent us!” Dana yelled up after him. “We have to get you to safety.”

“Thanks,” he laughed. “But no thanks. I’m going home.” And he leaped from the Moth on to a nearby drone carrier, and then a venturer, and so on across the row of ships.

“Go after him,” Dana said to Planchet, pushing her forward. “He should recognise you.”

“I think he’s too busy rescuing himself,” said Planchet, sounding impressed.

“That won’t last long if he goes home!” Porthos had reported back that the Su apartment was still packed with red guards ready to arrest anyone who rang the buzzer.

Planchet nodded, and scampered after the escaped prisoner. “Monsieur Su! Stop!”

Aramis had definitely picked the short straw. Rosnay Cho’s engineer Foy had some very dubious tastes when it came to entertainment, and while Aramis was on the whole in favour of sexy women being naked in her presence, it was highly possible that spending a lot of time in The Ishtar Club would put her off breasts for life. For this, he could never be forgiven.

Finally, Foy replied to a message through his comm, and stood up to leave. Aramis did the same, leaving a large tip by her drink as she followed him out.

“We’re on the move,” she said quietly into her own comm.

“Heading this way, or back to the ship?” Athos asked in her ear.

“He’s strolling back along the promenade,” said Porthos in her other ear. “Towards you and Cho.”

“Order me an espresso and a friand,” said Aramis. She liked the warm friands that they printed down on Stellar.

“You’re paying,” Athos told her, and she heard the chime that told her someone was accessing her credit.

“I should never have given you the code,” Aramis groaned.

She kept half an eye on Foy as she strolled back along the promenade which overlooked the Stellar Concourse. There was Athos, sitting at one of the cafes on the lower level, his Musketeer jacket a bright blue beacon. From where he sat, he had line of sight on his own mark, the infamous Rosnay Cho.

Aramis had heard a lot about the Cardinal’s special agent over the years, and the various nasty messes she had been involved in, but had never actually set eyes on the woman. Athos dismissed Cho as ‘a viper’ but had failed to mention how spectacular she was to look at, from her confident body language and elegant frame to the long scar across her face accentuating her raw beauty. She looked like trouble. “I’m starting to see why young D’Artagnan has taken such a close interest in this woman,” Aramis murmured into her comm.

“Behave,” chided Athos. She watched him reach out and take something from the food printer embedded in the table. “Join me, or I will eat your cake.”

She ran down the stairs lightly, and kissed him on both cheeks as she joined him at the table, as if they hadn’t seen each other in years. “Next time, you can take the part of the mission that means sitting in a strip club.” She bit into the friand, still warm from the printer.

“Fun afternoon, was it?”

“I’ve never been so disinterested in naked boobs in my life before. All the disco lights and glitter.” Aramis shuddered. “I wanted to wrap all the women up in cardigans and take them home with me.”

Athos raised his eyebrows.

“Not like that,” she growled. “I wanted to feed them soup and rub their feet. Those shoes look terribly uncomfortable.”

“As would be the glitter.”

“Don’t remind me.” Aramis concentrated on her cake and coffee for a moment, letting Athos worry about observing Cho and the engie.

“Aramis,” he said after a moment.

“Mmm?” she said with her mouth full.

“Do you remember that party after the big game, about six months ago? The fleur-de-lis final, a few days before Joyeux?”

Aramis finished chewing, and blew on her coffee. “I remember you disappeared with my girlfriend for several hours.”

“Jealousy’s a curse,” he informed her.

“And whatever it was she was up to that night got her exiled, so thanks for that.” Aramis rather missed Chevreuse. She had been a good friend as well as a lover, and a fun time all around. Conveniently, the distance they had between them now made it possible to forget all the blazing rows they had shared in between the fun nights out and long nights in.

“That’s the party I’m thinking of, yes.”

Aramis set down her coffee and looked very seriously at him. “Is that what all this is about? The same old – scandal that never was?”

“Perhaps.” Athos glanced briefly over at Cho. “Porthos, how is our D’Artagnan getting on?”

