Tag Archives: serial

Serial: Earthrise, Final.

Posted by jagadmin on April 24, 2013 1 comment

Welcome back to Earthrise! We are now on our regular schedule, free on Tuesdays, with Thursday and Saturday available if donations or subscriptions that week go over $15 per episode. You can catch up on existing episodes, donate, or set up a subscription here! And now, on to the story:

Earthrise
Her Instruments, Book 1

Final

      “Good morning, sleepy,” Kis’eh’t said in a gentle voice. “Or rather, good night, since that’s about the time. You’ve been sleeping for nine hours!”
      Did he have a voice? He did. He used it. “I’m surprised. I expected to sleep for well over twenty.”
      The Glaseah, barely visible in the low light, shook her head. “Don’t joke like that. We were all worried. How are you feeling?”
      Hirianthial assessed his body. “Better than I probably look.”
      Kis’eh’t winced. “That wouldn’t be hard,” she said. “We put an ice-pack on your face so you aren’t swollen, but your skin’s going to turn interesting colors.”
      “I’m sure,” Hirianthial said. He tried sitting upright and surprised himself pleasantly by succeeding. Someone had delivered him to his quarters and tucked him into bed under a mound of blankets.
      “I’m apologizing on behalf of the crew for taking off your boots and sponging off the worst of the dirt,” Kis’eh’t said. “Bryer’s the one who did it, since we think he’s the one who emotes the least. Did he wake you?”
      “I doubt a falling meteor would have woken me,” Hirianthial said, gingerly pressing on the back of his neck. The longer he remained conscious, the more aware he was of the wrenched muscles, deepening bruises and joint aches he’d incurred fleeing the pirates. It never ceased to amaze him how nothing serious could hurt so badly. “I thank you for the attention, though.”
      “It was the least we could do,” Kis’eh’t said. “Everyone says you and Bryer are the only reason the whole mission came out okay.”
      “I wouldn’t go so far,” Hirianthial said. “The captain and the twins did excellent work.”
      She shook her head. “You can re-assign praise however you want if it makes you feel better. The rest of us… well, we’re really grateful.”
      He couldn’t help a laugh. “I hope this doesn’t mean I’ll have to fend off the twins.”
      “No,” Kis’eh’t said, grinning. “And I think we’re all out of things we can make into jewelry. You’ll probably have to settle for a party. Not just for you, mind you. For Bryer too. We’re going to put a party cap on him.”
      A Phoenix at a party. It beggared the imagination. “That sounds like quite a challenge.”
      Kis’eh’t nodded. “It figures that we’re going to end up fêting the two people on the crew who like the least fuss,” she said. “But we’re going to do it anyway, once we get underway.”
      “And when is that?” Hirianthial asked.
      “Soon,” Kis’eh’t replied. “As soon as the twins wake up, I think.”
      “And Fleet?”
      “They’re still cleaning up,” Kis’eh’t said.
      “Ah.”
      “You’re not thinking of leaving, are you?” Kis’eh’t asked, feathered ears drooping.
      “I’m in no condition to rush away,” Hirianthial said carefully.
      “Good,” Kis’eh’t said. “We were worried you’d want to leave.”
      He said nothing—it seemed safest. Kis’eh’t continued. “If you like, I’ll bring you food? The best cook is sleeping but I can make tea and toast.”
      “That sounds wonderful, thank you,” Hirianthial said. “Perhaps after I’ve showered.”
      “Okay.” She brightened: not the instant sunlit glee of the twins, but a slower, steadier glow. “We’re really glad you’re here, Hirianthial. Things wouldn’t be the same without you.”
      He dipped his head. “Thank you.”
      Once she’d left, he remained on the bunk with the blankets cocooning his lower body and a prickly cool along his back and arms. He was too tired still to worry about whether he’d stay or go. There were more pressing concerns. His body would tolerate no more neglect. Cautiously he gathered clean clothes and went to shower. The sponge bath had removed the superficial layer of dirt from his exposed skin, but he remained grimy from head to ankle and his hair still bore a faint pink shadow. He scrubbed the blood off his body, out of his clothes, from beneath his fingernails. That last inspired visceral memories of home. Surgery as a doctor was done with gloves; it was only when he used a blade that he got blood running, hot and too fluid, and then sticky on his fingers. How many times had he washed his hands of it? And all he felt over the memories was a kind of exhausted acceptance.
      He was what he was—all of it, from killer to healer. And, he thought, he was also alive… and at peace with that, and the years in front of him. While washing his hair for the second time, his fingers tangled in the beaded cord and he pulled it forward to examine it.
      Beneath his fingers he could still sense the laughter and glitter-glimpses of memory each charm on the dangle represented. As needles of water struck the cord and washed it clean, Hirianthial rested the edge of a shoulder against the shower wall and read the chain again.
      Had he been mind-blind, he would still have known the dangle for an act of friendship. But he was not mind-blind. The ferocity of their affection transcended mere friendship. He couldn’t imagine abandoning them.
      If he had the choice, it wouldn’t be a choice at all.
      Hirianthial shut off the water, dried himself and returned to his quarters. He changed the sheets on the bed and put away the dirty linens. Doing so little had already made him drowsy, but showering had opened the multiple slashes traced across his body. He rolled back the sleeves of his nightdress and unpacked the necessary parts of his first aid kit.
      The door’s mellow chime caught him in the middle of the final bandage. “Come in.”
      The door opened not on Kis’eh’t and the expected tea and toast, but on Reese. Hirianthial slowly lowered his arms into his lap.
      “Sorry,” Reese said after clearing her throat. “I have some of your things. Can I…?”
      “Come in,” Hirianthial said again.
      Reese stepped inside. “I have your dagger,” she said. “Should I…?”
      “You can leave it on the table,” Hirianthial said. “And thank you. I didn’t expect to see it again.”
      “We thought we shouldn’t leave it behind,” Reese said. Her reticence bewildered him; it muted her aura to a soft brown and left him no hint as to her emotional state. “I’ve heard about… um, daggers and things. Being special.”
      “Some are,” Hirianthial said. “That one not so much. But I’m glad I don’t have to replace it.”
      Reese nodded. “I’ve also brought this back.” She showed him a folded square, and the low light shone off the exposed nap of his tabard. “It’s meander, isn’t it?”
      Surprised, Hirianthial said, “Yes.”
      “And they broke it,” Reese said, crestfallen. “It can’t be fixed, can it?”
      “I’m afraid not,” Hirianthial said. “I will see if what remains can be salvaged.”
      She nodded and set it beside the dagger, petting it with a self-conscious hand. He watched her and knew not what to think.
      Reese turned and rested her hands against the edge of the table. “I just want you to know that… I’m sorry. For things. Especially me, how I act sometimes. Well, a lot of the time.” She looked away. “I’d like you to stay.”
      “Lady?” Hirianthial said, astonished.
      She flexed her hands against the table, looking at the ground. “I haven’t had time to figure things out yet,” she said, more to herself than to him. She lifted her eyes. “I’d like you to stay. If you want to. Please.”
      He couldn’t read her feelings past the blur in her aura, and lacking that he fell back on more visceral things: the swiftness of her breath. The trembling tension in her fingers. And the uncertainty in her unguarded blue eyes.
      “I would be pleased to do so,” Hirianthial said.
      She took in a little breath, then nodded and left in surprising silence. Hirianthial stared at the door. He stared at it so long that when it chimed again he started.
      “Come in.”
      This time the door slid open for Kis’eh’t holding a tray. “Ready for food?”
      “More than ready,” Hirianthial said, putting aside the first aid kit.
      As the Glaseah set the tray on the table, she said, “Was that Reese I saw walking down the hall?”
      “Most probably,” Hirianthial said.
      “Did it… was she… ”
      “She came to ask after my health,” Hirianthial said.
      Kis’eh’t let out a long sigh. “Thank the goddess. Reese is good people, but sometimes she bites off her foot after the trap is open.”
      The truth of the words surprised Hirianthial into a laugh. “So do we all. But only sometimes.”
      “Thank goodness for that,” Kis’eh’t said, setting out the dish and a napkin. She peeked past her arm. “Are you really staying?”
      Hirianthial closed his eyes. Between his shoulder-blades, resting over his back where his heart kept time, he felt a warm breeze through high branches and smelled the cool spice of Martian wood. He rose slowly from that memory. “Yes. I am.”

