C.M. Simpson's Blog, page 90

Tuesday's Short - Just a Dinosaur

This week’s short story takes us from the science-fiction setting of love and family set against a back-drop of a hard-fought war to this Australian-set urban fantasy tale of discovery, danger and paleontology gone wrong. Welcome to Just a Dinosaur.
The legends hinted at some kind of dinosaur. Oliver hoped it was a new species, and he had Nate believing him. Together, they hope to circumvent the prohibitions of intruding on a sacred site, to prove the creature existed—and all without their boss, and Nate’s lover, finding out. What exactly lies behind the legends—and, more importantly, will they be able to reveal it to the world?


Just a Dinosaur is available as a stand-alone short story at the following links: books2read.com/u/mBeqvk.
You can also find Kristine Kathryn Rusch's latest free short story over on her blog: kriswrites.com. Why don't you go and check it out?

Carlie's Chapter 4 - Dear Tiger: Don't Look Back

LAST WEEK, Tiger revealed what had happened to his parents. This week, Simone tells Tiger she's found help in the form of a group called Odyssey.Chapter 4 – New Allies
Dear Tiger

I don’t know if you’ll get this, but I’m sending it anyway.I know you’re out there. Somewhere. I know you’ll answer if you can.You’ll be glad to know I made it. I got right out of the FedExplore complex, and onto this cruise liner. Thing is, I wasn’t supposed to be there.I know, right? Like that was a surprise.I found an empty cabin and managed to hide out for about three days. I even hooked into the computer so it made the cabin invisible. Odyssey weren’t real happy about that. When they found me, they were going to hand me over to GalPol—and then I told them who I was.They have psis, Tiger.Good ones. Ones so good you don’t even know they’re in your head until they’ve been there for a while—and that was even with all the stuff you sent me. This one didn’t even trigger the alert sequence.Anyway, they agreed to take me on.They’ve given me a new name, and are taking me somewhere safe, somewhere FedExplore can’t reach.And they’re real mad at what’s been done to us.Anyway, they said to tell you they wanted to help.Tell me where they can meet you, and they’ll be there.And be careful, Tiger.What if those things follow you? What if they cut loose on board a space ship?I wish I knew you were safe, and doing okay.Get in touch with Odyssey. They’ll help you.
Love
Simone.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The complete series is available as short, individual ebooks, and will become available as an omnibus, later this year. In the meantime, you can find them on this blog, until one week after the last chapter in the last book of the series has been posted, at which point this series will be taken down, and a new series serialised on site.
books2read.com/u/4Awrze
books2read.com/u/mgrxdR




















books2read.com/u/4DoG8D books2read.com/u/b5Mng1
books2read.com/u/3GYBla books2read.com/u/4782k8

Wednesday's Verse - The Protector's Wish

This week’s verse moves from  a speculative verse about outliving our children to a a fantasy verse about one man protecting those we love. It is taken from 366 Days of Poetry , a collection of mixed-genre poetry released in 2016.
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The Protector's Wish


If you love me—then leave me.

Save the others; save yourself,
for I am beyond redemption.
I am well beyond your help.
I know you are beside me,
but my blood it stains the snow,
and you have no way to staunch it,
no way to stop the flow,
so, if you love me, then please leave me.
Leave my sword, my dagger and bow,
and I will give you time to flee,
and to save the others I love so,
for while you cannot save me,
and I cannot save myself,
I can help you get away,
to reach shelter, and reach help.
Tie the wound off tightly, love,
and take our children and yourself,
and get you as far and fast from here,
as you can with all my help,
and I will, when it is over,
look down on you and ours,
and I will guard you from above,
through all your living hours.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------You can find the first two poetry collections at the links below - although there are plans to reissue them with more genre-appropriate covers in the future. The third collection will be released later in the year.

books2read.com/u/mVLQZb books2read.com/u/bxgyLd

Tuesday's Short - Jalaya

This week’s short story takes us from one woman's search for a war hero on a distant war-torn world to a science fiction tale of love and family against the backdrop of a long-fought war. Welcome to Jalaya.  


Separated by duty, and reunited by the same


Michael has helped the villagers survive the invasion for ten years. This year, he cannot. Cut off from escape, their only hope of salvation is to return to the village, and pray. Returning to the village means returning to his fiancé, forced by a secret family tradition to remain, when duty called him to leave. But reunions will have to wait. First they have to bring their people home.



Jalaya is available as a stand-alone, novella-length short story at the following links: https://www.amazon.com/Jalaya-CM-Simpson-ebook/dp/B0084RX4FO/.
You can also find Kristine Kathryn Rusch's latest free short story over on her blog: kriswrites.com. Why don't you go and check it out?

Carlie's Chapter 3 - Dear Tiger: Don't Look Back

LAST WEEK, Simone was worrying about where Tiger was. This week, Tiger tells her what happened to his parents and the colony on Deskeden.Chapter 3 – Unexpected Incursion