“A snag or two,” said Porthos in their comms. “But it looks like she found the fella she was looking for.”

“A successful mission, then,” said Athos, ordering himself another espresso. “I loathe surveillance.”

“I know,” said Aramis, patting his hand. “You think such deep thoughts when you’re left on your own.”

“Why do you think I surround myself with people who never shut up?”

“This is promising,” Porthos said suddenly, patching Rosnay Cho’s clamshell into their comms.

“The wife should be comfortable in the Armoury,” said Cho, as clearly as if she were sharing the table with them. “Hopefully, our guest might change his mind about talking once he knows that the Church has her in custody.” She drummed her fingers on the table.

“What’s the word from Milord?” asked Foy.

Aramis glanced at Athos with curiosity in her eyes. “Milord,” she mouthed.

Athos shrugged in response.

“Bastard likes to tease,” said Cho. “But he’ll come through. He always does.” She checked her clamshell, and frowned. “There’s one loose end I don’t like. The Su family have a lodger, and no one’s seen him or her all day. Why does the name D’Artagnan sound familiar?”

Athos and Aramis went very still.

“Don’t you remember?” the engie guffawed. “Back on Meung Station. The buttercup?”

Cho laughed at that, too. “Don’t suppose it’s the same kid. But I’ll stroll up to the Su residence to see how their mousetrap is going. We must make sure anyone who calls on that family over the next few days gets taken in for questioning. If the lodger is our buttercup, I won’t pretend I won’t enjoy having her arrested.” She got to her feet. “Go check that the Moth is charged up, file a flight plan for 20:00 hours. I need to be down on Luna Palais well before midnight, to report to the Cardinal.”

“D’Artagnan,” Aramis said softly into the comm. “Engie coming down your way. Get out of there.”

“Already out,” came the muffled voice of Dana. “How long?”

“Ten minutes or so, maybe fifteen if there’s traffic on the spherelifts.”

“I can make extra traffic,” Porthos volunteered. “Can’t we, Ed?”

“You’re enjoying this power a little too much, darling,” observed Ed, but he didn’t object.

“Do you want to take the dreadlocks or the angry trousers?” asked Aramis. Rosnay Cho was already walking away, in the opposite direction to her engie.

“Oh, you take the engineer,” said Athos. “I fancy having a look at this mousetrap of theirs. If Cho and her red guard friends are looking for a D’Artagnan, maybe they should find one.”

Oh, she didn’t like the sound of that. Aramis gave him a hard look. “Planning on convincing a bunch of reds that you’re a short black Gascon with girl parts?”

“A physical description would make things harder, if they have one.” Athos admitted. “But I can be very convincing.”

“As long as there aren’t any Sabres there who recognise you as Athos.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but someone cut my hair recently. I could be anyone.” He had a mischievous light in his eyes.

Aramis hadn’t seen such glee in him for a long time. Athos smiling while sober was rare, but Athos allowing himself to enjoy something other than wine and swordplay was a thing to behold. “You should probably take off your Musketeer jacket,” she suggested.

“That would practically be cheating.”

“We have more fun since she joined us, don’t you think?”

Athos gulped down the last mouthful of his espresso. “It’s better than being stabbed in the chest. But the day is young.”

When she first set out to rescue Conrad Su, Dana had not envisaged ending up with him flat on the floor beneath her, caught a secure headlock. “Planchet, how do you know this hellcat?” he hissed, arching his back up as if trying to throw her off.

Dana was small, but sturdy, and she held firm, squeezing him a little tighter around the throat. “Do you want me to explain it again?”

“No,” Conrad snarled. “I want Planchet to explain it. I’m aware that’s not necessarily going to make things less confusing, but I’m prepared to take that risk.”

Planchet loomed into view over both, grinning all over her freckled face. “Dana’s a pilot!” she said brightly. “I’m going to be her engie when she’s a Musketeer.”

Dana should correct that ‘when’ to an ‘if’, she knew, but she couldn’t quite bear to dampen the kid’s enthusiasm. “That’s probably not helpful for this specific situation, Planchet,” she said instead.

