Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 62

Recycling the Acoma Way (art and armies from trash)

Today had some unexpected joys to it. I ran into my Mum in town and was able to say airily “I’m going to meet my daughter at the Long Gallery” which made me feel like such a grown up! The daughter in question is Jem, my four year old, who was on an excursion.

I knew they had been making trash faces at school and that we were going to see the Art from Trash Exhibition, but what I didn’t quite get was that the kids’ work was actually being exhibited in the Long Gallery alongside the professional work. My four year old’s collage is in a real art gallery!

Jemima has been saying she wants to be an artist when she grows up for a very long time… I guess this is a good step.

Which segues nicely into Part 3 of my Daughter of the Empire Reread over at Tor.com – because this is the chapter where Mara of the Acoma looks a way to let the “honourless” Grey Warriors pledge to her service.

Talk about recycling – she finds a previously untapped resource (in this case, people forced to become criminals because of a social convention that servants of a family lose all honour when their master dies) and figures out a way to give them a sense of purpose again, while saving herself too.

All this and more – join the reread today!

Galactic Suburbia 101 Show Notes

The new episode is ready to be downloaded or streamed or any of those other things you like to do with podcasts.

In which we emerge from our cake coma to discuss awards, speeches, hashtags and online activism. And, okay, more cake.

News

Norman Hetherington’s birthday celebrated by Google: Australians love Mr Squiggle!

Nebula award winners announced.

N K Jemisin’s GoH speech and Hiromi Goto’s GoH speech at Wiscon

Alisa’s post: If You Aren’t Part of the Solution

Discussion of #yesallwomen and #notallmen

Charles Tan’s important essay on Bigotry, Cognitive Dissonance and Submission guidelines

What Culture Have we Consumed?

Alisa: Total Devotion Machine, Rosaleen Love; Perfections, Kirstyn McDermott; The Lady Astronaut from Mars, Mary Robinette Kowal

Alex: A Pursuit of Miracles, George Turner; Black Ice, Lucy Sussex; Jane Bites Back, Michael Thomas Ford. Project Bond.

Tansy: X-Men Days of Future Past, Sex Criminals by Matt Fraction, Robotech Rewatch



Galactic Suburbia Scrapbook – is still a preorder which means if you go ahead and preorder, we’ll send you a copy of the book when it drops, glitch with the Paypal means it charges you 1c on preorder but Alisa refunding those. And also, all sales for the Scrapbook will go towards running costs for GS.

PS we have a donation button on the Podbean site, which we thought we would mention because we got scolded by email… if you want to throw us a donation towards our hosting fees, we will be very grateful!

Check out our Pinterest board for the entries in our cake logo contest! We haven’t been able to choose, so we’re asking for feedback from our listeners. Vote for your favourite by emailing us – and remember it’s not about how much you like the look of the cake itself, but which picture you think makes the best logo to represent us for our next 100 episodes.

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

ROBOTECH REWATCH 1: So Much For World Peace

So, Robotech. I’ve read and watched a lot of space opera over the years, but this cartoon is the one that first climbed inside my head. I’ve never watched the Japanese original, Macross. I have always meant to, but somehow never got around to it. Maybe after this rewatch is complete…?

I have read almost all of the Jack McKinney novelisations, multiple times. They’re really good. They are genuinely so much better than novelisations of an anime show dubbed into English should ever be expected to be. They fill in a lot of the blanks, extending the characterisation and backstory, and acknowledging the darker and more mature themes of the story more thoroughly than during the short episodes.

I was exactly the right age (about twelve I think?) when I first came across Robotech, and grew deeply attached. The combination of spaceships, politics and romance really appealed, and the serialised aspect hit all my most obsessive buttons.

“Robotech” is made up of three anime shows, dubbed into English and rewritten just enough to pretend they are all part of the same universe. I did not know this when I first watched. I didn’t know why each new series was so tantalisingly separate from the previous one, and where all the characters I liked had disappeared to. It bugged me for years, and only the books (and later, Wikipedia) helped me figure out how it all worked. In the mean time, I watched the later seasons closely, hungry for callbacks.

I tried introducing Raeli (now nine!) to the show a few years ago and she wasn’t interested. When the Musketeer Space milestone funded to kick off this Robotech rewatch, I gave it another go on the grounds that it would be much easier to watch that many episodes if my daughters were watching along with me.

We watched nearly 5 episodes in that first session. Raeli adores it. Watching it with a kid is great because it gives me that double perspective – the odd disconnect about a show that feels more adult than your brain tells you it should be.

Then there’s okay, the gender stuff (technical term). Robotech is weirdly progressive and regressive at the same time when it comes to gender stuff, largely because it’s a 1980’s show set in the future, and it’s hard to predict social change. Plus there’s a bunch of anime conventions and tropes that are themselves problematic from a gender point of view. I’ve always waved away gender stuff with Robotech in the past (I know, it seems unlikely, but I can do it sometimes), but I don’t think I can avoid it this time around because – well, if I’m watching it with Raeli, and it conveys a message about gender that alarms me, I’m going to point it out to her.

She’s used to that.

Each post will have one or two episodes, depending on how much there is to talk about. Thanks to the financial backers of Musketeer Space, who unlocked this rewatch as Bonus Extra Blog Content. If you like these posts, consider sponsoring Musketeer Space and its associated bloggery at my Patreon page for $1 a month.

“What are you trying to do, make a fool out of me?”

Episode 1. Boobytrap, AKA So Much For World Peace, Here Come the Aliens to F**k You Up

In the year 1999, an abandoned alien battle fortress crash landed on Earth! Ten years later, a whole city has built up around the fortress on Macross Island, and humanity has developed a new form of technology – Robotech – based on the alien ship.

Humanity has also been enjoying a decade of world peace, thanks to their collective terror at the evidence that aliens exist. Yay humans! We knew you’d get it right eventually.

Of course, world peace can’t last forever. Where would be the fun in that?

It’s 2009, and the battle fortress (known as the SDF-1) has been fully restored and is ready to launch. They almost know what all the buttons do! Unfortunately, the day of celebration turns to chaos when the aliens come hunting their lost ship…

It is ridiculous how happy this music makes me. I loved this show so much, it actually gives me nostalgia chills to hear it. Other pieces of music that have this effect on me: the theme tune of Press Gang, the theme tune of Blake’s 7, and “Manic Monday” by the Bangles. True fact.

The credits of these early episodes on the DVDs are different to the ones I remember, though, which I put on my Friday links post yesterday. I remember wondering about all the characters who appear in the credits (Dana, the crew from the Invid Invasion, etc.) that I didn’t recognise.

There’s a few really interesting science fictional ideas in this first episode, and I especially like the central concept of Robotech: the social effect that a crashed alien space fortress has on humanity, and the technology they develop in response. It’s a clever idea, and leads to repeated use of one of my all time favourite tropes: That Button Doesn’t Do What You Think It Does.

Apart from Captain Gloval, the gruff Russian sea captain who is in charge of this mess, the bridge crew are all women. Claudia has been out all night with Commander Fokker, and Lisa disapproves! The girls are mostly very giggly and silly while doing a pretty hardcore job, which I raised an eyebrow or two about. (Note, I talked this out with Alisa in the episode of Galactic Suburbia that is going up tomorrow, and she assures me that all-female work environments are a lot like this, even in engineering – which made me rethink my kneejerk reaction)

I did wonder if Kim, Sami, Vanessa and Claudia might be playing some sort of elaborate practical joke on the military, as if women are only allowed to take on a high-impact job (they’re basically air traffic controllers in space, can you imagine anything more stressful?) if they behave like teenage bubble heads. But… why should we only take women in science fiction seriously if they act in traditionally male ways? It’s definitely food for thought.