**END**

And there you have it. I hope you enjoyed Book 1 of Her Instruments! I’ll be starting serious work on the rewrite/revisions of Books 2 and 3 later this year, with a plan to release them in early 2014.

I’m planning a mini-Kickstarter to help defray the costs of the e-book/print editions (to pay the fabulous Julie Dillon and the talented Dave Bryant), so look for that in a few weeks, along with a sneak preview of the cover.

Serial: Earthrise, Episode 71

Posted by jagadmin on April 23, 2013 No comments

Earthrise
Her Instruments, Book 1

Episode 71

      “Feeling better?” Sascha asked as they entered.
      “Much,” Reese said. “You two look better too.”
      “What did you do to your hand?” Irine asked.
      “It’s nothing.” Reese drained the sink and joined the Harat-Shar in her room. “Just a cut.”
      “We checked the ship from feet to sensors,” Sascha said. “Fleet did everything but tap out the dents in the hull. We can leave whenever you’re ready.”
      “Good,” Reese said. She waved them to her bunk and sat on the chair. “Let’s do that after everyone’s gotten at least six hours’ sleep.”
      “Do we have a destination?” Sascha asked as Irine settled at his feet.
      Reese grinned. “Do we! Turns out we’re civilian heroes and while Fleet doesn’t do anything as crass as paying them for bravery, they do get generous with gifts.”
      Irine’s ears perked. “This sounds good.”
      “The pirates that were tailing us? Their ships are ours now. Salvage waiting for us at Starbase Kappa.”
      Sascha whistled. “Not a small gift.”
      “No,” Reese said. “So we’ll head there, evaluate the wrecks and sell them to best advantage. After that… who knows? I guess we’ll go wherever sounds most interesting.”
      “We could go anywhere,” Irine said, eyes wide.
      “We could,” Reese said. “Just not back to Harat-Sharii.”
      Sascha chuckled.
      “I’m guessing you’re not here to check up on me,” Reese said.
      “You’re wrong,” Sascha said. “We are here to check up on you. We’re just also here for one more thing.”
      Reese took a deep breath. “Which is?”
      Irine said, “You know.”
      “Pretend I’m without clues,” Reese said.
      “You’ve been treating Hirianthial like the lowest form of dirt,” Sascha said. “Since the rest of us like having him around, we’re hoping you’ll make it clear to him that you like having him around, too.”
      “What if I don’t like having him around?” Reese asked, surprising herself with her own uncertainty.
      Apparently her quiet tone surprised the twins as well. They exchanged glances. With furrowed brow, Irine said, “How can you not like having him around? You read more novels about Eldritch than any person I’ve ever met. Now you’ve got the real thing!”
      “Sometimes the things you fantasize about aren’t what you end up really wanting,” Reese said, staring at her folded hands. She shook herself and smiled wanly. “Though I don’t guess that’s something Harat-Shar are familiar with.”
      Sascha was studying her. “Actually, that’s the first thing you’ve said that makes sense.”
      Reese frowned. “Really?”
      “Really,” Sascha said. He sighed. “Look, if you really want him gone then send him away. But if you’re not sure… then tell him he’s welcome.”
      “Because if you don’t expressly tell him,” Irine said, anticipating Reese’s question, “he’ll go away. He won’t stay if staying is going to make you miserable.”
      “He doesn’t make me miserable,” Reese said. “He just makes me… ” She shifted in her chair, looking for the right word. “Uncomfortable.”
      Sascha nodded. “Of course he does. That’s how all the best things start.”
      “Pardon?” Reese said.
      He smiled. “The best things. Adventures. Destinations. Knowledge. Relationships. All of them start with uncomfortable moments. It’s only when you’re grappling with something new that you might uncover something wonderful… but unfortunately, that means grappling with something new.”
      “New things chafe,” Irine said, plucking at her tail.
      Reese stared at them.
      “Promise you’ll be decisive,” Sascha said quietly. “Either tell him to go or tell him to stay, but make a decision.”
      She ran a hand over the top of her head. “Sascha—”
      “Please, Reese,” Irine said. “If we’re going to lose the prettiest guy on the ship, let it be because you really don’t want him around, not because he thought it would please you to leave.”
      “I promise,” Reese said, then glared at them as best she could. It wasn’t much of a glare–hadn’t she been planning to work on that? “You two are such trouble. If I’d have known what I was in for when I hired you… ”
      “You would have done it anyway,” Sascha said with a grin. “Because we’ve grown on you like flowers on an open field.”
      “Get out of here,” Reese said, suppressing her laughter. “Before I throw you out. I have thinking to do.”
      “Aye, aye, ma’am!” Irine said, climbing to her feet. She added, “I learned that from the yummy Fleet people.”
      “Did you—oh, get moving. I don’t want to know!”
      Irine snickered. They headed for the door, where Sascha bent down and plucked up a crumpled cloth from beside the door. “You might want to return this, Boss.”
      Reese caught it as they left. She shook her head and started to stand when her fingers registered the caress of felt-soft fabric. Abruptly she sat again and looked at the tabard in her lap. Cleaning her room had been the last thing on her mind the past few days and she’d given little thought to the clothing she’d discarded on the way to the shower after Fleet had dragged the pirates off the Earthrise.
      She petted the silky material. The pile was so thick it reminded her of Allacazam’s neural fur, plush and soft. On the tabard’s face, deep channels cut through the velvet, exposing the nap in an elegant but random pattern of swirls and spirals. Most of the books she’d read about Eldritch had only made passing references to their clothing… but the recent ones, the ones by the Harat-Shariin matron, had mentioned an expensive but beautiful tapestried cloth the Eldritch called meander. One of the novels had even described its laborious production, hand-made by artisans famed for the individuality of their patterns.
      Reese bit her lip. If that part had been true, the tabard represented months of painstaking craftsmanship, unique and irreplaceable. Her fingers traced the tattered edge of the front panel, following the broken threads, the unraveling seams that connected the satin lining to the cloth. It suddenly seemed so senseless. She bent over it and hugged her knees.
      The smell of perfume—no, cologne—clung to the fabric. Something rich with a touch of spice, a woodsy scent that reminded her of trees. She wondered if the twins had smelled it when they’d been braiding the crew’s gift into Hirianthial’s hair… and she was suddenly glad she’d added her own contribution to the dangle.
      But he’d read her mind. And he could do it again. She’d seen the ease with which he’d guided them through the chaos in the pirate compound. Not only could he read minds, but he wasn’t dumb. Simply hearing her thoughts wasn’t scary enough alone. The fact that he could read them and then construct the secrets of her heart after knowing her for the briefest fraction of her life… and that didn’t even begin to touch what he’d done with a single dagger. Not even one as impressive as the ones she’d glimpsed in the case.
      Bad enough that he knew all her secrets. It was entirely unfair that he got to keep all his own. And she wasn’t sure she knew what to do with the knowledge that someone knew her well enough to hurt her, without her having anything to use against him as a shield.
      Even thinking of it that way hurt. Why did she always have to plan for the inevitable hurt?
      Reese closed her eyes. The tabard pulled her in one direction. The dagger another.

***

This is it, our second-to-last episode! Next time, the conclusion!