Hey, Simone.
Quick note. I’m fine.
Um, why did I stay?
Because mum and dad got into the ruins, and they found these strange slime moulds, and I remember what you said about the stuff in the jars. I tried to stop them from going back in, but they refused to listen, so I had to wait.
And while I waited I did another condensed course—this one on slime moulds. Thing was, I couldn’t find anything on the ones you talked about, or the ones we’d found in the ruins, so I had to do a base work-up. Mum and dad were thrilled! They thought it was wonderful that there was finally something we could work on as a family.
They weren’t so impressed when I told them why I was doing it. And they really didn’t like what I had to say about what happened to you.
What can I say, Sim? I was missing you, and I lost my temper. The thought they could be so naïve about what might happen, and then the way they just brushed all my fears away like I was some stupid, small child… Well. Let’s just say I let them have it with both barrels.
And I’m not proud of that. Really, I’m not.
Not just because they were shocked that it happened, but more because they were shocked by the way I got my information. It was like they didn’t want to believe the way the company had behaved. We had the biggest argument that night, let me tell you—and the next day, they disappeared.
Just… vanished.
Screaming at me to run, because I’d gone after them, because their equipment had started playing up.
One minute they were moving through what looked like a large, underground amphitheatre, and the next their broadcast started to fizz and crackle, and I lost the picture. I was supposed to stay on the monitors, but I couldn’t. I mean, I’d already lost you; I didn’t want to lose them as well, and I couldn’t just sit and wait for someone else to go check it out—especially not when I was the one who actually knew what was growing on those stone benches, and what to do if someone got infected by it.
I scrambled the emergency crew, and got Kiara to take my place, and then I went down to find out what had happened to them.
I didn’t want to think the worst. I really didn’t. I wanted to believe the emergency team leader when she said it was probably just a glitch in the gear. I really, really did.
We went into the ruins quickly, but carefully. They deployed a forward team to scan ahead of the medics and the guys carrying the rescue equipment, just in case there’d been a cave in, or there was the sudden arrival of some unknown predator—and goodness knows I’d been studying a lot of those in the last few weeks. Those slime moulds are very aggressive.
I was wondering which one had gotten out of containment, when we reached the edge of the amphitheatre, and I could see that it wasn’t what we thought.
For one thing, my parents were fine, kind of. They were standing exactly where they’d been standing when the equipment cut out, and they were busy recording what was happening on the amphitheatre stage.
Why they were doing that, I don’t know. Maybe they had already worked out they weren’t going to survive, and were doing their best to document it, so the rest of us would know what happened. Anyway, I moved forward for a closer look, and the rest of the team moved forward with me.
“Do you think they’ll listen to you if you tell them to leave?” the team leader asked, and I shook my head.
She gave a sigh, and then stepped past me, signalling to four of her team as she did so.
‘You’d better wait here,’ she said, and they all trotted forward.
I wanted to go with them, but I was terrified.
It was like we were standing on the edge of a tropical storm, and the amphitheatre looked all shivery. The air in front of me was warmer than the air around me, but it felt hot and dry, rather than hot and wet, and I knew that couldn’t be. We were coming into the cooler season, so I couldn’t figure out where all the heat was coming from—and then there was the light.
I don’t know what was on that stage, but I didn’t know of anything that could throw a light like that, all orangey red, with a touch of yellow fizzing around the centre. I didn’t like the look of it. As the team leader advanced, I followed.
For the life of me I couldn’t work out why my parents hadn’t moved.
It was hard to keep an eye on them, and an eye on the light on stage, but I tried. I think that’s what saved me, too. The team reached my parents, and the team leader reached out and laid her hand on my mum’s shoulder. Her off-sider did the same for my dad, and I looked up.
The light had become hurtingly bright, and it made my eyes sting, but it was what it was doing that almost made me forget my parents. You see, Sim, the light was growing. It had started out as a glow surrounding the thing on the dais, but when I looked this time, it had stretched up to form a sort of pointed arch.
The arch grew wider, enough to be a doorway, and then this… creature stepped through. It was an alien, Sim, bipedal, and wearing some sort of power armour. I watched it step out of the light, saw it pause to scan the auditorium, and realised why my parents hadn’t moved.
That thing stooped down and lifted two cables from the stage floor. When it pulled on them, my parents cried out, and stumbled towards it. I started to run after them, even as the rescue team leaned across them and took hold of the cables, some pulling against the alien, and some trying to cut the lines.
The alien pulled again, and everyone shouted. I was shouting, too, and my parents heard, and they looked back. And that’s when they told me to run, and to not look back.
I wasn’t going to, Sim, but then that archway flared bright orange and six more of those monsters came through. They were armoured, and they carried harpoons. I hadn’t understood what had happened to my parents, until they fired.
Each harpoon took out one of the rescue team, and then my dad reached over and grabbed hold of the team leader’s las-pistol. He pulled it out and fired, and the bolt hit the thing that held their ropes. It gave this angry roar, and pointed at them… and that’s when my parents disappeared.
They went up in a flare of light, and everyone holding their ropes fell.
And I ran, Sim. I ran as fast out of those tunnels as I could.
I hit the surface, and I ran for the comms hut. I was going to call for help, but it was too late.
I hadn’t even made it half way, before the air around me started to get real hot, just like it had in the amphitheatre—and then a sliver of light appeared, right in the middle of camp.
That’s where we had our comms centre. In the middle of camp.
There was no way known I was going near that light.
I turned and ran for shuttle field. They were still unloading, but they stopped when I showed them the… portal?
There’s a protocol about things like that.
Unexplained phenomena.
They pulled everyone nearest them back into the shuttle, and they lifted. They might have waited longer, except by then they could see the aliens coming through. There were flashes of light and people fell, and the shuttle crew didn’t wait any longer than that.
We left so many behind.
And I didn’t even try to get them to wait.
I’m sorry, Sim.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The complete series is available as short, individual ebooks, and will become available as an omnibus, later this year. In the meantime, you can find them on this blog, until one week after the last chapter in the last book of the series has been posted, at which point this series will be taken down, and a new series serialised on site.
books2read.com/u/4Awrze
books2read.com/u/mgrxdR




















books2read.com/u/4DoG8D books2read.com/u/b5Mng1
books2read.com/u/3GYBla books2read.com/u/4782k8

Wednesday's Verse - When Our Children are Gone

This week’s verse moves from  an urban fantasy Seussesque verse about an unfortunate meeting with an elf to a speculative verse provoked by a colleague's comment that parents are likely to outlive their children because of their children's unhealthy lifestyle choices. It is taken from 365 Days of Poetry , a collection of mixed-genre poetry released in 2015.
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When Our Children are Gone


When our children are gone
who do we turn to,
in this world where the aging
outlive their own?
When we bury them under,
stand at their gravesides, forlorn,
what do we live for?
Where next do we wander?
When our children are gone
from a lifestyle decayed,
poisoned by too many good things
hard-bought,
hard-won by our labours,
bestowed as our plunder,
not earned or worked for,
but given away?
When our children are gone,
and we are what’s left,
and the world turns again,
come the hard times, the good times,
the warp and the weft.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------You can find the first two poetry collections at the links below - although there are plans to reissue them with more genre-appropriate covers in the future. The third collection will be released later in the year.

books2read.com/u/mVLQZb books2read.com/u/bxgyLd

Tuesday's Short - Jacob's Vision

This week’s short story takes us from an undersea adventure on a distant world to one woman's search for a war hero in a war-torn land. Welcome to Jacob's Vision.
Erin writes of her earthbound memories of an interplanetary war, of the fate of a war hero, and of the start of re-building.Jacob's Vision

The hill, with its footing of green-studded black, was the same as I remembered it. I stood at the top of the ridge looking out, seeing the city ruins, imagining the glow from its center at night.

I’d seen the ruins, and watched that glow before—with Jacob. It had always been his dream that we would return, that the beacon he had set would bring rescue, or aid in the rebuilding he had envisioned.
Sighing, I settled myself at the foot of one of the scarred and blackened statues, and set my notecase beside me. I took the hardbound notebook from the case, opened it and continued writing.
I had been telling of my fifth week with the Wanderers. It had been two days before I’d begun to seek Jacob’s vision in earnest, and it had been near dusk.
With another sigh, I lifted my pen to continue my recollections where I’d left them the night before.