Still, there’s a retro feel about the traditional femininity expressed by these girls, and I don’t just mean because the show was written in the 1980’s – they feel almost like WAF girls from a 1940’s period piece, or something out of a 1960′s bedroom farce.

I do kind of adore them all, even if they tease Lisa for taking her job seriously, and it’s worth noting that for the most part these women are shown as being super competent and hardworking even when playing with their hair and talking about boys.

Captain Gloval is already showing signs of space madness, I’ve got to say, even before they go out to space. He mutters to himself a lot, apparently narrating the long Russian novel that he wandered in from. Again, he’s a relic from a bygone age, possibly the nineteenth century. Or whenever it was that submarines first became fashionable.

My favourite bit of Episode 1 is still where Gloval puts his pipe in his mouth, and Sami pipes up with the regulations: “No smoking on the bridge, sir!” So that’s at least one social convention of the future that Robotech has successfully predicted. Nice one, Robotech.

It’s hard to tell at this point who the main character is supposed to be. Roy Fokker is the heroic military pilot who might possibly occupy that space… right up to the point that his “little brother” Rick Hunter breezes into his military display, showing off how he’s a better pilot than any of them.

Oh, Rick. You and your spiky hair and your civilian neck scarf and your ridiculous sense of entitlement. You have no idea what’s ahead of you, do you?

There’s a lot of plot packed into this first episode, despite it being super short. (A side note: my DVD includes the throws to ad breaks, which is lovely – the ABC used to do the same thing, despite not actually including ads) Breetai and Exedore of the Zentraedi turn up leading the force against the humans, which means we get to see the story from their point of view very early on. I feel almost as soppy about seeing them for the first time as I do Captain Gloval! Even this early in the story, we’re getting to eavesdrop on their machinations as well as the humans who we are obviously supposed to sympathise with. Or are we???

Another key element of Robotech is the combination of fun action adventure and simple animation (explosions are expressed as circles!) with mature themes and surprisingly sophisticated conversations – already in this first episode we’ve had a discussion of Claudia’s love life that feels quite adult, and the beginning of an ongoing debate between Roy and Rick about military service vs. pacifism.

I often felt that the novels developed many of these themes more seriously than in the series, but actually most of the material is pretty much here to start with.

The first few episodes are mostly going to be me squeeing about first meetings between characters – the most important one in this episode is probably when Rick Hunter “meets” Lisa Hayes across the telecom when she sends him (by accident) into battle, just because he happens to be sitting in a Robotech plane. Later, shocked at his complete incompetence (but not quite shocked enough to check his ID), she talks him through changing module from plane to Battloid, and he finds himself up against an alien ship in the streets of Macross City.

Lisa dealing with Rick’s continuing incompetence is a theme we shall return to.

ROBOTECH MUSIC MAKES ME FEEL PATRIOTIC AS A HUMAN.

“This used to be a fighter plane!”

Episode 2. Countdown [AKA: It's All In How You Press The Buttons]



The alien continue to attack Macross Island, proving to be a superior force.

The untried bridge crew of the SDF1 display their competence and ability for Captain Gloval, despite no one really knowing what half the buttons do on this ship. Meanwhile, the Powers that Be try to convince Captain Gloval to take this baby into space on the grounds that they might all magically get better at knowing what the buttons do if they are further away from the Earth.

As plans go, it’s not… entirely the worst?

Down in the streets, Rick Hunter is still performing battle slapstick. Thanks to Lisa’s advice, he is no longer falling out of the sky, but he is trapped inside an unexpected robot…

ENTER MINMEI.

So at this point, she’s just an ordinary teenage girl with no pretensions of stardom. Or so we think. Previously spotted trying to drag her little brother away from an overly pushy drinks machine, Minmei is now at home, minding her own business when an unexpected Robotech duel erupts in the street outside.

So, there’s meet-cute, right? That’s a thing. And then there’s Minmei and Rick, who would make baby penguins feel a bit sick. In this first encounter, despite him still being stuck inside a robot, they hurl cheerful banter at each other that almost counts as flirting, right up to the point that he loses control of his robot body and smashes the corner off her house. Oh, young love.

“I don’t even know what this thing is and I’m sure not qualified to pilot it!”

Rick Hunter, Aware of His Limitations Since 2009.

Back on the SDF-1, when Gloval and the crew try to get the ship in the air, the gravity pods take off without the ship, ripping holes in its paintwork as they go. Did I MENTION my favourite trope of all time?

“They’ll never let me hear the end of this.”

Captain Henry Gloval. Having a bad day.

As I expected, my daughters identify more closely with baby-voiced, super cute Minmei than any of the military women. (I’m going to attempt to be kinder to Minmei in this rewatch than I have been in the past – prepare for super human effort) Raeli, however, drew a line at Minmei’s ridiculous decision to go back for her diary during the evacuation on the grounds that someone might find it and read it, during the alien invasion.

“What do you want, lady, embarrassment or death?”

Raeli, Age 9

Jemima (Age 4 and a Half) noticed all on her own that the bridge crew (I am not going to call them the Bridge Bunnies, Robotech fan sites, not if you set me on fire) were all girls apart from Captain Gloval. When she asked me why, I told her it was probably because they were the best qualified.

There’s a lot of Rick and Minmei in this episode. At one point, he uses his giant robot hand to rescue her, King Kong style, then flubs it and drops her while flying through the air. He manages to transform back into plane shape, open his visor thing, and get her inside the ship, defying all the laws of gravity and physics. And good sense.

“That actually was kind of impressive.”

Raeli, Usually more Sarcastic Than This.

The big reveal in all of Rick’s crazy battle antics is that the giant robot-shaped creatures invading the earth actually contain… giant pilots! So that’s why they call us Micronians. And it also explains why the SDF1 has such high ceilings.

Speaking of SDF1, they attempt a second take off, and this time it works. They charge slowly up into space, not realising that they’ve left Rick and Minmei behind. To be fair, neither of them actually works for the military.

Yet.

=========

Maintain communications on this channel! The Robotech Rewatch will return next week! Find out more about the Musketeer Space project and how you can support it here at Patreon. Or just check out Musketeer Space, a space opera web serial with swashbuckle and style, starting from Chapter 1.

Friday Links are Team Peppa Pig

Two days after the bombshell that Peppa Pig might be in danger from the budget cuts to the ABC, she’s still trending. I think we’ve found our figurehead, people! Particularly interesting was the revelation that Peppa might be in the firing line because of her “dangerous feminist ideology.” Is this because she rolls in the mud with her family and laughs at the end of each episode, or just because she is smart and articulate?

Funnily enough, I’m interested in gender-swapping as a literary technique at the moment. Jenny Crusie wrote a thoughtful piece this week on why she thinks it’s not realistic to keep the same story if the genders of the main characters have been swapped. As is often the case for me with posts about writing, I think she is both right and wrong.

Hollywood Reporter “reveals” that thing about Game of Thrones that many fans and bloggers have been talking about for years – there’s a code in them thar embroidery. I find it particularly interesting that the women’s costumes are being used in this way, both in and out of the show’s narrative (Doyleist and Sherlockian perspectives ahoy!). And it makes me want to write another fantasy novel about dressmaking.