Serial: Earthrise, Episode 70

Posted by jagadmin on April 20, 2013 No comments

Earthrise
Her Instruments, Book 1

Episode 70

      “You awake, Reese?”
      “I am now,” she said groggily, twisting in her hammock to fumble for the intercom.
      “Not awake enough, I guess,” Irine said with a laugh. “I’m at the door.”
      Reese squinted into the light. “I see. Now. I see now. What is it?”
      “Captain NotAgain asked to see you,” Irine said. “He’s at the campus. The Fleet folk are standing by to drive you there.”
      “Already?” Reese asked, scrubbing at her face.
      “It’s been five hours, believe it or not,” Irine said. “Do you need help dressing?”
      “From a Harat-Shar?” Reese asked. “I might not get there until tomorrow.”
      Irine laughed and wiggled her hips. “Why, Captain! Are you flirting with me?”
      “Yes. No. I’m asleep. Get out!”
      The tigraine chortled and let the door close. Reese grumbled all the way out of her hammock, but as she zipped up her shirt she realized she was smiling. The smile persisted as she rummaged for the camera and tucked it into her pocket.
      “Guess that’s how they start getting under your skin,” she said, petting Allacazam on the way out. The Flitzbe agreed with the image of a smug cat sprawled in the sun.
      Outside the sun had set, obscuring the horizon Reese had found so distressing. She sat in the back of the kestrel the Fleet officers had waiting and stared at the twinkling stars scattered across the firmament. The wind blowing past her ears felt good for once, and the cool air reminded her of the temperature in the Earthrise, though with the novelty of being maintained outside without aid. She listened with partial attention to the banter of the men driving the ground-flier—something about whether the last alcohol they’d tried matched the superior product they’d found on some colony world—and relaxed into her own skin.
      No one was shooting at her or threatening her and the sky on a planet was beautiful. She closed her eyes and let her head dip back against the rest and memorized the feel of the wind on her cheeks.
      By night the pirate compound was an ugly place, and the giant lamps the Fleet personnel had erected didn’t help. The glaring light exposed the debris from the fight. Walking around some of the shattered buildings, Reese was thankful they’d fled when they did. From the look of things it had gotten much worse after they’d gone.
      “Ah, Captain Eddings!” NotAgain was standing near a landed fighter, a data tablet in hand. “I’m glad to see you well.”
      “I’m glad to be well, believe me,” Reese said, taking his proffered hand and covering it with hers. “Did you get what you hoped for?”
      “All that I hoped for and more,” NotAgain said. “You and your crew did superb work, Captain. In fact, I think it’s fairly likely you’ll all receive a Copper Sickle for it.”
      “A what?” Reese asked.
      He laughed. “You might not have heard of it. It’s one of the few civilian citations given by Fleet. It’s quite an honor.”
      “Wow,” Reese said, cheeks warming. “That’s… unexpected.”
      NotAgain grinned. “Don’t look so pole-axed, Captain. You’ve all earned one several times over.” He shook his head. “As it is, you’ll be one of the few people to have earned one and still be upright afterwards. You were damned lucky to have such good back-up.”
      Reese nodded. “I meant to thank you for that. The weapons, the personnel—”
      He laughed. “I wasn’t talking about them. I meant your bodyguards. You should have told me you had an Eye-trained Phoenix. Though I doubt you could have known your Eldritch would hold his own so well either.”
      “An… Eye-trained Phoenix?” Reese asked.
      “You didn’t know?” NotAgain’s brows lifted. “Count yourself lucky, then. As I understand it, most of the Phoenix you meet off-world are Eye-worshippers, but few of them get far enough long in their meditative practices to get to the physical training. I hear it’s rigorous… takes a really well-placed palmer shot to the head to put them down, or significant injury. Maybe you could find out more about how they do it?”
      “From Bryer?” Reese laughed. “Not likely.”
      NotAgain grinned. “They do tend to be quiet. Keep him around, though, Captain. He’s the one who told us how to find Surapinet, though it took our engineers to decode the information. He got a message to us that Surapinet was in a flier that sounded disharmonious in the high notes. Seems an overpowered engine emits an unpleasant combination of sounds in the ultrasonic range—once we sifted the data for that we found him easily.”
      “It sounds like something he’d say,” Reese said. She shuddered. “I’m glad you caught him.”
      NotAgain’s voice hardened. “Me too.”
      Reese watched the Fleet officers striding in and out of the light. She’d had enough of people talking in voices like that, but on the other hand she was grateful they existed. The contradiction was discomforting. “I guess Surapinet won’t be paying out my contract.”
      “Mr. Surapinet won’t be doing anything but sitting in a prison cell for quite some time,” NotAgain said.
      “And the crystals?”
      The Tam-illee sighed. “We’re not sure yet. That’s a matter for the Alliance Diplomatic Corps, not us. But we’re sending them the bodies and the information you provided, and hopefully they’ll be able to salvage the situation. Speaking of which…” His ears perked. “I hope you don’t mind that I’m having your salvage towed with ours to Starbase Kappa.”
      “My what?” Reese said, startled out of her contemplation of the work being done by the captain’s personnel. “I don’t have any salvage.”
      “Such modesty,” NotAgain said. “Of course the pirate vessels we found alongside your ship when we answered your distress call were your wrecks. I took the liberty of registering them in your name since you were busy helping us conduct this operation.”
      “I was what?” Reese said, gaping at him.
      “Busy,” NotAgain said. She swore that with every word he grew more cheerful. “But don’t worry. When you arrive at Starbase Kappa you can decide whether to cannibalize them for parts or sell them whole. The Fleet depot would certainly be interested, but I’m sure the civilian wreckers would be willing to bid for them as well.”
      “You’re giving me the wrecks?” Reese asked, unable to believe him.
      “Giving?” NotAgain shook his head and tsked. “You can’t give someone something that’s already theirs.” He grinned.
      “But you—they—doesn’t Fleet need them?”
      “With all the fighters they just threw at us? We’ve got plenty of our own, Captain Eddings. You don’t have to give us yours.”
      “I… should stop arguing with you, shouldn’t I,” Reese said.
      “It would be a waste,” NotAgain said. “Fleet appreciates your generous desire to donate your profits, but we have more than enough for ourselves. Keep your rightful salvage, Captain… and with it, our thanks for your service to the Alliance.”
      “Yes, sir,” Reese said.
      NotAgain held out his hand. “If we don’t meet again, it was a pleasure.”
      She clasped it and squeezed. “Me too.” Remembering the Tam-leyan emphasis on families, she added, “I hope you have more grandchildren than you can hold in your arms.”
      He laughed. “May it be so for us both. Be well, Captain.”
      “Good night,” Reese said.
      A different Fleet officer drove her back to the Earthrise. Standing just inside the cargo bay, Reese watched the dwindling lights of the kestrel and leaned against the wall. Salvage from two wrecks was a windfall she could barely wrap her arms around. Had Fleet not already repaired her Well drive, she could have done so several times over. And while it wouldn’t make her fabulously wealthy, she would certainly have enough to fund her merchant endeavor for several years… if, in fact, she wanted to.
      Reese turned to the shadowed depths of the bay and her eyes fell on a crate and her crumpled vest. She had forgotten about the dagger. Without unwrapping it, she lifted it from the crate and took it with her to her room.
      In the sink, the dagger tinted the water she dunked it in bright pink with oily whorls of brown soil. She ignored them. She ignored that the crust she was scrubbing at with a sponge was blood or something unnameable only a doctor would have been able to identify. She tried not to think too hard about anything while doing it—she just rinsed, scrubbed, drained the sink and refilled it until all the grime had come off. This was her responsibility, wasn’t it? To face what had been done on her behalf. To acknowledge that as uncomfortable as it made her, Bryer’s and Hirianthial’s violence had kept her in one piece. The least she could do was stare at that until she stopped flinching at it so hard. She’d done harder things in her life… she could do this one, too.
     Wiping the dagger dry with a cloth she finally allowed herself to examine it and see that it wasn’t the one from the case, but something plainer and newer. She turned it in her hands, confused. Had Hirianthial bought it in the Alliance? Why not use the ones he had? In her curiosity she twisted the thing to one side and nicked herself on its edge, which was when the door chimed.
      “Come in,” Reese said around her thumb.
      The twins appeared in the door, looking washed and perky.