*   *   *


It was close to dusk when we met and I looked from one face to the other. “We need to find out what’s in them?”
Kurt nodded.
I scanned their faces again. Ilya with one arm in dirt-encrusted bandages; Padraig, leg splinted from thigh to heel; and Allie whose bloused shirt hid the strapping across her ribs. They all watched me in return.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll go.”
Kurt smiled, and rested his hand on my shoulder. “We’ll meet you at Cone Hill.”
I couldn’t help but let my startlement show. “Cone Hill?”
It was their term for a ‘secret place’, an unscheduled reunion. We used it in case one of us was captured. When that one was questioned, as they invariably were, the others were safe. It hadn’t failed yet.
I sighed. Understanding, but disappointed all the same.
Kurt’s hand squeezed my shoulder. “You’d better get started,” he said. “It’s getting dark.”
I don’t remember how I made it into the sheds. I went under the fence through a dust-filled hollow, I think, then across the open space surrounding the buildings before the searchlights became effective against the dusk. What I saw inside made me feel sick to the stomach.
I could only bring myself to glance into the high-fenced stalls, noting the gutters and runways beneath them. There were enclosures of steel that I didn’t take the time to peer into, and there were pits, pristine and concrete, that were unused and empty.
I remembered visiting a similar structure after it had been used. Death had ruled there. People, survivors like myself, had been slaughtered like cattle, trapped inside the killing sheds except for the lucky few transported to be slaves for some distant despot. Jacob had led a strike team against the captors who had held the rest.
Our suspicions confirmed, I left the sheds. There was another enclosure to investigate, but I was sure the team had made the right decision in leaving the area. I would make one swift pass through the sheds belonging to the second site and circle back to our camp. If I made it back tonight, Kurt and the others would still be waiting. Come dawn and they’d be gone.
Together, we had watched the people manning both enclosures. Military types, but we had come to the conclusion they didn’t belong to the same side. The two camps seemed to be in a state of constant hostility. It had intrigued us, and given us hope.
If those in one camp were cannibals and traffickers in human flesh, would it be foolish to hope that those in the other were not? I had voiced the question, and I had been chosen to see if I was a fool.
I slipped through the dust pool under the first compound’s fence, and crept swiftly between the rolling hummocks of grass and salt bush that separated it from the second compound. Several times I was forced to submerge myself in a convenient hollow, or freeze, as still as a hunted rabbit, until a searchlight’s beam had swept across me.
The second compound was more alert. There were no dust pools beneath the parts of its fence that I could reach, and the reinforced mesh was full of sensors. I noted cameras on the fence-top and was careful to avoid their arc. There was also the tell-tale shape of transformers indicating the fence was electrified. No entry here and no way to discover what was inside. I widened my circle of search, hoping to find some other sign of what the compound might contain.
Thirty yards clear of the fence I heard voices grumbling in a thicket of sand thorn, and crept closer to listen.
“D’you believe this camp director’s gall? Not lettin’ us in till sun-up. I mean, I ask you.”
Another voice sighed tiredly in the dark. “Leave it alone, ’Cormak. He’s got slavers on his mind.”
“All the more reason to let us in tonight.”
“Nah, it’s too dark. Anyway, we’re safe here.”
The voice that was ’Cormak’s grumbled something further but then quietened. I wormed my way into the edge of the thorn bush, trying for a visual.
My night-vision goggles showed two figures by a camp stove and, more importantly, a truck in cam-netted obscurity, parked in a gap in the shrubs behind them. I withdrew swiftly and circled ’round to the truck.
This was my entry. I crawled beneath the hulking vehicle, and wormed my way into the cleft above its front axle. Now I could rest.
I woke to the first thunderous rumble of the truck’s engine and a grinding of gears. Bracing myself as I was jolted in the perch I had found, I held back a surge of excitement and fear. I was on my way.
The guards on the gate gave me pause to worry when they joked with ’Cormak about stopping to pick up hitchhikers. ’Cormak grumbled a reply so obviously without humor that I nearly joined in the laughter at his expense as the truck rolled through.
I waited for the truck to stop on the other side. I’d thought perhaps it would come to a halt behind the towers on the gate, but it didn’t. It kept going until it felt as though it was running the full length of the enclosure. The ground grew rougher as it progressed, the unforgiving axle passing on every bump and jolt until I felt my grip shaking loose.
After it had run what I guessed to be the length of the perimeter, the truck slowed and took a corner. I tried to visualize where we were in relation to the shadowy domes I had seen the night before. The truck ran what I thought was half the perimeter’s depth and took another corner. It was definitely heading for the domes. This might turn out better than I’d hoped.
My fingers slipped, and I began to slide from my perch. Lunging for purchase, I failed to find a hold and felt a fingernail tear. I bounced off the shelf and over the axel, scrabbling for purchase. The ground grazed my legs, stomach and arms as I fell beneath the chassis, coiling reflexively into a ball to avoid the oncoming wheels.
The wheels rumbled by on either side, too close for comfort, and then the sun shone down and I was in the open. Cautiously unrolling, I lifted my head and looked around. There were two guards, in camouflaged uniforms, standing in front of a dome not ten feet away. I froze, scanning for cover.
I had just decided the dome was it when one of them went from staring relaxedly past his partner at the truck to alertly studying me. Crap. I got up and ran, the movement alerting his partner. They shouted as I set my sights on some sort of suspended bubble-shaped container. It was the closest cover I could reach and I was hoping it would provide me with some kind of cover from their weapons. Where I’d go to next, I had no idea.
The bubble looked like some kind of torture chamber… or a pump-house for a well or something. If it was a torture chamber, I didn’t want to be anywhere near it. Same for if it was a pump house. Unfortunately, the situation didn’t give me much of a choice. Shelter, any kind of shelter, was better than a bullet any day. I heard the crack of a rifle, took a sliding dive under the bubble’s edges, hit concrete and lost more skin as another shot rang out.
I came up cursing. Shower bay. Sprayer on the wall, taps underneath it. Open door, facing another small building opposite. I bolted across the bare two meters separating them, slid under the side of the second shower bay and came up on the other side, took a bead on one of the domes with the idea of getting inside and lying low before anyone could work out where I’d gone.
It was a thin hope, a pipe dream in reality, but desperation to escape capture made me try. I’d gone half the distance before guards shouted again. Uh-uh, no way. Not stopping. Sorry guys. Too shit-scared. You missed the first time; you’ll probably miss again.
Please miss again.
Another voice joined the first two. Deep and full of authority it almost halted me in my tracks. Almost, except underlying the unmistakable aura of command, there was an element of unvoiced menace that only made me run harder.
I heard footsteps behind me, gaining, another guard coming from the perimeter to my left, or maybe the gate towers themselves. A long way to run; he’d be tired, but again, that voice rang out. Commanded to halt, I turned my gaze from the dome I was heading towards and glanced towards the guard. He was ahead of me, coming in at an angle, definitely from one of the guard towers, and coming in faster than I’d known a man could run. He was on a perfect line to reach me before I could reach the dome.
A glance behind me confirmed that the two guards behind me had cleared the shower sheds and had a clear line of fire. Both had stopped just clear of the last shed and raised their rifles to their shoulders.
Nobody’s fool, I threw myself into a slid and stopped. When no shots were fired, I lifted my head and very slowly got to my feet. The two guards tracked me with their rifles, but didn’t move, so I slowly turned to face the third guard, the guard with the voice of command.
I held my hands away from my body, watching him slow his pace to a walk. When he shouted again, I found I didn’t understand his order. He repeated the command, gesturing downwards with his hand. I still didn’t understand what was wanted so I stayed where I was, not moving, trying to get my breathing back under control.
The command was repeated a third time, but this time he stopped, and I became truly afraid. His hand went to the gun at his belt as his other hand repeated the chopping downwards motion. Any second now, I was going to die.
My feet were frozen to the soil, but my mind was racing. I had to do what they wanted or they were going to shoot me. I had to work out what they wanted or I was dead. I didn’t understand a word they were saying. I thought I was going to die until Jacob’s voice echoed, unbidden in my memory.
‘When we find somebody we always make them lie down before we go anywhere near them.’
‘And what if they don’t?’ I had asked.
‘We shoot them,’ he’d replied. His calm factuality had been the source of our first argument.
The guard raised his gun and barked the command again, bringing me abruptly back to reality. I let my knees buckle, and dropped to the ground, wishing Jacob were with me. My hands I kept well out in front of my body—no sense of threat there; Jacob would have been proud.
There were footsteps in the sand me, then I felt the cold muzzle of the someone’s side-arm against the back of my neck, the weight of someone’s knee in the middle of my back. Hands searched my clothes for weapons and found none and words were exchanged over my head. Again, I didn’t understand a word that was said.
The gun left my back, and the guard stepped away. Again, the voice spoke an order I did not understand. Slowly, I raised my face to look. The order was repeated. I tried to gain a clue to its meaning from the guard’s gesture. I could not, so I continued to stare up at him.
With a sigh of impatience, he slapped his pistol into its holster and took two strides towards me. I ducked my head as his hand descended and found myself lifted, by my shirt collar, to my feet.
A curt bark at the watching guards seemed dismissive and I watched them shoulder their rifles and march away. The guard with the voice moved his hand from my collar to my arm, and led me towards one of the shower bays.
Not certain of what to expect, but terrified by the possibilities, I shrank from it. The action resulted in my being pushed forward into the bay. While I recovered my balance, he turned on the water. I skipped back from under the spray and he reached up and redirected the nozzle until I was soaked.
Unable to escape it without taking a dive under the partition, or pushing past him, neither a good option, I stood still. The water, though it smelt of chemicals, wasn’t doing more than sting the grazes and cuts I’d suffered in my attempt to reach the dome. Did he have some sort of wet-clothes fetish, or did I need decontaminating? I couldn’t tell, but the water was luxury after months of going without.
Cautiously, I began to rinse some of the dirt from my skin, and rub at the grime on what remained of my clothes. The guard relinquished his grip on the nozzle, seeming content to wait until I’d finished.
When I felt as clean as I was going to get, without stripping off and changing into another set of clothes, I stood under the water and waited. The water was turned off and the guard’s hand was on my arm as soon as I was clear.
Again, he said something to me. I sighed.
“Français, English, Basic, Deutsch,” I said, my voice trembling with the effects of the morning’s breeze on my wet clothes, and the uncertainty I was feeling.
He smiled then.
“English will do. You will walk with me.”
“Very well,” I said, looking up at the guardian towers. “I will walk with you.”
He was, it seemed, in charge of security. I had stumbled on an inspection tour. I had shown the one flaw in security he’d failed to find. Whoopee for me.
I accompanied him to a ground-car parked beside the tower from which he’d come. Leaning through the passenger’s door, he used the radio inside it to speak with the base commander. Again I understood nothing of what he said, but I did notice that there was no one standing outside the towers and that the gate was invitingly close.