I’ve seen a lot of critiques of a particular set of submission guidelines around the traps recently, but Charles A Tan’s magnificent take down should be required reading for anyone intending to call for submissions for any project ever. Especially if you want to support diversity.

There’s been a lot of feminist critique and frustration about the latest X-Men movie, such as here at Bitch Magazine (but I could have linked to a dozen similar blog posts or articles). I share the frustration of many who would really like the X-Men movies to reflect the gender balance and interesting diversity of many of the comics going back to the 70′s. But I also felt in my bones that this was actually the best X-Men movie yet for its portrayal of women (yes, even though I know it’s supposed to be Kitty’s story) and wasn’t able to put a finger on why until I read this great piece by Emily Asher-Perrin at Tor.com. It’s super spoilery, watch the movie first! But it also shows the way in which, finally, the movies are addressing some of the core “problems with women characters” issues not only of the previous movies, but issues embedded in the comics, too. It gives me hope.

Plus Mystique rocks in this movie, you know? She is *mighty*.

In other news, my Robotech Rewatch starts tomorrow as part of the Musketeer Space project. To join my awesome financial backers and earn rewards while enabling me in my writing & blogging habit, check out the Musketeer Space Patreon page.

Musketeer Space Part II: Paris, At Last

Musketeer Space is a weekly serialised novel by Tansy Rayner Roberts.

If you’re just joining us, you can read my intro to the project here. And check out my Patreon page, to sponsor the project.

Here’s Chapter 1!

It’s been a busy week and I’m really pleased with all the positive buzz and general goodwill around Musketeer Space. Thanks everyone for your enthusiasm. Katharine (@thiefofcamorr) set up a GoodReads page which some readers might like to use. Sean the Blogonaut reviews the first chapter over here.

The first Musketeer Media Monday went up yesterday: Musketeers in an Exciting Adventure with Airships (2011).

PREVIOUSLY ON MUSKETEER SPACE:

Hopeful pilot Dana D’Artagnan is on her way to Paris Satellite, to join the Musketeers. During her last recharging stop at Meung Station, she has an encounter with the mysterious “Ro” who taunts her into a psychedelic spaceship duel, and kicks her butt.

NOW READ ON.

PART II: Paris at Last.

Dana awoke, and wished she had not. Every stubbled hair on her scalp felt like a needle pressing directly into her skull.

She coughed, and tasted blood, then vomit, and finally an odd metallic tang. Duel.

If her mother was right, and all pilots were crazy, Dana had just proved… something. She was not sure what, except that next time she saw that woman from the Moth, she was going to break her nose.

She could tell even without opening her eyes that she was lying in her old bunk on the Musket-class dart that her parents had been so proud of providing for her to make her way in the world. There was a comfortable hum in her head that she only felt when she and the ship were this close to each other.

Buttercup.

“It’s a good ship,” Mama had told her. “A lucky ship. Not as new as some, but it served me well and it will serve my daughter well.”

“The only one she never crashed,” Papa laughed in reply.

For one horrible, weak moment, Dana wanted to be back with them, to have never tried to leave Gascon Station.

It could be worse. At least the bastards who had set her up for that Duel had been civic-minded enough to dump her back on her ship in safety. Dana struggled off the bunk and into the sonic shower, peeling off her clothes as she went. The jacket, at least, was undamaged. She’d need that in Paris.

The sonic cleaning stung her neck, and she shut it off quickly, leaning in to check herself in the mirror.

Three small, red holes marked the place on her neck where her credit stud, identity stud and finally her application to the Space Agency had all been ripped off her skin. All three had been stolen while she was unconscious.

Anger poured through her, and she swore every foul name she could think of about that motherfucking bitch, the arsehole from the perfect brand-new Moth. Alone in the shower, Dana punched and kicked the walls until her knuckles hurt worse than her head. She couldn’t swear anymore, couldn’t even think the words she wanted or needed.

There were backups, of course there were backups. That was how the galaxy worked, everything was data, and everything could be printed anew. The information on her credit studs was backed up here, in the ship she would always be calling Buttercup, even inside her head. Her money, her identity files and pilot records, even her application, they were all backed up.

Except, of course, that someone had brought her home.

Slowly, Dana stepped out of the sonic shower and made her way along the narrow ship to the cockpit. She sat naked at the computer, ignoring the voice in her head as the helm tried to coax her into flight.

Let’s go, space space, come and fly, come and fly.

Sometimes, having a spaceship in your head was a lot like having a large, nagging pet who couldn’t think beyond the next walkie.

Dana called up her information quickly. She wasn’t angry anymore, had no rage left in her veins. But oh, her credit account had been hacked, of course it had. No number left but zeroes.

An odd numbness spread across the back of her skull. Hopefully this was shock rather than actual Duel-induced brain damage. Dana printed new studs for herself, one for her ID and another for her Paris application. A third for her empty credit account. A fourth, to clone and back up every iota of personal information in the ship’s archives.

She could go to the station’s militia, of course she could. As long as she didn’t mind sharing the story of the illegal Duel racket they had going on here on Meung.

Or she could cut her losses, and find out what price the Buttercup would make at one of the vendors here. She could get a seat on a commercial venturer and still make it to Paris within the next day. That was the sensible thing to do. Mama and Papa might not even learn she’d done it, not until later when she had a job and a new ship to crow about.

There were many benefits to this new plan, up to and including never again having to wince with embarrassment when someone made up a cute pet name for her bright yellow spaceship. At least now she wouldn’t have to brazen it out when everyone assumed the paint job was her idea.

Still, when Dana entered the commands to detach her consciousness from the Buttercup’s controls, she felt like a traitor. Right up until the end, she heard a tiny litany inside her head: Don’t leave, let’s go flying, space space space, let’s see the stars!

Ro, that was the pilot’s name. Dana memorised it along with her dark eyes and long sweep of hair. She would recognise her again, if she saw her, and she would get her revenge.

It wasn’t until Dana was in her seat on the venturer Sun Wukong bound for Honour, Luna Palais and Paris Satellite, that she realised she had lost something else. The photo silk of her mother’s youthful adventures was no longer tucked safely inside her jacket pocket.

Had her thief taken that too, or had she somehow left it behind on the Buttercup? Dana did not know, but it was enough to make her angry at the Moth pilot all over again.

So much for softening Commander Treville’s hard edges with a spot of family nostalgia.

* * * * *

Paris Satellite was the biggest space station that Dana had ever seen. There was none of the grimy elbows-in mentality she knew from Gascon Station, where she had grown up. Even the orbiting cities of Truth, the furthest she had previously travelled across the solar system, had a tendency towards economy of materials and space.

Paris was all gleaming steel, plexi-glass, and wide-open spaces. As Dana disembarked from the venturer with the rest of the passengers, shaking off the headache she got every time as a passenger, she spotted actual trees growing up out of paving stones in the main avenue, for all the sky as if this was a dirtside city.

This was where her parents had lived, worked, fallen in love. Paris, the satellite of all dreams, in orbit around Luna Palais, Honour’s only moon.

You could practically smell the red dirt of Honour on the boots of the locals. Not that Dana had any interest in planets, or moons for that matter. She only had eyes for the pilots who hurried this way and that, their flight suits a rainbow of colours that told you exactly who they flew for. Pigeon grey for the satellite’s general service pilots, red and gold for the Cardinal’s Sabres, and blue and white for the Musketeers. The occasional black flight suit marked out a Raven, members of the independent Courier Corps.

Button pushers, as Mama always referred to them with a sneer. In a galaxy where most communications were instant, and anyone (with enough credit points) could send the data for an item of choice to be reprinted on any planet they chose, the Ravens represented an antique profession.