***

For those of you who are curious about Bryer, there’s your bit of a hint of why he’s effective. :)

We are now only two episodes from wrapping up this book! So Tuesday we’ll get our freebie, and then I’ll post the final episode whenever we hit cap!

Serial: Earthrise, Episode 69

Posted by jagadmin on April 18, 2013 1 comment

Earthrise
Her Instruments, Book 1

Episode 69

      The Phoenix dipped his head in assent and ducked behind the shrubs. Hirianthial joined him. The brushy vegetation lining the road was barely tall enough to hit his knee and its open branches seemed to invite investigation, but the land was sear and yellow, not far from the color of Bryer’s feathers. By now Hirianthial imagined himself a grimy ivory. The gouges and rents in Bryer’s clothing broke up the red hide, resulting in unanticipated camouflage.
      Down the road came five pirates, looking far scruffier than the guards in the building they’d fled. They were armed with rifles and their own seething anger, and their certainty that their quarry ran before them blinded them. They strode past the shrubs.
      “Now,” Hirianthial said.
      Bryer flung himself from the leaves and knocked down one man, ripping out his throat with a clawed foot before any of them even realized they’d been ambushed. Hirianthial followed the Phoenix, though he dispatched his first man with less drama. The second bashed him in the ribs with the butt of his rifle, but as Hirianthial fell he grabbed the strap and took the man down with him. Rolling onto him he employed the dagger, which by now had become glued into his hand.
      Bryer whistled and Hirianthial ducked, pressing his head against the dead man’s chest. The blow meant to knock him unconscious missed. The Phoenix’s swipe snuffed that man from Hirianthial’s senses, leaving all their attackers dead.
      “I don’t think I can get up,” Hirianthial said hoarsely, propping himself on top of his last victim with both hands. The palm on the dusty ground stuck, but the one sealed to the dagger slid, dropping him onto the body.
      Bryer chuffed and grasped his arm. “Done. Must move.”
      Except the world wasn’t just distant now, it was rocking. Hirianthial tried to lift his head, which seemed heavier—perhaps the blood soaking through his hair? But he decided quickly that moving his head made the vertigo more intense.
      “Did well,” Bryer said. “Mind being carried?”
      “I don’t think I have a choice,” Hirianthial said, and lost his grip on everything.

***

      “Is he okay?” Reese asked, stunned.
      “Fine,” Bryer said.
      “That’s the first human thing I’ve heard you say about him,” Irine said.
      “Oh shut up,” Reese snapped. Bryer came to a halt. Hirianthial was slung over one of his shoulders, unmoving. His sleeves and the lower half of his hair were drenched with darkening red. “Is he awake?”
      “No,” Bryer said.
      “At least he waited until we were almost at the ship to need rescue,” Reese said.
      “For the sake of Angels, boss!” Sascha exclaimed.
      “Well look at him!”
      Bryer grunted, then flung something at Reese. She jumped back as the dagger bit into the ground, quivering at her feet. Blood slimed the hilt, the cross-guard and what she could see of the blade.
      “Killed the people following us,” Bryer said, then as if realizing the ambiguity of the statement, “He did.”
      “Damn,” Irine said. “I thought he was about to topple over.”
      “He was,” Sascha said.
      “If there were people following us, we’d better get moving,” Reese said.
      “No more,” Bryer said. “He’s unconscious.”
      “Exactly,” Reese said. “He won’t be awake to tell us about any more of them.”
      “No,” Bryer said. “He’s unconscious now.”
      “I noticed,” Reese growled.
      “I think he means Hirianthial would be awake if he thought we’d need him,” Sascha said. “But you might be too stubborn to notice that, well, let’s see, he’s saved our tails continuously since he led us out of the building back there?”
      “If it wasn’t for him we wouldn’t have needed saving!” Reese said. “In case you don’t remember, it was breaking him out of jail that got us involved in this mess!”
      Sascha stared at her, both ears flattened.
      “Let’s just keep going,” Irine said. “We’re almost to the ship.”
      Bryer huffed and strode past them. Reese started after him until Sascha moved into her way.
      “What?”
      “You’re forgetting something,” he said.
      “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Reese said.
      “The dagger,” Sascha said. “His dagger. The one he’s been using to cut people up to keep them from killing us. Reminder: ‘us’ includes ‘you.’ Go get it.”
      “I’m sure he has others,” Reese said.
      Sascha stepped forward until he was almost nose to nose with her. “Boss, I don’t know what the battlehells is wrong with you. But you’re not going to leave a man’s weapon behind just because you feel put out by him dropping unconscious after spending himself to save our lives.”
      Reese stepped back, astonished, but Sascha had already turned his back on her and started after the others. When she didn’t move, he said over his shoulder, “If you’re feeling squeamish, use a blood-damned towel.”
      Reese grabbed her braids and suppressed her urge to scream. She didn’t want to pick up any dagger. She didn’t want to think about Hirianthial, or what they’d just been through, or the fact that she’d somehow hired two people who could cut through groups of armed bad guys like knives through butter. She was still in one piece, still moving and still functioning, and asking for more was asking for something she had no capacity for. But the look in Sascha’s eyes… she couldn’t go back to the ship and face that look again. She squinted at the dagger standing upright in the ground.
      Forced herself to touch the sticky handle.
      Forced herself to pull it from the earth, crumbs of dirt falling from the blade. A layer of soil coated the tacky parts of the metal, blunting the impact of the amount of blood on it.
      So far she’d gotten him to haul boxes with his surgeon’s hands and now kill people with them. It couldn’t get much worse than that. If he could forgive this whole episode, maybe nothing else would phase him. Assuming, of course, that she even cared about his forgiveness. Assuming that he’d even stay around after all this.
      If she wanted him to.
      Could she be any more confused?
      Shuddering, Reese stripped off her vest and wrapped it around the dagger, then ran after the others. She caught up with them as they reached the perimeter set up by the Fleet officers. One of them hailed her.
      “Captain Eddings! You all made it back safely! We’re glad to see it.”
      “Thanks,” Reese said as they took down the section so they could cross. “What’s the word from your side of the fight?”
      “Things are really hot in the air right now,” the man said. “Captain NotAgain recommends you remain on the ground until he sends a signal. Apparently the pirates used this place to repair and rebuild ships. We weren’t expecting quite so many of them.”
      “I have absolutely no problem staying here,” Reese said. “In fact, I’m sure we could all use a shower and a long nap.”
      “Sounds good,” the man said. “We’ll keep watch out here.”
      “Thanks,” she said, and followed the rest of her crew into the cargo bay. She set the dagger down on one of the crates. Kis’eh’t was already hugging the twins, but the Glaseah broke off to engulf Reese in an embrace of her own. “Aksivah’t! When I saw those ships go by overhead I thought for sure—”
      “We’re okay,” Reese said, and hugged Kis’eh’t back. “We really are. I don’t know how, but we are.”
      “The twins told me Bryer and Hirianthial saved the day,” Kis’eh’t said. “That was before Bryer took Hirianthial off to his quarters. Are you all really unscathed? I’m no doctor but bandaging scratches I can do.”
      With the Glaseah’s arms looped around her waist and the smell of the woman’s clean soft hair in Reese’s nose, all the fear and tension suddenly broke loose. Reese quivered, then shocked herself by choking on a sob. Kis’eh’t drew her into a tighter hug and said nothing as she started crying. Even the twins were silent as they approached and added their arms to the embrace until the space they enclosed grew humid and started smelling of wet fur.
      “Ugh,” Reese said, pulling back and rubbing her eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me.”
      “I can’t believe you, Boss,” Sascha said gently. “You get threatened, manhandled, shot at and chased and you have no idea what got into you? I’d say mortal terror got into you.”
      “But it’s over now,” Reese said, fighting the return of the tightness in her chest. “I should be happy.”
      “And you are,” Irine said. “Your body’s just confused on how to show it.” Her ears drooped. “I could use a good cry myself.”
      Reese dabbed at the inside corners of her eyes. “Let me guess. Harat-Shar cry by hiding in locked closets with their brothers.”
      Irine grinned. “Sex isn’t our answer to every question.”
      “Just most of them,” Sascha said.
      Reese chuckled despite herself. “I need to wash my face. And my body.”
      “And sleep,” Kis’eh’t said, squeezing her shoulder. “Go rest, Reese. We’ll take care of things.”
      After all this they were still willing to stick with her. Reese couldn’t trust her voice, so she nodded and slipped into the quiet of the corridors. By the time she reached her room she’d calmed herself enough to feel the weight of the fatigue that dragged at her body. Washing her face and hands in her bathroom seemed a ridiculous luxury. Her wrists beneath the tap trembled.
      Reese stripped. The bead camera had somehow remained affixed to her collar; she carefully removed it and set it aside. Then she examined herself for damage and found nothing more than a few tender bruises and one or two cuts—how she’d gone into a pirate lair and come out again with so little to show for it escaped her, but she gave fervent thanks for it and took a very long shower. If she cried with her hands full of soap, the steam did a good job of hiding it.
      Not long after, she pulled herself into her hammock and snuggled into the blankets and pillows, expecting and finding Allacazam among them. The Flitzbe asked no questions, though she sensed him assessing her condition.
      “I’m fine,” she whispered. “Thanks for asking.”
      And then she snuffed the lights and slept.