“She is Madame Su’s new lodger,” Planchet added. “We came to rescue you. Was that really a melt-mine on the side of the ship, that was amazing!”

“A piece of tech I picked up from a friend,” said Conrad, lying still now as he took all this in. “Dana, then.”

“D’Artagnan,” Dana corrected.

“I think as long as you’re sitting on my back, I can call you by your first name. Swear by your honour and your ship that you’re not working for the Cardinal.”

“I don’t have a ship,” Dana sighed. “But I’ll swear on my honour and all future ships, if you’ll take that.”

“Your loyalty is to the Prince Consort?”

Dana hesitated. “To the Crown,” she said. She sat up, allowing Conrad to do the same. He didn’t look quite as preternaturally pretty in person as he had on the holo screen but that could be because he had been captive in a ship for a couple of days. “My loyalty is to the Crown, and that covers both the Prince and the Regent.”

Conrad rubbed his neck, and winced. “It’ll do. I really can’t go home?”

Dana shook her head. “They’re waiting at your place, to arrest anyone who goes there.” Porthos had patched the table conversation to her comm as well, which may have made her explanation to Conrad a bit more confused than she had intended, since she was listening to them at the same time. “Me too, for being a lodger.”

“Not me, though!” Planchet said cheerfully. “Madame Su doesn’t pay me except in bed and board, and she’s always kept me off the books.”

Conrad gave the young engineer a friendly shove. “Don’t say that like it’s a good thing. My darling wife’s not taking gross advantage of you for your own protection, just because it happened to work out that way this one time.” He looked seriously at Dana. “Here’s the thing. Prince Alek is my boss and my teammate. I’m the closest friend he has left on Luna Palais. That means I’ve been picked up for questioning, and subjected to security checks more times than I’ve made silk coats. And trust me, I’ve made a lot of silk coats. They usually let me go about my business after an hour or two.”

Dana nodded. “Is this the first time Rosnay Cho was involved?”

“The first time she’s got her hands dirty,” Conrad muttered. “Though I’m starting now to think she was behind a few other incidents in the past. I thought she’d let me go once I finally convinced her there was nothing compromising I could tell them about his Highness. Luckily, Cho favours psychotropic drugs and brain cables as a method of interrogation…”

“You surprise me,” Dana said dryly, remembering the use of pilot drugs in their Duel.

“And I happen to be one of the 5% of the population who can’t be invaded that way,” Conrad went on. “One of the reasons people in power like to share so many bloody secrets with me. I would have waited for Cho or her employers to lose interest, but I ran out of time.” He paused, looking at Dana as if he was still wondering how much to share with her. “I have a very important appointment later today, down on the moon. That’s why I risked the melt-mine to get out. I have to reach the Prince Consort in the next couple of hours, or he is going to get himself into so much trouble with out me. Seriously. You can’t believe how much trouble. Cities burning, solar system crumbling, shit is going down.”

Of course she was going to help. She had come this far. “You can’t go by civilian shuttle,” Dana said immediately. “Too many Church zones to cross between here and there – they’d pick you up as soon as you stepped into their surveillance coverage.”

“I can take him in my dart,” Aramis said in her ear.

Dana shook her head. “You and the others have done enough, and your ships are too recognisable. No point in advertising the involvement of the Musketeers, not unless we have to.”

“Athos won’t be needing his ship for a while,” pointed out Porthos in her other ear. “Since he’s about to…”

“Shh, don’t distract her,” Aramis cut in. “You have a plan, don’t you, Dana?”

Dana found herself grinning. “Conrad has an appointment Down There, and I’m a pilot. So all we need is a ship. And I happen to know where there’s a ship with compromised security close by.”

Conrad gave her an odd look. “You want to steal Rosnay Cho’s Moth?”

Dana felt as if her insides were full of lightning. “You have no idea how much I want to steal Rosnay Cho’s Moth.”

“But I blew a hole…” Conrad reminded her.

“I can fix it!” Planchet said excitedly. “I can!” she patted a small satchel on her belt “I’ve got my box of tricks, including sealing glass and rotor-connectors. The self-repair system on board should do the rest once I log Dana into the system.”