It had always been Dana’s private dread that they would be the only ones who offered her employment. Boring ships, boring trade routes, boring co-workers. Everything that the Musketeers were not.

Dana fingered her collar studs nervously. Plain black plastic, instead of the platinum she had set out with. Nothing to strut about. Perhaps she was an idiot for thinking such things mattered. But oh, she could do with an injection of confidence right now.

The important thing was that the commander of the Musketeers had been born on Gascon Station too, and knew what it was like to try to forge a career from the provinces. Surely the name D’Artagnan coupled with Dana’s excellent training record would be enough to impress Commander Treville.

The photo-silk niggled at her, though. It would have been a nice touch. Something to make this meeting personal, and to show that Dana was more than just another recruit.

Possibly it would have also been helpful to make a formal appointment.

* * * * *

Commander Treville was a mountainous figure, with dark slab-like arms and a barrel body, enveloped in the bright blue and white uniform of the Musketeers. Her black hair was buzzed pilot-short. She showed no sign of having anything but hard edges, and every inch of her presence made it clear she still thought of herself as a pilot first, an administrator second.

This did not in any way prevent her from giving the pilots under her command one hell of a rough time.

As the morning dragged on, Dana waited in a plexi-glass walled corridor, above the maze of airlocks that housed the ships of the Royal Space Fleet. She sat there, invisible in the crowd. Behind and around her, pilots sprawled across tables in their cafeteria, sharing food and conversation. There were more women than men, which matched the numbers she remembered from training – the Royal Fleet was at about 75% women which was lower than her mother’s day when it had been closer to 90% thanks to the previous Regent’s belief that women made the best pilots.

Dana’s belated attempt at an appointment had been met with rolled eyes from the assistant at the front desk, but she was given a number in today’s queue, with no guarantee that Treville would find time for her.

The number was 78.

So, Dana waited. There were view screens all around, and while she could have used a stud to call up her own screen to catch up on news or Paris culture, it was interesting to see what a curated feed brought up – in the case of these particular screens, that meant plenty of gossip, expensive shopping options and occasional injections of local politics, along with hourly five minute episodes of Love and Asteroids, the latest hit soap.

Without fail after every episode of Love and Asteroids (which was packed with scandalous tales of adultery, bucking the chain of command and other wicked behaviour), some sort of morality vid would play, to balance things out. As one shift ended and another began, Dana saw the Regent’s famous inauguration speech about the sanctity of marriage contracts three times, and the Cardinal’s equally famous ‘all gods followed us to the stars’ soundbyte a colossal eight times, if you didn’t count the parody version which was used to sell cola shots.

On the whole, the interior of Commander Treville’s office was far more interesting than anything the holo-channels had to offer.

Dana’s eyes kept being drawn back to Treville as she strode back and forth in her office, usually barking at the comm channels or tapping at a panel on her standing work station. Every pilot that docked their ship had to cross this corridor to reach the rest of Paris Satellite including their sleeping quarters.

The Commander missed nothing.

Several times, Treville stepped forward to fill her doorway, bellowing names out into the corridor, usually at a pilot who was attempting to sneak past her without reporting in. The unfortunate in question would be dragged into her office and berated behind the soundproof plexi-glass.

No wonder this was a popular cafeteria for all the pilots, not just those wearing the blue and white of the Musketeers. The food printers were standard enough, but they came with the entertainment option of watching your peers being publicly roasted.

Commander Treville, Dana decided, was terrifying.

When Dana’s number was finally called, her mother’s former colleague managed something like a welcoming smile. It looked more like a tired grimace, but Dana appreciated the effort.

They sat opposite each other at a low desk on the far side of the office, perhaps the first time Dana had seen the Commander off her feet all day.

“Dana D’Artagnan,” said Treville, rolling the name thoughtfully around in her mouth. “Your father was one of the best engies in Paris back in the day. And your mother…” For a moment, the smile did not seem forced. “No one flew like your mother.”

“She’s still the best,” Dana admitted.

Treville shrugged. “Can’t imagine there’s much skilled work flying to be done out on Gascon Station these days. I grew up there myself, you know. Apart from the Mendaki invasion three generations ago, nothing has ever happened there.”

It was true. In the last intergalactic war, which had ended only eight years ago, the silver eyed shapechanging aliens known as the Sun-kissed had famously invaded every planet in the solar system except Freedom. Even if Dana hadn’t always known that her station orbited a world considered to be the arse-end of the solar system, she could not have missed the information. Every chancer who ever blew through Gascon Station made sure to let her know just how far from “civilisation” they were.

Commander Treville tapped the plastic application stud that Dana had placed on her desk between them, and a screen flickered up, displaying Dana’s training transcript. “We don’t get many applicants from remote training, but you’ve acquitted yourself well here. With these kinds of marks and hours logged, I’m surprised you didn’t take this stud two levels up, directly to the Cardinal’s office. Most new-qualified pilots try there first. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the salary is almost twice what we have to offer.”

“I don’t want to be a Sabre,” Dana said indignantly. “I want to be a Musketeer!” The thought of what her mother would say if she came home in red and gold livery made her want to throw up.

Twice the salary. She knew that the Sabres were still coasting on the glory that came from saving the solar system at the end of the War of the Sun-kissed, but Dana had never guessed at the practical ramifications of that.

Commander Treville almost laughed, but stopped herself in time. “You’re sweet, kid. I wish half of my gals had that attitude. But being a Musketeer… it doesn’t mean what what it used to . If it wasn’t for the Regent’s nostalgia for the world before the war, we would have disappeared into the Cardinal’s filing cabinet years ago. A historical footnote, rather than an item in the Royal Budget spreadsheet that gets smaller every year.”

Dana knew which way this conversation was going, and she was desperate to say something, anything to change that look of mild pity on Commander Treville’s face. As she racked her brain, though, she saw the commander’s eyes flicked away, already distracted by something in that plexi-glass corridor of hers. “Excuse me, Dana. Some business that can’t wait.”

Treville leaped to her feet and marched to the door, flinging it open. In an enormous voice using every inch of her impressive lungs, she bellowed: “CAPTAIN ATHOS, CAPTAIN PORTHOS, CAPTAIN ARAMIS! Get in here, you bastards!”

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 Christmas story.

More Mara Mayhem: Daughter Of the Empire Chapter 2

My Empire trilogy reread continues at Tor.com with Daughter of the Empire Chapter 2: Evaluations.

Mara has to decide whether to enact the death penalty upon Papewaio, her most loyal soldier. She also gets a lesson in sex ed from her former nurse (awk-ward!) and starts admitting all the things she has done wrong since her rise to power, the previous day. In other news, assassins are dangerous!

Being a female ruler on a world like Kelewan (or most fantasy worlds) is already so against the norm that the women in question may as well go for broke and smash a few conventions along the way. Rules are more like guidelines, yes? But you have to be careful which ones you smash and which ones are going to smash you back…

Musketeers in an Exciting Adventure with Airships (2011)

It’s Musketeer Media Mondays! I love alliterative titles, I can’t help it. If there was a day of the week starting with L, that’s where my Friday Links would be, instead of actual Friday, where they belong.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog you will have noticed that I started a web serial last week, Musketeer Space (first chapter available to read here) and also set up a Patreon page to collect financial patrons for the project. To my delight and surprise, quite a few of you signed up straight away, and I surpassed my first and then second milestone goal within a couple of days.