***

We hit the cap, so… more episode!

All the violent stuff is over, for those of you holding your breath. Now for my favorite part… the leisurely denouement!

Serial: Earthrise, Episode 68

Posted by jagadmin on April 17, 2013 No comments

Earthrise
Her Instruments, Book 1

Episode 68

      The trip to the first floor proved uneventful, which was an unexpected hardship. Only the sense of imminent danger kept Hirianthial on his feet and deprived of it he began to list to one side, giving in to increasingly ardent demands from his body that he close his eyes and sleep.
      Picking through the tumbled furniture and shattered glass tables in the lobby, Irine said, “Wow. We missed the party.”
      “Thank freedom,” Reese said, peeking out the front door. People in and out of uniforms, pirates and Fleet, darted into view, firing all the while. “I wonder if we could steal a ride to the Earthrise? I don’t like the idea of navigating through that at anything slower than an eagle’s pace.”
      The thought of the long walk back almost stole Hirianthial’s remaining energy.
      “Hey, it’s Bryer!” Irine exclaimed and waved.
      The Phoenix wiggled into the foyer through one of the broken windows. Aside from a few missing red crest extensions and a lace of blood spatters, he looked hale.
      “Did you get him?” Reese asked.
      “Left on a ship,” Bryer said.
      “Curse it all!”
      Bryer’s maw gaped and this, Hirianthial divined from the sudden shot of sparkles that decorated the Phoenix’s usually inscrutable aura, was amusement. “A ship tuned too high. Told Fleet. They will find him.”
      Reese deflated. “I hope so. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life on the run.”
      “Look on the bright side,” Irine said. “being on the run is part of a merchant’s job, so it won’t be too much of an effort to disappear.”
      “That’s what we thought last time,” Reese said and peered out one of the windows at the sky. “We have got to get out of this place before Fleet decides to bomb it out of existence.”
      “That way,” Bryer said, pointing, and jogged out of the foyer.
      With a sigh, Reese followed him. Irine dogged her steps. Sascha looked at Hirianthial. “Can you make it?”
      “The alternative doesn’t appeal,” Hirianthial said and took one step forward. The world sheared around him and he leaned against the wall. He felt the wave of matter-of-fact concern and the touch of Sascha’s alien mind before he registered the pressure against his side.
      “Steady there,” Sascha said. “We still need you.”
      “Are you sure?” Hirianthial asked with a faint laugh.
      Sascha broke into a toothy grin. “You and Bryer are our only fighters, sad to say. The rest of us don’t have formal training.”
      “And Bryer and I do,” Hirianthial said, letting the Harat-Shar help him out of the building, step by laborious step.
      “I’ll eat my tail if you don’t,” Sascha said. “So if I’m wrong, don’t tell me so.”
      Hirianthial laughed. At the threshold of the building he sucked in a long breath and forced himself upright. The sight of people streaking past helped center him in the present. He let his mind yaw open, gathering the feel of the rest of the crew and their relation to the combatants still shooting nearby. He’d never thought to use his abilities so; he wasn’t even sure if he could have in the past. But if by doing this he could get them out of harm’s way—immediate harm’s way—he would do it. He could collapse later, once they were safe.
      His body ached. Breathing hurt. But he started after the others with Sascha at his side and caught up to them with a short jog. Ignoring Reese and Irine, he called to the Phoenix. “Bryer, I’ll take point.”
      The Phoenix glanced over his shoulder, then dropped back to hold the rear. Hirianthial took his place.
      “You sure you can do this?” Irine asked from behind him.
      “I’m the only one who can,” Hirianthial said, and led them forward.
      Zigzagging across the campus, using some of the warehouses as cover, Hirianthial wondered how Fleet’s end of the fight was going. From what little he could see and the less he allowed himself to sense, the numbers on the ground were about equivalent. He hoped Fleet’s superior hardware would give them the edge they needed to prevail.
      The first time he halted, Reese hissed, “Why are we stopping?”
      “We’re hiding,” Hirianthial said.
      “I don’t see anyone!”
      “Hush.”
      The minds he felt nearby dispersed. Ignoring Reese’s agitation, he started moving again.
      Each time they stopped, her disgruntlement grew. He knew he should assuage her fears but staying upright while searching for holes in the fight to guide them through occupied all his attention. They were almost off the campus when a mass of angry minds clotted right around the corner of the wall they’d been hugging.
      “Against the wall!” Hirianthial said.
      The twins and Bryer flattened. Reese opened her mouth to object as their enemy reached the corner. Hirianthial grabbed her, covered her mouth and pressed her flush to his body. He barely noted the explosion of her feelings in his mind as she struggled against him. He tried to hold her without hurting her, but she had fewer compunctions about returning the favor.
      The first of the pirates jogged into the open, followed by nine others. Only then did Reese stop fighting him, all her rage inverting into terror.
      You don’t see us, Hirianthial prayed.
      Reese whimpered, a sound that moved her lips against his palm, wetting his skin with the heat of her breath.
      You don’t hear us, either, Hirianthial prayed.
      They marched on. Only when they had passed the succeeding building entirely did Hirianthial release Reese and prepare for her outburst.
      Irine beat her to it. “Rhacking angels, Reese! Are you trying to get us all killed?!”
      “I didn’t know!” Reese said.
      “What did you think he was doing? Stopping to enjoy the scenery?” Irine shouted. “You want to pick a fight with him, do it on the ship, don’t do it out here where you’ll get us all killed!”
      Reese deflated. “I thought—”
      “Quiet,” Bryer said.
      “We’re not safe yet,” Sascha said. “Let’s save all the fights for later.”
      Irine grabbed her ears, then forced herself to calm down.
      “Let’s go,” Sascha said.
      Hirianthial nodded, checked for enemies, and headed for the road. He kept the group moving at a steady pace until the campus dropped out of sight behind a hill, then stopped and concentrated. Nothing before them. Nothing behind them, though they weren’t very far from town. Nothing around them.
      “We’re clear for now,” he said, and tottered. Sascha caught him before he fell entirely.
      “Battlehells,” Sascha said. “Don’t die on us yet.”
      Bryer stopped beside them both and met Hirianthial’s eye with an alien one. “Point?”
      “You take it,” Hirianthial said. “I’ll keep watch on the rear.”
      The Phoenix nodded and loped ahead.
      “And you’re in such condition to take any kind of guard position at all,” Sascha said. “And no, don’t you try to stop leaning on me. Let’s just get through this together.”
      Hirianthial managed a faint smile. “Far be it from me to argue with a Harat-Shar.”
      “You got that right,” Sascha said.
      Together they limped after the others. The slower pace gave Hirianthial time to assess his condition and call himself lucky: other than the bruises and incidental slashes he’d gotten in the fight he was intact. His biggest problem remained the weakness he’d inherited from his battle with the mental-wound, and that would resolve itself with enough sleep.
      “You’re so light,” Sascha said. “You’ve got to eat more.”
      “It’s on the agenda,” Hirianthial said, glad enough of the warm density of the Harat-Shar and the softness of the fur that cushioned the edges of the man’s body as they bumped together down the road. That Sascha’s mind was relentlessly focused on their situation helped diffuse the impact of his thoughts; all things considered, it was the most comfortable way Hirianthial could imagine being half-dragged down a road.
      “It’s so quiet. You’d think there’d be someone around,” Irine said.
      “I’m just glad there aren’t,” Reese said. Her aura had a sullen gray flatness.
      “You think Fleet destroyed all the barns?”
      That piqued Sascha’s interest strongly enough that Hirianthial ended up looking off the road with the Harat-Shar. He followed the tigraine’s series of thoughts from the observation of the pattern of destruction to the memories of similar constructs.
      “They were hangars,” Sascha called forward.
      “For planes?” Irine said.
      “That would explain the overhead fight,” Reese said. “I hope Fleet made out okay.”
      “I’m sure they did,” Irine said.
      The two continued to talk, the nervous chatter Hirianthial associated with the lingering effects of an extreme adrenal dump. He ignored it and concentrated on walking… until a whisper at the edge of his perceptions brought him fully alert.
      “What is it?” Sascha said in a low voice.
      “Get Bryer,” Hirianthial replied, standing on his own.
      Sascha trotted ahead. “Hey Bryer… you go be Long-Tall-and-White’s leaning post for a while. I’ll take the front.”
      The Phoenix padded back and stood beside Hirianthial as Sascha led the three on. Then he turned his head to the Eldritch. “Trouble.”
      “Feels like five people,” Hirianthial said. “They’re definitely looking for us.”
      Bryer stretched his fingers and the sun flashed off his claws. “Five. Easy kill.” His crest flared. “You will kill, yes?”
      “They want most of us dead and the rest of us in chains,” Hirianthial said. “And they’re armed to do it. Yes, I’ll kill them.”
      Bryer nodded, then scanned the road. “Little cover.”
      “We can crouch behind the brush,” Hirianthial said. “They’re not expecting an ambush. If we let them pass us and keep going it shouldn’t take long.”
      Bryer eyed him. “Sneaky.”
      Hirianthial smiled. “We’ll be outnumbered at least two to one and I’m barely conscious. They’ll have a fair enough fight.”