As he spoke, I began to sidle around the car. I heard ‘Excuse me,’ then the crack of a pistol. The dust exploded at my feet, and I stopped.
“Back here,” he ordered, waving the pistol in my direction.
I shuffled back to his side. He bade me sit, and pointed to the dirt at his feet. I obeyed, the pistol coming to rest at the base of my neck as I settled. I tried to ignore the dust that stuck to my still-wet trousers.
The conversation did not last long after that. I heard him agree with someone on the phone and hang up.
“That was stupid,” he said to me.
I shrugged.
He opened the back door.
“Get in.”
Again, I obeyed. He shut the door behind me and locked it. A driver materialized from one of the towers, and opened the passenger door in front for him. He climbed in and sat, buckling his safety harness before turning to cover me with the pistol. I sat quietly, while the driver took his place behind the wheel, then sat, just as quietly, through the long drive across the abandoned desert-savannah to the security officer’s main base.
When we arrived, I waited until he opened my door and took my arm once more, then allowed him to guide me into a building made of brick and glass. We walked up a flight of stairs, and through a room containing small desks and chairs.
“We educate our children here,” he told me, “but I have nowhere else so you will behave.”
I sensed the current of warning in his matter-of-fact statement. He reminded me of Jacob, so I nodded. He led me through to an office where a lady in her mid-thirties waited.
“Estelle will show you pictures. You will tell her what they are.”
I nodded, allowing him to seat me behind a desk. The woman, Estelle, showed the first picture. I looked at it and felt myself go pale. I knew this picture!
“What is it?” the man demanded.
I swallowed, and let the words spill out. “That is the cloud that follows a nuclear explosion. It is the cloud that was seen after Keraklea was destroyed. The picture was taken from the Hill of Remembrance, also known as the Hill of Peace. The statues at the foreground edge of the picture are those built in memory of those who died in the cross-galactic war that occurred earlier this century.”
I paused, looking uncertainly from the guard to the woman. They seemed to be waiting for something more. Raking through memories I’d tried hard to forget, I stumbled on.
“The radiation from this blast did not reach the Hill. The Hill was overrun and partially desecrated by Yagreshians three days later. The forest below the hill was burnt...” I stopped as a hand descended onto my shoulder and looked up.
The guard bent his face to mine. “You are not a native of Keraklea. How do you know these things?”
I looked at the desk. It was true I wasn’t a native; I had been travelling when the war began, and my own home was no more. The grip on my shoulder tightened. The question was repeated.
“How do you know?” he growled.
“I had a friend. He had the same photo in his pocket. He told me.”
To my surprise, the pressure on my shoulder did not decrease. The guard’s eyes seemed to gain an intensity they had not held before, and I trembled, feeling truly afraid.
“What was his name?”
I could see no harm in answering. “Jacob,” I said.
Now the guard crouched before me, both hands resting on my shoulders. “Jacob Konigsley? Captain Jacob Konigsley?”
I nodded.
“Where is he?”
There was an eagerness in the man’s eyes now, an eagerness and a hope that I did not feel was my place to destroy. I turned my head away.
He shook me. “Where did you see him last?”
“I saw him last on the Greermach Ridge overlooking Rinagen.”
“How was he?”
My voice, when I answered, was as emotionless as I could manage. “He was dead.”
Before the guard could ask me any more questions, there was the sound of children’s voices outside the door. The woman went to meet them. The man took me by the shoulder.
“This way,” he ordered.
I did not take my eyes from the door, or the children who were filing through it as he led me, from the office, past the desks and chairs and through another door on the other side of the room.
That door led to another corridor, and he pushed me ahead of him. I turned, walking where he directed. Behind us, the door opened once more, and the heavy-booted steps of soldiers followed. The man who led me turned his head to acknowledge them as we followed the corridor past two doors to a T-junction at its end. My guard steered me left and the soldiers followed.
The arms of the ‘t’ were short. I opened a door at the end of the left arm and walked through. It was an office, judging by the desk with one chair behind and two chairs in front of it.
I did as directed and sat in front of the desk. One of the soldiers waited outside the room but the other followed us in and closed the door behind us. My escort took his place in the seat opposite mine, the desk-top lying between us.
“What were you doing in the compound?” he asked.
“I was seeing what was there,” I replied.
It was not the best answer. Even as I finished speaking the words, I realized how impertinent they seemed. I cringed as he rose out of his seat, his face red with temper. I tried to apologize.
“I did not mean it to sound so...”
He subsided, hand slowly lowering from the drawn back position of a slap.
I tried to explain what I meant. “I was sent to see what you were doing, to see if you were the same as the... others. Your people did not seem friendly with the others. We, I was hoping to find shelter amongst you.”
Too late did I correct my mistake. His head came up from contemplating the desk, and I could sense the sudden interest of the soldier at the door.
“You said, ‘we’,” he told me.
I looked down, avoiding his gaze.
He reached a hand across the table and trapped one of mine beneath it. His grip tightened. “Tell me,” he ordered.
“There are a group of us,” I said. “We are seeking shelter.”
I stopped, and felt my face go pale as cold fear rose with realization inside my chest. I wrenched my hand free and ran for the door.
“I have to warn them,” I cried, forgetting Cone Hill and the secrecy of my friends’ location. “The Slavers will begin hunting today. I have to go.”
The soldier moved to stop me, and I dived under his hand and grabbed the door handle. It had been a long night and my thoughts were of Kurt, Ilya, Padraig and Allie. I ran into the soldier waiting outside.
My original escort looked up as I was brought back inside.
“I don’t know how you survived this long.”
I didn’t answer, but stood, waiting, for his judgment. The soldier who had returned me spoke. “General?”
“Go back outside, Private.”
My glance flicked around the room, as I started to think again, but I saw nothing that would be useful as a weapon against the general and the soldier who remained.
“Where were you supposed to meet your friends?”
I lifted my head. “I cannot tell you,” I said.
“You can tell me and I will drop you within a mile of it, or you can be silent and they can die without your help.”
“Cone Hill,” I said, and heard a snort of laughter from behind me.
Even the general seemed amused. “You were going to warn them and you didn’t even know where to find them?”
I didn’t answer that. Bastard.
He sighed. “The hunt won’t start until tomorrow if the slavers follow their usual pattern. Today they’ll be moving their people in and bolstering their defenses.”
I started to tremble, and gritted my teeth against the disappointment I felt. I wondered if Kurt had taken the others far enough away, or if they’d been stupid and waited for my report. I turned my face towards the general.
The sudden growing thunder of copter blades made his head come up and his face pale. The phone on his desk rang as a siren outside began to wail. For a long moment, I thought I’d been forgotten, then the copter sound faded into distance and a second siren sounded. The general spoke a moment longer before replacing the telephone’s receiver and turning to me.
“I have more questions to ask.”
I nodded, forcing myself back to the present, letting my body fall into the stance soldiers adopt when they know they’ll be waiting for a while. There was little I could do about the sudden wave of light-headedness I felt except to grit my teeth, although even that did not stop them from chattering with the growing chill I felt. The general studied me for a moment, then came to a decision.
“First we’ll find you some dry clothes. Sergeant.”
The soldier behind me opened the door. I waited until the general had come around the desk and taken my arm, before letting him move me towards the corridor. The two soldiers fell in behind us as we walked the left arm of the ‘t’.
I waited until we had reached the corner before jerking free of my escort and making a final bid for freedom. Surely they wouldn’t shoot me down in front of a classroom of children. Surely…
My feet slipped on the tiled floor as I made the turn, and the general’s shout of anger was punctuated by the scrape of fingertips across my back. The door to the children’s class stood not too far ahead. Through the glass window in its upper half I could see children attending their lessons. With any luck they would be enough to stop me getting shot. I drew a deep breath and barged through, past the children and the astounded woman who was their teacher.
The door to the stairs outside, I reached in a few desperate strides. The soldiers behind me had just barreled into the classroom as I slammed it closed. I leapt the rail to the landing halfway down the stairway, then raced the rest of the way into the open. Behind me, the clatter on the stairs told me my pursuers were more cautious.
I thanked the heavens for it.
The grounds below had begun to stir and heads turned towards me, as I came running out of the shelter of the building. I barely paused to acknowledge them, scanning the area for some sort of cover.
There was a square of low benches sheltered by a roof of metal sheeting. I ran to the left of this, aiming for a group of buildings where I might find shelter from the eyes of the soldiers, and cover from their guns. Already I could hear their boots behind me, scattering the gravel underfoot.
The general was shouting something in the tongue he had used when we’d first met, and already others had joined the chase.
There was a fence beyond the building I was heading for, so I swerved between the building and the benches. The general leapt the far set of benches and kept coming. I made for a gap between the buildings and skidded to a halt as a figure stumbled through it.
I was close enough to see the newcomer’s face, and stared in shock.
“Jacob?” I cried.
He stumbled again, then looked at me. I ran to support him.
“Jacob?”
The general was closing. I didn’t care. He was the only hope I had for Jacob.
All thoughts of the others were forgotten—Ilya, Kurt, Padraig and Allie. They still lived; I had thought Jacob dead. I had grieved him long ago.
Jacob stumbled again and this time I caught him and wrapped an arm of his over my shoulder. At the time, I didn’t notice the unusual texture of the skin on his back. I turned towards the general and the benches, letting Jacob rest against me.
“It’s Jacob,” I said, pleading.
Jacob stumbled against me, trying weakly to push me away. I gripped both his shoulders with my hands as he batted and shoved at me.
There was pain in his eyes, pain like I’d never seen before. I looked over his shoulder at the general and the soldiers who had halted behind him. The general had drawn his pistol and was aiming it at Jacob’s back.
“Stand clear,” he said, and his voice was husky with grief. “Stand clear,” he repeated, trying to bring an edge of hardness to his command, when I stared at him in disbelief.
“I’ll not say it again.”
Jacob turned his head and saw him. “Arras,” he croaked. His voice was a thin whisper.
Arras? His next in command? I glanced again at the general.
Jacob used my distraction to gather his strength for one final shove. I lost my grip, stumbled backwards and tripped.
“Arras, look after her. Be quick now.”
I heard the gun speak twice and Jacob sigh. He fell without speaking again.
I picked myself up from the dirt, shock sending chills along my limbs, and robbing me of the ability to speak. Jacob lay still. I made to go to him.
A shot in the ground at my feet stopped me. I looked in disbelief at the general. Again he was shouting orders in that foreign tongue but this time, the soldiers were dispersing.
He was running as he yelled, towards me, gun leveled. “Get back,” he cried, switching to English. “Get back!”
Confused, I stumbled back as the general launched himself into a long dive. It ended in a roll that swept me from my feet and flung me back against the side of a building. There he pinned me with his body and sheltered me from the blast that took Jacob irrevocably from us.