Here, then, is the first series of Unlocked Content made available to all tansyrr.com readers thanks to the generosity of the Musketeer Space patrons. For as long as the page is earning $50 a month or more, I will be posting a monthly review of some kind of media interpretation of The Three Musketeers or its sequels. Upcoming in future months include the BBC series starting Capaldieu (Peter Capaldi as Cardinal Richelieu), the two Michael York & Oliver Reed movies from the 1970′s (I have previously seen The Three Musketeers but not its sequel The Four Musketeers), and of course the gender-swapped work of genius (I’m not entirely being sarcastic here) that is Barbie and the Three Musketeers.

All recommendations for Musketeer media, including audio, comics, sequels, prequels, loosely-connected homages and preferred translations of the original text, are gratefully received. (especially if you want to extend borrowing privileges!) Yes, I do want to include Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds if I can locate it. I’m pretty sure I didn’t imagine its existence.

The first Musketeer Media I chose to tackle is the 2011 movie “The Three Musketeers,” starring Orlando Bloom’s flounce and Milla Jovovich’s belated Black Widow audition tape. Some other people might have been there too. I didn’t really notice.

MUSKETEERS IN AN EXCITING ADVENTURE WITH AIRSHIPS (2011)

This is a wild cocktail of a movie, with one part ‘yes the scriptwriters actually read the book’ to two parts ‘wouldn’t THIS be awesome’ and another seven parts tequila. With a marshmallow, a firecracker and a catalogue of steampunk costumery on top.

I am exhausted just remembering this movie.

I also felt, particularly in the quite delicious banter-and-danger opening scenes, that it remained firm if not consistent in its thesis that if Alexandre Dumas were alive today, he’d be writing episodes of Hustle. (Or, if you are American: Leverage)

Every time I started to accept that this crazy rockstar cousin of a steampunk caper was only loosely based on the story I loved, they would throw me a curve ball by actually plating up something lovingly respectful of the novel.

Movie, you confuse me. I rather think I would have a better idea of what to think of you if you came with an original Queen soundtrack.

One example: the D’Artagnan Meets the Musketeer scene, which looks a lot easier to choreograph than it actually is (I say, having attempted about fifteen times to write my own version of it, to the point that it has become That Fucking Meeting Scene in my head).

This version was light-hearted, clever, and pretty damned authentic to the novel. D’Artagnan chases after Rochefort in revenge for their previous (book-authentic) encounter, and slams into first a drunk Athos, then a preening Porthos, and finally Aramis in the execution of his duty (horse parking tickets!) Each encounter tells us something about the Musketeers, and shows the protagonist for the hothead he is. All three of them end up inviting him to duel, and he has to take them on all at once, in an encounter that ends with them as friends. It was all very pleasing…

Unfortunately, I was still recovering from the disappointment that this wasn’t going to be, as the opening scenes teased me, a movie about how the Musketeers and Milady run around Paris as a high end team of con artists.

Strangely, I found myself enjoying the truly insane parts of this movie far more than the bits that were playing it straight. The most entertaining part about the hapless King is his obsession with fashion. It’s an easy narrative choice, to make him a young fool, and that’s the direction they took here. Ray Stevenson’s Porthos gets all the best lines, while the other Musketeers are sadly a bit mumbly and drippy. Constance is a disappointment – they fall into the Hollywood trap of making her a generic glamorous lady-in-waiting instead of a nuanced married lady wrapped up in her own adventure of political scandal. The Queen, however, is rather good, showing political cleverness beneath an innocent face. The Cardinal is woefully underplayed and dull.

Nine-year-old Raeli’s verdict: “The bald guy is probably my favourite Musketeer.” (She means Porthos)

Once airships and abseiling Milla Jovovich get involved, the movie definitely slips into crazy town, even as the original Queen’s Necklace conspiracy keeps popping up to pretend that the scriptwriters (let’s not pretend just one person wrote this movie) are genuinely interested in Musketeers and not just using it as an excuse to make a steampunk caper movie. Buckingham (Orlando Bloom) is hilarious and steals the movie quite effortlessly from the other villains, not least because he appears to be doing an Elvis impersonation with his hair.

I rather liked Jovovich’s Milady, and her balance between feminine wiles and dastardly vicious ability. Her costumes are AMAZING, and I don’t just mean from a fancy clothes point of view – her costumes are practically characters in their own right, and I enjoyed the way that the restriction of women’s clothes at this time was constantly addressed in her various scenes. I’d happily watch the movie that this Milady is obviously starring in, in her own head – a glamorous assassin, cat burglar and steampunk con artist with detachable skirts – but I think I’d like her better if she wasn’t supposed to intended to be Milady de Winter.

The main problem with the film, sadly, is that the plot doesn’t work without characters actively having telepathic powers. Time after time, events happen which make no sense unless the reason they are happening is because the characters were given advance access to the script. This is particularly the case in the big double airship set piece. I didn’t mind it when Athos and Milady were predicting each other’s movements based on their experience working together, and the way that was flipped, but Rochefort’s appearance with the second airship was so beyond ridiculous that my brain actually melted a little. I’m also not sure why the queen would have guessed the Cardinal’s entire plan based on a missing necklace, unless she had also read the bit of the script involving the letters.

I also totally noticed that some of the best lines of the script are stolen from The Princess Bride.

“They never mentioned this in the audition…”

The gender choices were interesting – I don’t want to spoil it too much, but let’s just say that several women who end up dead in the book get a more complicated fate, obviously intended to lead into a sequel of a successful movie franchise (oh, movie). Milady and Athos’ history is based on simple treachery after a workplace romance rather than the more complex story of the book. The movie constantly flirts with the possibility that Constance is going to be killed in a fridging manner, only to be slightly better than that.

Slightly. There’s still a whole lot of gratuitous damselling, which actually makes it more annoying that they gave her a few witty and adventuresome qualities early on, to pretend she’s not just there to give D’Artagnan someone to snog.

Rewatching the movie a couple of weeks later with our daughters, the main difference was that in the mean time we had been watching the BBC Musketeers show, which takes more narrative liberties in some ways but presents far more realistic, grounded versions of the characters. I now feel somewhat guilty for letting this movie be Raeli’s first Musketeer experience, because she loved it a little too unconditionally.

Raeli was, however, suitably scathing when Constance made her speech about how being a mere lady-in-waiting made her more disposable to the mission than D’Artagnan. As is only right and proper.

On the whole I enjoyed this a lot the first time, a lot less the second time, and feel a bit mean being too picky about its extra steampunk additions to the story given that I myself am embarking on a genre rewrite of this story. Then again, it holds itself back from being a full genre re-imagining, and perhaps if it had tumbled more completely through that clockwork door, it would work a lot better.

7 out of 10 swishy cloaks. A fun, chaotic and very attractive movie with not much beneath the surface. If the movie was “Milady in an Exciting Adventure with Airships” I probably would have given it at least 8.

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This Musketeer Media Mondays post is brought to you thanks to the paid patrons of the blog. To sponsor Musketeer Space and its extended material for as little as $1 per month, visit my Patreon page.

Patreon and Musketeer Space: The Story So Far

Well, obviously I’m going to be documenting some of this! It’s no fun experimenting with a new business model if you don’t micro-analyse all the details.

So far, 21 patrons have pledged (collectively) over $100 per month to my Musketeer Space project. That’s pretty awesome. Of course, I haven’t actually received any funds yet (Patreon charges cards at the end of each month), but it’s a very good start and much more than I was expecting this early in the game.