***

This week has been rough! We got this episode paid for, so I am posting early. I’ll post again tomorrow if we hit cap again.

Serial: Earthrise, Episode 67

Posted by jagadmin on April 16, 2013 No comments

Earthrise
Her Instruments, Book 1

Episode 67

      The guards lunged into the room, more than enough of them to kill them all. Reese leaped behind the desk as one of the Harat-Shar yowled and she heard curses and the thick smacks of fists against flesh. A hand grabbed for her ankle and she kicked back until it let go, but someone had followed her behind the desk. Reese dropped beneath it.
      They were going to kill her. She had no idea why they hadn’t fired on her yet. A single shot with a palmer and she’d be dead. Instead they were trying to drag her out from beneath the desk. She bit the hand that grabbed her shoulder and writhed as several more tore at her arms and legs. Two people hauled her into the open… and then flew up over the desk. Dark gold talons gripped the edge just above Reese and then Bryer looked down at her.
      “Hurry,” he said.
      Reese scrabbled out from her hiding hole and stared at the bodies on the ground.
      “Come on, boss, they’ve got Hirianthial!” Sascha said as he strapped on one of the guard’s weapons.
      “What about Surapinet?” Reese said. “Which way did he go?”
      “Who cares?” Irine said.
      “I care!” Reese exclaimed. “If he goes free we’ll be dead in a week! We have to go after him!”
      “Fleet will take care of him,” Sascha said, pointing out the windows. “See, they’re already here.”
      Reese glanced behind her shoulder and saw smoke rising from one of the warehouses and a swiftly passing shadow on the ground, shaped like a fighter. A dozen smaller fighters were already in the air, but they didn’t look like Fleet’s. “Where did those come from?”
      “Keep your eye on the prize, boss,” Sascha said. “If they get off the ground with Hirianthial we might never see him again.”
      “Same goes for Surapinet,” Reese said, then waved her hands. “Oh for the love of freedom! We don’t all have to go after them both! Bryer, go take care of Surapinet!”
      The Phoenix huffed, then leaped off the table, leaving scratches on the metal. He whisked through the door.
      Irine handed Reese a palmer. “Here. You might need it.”
      “Why didn’t they fire on us?” Reese asked.
      “Too close quarters, probably,” Sascha said. “Doesn’t matter. They went this way.”
      “I’d appreciate not having to rescue the man at least once,” Reese said.
      “Yeah, well, it took four people to drag him away and that was after he took care of five of them.”
      “And you saw that with your own eyes in the middle of a fist-fight,” Reese said.
      Sascha’s ears flattened, but he turned to the nearest body. “I don’t need to have looked during the fight,” he said. With a grunt, he pulled at one of the bodies and then held up a gory dagger. “He didn’t make the same kind of kills as Bryer did.”
      Reese stared at the dagger in shock.
      “Come on,” Irine said, grabbing Reese by the vest. “This way!”