*   *   *


“Leave it now.”
I jumped as a hand descended on her shoulder, looking at the page I had been reading, then up at Arras. There were tears in my eyes; I could feel them gathering, preparing to fall.
Very carefully, I laid the pen I’d been using in the centre of the diary, then reached up and placed my hand over his.
“We have to remember, Arras,” I said.
“You’ve been remembering for over two hours,” he replied. “It’s time you rested. Tomorrow we start rebuilding. Tomorrow we remember Jacob again, and we’ll keep remembering him even after the building is done.”
I looked down at the unfinished page before me and patted his hand.
“You go on ahead, Arras. I’ll follow in a moment.”
“Ten minutes, Erin, or I’ll carry you back,” he threatened, but I heard the tone of laughter in his voice and knew he meant no harm.
“Promise. I’ll be there,” I said as I heard him walk away.
I waited until he was out of hearing then turned back to the book.


*   *   *


We have been waiting for ten years, I wrote, two years since Jacob died and ten since he set his beacon. During that time we watched the beacon and gathered all we could find to share the dream.
Two months ago, our patience was rewarded and aid arrived. The Yagreshians are being made to pay for their war and we are rebuilding Keraklea.
As for Jacob, his capture and the sabotage of his body are being avenged; the Yagreshians will pay also for his statue to join those of other heroes on the Hill of Remembrance, and I have written the apology they will sign at its foot.