I’ve reached 2 of my 3 initial milestones (I keep wanting to call them stretch goals, but that’s not quite what they are!), both of which include a commitment to provide blog reviews and essays relevant to the project: a monthly Musketeer Media review, and a weekly Robotech rewatch.

While Patreon have suggested that we not deliver rewards until after the first payment has been delivered, I’m quite keen to get started. So I’ll be putting up a Musketeer Media review this Monday, and beginning the Robotech posts next weekend. (my nine year old and I sat down and watched through five episodes straight through today – she loves it – so at least finding time to watch and make notes will be less of a problem)

The reward newsletter with extra material and behind the scenes stuff will begin in June.

I’ll be contacting patrons about their other rewards – spaceship naming, though this doesn’t have to happen immediately as people might like to wait and read some more of the story before they come up with what they want, and so on, in the first week of June.

Future funding milestones will focus less on extra content (I think I’m heading towards my limit on that) and more on improving the final quality of the book, including cover art and editorial expenses. I’ll be making changes here and there to the Patreon page as I learn new things.

And of course, I have the book itself to write! I don’t want to get ahead of myself with that at all – the story is the most important thing. I’m full of bubbling enthusiasm, and I hope having weekly readers to keep me honest will keep that enthusiasm bubbling over.

If you missed it, the first chapter of Musketeer Space can be read here. Reader Katharine (@thiefofcamorr) noted the usefulness of the Straight to Kindle function on Chrome, which may be of use to some of you if reading on a desktop isn’t fun.

Thanks so much for joining me on this weird and wonderful journey. The old blog has been, not exactly lying fallow lately, but certainly going through something of a resting period after last year’s Doctor Who anniversary frenzy. Now it’s time to change the curtains and give the whole place a new lease of life!

Everything’s better with Musketeers.

Friday Links is Sensational (Featuring Wonder Woman)

Welcome to a bumper edition of Friday Links!

The August solicits for DC Comics had a delicious (one might say SENSATIONAL) announcement to make: a new digital-first comic for Women, bringing back the old school title of Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman. (Sensation Comics was the anthology comic in which Wonder Woman made her first few appearances before getting her own title – it is to her what Action Comics is to Superman, and Detective Comics is to Batman)

I’ve really been impressed with DC’s range of digital comics, which have been far more interesting, experimental, female-friendly, modern and shareable with kids than just about anything coming out of the main range since the New 52 began. Even better, this new Wonder Woman will be an outside-continuity anthology, allowing for multiple stories (hopefully none involving hooking up with Superman) and a jumping on point for casual readers. All this AND the list of creators involved is really exciting, including Lauren Beukes, Cecil Castellucci and Cat Staggs. With an opening story by Gail Simone. Sensational!

Courtney Milan blogs about being at the Romantic Times Giant Bookfair, and addresses the recent controversy about the separation of indie (or “aspiring” authors, heh) and traditionally published authors in signing halls at that event. I’ve seen a lot of responses to this event and I think Milan’s seems the most even-handed especially because she is firmly refusing to use civil rights vocabulary to describe a bureaucratic bungle. (having to sit in a separate room to authors you perceive as being your peers is not the same as racism or segregation, FFS)

At The Radish: the value of the backlist for authors. This one spins off the Bookfair topic, as “being stuck in the backlist” has been equated to “the back seat of the bus” YES REALLY. Actually, argues this guest post, the backlist is an awesome place to be. Hell yes, books written by past me, you are the least trouble of all the books in my life.

Trudi Canavan wrote a nice piece about the historical role of female authors in Australian fantasy – I thought she put it really well and her experience as a reader mirrors my own.

A 2014 review of the now rather retro anthology 2012 which was published in 2008. Some nice things are said! Also, my ego boost of the fortnight came from the unexpected quote from Ink Black Magic in a Gail Carriger blog post. Because !!! Also it’s one of my favourite bits of that book, so extra !!! with some

Oh okay, not the only ego boost, as Marianne De Pierres also included the Creature Court books in her post about Australian SFF books she loves.

Tara Moss talks about her new book The Fictional Woman, and her life as a woman – from model to crime author to mother to doctoral student and political activist, all of these things overlapping and affecting each other. She also talks openly about the sexual harassment and assault she has been subjected to over the years, and how that has affected her.

But when I suggest her beauty has been important in shaping her life, she stops me. “When you say ‘your beauty’, I want to laugh,” she says. “I do recognise that in a technical way I have at times had a conventionally attractive appearance that fits with commercial ideas, and that means I have been able to earn my living from it. But as a model you get told all the time what’s wrong with you; you don’t get told you’re beautiful.”

Speaking of harassment, Courtney Meaker has written a powerful post, Walking While Fat and Female – Or, Why I Don’t Care Not All Men are Like That which talks about her experience as a regular pedestrian on the streets of Seattle, and addresses the ‘not all men are sexist/harassers/rapists’ sentiment, which is one of the most profoundly unhelpful thing anyone can say in the face of real life harassment.

I also really loved this piece about comedian Sarah Millican’s response to the outcry about what she wore on a red carpet. Honestly, the disturbing and entitled critique of women on red carpets is getting weirder every year. Especially when (as so often happens) the critique is not just of their fashion choices, but of their bodies, their hair and their ability to not get in the way of the fashion designer in question – in other words, to be a literal clothes hanger.

“I’m sorry,” Millican writes. “I thought I had been invited to such an illustrious event because I am good at my job.”

Just once I’d like to see a magazine article on “Happiest/Grumpiest Actors on the Red Carpet” or “Actors Who Said Wittiest Things on the Red Carpet” instead of the tired old stabbing of women for thinking maybe if they feel pretty, that’s enough. (it’s never enough)

In other news, we have a hybrid car. It’s a bit adorable. Even more adorable, however, is the Tesla, a fully electric car. The Oatmeal presents a love letter to his new car, in comic form.

Musketeer Space Part I: Reasons To Hate Moths

Musketeer Space is a weekly serialised novel by Tansy Rayner Roberts.

And yes, it is a (mostly) gender-swapped retelling of The Three Musketeers as a space opera!

Read my intro the project here. And check out my Patreon page, to support the project.

Thanks to Grant Watson of the Angriest for sending me a logo, and to everyone who has signed up pledges to the project so far. I was surprised and delighted to reach my $50 a month target so quickly last night, which means I will be writing a Musketeer Media Monday post every month, starting next week! Thanks everyone for your enthusiasm about the concept – it’s going to be a fun ride and I hope many of you come along with it.

Spaceship-naming pledgers will be contacted shortly.

Please comment, link and share!

PART 1: Reasons to Hate Moths

Dana D’Artagnan nosed her Musket-Class dart into the mechanic’s bay on Meung Station, in orbit around the planet of Valour. She hadn’t even glanced at the planet on her approach – planets held little interest for her. This station was the last recharging stop before she reached her destination.

Not for her first time, Dana wished that her Papa had chosen a colour other than bright yellow when he retooled Mama’s creaky old ship for her journey. Dana had a fat enough credit stud that she could pay to have the dart resprayed, but only if she didn’t worry too much about paying the rent for her first month in Paris.

Paris was more important.

Of course, the ship she landed next to in the bay had to be a brand new Moth fighter, so sleek and silver that everything around him looked extra shitty. But she wasn’t going to let that bother her.

Dana jumped down from the hatch and slid under the belly of her dart, releasing the power spheres one by one. All six of them needed recharging. As she carted the large spheres two by two to the charging console at the back of the bay, she heard boots ringing against the metal floor, and then laughter.