The sphere-lift beside them beeped suddenly, and irised open to reveal Aramis with an unconscious man at her feet. “So what you’re saying is,” she said calmly. “It’s a good thing I just gave Cho’s engie a dose of Pentasleep and stole his ID stud.” She opened her hand, revealing the small metal stud that she had removed from Foy’s wrist.

Conrad raised a hand. “Can we stuff him in the sonic shower compartment and feed him protein bars through a slot? No particular reason.”

“How much longer do you need to keep E-Dock in a security blackout?” Porthos broke in over the comm channel they had been sharing. “Because Ed is going off shift in about twenty minutes, and I owe him two steak dinners and some amazing sex straight after.”

“Three steak dinners,” corrected Ed. “And dessert.”

“Baby, I have all sorts of ideas about dessert…”

“Twenty minutes will be fine!” said Planchet, blushing hard. “It only takes ten to backdate a flight plan into the system.”

“Interesting,” said Aramis, gesturing for Conrad to help her pick up the unconscious engie. “Dana, your talent for human resources is spot on. My own engie is sadly far too moral to endorse a caper like this.”

Dana gave Planchet an encouraging smile. “I think we’re going to work well together,” she agreed.

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, visit my Patreon page. Pledges can earn rewards such as ebooks, extra content, dedications and the naming of spaceships. My next funding milestone ($200 a month) will unlock a special story to be released at Christmas.

Snapshot: Kim Wilkins

Kim Wilkins was born in London and grew up the seaside north of Brisbane. She has degrees in literature and creative writing including a Ph.D. from the University of Queensland where she also serves on faculty as a senior lecturer. 2014 will see the release of her 25th and 26th full-length work of fiction. She is published in 17 countries and under her pseudonym Kimberley Freeman has been a bestseller in Germany and the United States.

1. Daughters of the Storm is due out from Harlequin in November – a big historical fantasy novel under the Kim Wilkins byline. What excites you most about this release?

What excites me the most is that this is going to be my first major publisher release under my own name since 2005 (almost 10 years). I have loved being Kimberley Freeman and writing under that name has given me opportunities and successes that I couldn’t have imagined. But fantasy has always been closest to my heart. I’ve been very lucky to do a wonderful collection with a small press, and write a few short pieces, but the big fat fantasy novel that reaches a wider audience has been my unfulfilled dream for many years. Also I fucking love it. It’s easily the best thing that I’ve ever written. Truth.

2. You previously explored several characters from this new fantasy series in a standalone novella. Were they always intended to be part of a larger narrative? How much has changed in the time since the novella was published?

Yes they were always intended to be part of a larger narrative. I started thinking about this story in 2007. It really has been a long gestation period, covering a long and troubled period of my life including a divorce, a new relationship, and raising two very small children. But my vision has held and I poured all of my passion and every aspect of my craft into the composition of the novel. It has made me a better writer and a better person.

3. You’ve been busy in recent years with the double career as Dr Kim Wilkins: university professor, and Kimberley Freeman: author of contemporary romance and women’s fiction. Does this release mean we can look forward to a lot more from Kim Wilkins: fantasy author?

Absolutely. Harlequin have asked for another book in the series and specifically instructed me not to kill off the main character (I had only considered it idly). As well as that, I’m working on a special secret project for another small press, writing a Viking themed urban fantasy.



4. What Australian works have you loved recently?

I love everything Kate Forsyth writes, and her “bitter greens” and “the wild girl” have been two of my favourite books in a long time. I also loved Kirstyn McDermott’s “perfections”.

5. The publishing world has changed a lot in recent years, and continues to shift rapidly under our feet – do you feel the pressure to adapt to survive? What do you see yourself doing differently in the future?

I have always adapted to survive. That’s where Kimberley Freeman came from. In fact I’d say that being ready to diversify is one of the most important qualities a writer has to have if they are to sustain a career long term. Good work habits, good relationships, and adaptability are the backbone of my career.