*   *   *


My ten minutes were up. I could hear Arras coming up the hill, and was reminded again that good can still grow out of pain. I snapped the book shut, and shoved both it and the pen into the notecase.
When I had tucked everything away, I walked back through the statued heroes to meet Arras at the head of the path. Together we turned our backs on the sight of devastated Keraklea and looked down on the site where New Keraklea nestled on the other side of the Hill. It was Jacob’s vision becoming reality, and we were making it so.
Our hands entwined as we began the descent. Allie was cooking tonight, and Kurt would be ready with his reports. By dusk we’d be planning tomorrow’s orders. When night fell, we’d climb the Hill and stand, silent watching to see if Keraklea’s glow had diminished.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jacob's Vision is available as a stand-alone short story at the following links: https://www.amazon.com/Jacobs-Vision-CM-Simpson-ebook/dp/B0084RVXA2/.
You can also find Kristine Kathryn Rusch's latest free short story over on her blog: kriswrites.com. Why don't you go and check it out?

Carlie's Chapter 2 - Dear Tiger: Don't Look Back

LAST WEEK, Tiger revealed he had lose everyone he loved. This week, Simone wants to know where he is.Chapter 2 – Tiger Where Are You?
Tiger!  I’ve lost you. Your mind has gone dark. Your world… Deskeden… It’s… There’s no-one there. How can there be no-one there?I only looked in on it yesterday. When I looked, it was still there. There were hundreds of people. The research facility and the town to support it were in the middle of being built. There was a ship…Why isn’t there a ship, anymore?Is it something to do with the ruins? Did something happen? Is something going to happen on Sharvin?Tiger, I don’t know where you are, but I hope you are safe. I miss you, but knowing you were out there has kept me going when all I’ve wanted to do is stop and give up. Knowing you were on Deskeden had me worried sick, but only because the company might work out you were still there, and still important to me. Not because of whatever happened to your parents.Why did you wait so long to leave? I thought it was only going to take you a few weeks, but it’s been months, Tiges. What happened?All I know is you were waiting for the new scientist to learn how to transfer the DNA, and for Kiara to become his assistant. And I know you didn’t tell them anything. What I don’t know is how you planned to get off world, and why you stayed so long.I was real worried about you, Tiges.
I still am.
Stay safe.
Simone.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The complete series is available as short, individual ebooks, and will become available as an omnibus, later this year. In the meantime, you can find them on this blog, until one week after the last chapter in the last book of the series has been posted, at which point this series will be taken down, and a new series serialised on site.
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Wednesday's Verse - I Met an Elf on a Summer's Day

This week’s verse moves from  a poem about the moon to an almost-Dr-Seuss-style urban-fantasy piece about meeting the wrong kind of elf. It is taken from 366 Days of Poetry , a collection of mixed-genre poetry released in 2016.
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I Met anElf on a Summer's Day


It happened on a summer’s day,
I saw an elf along the way,
and what do you think I heard him say?
Hey, babe, are you headed my way?
Not what I thought to hear from an elf
I said to my somewhat gobsmacked self.
So, I shook my head, and wished him good health,
but told him I was going somewhere else.
Hey, babe, what do you mean?
And then he said something quite obscene,
so I kept walking, though my soul did keen
for the elves who’d in my childhood been,
those merry souls, who in forests danced,
who magicked the unicorns who pranced,
and cast magicks quite advanced.
Why couldn’t I have met one of those by chance?
Instead, I’d met one that was quite a lout,
who from the hills had ridden out,
and who obscenities did spout
So I hauled back my fist and his nose did clout,
and because I’m not quite all a fool,
I fled to the sanctuary of a school,
and in the headmaster’s office my heels did cool,
all on a summer’s day.
Until the elf had gone away.
For no invitation was extended, and he could not stay
out from the hills, in a world not his own,
where the children carried cold iron home.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------You can find the first two poetry collections at the links below - although there are plans to reissue them with more genre-appropriate covers in the future. The third collection will be released later in the year.

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Tuesday's Short - In Service to the Pinnacle

This week’s short story takes us from the journalistic commentary of headlines on Earth's involvement in inter-planetary politics to a distant underwater world where diplomacy of a different kind is required. Welcome to In Service to the Pinnacle.
Jamie has two names, and a whole bunch of secrets that she keeps from everyone, including her employer, Odyssey—which is no mean feat, given what that company does—but, when a mission takes her to Askreya, she has to deal with an old dilemma, an old foe, and something entirely new, and her secrets begin to come to light. Can she finish her mission, without everything being revealed?In Service to the Pinnacle

Why anyone would want to serve a stone was beyond her, but Jamie Anderson just took the news with a shrug, and reached for her kit.