“Oh, what is that thing?” said a woman. “Do spaceships even come in that colour? Would anyone seriously walk into a shipyard and say sure, I’ll have the canary yellow one.”

A male voice spoke lower, in a similarly mocking tone. Dana couldn’t catch the words. Cheeks hot with embarrassment, she stalked back to her ship and climbed under to get the next two spheres.

The bootsteps came closer. “A daffodil,” said the woman. “No… better. He’s a buttercup!”

Dana counted silently to ten, and then scooped up the power spheres and marched to the charging console again. The hatch of the Moth fighter closed as she passed, which meant at least that she didn’t have to face the owner of that mocking voice.

As she returned for the final spheres, the hatch re-opened, and a woman leaned out. She was at least a decade older than Dana, with long black hair that swung over her shoulder as she leaned out of the Moth.

Not a pilot, not with hair like that. She had to be a passenger. A wealthy, entitled, sarcastic passenger.

“Nice ship,” said the woman, almost sincere. Almost immediately, her mouth twisted up into a smirk and it was then that Dana noticed her scar, a long jagged line that started a little above the corner of her eye, and slashed down her jawline. “What do you call that colour?”

“Buttercup,” Dana said, and continued with her work.

As the spheres hummed away in the charging console, the station report on Dana’s dart came through. The last leg of her journey hadn’t done too much damage to the hull, despite the meteor storm they had weathered near the Daughters of Peace, but it was going to take take six hours for new software to upload into the navigation system, and for the spheres to fully charge.

Time enough to have a drink or three, and maybe rent a room for a sleeping shift where her feet didn’t dangle off the edge of the bunk.

Dana took a quick sonic shower, buzzed her black hair even shorter against her scalp, and changed into a fresh flight suit. She hesitated about the jacket. It looked smart, especially with the three platinum studs at the collar. But while it was the fashion to wear identity and credit studs publicly, she wasn’t sure if she should be so cavalier about the third, which contained her formal application to the Royal Space Fleet on Paris Satellite.

Would it be any safer here on the ship?

She straightened her jacket. It was blue with gold trim, and made her flight suit look more official, like she was already a Musketeer.

After a moment’s thought, she popped the three studs off the collar of the jacket and pressed them one by one against the side of her neck. They burrowed in with a tingling sensation, glittering brighter against her brown skin than they had been against the jacket. Old fashioned to wear them this way, but if she lost the jacket, she would still have everything important to her. Her credit, her identity, and her future.

She had a photo silk tucked into one of her pockets, an extravagant gift that Mama had pressed on her – it displayed images of Mama and her old friends from the golden days, including a certain Pilot Treville who was now Commander of the Musketeers.

“That will put her in a good mood if nothing else,” Mama hissed, before kissing Dana quickly and all but shoving her into the cockpit of the ‘Buttercup’. “She’s a hard nut, Treville, and I don’t imagine she’s softened with age. This might blur the edges a little.”

Dana looked at the photo silk now, with its rotation of vintage images. Musketeers smiling, laughing, playing pranks on each other. A life so very different from the dull monotony of Gascon Station. It was everything she had always wanted.

She kissed the edge of the silk, and shoved it back in the pocket of her jacket, for safekeeping.

* * * * *

The bar was crowded and noisy. Dana was glad she had her studs securely on her neck where it was harder for people to brush against them, and rather less glad for the formal jacket . She wouldn’t be able to stay in this stuffy bar for long, not without losing some layers.

The beer helped. It was cold and fresh and real, unlike anything her ship’s food printer could make. The first one went down fast, and she ordered another.

All the software in her head was jangling up a storm, not happy about the separation between pilot and ship. Dana wanted, needed to be flying again. Alcohol dulled those senses for a while, gave her half a chance of relaxing away from her metal shell. But it didn’t help with her general desire to kick and punch things.

A couple of Mendaki pilots introduced her to a game of Pharaoh, and while their trailing tendrils meant they could spin the cards suspiciously fast, they were also generous about buying rounds of moonshine shots. Dana was basically wasted by the time the Milord walked into the bar.

She would have known he was a New Aristocrat even without a closer look at his identity stud. Every inch of him was gene-modified and glowing with artificial health. White skin, silver hair and piercing blue eyes. It almost hurt to look at him.

He did not belong in a grotty place like this, with the grease-stained engineers, gambling aliens and the handful of pilots lured in the cheap price of moonshine.

Which might explain why the Milord did not purchase a drink, but instead allowed himself to be guided into a back room.

Dana lost her stake, and then another. Her fellow punters snickered at her, if that was what the shivery, mocking sound they made with their mouth-tubes meant. The dealer shuffled, and dealt again. More drinks miraculously appeared on the table. The room became hotter.

A false breath of cool air flooded the bar as a new pair of rogues swaggered in. One was the woman from the Moth, her shining sweep of hair pinned back with decorative combs, to show off the scar that cut through half her face. She had a dreadlocked lad at her side in coveralls. He must be an engineer – no self-respecting pilot would venture out in such scruffy gear even in a crap-hole like this. The engie stayed at the bar and ordered himself a beer while the woman headed past the Pharaoh table to the back of the bar.

Dana pulled her gaze away, but not fast enough. The woman saw her, and raised a hand in a mocking salute. “Ho there, Buttercup.”

Rage blistered behind Dana’s eyes. She turned back to the game, just in time to hear the dealer sing “Bank!” Every player leaned in to have their credit stud scanned, to update the wins and the losses.

She had lost too much. With her debt settled, she pushed away from the table. Time to piss, and then get back to the ship to sleep off the drink. No comfortable room for her now.

Paris. Think about Paris.

The bar blurred around her as she took a few steps. Damn it. At this rate, she’d have to take a dose of Sobriety from the vending slot at the door, and that only meant she had wasted more money on this stupid night.

Dana staggered out the back of the bar and made her way along a small grey corridor until she reached the convenience stalls. Someone had charmingly painted the words ‘Sea of Tranquility’ over the door. Safe in a stall, she leaned her head against the cool surface of the wall and peed every drop of liquid out of her body. It took some time.

Doors banged, nearby.

“This is classy, sweetness,” said a mocking voice. Male. Fancy accent. The Milord, perhaps? Or another just like him.

“Last place anyone would expect to find you,” said a voice, female. Sarcastic enough to be the woman from the Moth, but Dana would not be prepared to testify to that. For all she knew, the voices came from inside her own skull.

“Break the news to me gently,” said the Milord with something like a laugh. “I’m so close to Valour, I could kiss it, so that would make it far too easy. Some other planet – the dregs of Freedom? God, don’t make it be Freedom, I haven’t a thing to wear with the arse end of the solar system.”

“Truth.”

“I hate getting my feet wet.”

“With the amount the Cardinal is paying you, I think you can buy new boots. You’re to catch our friend before she breaks into orbit, and plant a suggestion exactly where it can do the most good -” A soft sound, which could have been a kiss, or an information stud burrowing into skin. “Think you can handle that?”

“I live to serve, Ro my darling.”

“You’d better.”

Doors banged again as more noisy drunken customers came in. The voices of the conspirators were drowned out.

Dana stood. Still drunk, but able to walk. She tidied herself, washed her hands in the sonic spray, and finally headed out to the bar.

Her Mendaki pals waved their tendrils at her as she passed, but she gave a rueful smile and shook her head. No more of that.

At the door, she hesitated by the vending slot. Sobriety felt like giving up, and besides, she was nearer pleasantly drunk than she had been. Surely she could make it back to her ship in one piece without deleting tonight’s consumption. On the other hand, a capsule of Hydrate would not be a bad idea.