***

      The downstairs guards hadn’t searched him, which meant when the first of his attackers lunged for him Hirianthial drew his dagger from the back of his boot and put it neatly through the man’s carotid artery. The second man managed to get a hand on him and the talent Hirianthial had assumed would be a liability proved instead an unexpected asset, for that violent grasp conveyed flashes of all the man’s previous crimes.
      The very last time Hirianthial had been called upon to execute a criminal, he’d stayed his hand, out of sentiment, and from an exhaustion with killing. In retrospect, that mercy had been misplaced; some nagging feeling insisted that act would return to plague him, if he lived so long. This time, he let no such reservations fog his mind. He’d spent decades practicing in the profession of mercy, but before he’d taken up a doctor’s caduceus he’d carried swords sworn to just service, and the sensibilities of both worlds mingled in his mind as he fought. Every man who attacked him forced on him knowledge of his perfidy, his cruelty, and like a doctor faced with the worst malignant tumor, Hirianthial destroyed them.
      He was out of practice but the advantage they gave him by attempting only to disarm him rather than kill him would have evened the odds… had his body not suddenly stopped working. He barely had time to notice the fatigue before it overwhelmed him and he staggered. As his attackers rushed him en masse he reflected that engaging in combat was probably not Doctor SorrowsEase’s idea of bed-rest, food and judicious exercise.
      Hirianthial managed to wedge the knife into one more man before they overpowered him and dragged him into the hall.
      “Where do we put him?” one of them asked.
      “We need to get real restraints on him,” the other said. “I don’t trust him.”
      “Fleet’s here.”
      “Yeah. We’ll take care of him and bolt.”
      At the end of their exchange, Hirianthial ceased his struggles so abruptly the guards stumbled. When their grips eased he lurched away and started down the hall. He surprised himself by managing a sprint despite the dizziness that threatened to bring him crashing into unconsciousness, and when the guards caught up with him he surprised one with a knee between the legs.
      That earned him a smack hard enough to throw his face against his shoulder.
      “Don’t hurt him! He’s supposed to stay in one piece!”
      “They didn’t say he had to be pretty,” the other snarled. Behind him the third guard was moaning. “Did you see what he did?”
      “I’ll go get something to tie him with.”
      “Are you crazy? We’ll drag him to the supply room. We’re going to need all of us to keep him down.”
      If only they knew just how exhausted he was. He was so weak he was sweating from the minor exertion of running a few feet down the hall.
      “Just knock him out. We’ll carry him.”
      Hirianthial twisted to avoid the first blow. They pinned him for the second but he wrenched away in time. Adrenaline gave him the surge he needed to climb to his feet and run again, but he stopped as four more guards came around the corner.
      “Get him!” someone shouted from behind him.
      They all rushed him, from behind and from the front. He couldn’t fight them all, and the combined assault of mind and body loosened his limbs until he could barely stand.
      “You have cuffs?”
      “Yeah, sure, here.”
      The first guard took great pleasure in jerking his hands together behind his back and hooking them together. “We should do his feet too.”
      “I don’t have ankle cuffs. He looks pretty weak. You think he could run far?”
      “Who knows?”
      “Hey, let go of our Eldritch!”
      The sound of Sascha’s voice galvanized Hirianthial. He thrust the point of his shoulder into the man on one side of him and kicked the one in front of him, then dropped to a crouch and rammed the legs between him and the sound of fighting. Palmers squeaked, filling the corridor with the smell of burnt fabric and blood.
      “Hirianthial!”
      “Here!” he called, hoarsely. A man grabbed him and began dragging him in the opposite direction, then fell beneath a palmer shot.
      Lying on one arm, Hirianthial reflected that the looming twins were one of the finest sights he’d seen in at least the last decade. Certainly in the past year.
      “That’s all of them,” Irine said as Sascha crouched next to him.
      “You okay?”
      “I need unlocking,” Hirianthial said. “One of them should have a key.”
      Reese stomped up behind the twins. “A couple of them got away.”
      “No problem,” Irine said, sliding a few picks from her hair and dropping behind Hirianthial’s back. Furry fingers brushed at his wrists, accompanying the tiny clicking sounds of pick on metal and the mental brushes of concern, fear and a steady focus.
      “You look beat-up,” Sascha said, gaze traveling over Hirianthial’s face.
      “They barely handled me,” Hirianthial said. “It’s of no concern. Where’s Bryer?”
      “Following the primo bad guy,” Sascha said.
      “Done!” Irine said, flourishing the cuffs.
      Hirianthial sat up and flexed his hands. The ache in his wrists worried him far less than the dizziness that sent spots rushing in front of his eyes. He pressed a hand to his forehead.
      “Damn, you’re not well yet,” Sascha said. “Can you make it to the Earthrise?”
      “He’d better,” Reese said, “This place is crazy with guards. If we don’t get out of here while Fleet’s distracting them, we might not get out at all.”
      Hirianthial forced himself to his feet with only a trace of a wobble. “Let’s go.”
      Reese eyed him.
      “Are you sure you don’t need a hand? A shoulder?” Sascha asked.
      “I’m sure,” Hirianthial said, then smiled. “For now, at least.”
      Sascha nodded and pulled the Eldritch’s dagger from his belt. “You’ll want this back.”
      Hirianthial stared at it, then shook himself and took it. “Yes. Thank you.”

***

We are only $5 from our Thursday episode!

Getting closer to the end, now.

Serial: Earthrise, Episode 66

Posted by jagadmin on April 13, 2013 1 comment

Earthrise
Her Instruments, Book 1

Episode 66

      Past the foyer the carpet switched to black and the walls to dark gray paint with steel ribs, giving Reese the uncomfortable impression of walking through a poorly lit ship’s corridor. The elevator trip was even worse, since only half of them could squeeze in at a time: Irine and Sascha went first with their guide and Reese went up last with her “bodyguards.” They exited at the top of the building, so Reese was not at all surprised to be led to a corner suite. It was twice the size of her mess hall; two of its walls were clear glass panels, and a minimum of clutter in the room gave onlookers an unparalleled view of the landscape. If only there had been something worth looking at.
      The man behind the desk was human, tan with bleached hair. He didn’t look old enough to be running a multi-planet crime ring until Reese met his eyes and felt the force of their appraisal.
      “Captain Eddings,” he said. “I’m Marlane Surapinet. Do step all the way inside so my men can close the door.” He smiled. “For privacy.”
      “Of course,” Reese said, glancing at the guards. These two made the ones downstairs look like guard-impersonators.
      “I’m glad to have the pleasure of meeting you in person,” Surapinet said. “I admit I’m not sure why you insisted. The money will be in your account as soon as we verify the integrity of the goods you’ve delivered.”
      “I insisted because you irritated me,” Reese said. “And I like to clear up irritations with people I work with.”
      He cocked his head. “An irritation.”
      “You sent people to check up on me,” Reese said. “People I had to subsequently deal with.” She folded her arms. “I don’t like being tailed and I don’t like having to waste time and energy dealing with tails.”
      His brows lifted. “You didn’t expect me to leave you unwatched, Captain Eddings? I’d never hired you before.”
      “You bought my ship, my sweat and my silence,” Reese said. “You asked for a lot, but you paid good money for it. And then you disrespected my integrity. I don’t like that in an employer, Mr. Surapinet.”
      “I see,” he replied. “So you put paid to the tail, is that your story?”
      “Have they come round since they waylaid me?” Reese asked.
      Surapinet said nothing. Then he leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. “You sound as if you’d like me to continue to be your employer.”
      “I might,” Reese said. “It depends on how fair you’re going to play.”
      He smiled. “I always play fair with my associates. My word is my bond, Captain Eddings.”
      “And that’s why you set two vessels on me,” Reese said. If she concentrated on her anger it made it easier to ignore her terror.
      “I set those vessels on you precisely because I am a man of my word… living in a universe where few people keep theirs,” he said. “Surely you’ve been burned yourself. We honest people are so few.”
      “I still feel disrespected,” Reese said. “And the damage I sustained squashing your over-zealous heavies is going to bite into my profit margin.”
      He studied her. “And what would settle this between us?”
      “You could give me a cut of the sales,” Reese said. “Let’s stop playing pretend, Mr. Surapinet. Even one of those crystals is going to net you more in wet sales than the lump sum you’re paying me. I hardly think that’s fair since I’m the one Fleet will be chasing if they hear even the faintest rumor that those crystals might be classified by a bleeding heart researcher as thinking beings.”
      “And now we’re a chemist as well as a merchant?” Surapinet said.
      “I have good people working for me,” Reese said.
      “Ah yes,” Surapinet said, eyes flicking past her shoulder. “Good people.” He leaned forward. “How’s this deal, Captain. You get half my profits from the wet sales—”
      Her brows lifted.
      “—and I get the Eldritch.”
      “No.” She said it before she could think about it.
      “No?” the man said, and she didn’t like his tone at all.
      “He’s my Eldritch, no matter how scrawny,” Reese said. “He’s not for sale.”
      “That’s too bad,” Surapinet said. “He’s a wanted man in our organization.” A thin smile. “I’ll pass you some of the profit from his sale, if you like.”
      “It’s not about the money,” Reese said testily. Surapinet’s sharpened gaze made her aware of just how close she was to breaking cover. She made herself relax, sigh, run a hand through her hair. “Look, I don’t want to give him up… yet. I’m having too much fun with him, if you know what I mean.”
      Both his eyebrows arched. “Why, Captain, are you saying you and he are lovers?”
      Reese didn’t need to fake her derision. “Hardly. He’s a toy, not a lover. But he’s a very, very good toy. I guess being psychic means he always knows exactly what I want.” She tried mimicking one of the lazy smiles she’d caught on the twins’ faces. “I’ll sell him when I get bored, but I’m not bored yet. If you want exclusive rights when I do decide to give him up, I’m amenable to that.”
      “It’s so nice to talk with a fellow professional,” Surapinet said. “Although you understand that I simply can’t give you as much if I don’t get the Eldritch immediately.”
      “That’s fine,” Reese said. “I’ll settle for a quarter of the wet profits and a half-stake in the final sale if you exercise the option to buy him later.”
      “You want me to pay for him twice?” Surapinet asked.
      Reese smiled. “He’s that good.”
      Her smugness must have passed muster, because Surapinet leaned over and pressed a button next to his desk. “Ms. Deigle, please have someone from Legal meet us downstairs.”
      “Yes, sir.”
      “We’ll draw up the contract before you leave,” Surapinet said.
      “Fine with me,” Reese said. “But about the current contract. I’d like the money.”
      “And I’d like the locks opened,” Surapinet said.
      “Fair enough,” Reese said. “Shall we go?”
      “I’d be delighted, Captain Eddings. Or should I say Theresa?”
      “Depends,” Reese said. “Is this the beginning of a beautiful relationship, or are you just positioning me for disappointment?”
      He laughed and walked around the desk. “I think it’s a little early to make predictions. But I am intrigued.”
      As Surapinet reached for the door it swung open for the angry woman. Behind her the guards Reese had dismissed had multiplied from two people into fourteen, maybe fifteen.
      “Mr. Surapinet,” she said. “There’s a transmission originating from this room.”
      “There is?” he asked, and the look on his face boded very badly. He turned slowly to her. “Would you know anything about this transmission, Captain Eddings?”
      A moment to decide, and she chose to brazen it out. “That would be me,” she said without any visible unease… or she hoped without any visible unease. “Or did you really expect me not to take out some insurance for myself? Having a record of the meeting is good business sense.”
      “Without informing me?”
      Reese smiled. “You were the one telling me about how people of their word get burned, Mr. Surapinet. You sent pirates. I brought a camera.”
      He began to relax.
      “And you regularly store your records in the middle of empty space?” the woman interrupted. “Because that’s where the transmission’s leading.”
      Surapinet’s gaze hardened. “Not to the Earthrise?”
      “No,” she said. She sneered at Reese. “Of course, she’s not going to tell us how many Dusted Fleet ships are waiting for her little recording, is she?”
      “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Reese said, but it was too late. Surapinet pinned her with a glare so intense her knees wobbled.
      “Take care of them,” he said brusquely. “Except the Eldritch. Him I want alive.”