“What’s the aim?”
“You have to keep the rock alive for the next forty-eight hours,” Lassiter told her.
Jamie stopped, not sure she’d heard him right. Lassiter was looking at her expectantly.
“It’s a rock,” she said.
“It’s a living rock,” Lassiter told her.
“Riiight. And what kills it?”
“That’s not something they were willing to divulge. I tried to explain that it would be difficult to keep their Pinnacle alive, if we didn’t know what posed a threat to it. The only thing I could get from them was that it wouldn’t be a good idea to let the Pinnacle get wet.”
Jamie quirked an eyebrow.
“As in water causes erosion, and might cause premature aging?”
“Something like that.”
“But you said they’re visiting a water world.”
Lassiter gave a short laugh.
“I know. Ironic isn’t it?”
Jamie put her hands on her hips.
“Okay, boss. What did I do, this time?”
She watched as Lassiter’s face went from amused, to surprised, to a complete and utter blank.
“Come on, boss. What was it?”
“Well, there was that little matter on Deloran III.”
“Yeah, and how was I supposed to prevent that from becoming a train wreck? HQ got the wrong information. They didn’t verify it before they sent me out. They didn’t let me verify it, and hoots-ma-toot, suddenly we’re ass-deep in baby alligators.”
“Which you promptly shot.”
“They were tryin’to eat me, at the time.”
“HQ did point that out to the client, and it saved us some of the penalty fee.”
“And the duff gen?”
“Well, that saved us some more.”
“Oh, give it a rest, boss. That allowed them to be able to impose counter-penalties and the client then—”
“Took his custom elsewhere, and our reputation suffered.”
“That should notbe my problem.”
“Let’s just say HQ thinks your horizons need expanding.”
“Uh, huh. You mean HQ would like me to solve their next bit of misinformation with something other than my gun.”
At least Lassiter had the grace to blush.
“Something like that.”
“I don’t suppose the client gave you any information on who its enemies might be?”
Lassiter cleared his throat, and looked down at his shoes.
“Well, that’s just fine and dandy. We don’t know what would kill the rock, we don’t know who, and. I don’t suppose we have any inkling why, or why the next forty-eight?”
“Now that you mention it,” Lassiter said.
Now that she’d finished waving them around, Jamie put her hands back on her hips, and glared. Lassiter continued to stare at her for a long minute, and then he turned on the television in the corner of the room. Clicking through the channels, he finally settled on one that opened on a swirl of brightly coloured fish, and then zoomed in on solid stone structures bedecked with corals, anemones, and seaweed.
One side of the structure looked built into a cliff, above a sheer drop into an underwater trench. The other walls of the centre vanished into coral growth, or vanished into the edge of a seaweed forest, growing on the plateau on which it was built. The building was fitted with clear plascrete windows, which looked in on a conference room.
Jamie blinked and then took another look. The view through the conference-room windows was a little distorted, but she could still see the odd arrangement of a table that stood in the centre of the hall. Around the inside of the table were the usual array of seating for air-breathing delegates, but the other half of the table itself protruded into a tank that ran down the centre, and which was also set with an array of equipment meant for delegates—water-breathing delegates.
The television showed several underwater craft moving through the depths on approach to the city.
…delegates arriving for the inaugural meeting of the Cetacean worlds. This is the first face to face conference between delegates from both air- and water-breathing factions in any of the known galaxies, the commentator said.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Jamie said, her voice barely above a breath. “Nothing I did is deserving of this.”
Lassiter glanced back at her.
“You know I don’t like water, boss.”
“HQ said it would be good for you to face your fears.”
With an effort, Jamie suppressed the flash of anger, and words that not even Lassiter, for all his understanding, could overlook.
“But I just blew the last mission. Surely there are other operatives more qualified.”
“No one knows Askreya better than you.”
Jamie’s heart plummeted. Askreya. Officially, her home world.
“There’s a reason I left home as soon as I came of age,” she said. In truth, she had hoped never to see the world again.
“I know. You said it was because there was too much water.” He left the news report running in the background and gave her his full attention. “Is that the truth?”
Now, it was Jamie’s turn to blush. As he had no doubt guessed, that was indeed not all the truth. Lassiter waited, his calm brown gaze never leaving her face. Finally, Jamie found an answer that best explained it.
“There’s a reason I don’t like water, boss.”
“You nearly drowned?”
“I wasnearly drowned.”
“Hard to imagine you irritating anybody that much.”
“Is that meant to be a joke?”
Lassiter didn’t dignify that with a reply, but his half-suppressed smirk said it all.
“You want to tell me about it?”
“Did I tell Recruiting?”
“You should have.”
“I didn’t want them to send me back.”
“It might have made them think twice about assigning you to anything on that world.”
“When I’m the one that knows it best, and a galaxies’ first conference is going on? Give it a break.”
“True.” Lassiter’s smirk disappeared. “Tell me what contingencies I need to have in place.”
“You mean you actually want me back?”
This time, Lassiter looked sympathetic.
“Despite what HQ wants to believe, you’re one of my better agents.”
“Gee thanks.”
“So, spill.”
Jamie did.
“I was sixteen,” she said, “when one of the corps worked out I could hear the fish.”
From Lassiter’s suddenly raised eyebrows that was news, too.
“Yeah, I know. I didn’t tell HQ. Anyway, the corp decided they wanted me to work with them to track down the purple divers.” She hesitated, then made a wide armed gesture towards the television. “It was wrong. The corp was hunting them for their oil and their scent. I pretended to be willing to accept their offer, and started packing, but they found my blog and figured out I wasn’t about to help them.”
Her blog. She hadn’t told the company about that, either. So far, she thought she had gotten away with it, kept her head down, not made any updates since leaving Askreya. There had been nothing for the corp to trace, a complete break in her trail—and with her past.
“How well do they know you?”
“They probably have my biometrics, as well as photographs. And they’re vindictive enough to be updating it for age.”
“You don’t just hear the fish, do you?”
Jamie felt her face heat. She’d forgotten Lassiter’s ability to pick when she left something out. She just hadn’t realised he could work out exactly what.
“Well?” he pressed, and this time she felt the nudge inside her head that told her why.
“HQ know you’re a low-level psych?”
His expression remained stern.
“Don’t change the subject,” he said. “Yes, HQ knows. And you should have told them. Now, you can tell me, or I’ll pull it out of your head.”
From the look on his face, he meant it. Great, now she’d managed to irritate Lassiter as well. Jamie raised her chin defiantly and looked him in the eye.
“I can speak with them, as well,” she said, “and I can project an emotion, or direction, to them. If they trust me, the fish will do as I ask.”
“Including swim into the corporation’s nets.”
“Including that, and if there were no survivors to warn the others—no witnesses, so to speak—then I’d get away with it again, and again.”
“Not such a low-level psych, are you?”
Jamie remembered Lassiter’s threat to pull the knowledge from her mind.
“About as much as you,” she said.
They stared at each other for a long moment, Jamie half-listening to what the reporter was saying about the convention, and its guests.
This is also the first time the creature known as the Pinnacle has left its world to attend the convention…
Lassiter’s sudden expletive made Jamie jump, and they both turned to stare at the screen. A pure white craft, comprising sleek, sharp lines was gliding through the water towards the conference centre. At first she didn’t see what had caused his reaction, and then she noted the distinctive mountain peak with its overarching part-circle.
“That’s going to make it a bit difficult for me to keep it safe,” she said. “Weren’t they told I was to travel with the principal?”
“They were told you’d meet them there.”
“Well, that’sgoing to be a bit difficult, isn’t it?” Jamie bit out. “I’ve only just learned of the assignment—or is this going to be another baby-alligator scenario where I’m somehow to blame for not being prescient?”
“You’re sure?”
“Dammit! I didn’t see this coming. I take it the Odyssey contract is already in place?”
“It’s set to start at 13:45 on the tenth.”
“The tenth on whosecalendar?” Jamie asked, and watched as Lassiter paled.
“Oh, stars and heavens above!” He got no further than that, before his mobile started to ring, and both their pagers activated.
Jamie headed out into the hall to make her call-back, leaving Lassiter alone in her flat.
“Yeah? Yes, I saw the news. No. Because I have only just been given the assignment. Yes, I agree, I cannot save anyone’s ass when said ass is in the next system. No, I’m not being facetious. Yeah? You beam me up, and I’ll be there, but I’ll need”—light flared around her—“Sonuva…! You should warn a girl.”
She shut her mobile down, and glared at the assignments officer standing in the interview room. He didn’t waste any time.
“Where’s your gear?”
“I’ve only justbeen told of the mission. I haven’t even agreed to take it.”
“Why not?”