=====

This interview was conducted as part of the 2014 Snapshot of Australian Speculative Fiction. We’ll be blogging interviews from 28 July to 10 August and archiving them at SF Signal. You can read interviews at:

Tsana Dolichva

Nick Evans

Stephanie Gunn

Kathryn Linge

Elanor Matton-Johnson

David McDonald

Helen Merrick

Jason Nahrung

Ben Payne

Alex Pierce

Tansy Rayner Roberts

Helen Stubbs

Katharine Stubbs

Tehani Wessely

Sean Wright

Galactic Suburbia 105 Show Notes

This episode of Galactic Suburbia is brought to you by the flavour vanilla and the colour of fairytales. You can download or stream the new episode here or via iTunes

News

Drowned Vanilla Cover reveal – order the book at the publisher’s site.

Tansy’s Drowned Vanilla Pinterest board

Wiscon Update

Aussie Spec Fic Snapshot is on again.

What Culture Have we Consumed?

Tansy: Go Bayside (April Richardson); Breaking Bubbles; Dimetrodon, the Doubleclicks; First 3 Harry Potter movies, The Prisoner of Azkaban

Alisa: Squaresville; The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet; What book will she discard?

Alex: The Elenium and The Tamuli trilogies, David Eddings; Snowpiercer; Reality Dysfunction, Peter F Hamilton; Extant

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

Announcing the Australian Spec Fic Snapshot 2014

Snapshot has taken place four times in the past 10 years. In 2005, Ben Peek spent a frantic week interviewing 43 people in the Australian spec fic scene, and since then, it’s grown every time, now taking a team of interviewers working together to accomplish!

In the lead up to Worldcon in London, we will be blogging interviews for Snapshot 2014, conducted by Tsana Dolichva, Nick Evans, Stephanie Gunn, Kathryn Linge, Elanor Matton-Johnson, David McDonald, Helen Merrick, Jason Nahrung, Ben Payne, Alex Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Helen Stubbs, Katharine Stubbs, Tehani Wessely and Sean Wright.

Last time we covered nearly 160 members of the Australian speculative fiction community with the Snapshot – can we top that this year?

To read the interviews hot off the press, check these blogs daily from July 28 to August 10, 2014, or look for the round up on SF Signal when it’s all done:

Tsana Dolichva

Nick Evans

Stephanie Gunn

Kathryn Linge

Elanor Matton-Johnson

David McDonald

Helen Merrick

Jason Nahrung

Ben Payne

Alex Pierce

Tansy Rayner Roberts

Helen Stubbs

Katharine Stubbs

Tehani Wessely

Sean Wright

ROBOTECH REWATCH 9 – It’s Not Easy Being Vermilion

Robotech will be rewatched after these messages!

i09 jumped on the Robotech train this week, with a great piece looking at five failed attempts to produce a sequel to the popular cartoon. (I’m still bitter about The Sentinels not making a go of it) Rather cruelly, i09 have included the currently Kickstarting project for Robotech Academy in their list of ‘failures’ when it’s still 14 days away from being finished – it looks awesomesauce and I have totally backed it, so there!

It’s not over till it’s over, cadets!

Episode 10 – Blind Game

Breetai attempts to get sensible information out of the three bungling spies: Konda, Bron and Rico, but they are babbling utter nonsense about half naked ladies, secret weapons and designer frocks, and the Zentraedi command can’t make head nor tail of it.

Their footage, sadly, was destroyed in that sortie with Rick, so Breetai can only assume that they’re suffering from space hallucinations. Exedore suggests that taking a Micronian alive is the best way to get further intelligence – and adds privately to Breetai that it might be time to stop messing around and get more aggressive with the enemy, for the sake of morale.

“I like nothing better than aggression. Exedore, I think we had better discuss this matter further in my quarters.”

Breetai, throwing down to the slash fandom.

Meanwhile Gloval finally gets through to Earth Command, who have been dodging his calls for days (well okay and also the aliens have been blocking their communications). Command suggests that since the Zentraedi have been showing more interest in the SDF1 than Earth, they should totally keep doing that and stay well away from Earth.