Someone shoved her from behind, and she banged her forehead on the vending slot.

“Sorry, sailor,” said a cheerful voice, and when Dana turned, she saw the woman from the Moth, far from apologetic. “All a bit much for you, is it?” she smirked, with a nod to the vending slot. “No shame in that, Buttercup.”

Dana breathed faster. She felt her hands tightening into fists.

The woman noticed, and her smile widened. “Oh, please,” she said. “Try.”

Dana hit her. That was her first mistake. The woman from the Moth leaned away from the blow so fast it barely tapped her jaw, and then with one thudding motion had Dana on the floor, an elbow jabbed hard into the soft skin of her bared throat.

The floor hurt. Everything hurt. Dana stared up at the woman, and wondered if it counted as cheating if you threw up on someone during a fight. At this angle, she was more likely to throw up on herself. Best keep it down.

“Now then, citizens, take this outside, shall we?” declared a burly bartender, marching over to them. “Or upstairs, if you’d prefer, no questions asked,” he added in a lower voice, where it could only be heard by Dana, her opponent, and the dreadlocked engie who was there now too, tugging at his boss’s arm.

“Ro, don’t,” he said in a pleading voice. “That’s enough.”

“Well, Buttercup?” the woman from the Moth asked, still smiling as she pressed her elbow more forcefully against Dana’s collarbone. “Fancy a Duel? I don’t make this offer to just anyone.”

The engie swore quietly, and walked away, washing his hands of her.

Dana blinked up into the face of her enemy. “Yes,” she said. “Yeah. Bring it on.”

* * * * *

Before Dana D’Artagnan left home, her Papa had some advice for her. As he ran Mama’s old ship through that last coat of (ugh) colour and polish for the journey, he said: “Fight as much as you can, lovey, it sharpens your reflexes. The best pilots are demons with their fists. Just look at your mother. She was a menace in every bar fight, and there was no one faster than her at the helm of a dart. Everyone knew it.”

“That was why I crashed so many,” laughed her Mama. “Fight if you must, Dana. Pilots are all half crazy, thanks to all that shit they wire into our heads. If you want them to take you seriously, you have to embrace the crazy. Let go a little. Kick some heads in on your day off. But for fuck’s sake, don’t Duel.”

Here she was, in a room above a seedy bar, with the metallic taste of the psychic drug still sharp in her mouth.

Duels were illegal, which was why the bartender had kept his offer quiet. Still, they had gathered quite an audience. The Mendaki card-sharks were exchanging bets, and pilots and engies alike were happy to scan their credit studs again in such a splendid cause.

Dana sat on a straight-backed chair, with the woman from the Moth opposite her. Between them glowed the static of the game.

Her enemy looked older in this light. Ro. No last name. She could be as old as forty, though she held herself like a younger woman. Like she knew how hot she was. And oh, the bitch would not stop smiling.

“Red,” said the woman from the Moth. “Have you duelled before, Buttercup?”

My name is D’Artagnan, Dana wanted to shout, but the last thing she should do was give this crowd her name. “Blue,” she said. Anything but yellow.

She didn’t care what history her parents had with that bloody buttercup-coloured ship, she was selling it the second she got to Paris Satellite. The fleet would provide her with a new dart when she was accepted into their ranks. Musket-class, all the way, state of the art. She would never have to hear the word ‘buttercup’ ever again.

The static dissipated, leaving a holographic starscape hanging in the air between the two players. Two tiny spaceships sparked into life: a blue Sabre-class dart, and a red Moth fighter.

The bartender, who had set them up for this and taken a fee from each of the players because the bribe-hungry officials here on Meung Station would demand a cut of tonight’s illicit proceeds, now darkened the room so all that could be seen were the two ships and the faces of their players.

Dana had taken pilot drugs before. They were a necessary part of training, placing you inside the navigational computer of your ship, helping you to build the necessary reflexes to fly as fast and as sharp as you needed to. Blending the synapses of your actual brain with new software programmed into your head through a series of implants. When you flew, your hands and head were both directly plugged into the helm.

Eventually, you learned to fly with the implants but no drugs to connect you. Dana preferred that, the streamlined flight. As soon as she was able, she stopped using pilot drugs altogether. Sure, it made you a more ‘perfect’ pilot, but there was something creepy and mechanical about the process. She loved the helm at her hands, and the stars inside her head. She hated the sensation of not being able to tell where one began and the other ended.

It had been a surprise to no one when the tools of the pilot trade were turned into an illegal gambling drug. In Mama and Papa’s day it hadn’t even been illegal, not until the first back alley deaths rolled in and Something Had To Be Done.

“You might as well stick each other with metal blades,” her Mama had muttered, telling Dana about friends she had served with in her youth, Musketeers who spent too much down-time on Duel after Duel until there was nothing left of their brains but mush. The warning was clear. Only idiots let pride and honour get in the way of actual brain functions.

Dana inhaled now, and the blue dart in the scape quivered. There it was. Almost like a real ship, she could feel its controls and its computer, blossoming inside her thoughts. She could direct it, up and down, back and forth.

If that ship was damaged or destroyed, it was going to hurt like hell.

“Game on,” said the bartender.

Thirty seconds into the Duel, it became evident that Dana had been very, very wrong about the woman from the Moth. Long hair be damned, she was a pilot. An exceptional one.

It was fun at first, like any other game. Dana and the Moth dodged and swooped around each other, shooting laser cannons through the false starscape, hiding and refuelling behind asteroids and occasionally (quite by accident) blowing up whole planets.

The first time that the Moth caught a glancing strike across Dana’s bow, she felt a flashburn in the back of her skull, and almost couldn’t see for a few precious seconds. That part was true, then.

The reason that pilot drugs were used in training and long haul interstellar voyages but never in combat was because any damage to the ship rebounded to the pilot. It wasn’t always fatal, but it was no lover’s kiss.

The Moth closed in, chasing the Dart from asteroid to asteroid. She was good, and she was practiced, and more than that, she knew exactly how to shoot Dana’s avatar so as to hurt her, to send just enough flashburn or sharp electric shocks through her brain. Enough to hurt, to sting, to shock, but never quite enough to finish the game.

This ‘Ro’ was toying with Dana, and that made Dana angry. She was good at being angry. Nine times out of ten, being angry made her better at whatever she was doing.

She saw how to do it now, and next time the Moth flitted between two safe spots, Dana slipped in from an unexpected side. This time it was her laser cannon blasting hard across the Moth’s wing.

Ro rocked back, gritting her teeth against the pain that must have overwhelmed her. Dana did exactly what the Moth had not been doing, closing in for the kill.

But no, the Moth was fast, too damned fast, and the pilot knew the layout of this game far better than Dana. They spiralled together out of the asteroid belt and into blank, empty space. Dana whirled her dart around to fire, but the Moth was there first, facing her dead on, and the laser cannons flashed bright.

Her vision was red, all red, and she could not feel the dart in her brain any more. Dana coughed and choked on her own spit, not knowing why until someone turned her roughly over and she realised, floor, I’m lying on the floor again, fuck, I never even made it to Paris.

Everything hurt, and she could not see.

Then it stopped hurting.

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, visit my Patreon page. Pledges can earn rewards such as ebooks, extra content, dedications and the naming of spaceships. My next funding goal ($100 a month) will unlock a weekly rewatch-and-blog of Robotech, for all your space opera viewing delights.