“Ask the boss,” Jamie retorted, remembering all the times Lassiter had advised her to let him handle HQ.
Lassiter arrived on cue, minus the cussing. He merely oriented himself on the assignments officer and raised an eyebrow.
“She hasn’t agreed to go?”
“She has history we weren’t aware of.”
“Can it jeopardise the mission?”
“That depends if you consider the personal protection officer being a target a jeopardy.”
“Not as big a problem as not having protection in place on the agreed on date.”
“It’s not yet the date intended.”
“The client has a different opinion.” The assignments officer reached down, and picked up a duffle bag Jamie hadn’t noticed sitting at his feet. “Catch.”
She had just enough time to wrap her arms around the bag, before she was bathed in light again.
This time, when she reformatted, she hit the floor on her knees and threw up. Three sets of boots waited patiently until she was done. Three tall, green-skinned men in uniforms of crisp white cloth viewed her without a trace of emotion on their faces, as she slowly stood up and slung the duffle over her shoulder.
“Odyssey?” one ventured, and Jamie nodded.
She swallowed, wished she had a water flask, or ten minutes privacy to wash her mouth out.
“Yes?” she managed, her voice a croak.
“We break orbit as soon as you’re seated.”
Seated? Jamie didn’t need to ask the question; she was escorted quickly to a small waiting room with padded flight couches.
“For late arrivals,” one of the men explained, taking her duffle, and stowing it behind of one of the locker doors, while another indicated where she should sit.
Jamie wanted to ask how close they were to breaking orbit, but she didn’t have to. Her escort took the seats nearest them and strapped in. The officer attending her checked her webbing, and followed suit.
As he buckled down, Jamie felt a soft vibration run up through the seat, and then the ship accelerated. She was wondering why she needed to strap in for a simple departure, when the world around her shuddered, and her stomach felt as though it had gone into freefall.
Oh, crap. She’d been hoping to be in her cabin and sedated before the ship shifted into warp. Her day had just gotten unbearably long, and she hadn’t had time to inspect the gear she’d been assigned. She tried accessing her Odyssey implant on the off-chance they’d uploaded any data on the mission in between teleporting her in, or shunting her out. No such luck.
With a sigh, Jamie closed her eyes and tried to sleep. It was the only real answer to warp travel. In minutes, she was out to it, and she didn’t wake again, until one of the crew members touched her shoulder.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Three days out.”
“Of Askreya?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He waited for her next question, and turned to retrieve her duffle when there wasn’t any. “I’ll show you to your cabin. Your employers have forwarded a secure message to your private terminal. They assured me you knew the protocols.”
“Do they differ on this ship?”
“No ma’am. The protocols have nothing to do with us. We use standard secure data procedures, and leave the rest to our guests.”
“Thank you,” and Jamie followed him to a small cabin several decks down from where she’d arrived.
Within minutes of securing her cabin, she opened the data packet and went over the very few mission details she’d been provided. By the time she’d arrived at Askreya to meet the delegates she was meant to be protecting, she felt no more prepared than when she’d left HQ—save for the fact that she had a new identity, a quick nanite cocktail to muddle her biometrics, contacts to disguise the colour of her eyes, skin dye, and a different hair colour.
Fantastic, she thought, viewing the faint patina of scales that dusted her cheeks and throat. Now, I look like I should be out partying with the fish.
“I need to know what to protect you from,” she reiterated, once she had secured a private moment in her principal’s quarters. Her request was met by a sense of open curiosity.
“Did your employer not explain the situation?” it asked.
“They said you needed to be protected from water, and would not share the nature of the threat, or the reason there was a threat.”
Comprehension sounded in the voice, although Jamie could discern no obvious features on any of the rock facets opposite her.
“It is the same as the misunderstanding with the date. We were most anxious when you were not present when we arrived.”
“I am sorry to have caused you concern.”
The creature rocked with what Jamie understood was amusement. She might not be able to find a face, but she could still hear its emotions, and something of its thoughts.
“It is why we asked for you,” the Pinnacle said. “You can hear the thoughts, and send your own.”
“How did you know?”
“We read your file.”
“But it’s not in my file.”
“It is not in your Odysseyfile, Jamie Kleay.”
“That’s not—”
“—your officialname. We know. But we did not read your officialfile.”
Jamie was out of her seat, weapons drawn, and backing towards the door, but the rock person did not move, and its servants made no move towards her, either.
“Unlike those from whom we obtained the file, we mean you no harm, but we do need your help.”
That made her hesitate, one hand on the door.
“I cannot protect you if you cannot give me more detail on the threat,” she said.
“Then it is a good thing we do not need you for that.”
Jamie felt along the door’s edge until she had the control pad beneath her fingers, and then she waited, fingertips hovering above it.
“What do you need me for?”
“The people you know as purple divers have not been invited to this conference. They asked us for help.”
“You don’t strike me as brokers.” It was out before Jamie could stifle it. Again, she felt a wave of amusement from the creature.
“That is a mistake many people make. Just because we are made of stone does not mean we are slow, or raised under a rock. We obtained your records from Selicourt without their knowledge, and tweaked the biometrics they had on record.”
“You lied to Odyssey.”
“We were not entirely truthful with them, no.”
“They will put you in breach of contract.”
The level of smug Jamie was sensing went up several notches.
“They can try.”
“What do you mean?”
The smugness toned down.
“We have other matters of interest to them. I believe we can come to an agreement, but it is your help we require now.”
“Does the task pertain to your personal well-being and safety?” She felt the living rock hesitate, knew when it was somewhat less than honest in its reply.
“Of course.”
“You aren’t really in any danger are you?”
“Not from the water, no,” the creature assured her, and again Jamie felt the evasion in its answer.
“Do you need me, or not?”
“Yes. We need you.” That reply, at least, was the whole truth.
“Very well, what do you want me to do?”
“We need you to call the purple divers to the conference. We need you to tell them they mustreveal their secondary form to the attendees, and we need you to translate between them and the gathered worlds.”
“How do you know they will hear me?”
“They have not always been confined to this world,” the Pinnacle replied. “Nor are their communications limited. Representatives asked for our help in finding you.”
“Very well,” Jamie said. “When?”
“We have a tour of the reef booked in an hour.”
“You were very sure of my assistance.”
“We did our research.”
“Odyssey will complain.”
“I don’t see why. They will be paid for your protection of our interests, and you will earn them a significant bonus. Once our contract with the divers is complete, and they have regained their voice to the worlds, we will need to speak with your Odyssey. I believe our areas of interest intertwine. Are you willing?”
“And the threat to you?”
“We have our own security. If you will focus on the task to hand, we would be suitably gratified. Consider it a duty of protection, just not exactly the kind of protection for which you thought you were being hired.”
And so she did. For one thing, it enhanced Odyssey’s reputation, and, for another she had been wanting to make Selicourt pay for the atrocities it had committed in its pursuit of profit. This way, she managed both.
Typically, Lassiter remained unimpressed.
“You have some explaining to do,” he’d said, once the conference was over, and the purple divers had revealed themselves to be another intelligent form of shapeshifter. Mermaids, indeed! Jamie hadn’t heard so much hogwash in all her life, but if it made the reporters happy…
“I put everything in the report,” she said.
“Except that you lied about Askreya being your homeworld.”
Ah, yes, there was that.
“And you’ve been giving us a false set of biometrics every year since you joined.”
Jamie sighed. That was only partly true. The fact that her biometrics shifted with the form she chose to take wasn’t entirely her fault—even if the form she chose wasn’t exactly the one she’d been born with. Lassiter ignored her sigh, and continued.
“Just because you’ve made Odyssey the first name for protection and client confidentiality, once more, does not make you immune to the consequences of hiding things from the company.”
Jamie scrubbed at her cheeks. The patina of scales she’d thought a result of the nanites had not disappeared, when the nanites had been flushed from her system. She should have realised it was a bad idea to mess with her bios.
“What can I say?” she said. “A girl has to have some secrets.”
“Not any more.”
Jamie hid her smile behind a glare. Well, they could try.
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In Service to the Pinnacle is available as a stand-alone short story at the following links: books2read.com/u/bzpvPn.
You can also find Kristine Kathryn Rusch's latest free short story over on her blog: kriswrites.com. Why don't you go and check it out?