Vermilion Squadron suffers a hit, and Ben’s plane atarts leaking something nasty. Lisa and Rick get into a barney over the comms about whether or not it’s too dangerous to keep flying regardless, which involves him raging to her about how dangerous space is, something she “should have learned in the Academy.’ You know, the Academy he never went to.

Roy interrupts fondly to side with Mr Mansplainer on the grounds that Rick is right, if tactless.

Turns out that Exedore’s idea of ‘more aggressive’ warmongering is to tell Khyron to send a warning shot across the bow of the SDF1. Khyron is amused by the concept and interprets it creatively to mean ‘accidentally on purpose shoot out their radar tower, bwahaha.’

Kim, Sami and Vanessa bump into Rick in the playground, and tease him about the date he’s waiting for – sadly, he’s about to be stood up. A robot phone stalks him so Minmei can break it to him that she has singing lessons now, and a recording contract, and she’s just basically way too busy for him.

Rick is dubious about her new celebrity status: “It sounds like you’re trying to make a career out of this thing, Minmei.”

Oh, how very dare she!

Khyron’s squadron blows up a planet as part of a ‘weapon’s test’ and then do that warning shot thing which looks a whole lot like a massive bombardment with their entire weapons array. So ‘warning shot’ has been reinterpreted even more broadly than expected!

The SDF1 is hit, to everyone’s shock, as they were also (weirdly) convinced that Khyron was going to give them a warning shot and not just generally try to shoot them. In retrospect, I have no idea why this episode is not actually called Warning Shot.

The radar tower is indeed destroyed, and now all the planetary debris from the rest demolition game is hurtling right at the SDF1, too.

Lisa suffers an attack of guilt when she hallucinates Rick’s Battloid smashed up in space (in reality he’s sitting in a pond in Macross City feeling crappy about being ditched by Minmei) and admits to herself that he was right about all that ‘space is dangerous’ stuff. WHO KNEW?

To everyone’s shock, the Zentraedi then make contact, speaking directly to the humans in their own language and scaring them all silly. OMG, who gave the Zentraedi our number, and what’s their cultural equivalent of the ‘is your refrigerator running’ gag?

Lisa goes out on recon duty in a scientific probe vehicle called a Cat’s Eye, with Vermilion Squadron protecting her. When the Zentraedi make a suspicious move, Ben and Rick completely abandon Lisa (at her demand, against Rick’s better judgement) to check things out, leaving her vulnerable.

Sadly despite Lisa’s apparent competence and her claim to be able to look after herself, she fails to notice a big rock in time, and smashes up her ship badly in the asteroid field. She is then captured by the aliens, who are keen to find out more about these Micronians and their weird ways.

I’m a little sad about how this entire episode is dedicated to showing us how incompetent Lisa is, especially when she’s a career officer who has been in the military many years, as compared to Rick, who has been there for five minutes. The other characters generally tell us that she’s highly qualified and competent, but whenever we see her in action, she’s falling to pieces. Bah. I am still Team Lisa.

Lisa tries to be self-sacrificial once she’s on board the Zentraedi ship, but Rick has learned not to respect anything she says, and once again rescues her without consent. I’m really hoping that’s not a metaphor for anything.

“This is no time for protocol, Commander.”

Rick.. When exactly DO you think is the time for protocol? Because I’m suspecting never.

In a shock twist, Breetai leaps ninja-style from the ceiling and fights both Rick and Ben in hand-to-hand combat. Please note: they are still inside their Battloids, while he isn’t even wearing a jumper for protection. Man, he’s tall even for a Zentraedi.

Once again we end up with a scene of Rick Hunter in a giant mecha, holding an elegant lady between finger and thumb. This is taken as an opportunity for everyone (including Lisa) to pause their escape attempt to tease him about being attracted to her. Sexual harassment on duty, lovely.

Breetai is so incensed at their inappropriate workplace banter that he sneaks up on them again and punches both Battloids in the head. I really did not see that coming.

Next week: you must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss…

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.