***

Where’s the Star Trek: TOS fight scene music when I need it??

Xenopsych Case Studies: Wound

Posted by jagadmin on April 10, 2013 No comments

In the multicultural Alliance, aliens mingle with humans and the Pelted, gengineered offspring of human experiments, in a vast and mostly peaceful communion. The mindlinked xeno-therapists Jahir, one of the rare Eldritch, and Vasiht’h, a furred centauroid, work on a starbase teeming with members of multiple races and species, where they ply their special brand of dream-therapy on the over-stressed members of their community. These case studies are a series of vignettes about living and working among these diverse species. The free stories are available online at the case studies tag, or you can buy the Jahir & Vasiht’h ebooks; check this page for links and reading order.

Case Study: Wound

      Their patient was a champion fencer, two-time winner of the prestigious Le Ceau tournament in the traditional foil category… a Karaka’An feline who’d had a severe accident involving a broken leg. She was undergoing physical therapy following the successful quick-heal of the bone, but had suffered a setback when she’d strained the muscles in the good leg compensating for the weak one, a common complication in the digitigrade races with their compromised bipedal stances. When she’d developed anxiety over whether she’d regain her condition, her doctor and her coach had remanded her to their care, hoping counseling would keep her from rushing her physical recovery and straining herself again. That Jahir and Vasiht’h worked primarily through dreams was a lagniappe—”at least while she’s in your office, she’ll be off her feet.”
      Sleeping on their couch, she still gave off a vital energy: the muscle under her short caramel-colored pelt seemed to vibrate, as if she was competing in her dreams. When they slipped into her mind, they found that to be literal truth: her rest was less rest and more practice, improving muscle memory with replays of past victories. It was exhausting to watch; visiting her mind did not give Vasiht’h any of the context he would need to understand the game or any of the moves she felt compelled to repeat. But he did sense the kernel of anxiety that was feeding the manic energy of her dreams, so he cupped his hands around the images and braked them. Her muscles stopped twitching and her thoughts became more spontaneous, her sleep deeper.
      He noticed he was doing most of the work. That was not unusual; when they affected dreams, they often traded off roles.
      But then Jahir started having nightmares.

      The two of them slept in the same room—a habit they’d picked up during Jahir’s residency on Heliocentrus—though in separate beds, given their very different body types. The mindline tended to smooth out their subconscious moods by synchronizing them, and in sleep it depressed extreme discrepancies. For a nightmare to break through that effect was so rare that Vasiht’h almost didn’t believe it was happening until he woke, breathless and shivering, convinced that his shoulder was bleeding. It wasn’t, but his partner had a fist clenched in his blankets and his sleeping expression was troubled.
      Vasiht’h crept over to the bedside and peered at the Eldritch, frowned. They had never discussed the ethics of affecting one another’s dreams, but he slipped through the mindline anyway, far enough to tug at the disruptions he felt in the surface of his partner’s mind. He smoothed them down like the sheets on a bed, and slowly Jahir’s hand loosened and his expression grew slack again. Vasiht’h went back to his nest-like arrangement of pillows and curled up in them, unsettled.
     The nightmares began returning every few days. Jahir would not discuss them, did not even seem to realize he was having them: it was Vasiht’h who woke, heart racing, convinced he could feel the hot and slippery blood welling around fingers too long and too numerous for his own hand.

      That wasn’t their only problem. Their patient had responded well to the therapy and was no longer frightened that she would lose her peak condition permanently; in fact, she became so confident of regaining it that she chafed at any suggestion that she slow down to the suggested pace of the therapeutic exercises. She was bored, she missed her old regimen, she wanted to return to the piste. Trapped between their patient’s constant discontent and his partner’s broken sleep, Vasiht’h began taking tea for headaches until he went through three cups in a day and decided he was done with the whole business. One month into their treatment course, after his partner had gone to prepare the soporific their patient preferred, Vasiht’h said to her, “I wonder if there’s something you could help me with.”
      “Oh?” she said, ears perking. “Me, get to help my therapists? This should be fun.”
      “My partner had a bad experience once with a sword,” Vasiht’h said. “I think he could use… an introduction to the sport. A proper one, instead of the messed-up one he had. Could you teach him the rudiments?”
      “Could I!” she said. “I’d love to!” She grinned. “But I’m warning you, you might be creating a new addict.”
      “We’ll see,” Vasiht’h said.

      Two days later, he led a puzzled Jahir out of their office—”Our session today is off-site,”—and to the salle. Jahir continued to be mystified until their patient appeared with a grin and two practice foils: “One for you and one for me. Your partner’s kindly arranged you lessons from a champion fencer.”
      The look Jahir shot him would have fooled any bystanders into thinking him angry, but Vasiht’h had the benefit of the mindline and could sense the lightning rapidity of his partner’s mood shifts: from anger to questioning that reaction; from questioning it to identifying fear; from seeing the fear to resignation over the necessity of facing it; and from resignation to a sort of tired, whimsical gratitude.
      It remained one of the things that Vasiht’h found most astonishing about Jahir: how quickly his mind worked, and how complete his instinct for introspection was.

      So their patient began showing Jahir the fundamentals of sport fencing. Because she was serving as coach, her exertion was minimal: her demonstrations, slowed to a beginner’s pace, were nowhere near as grueling as her training, and the novelty of teaching distracted her from the boredom that was sabotaging her recovery. Vasiht’h retreated to the bleachers to watch the lesson, and found it fascinating. He did not think of Jahir as graceful, but he learned he was wrong watching the Eldritch’s execution of these exercises. His body language was cramped and hesitant, his lunges lacked authority… even his hand on the grip was tentative. Their patient cajoled him, and when that didn’t work, barked a command at him that shocked him into moving.
     In that movement, all the missing grace came back, stripped of anything but lethal purpose. Even lacking familiarity with physical violence, Vasiht’h recognized it for what it was.
      Their patient retreated, then laughed. “Better! Let’s build on that.”
      After half an hour of this, she sent the Eldritch to change and joined Vasiht’h on the bleachers, sitting back with a bottle of water. “You were right.”
      “About which part?” he asked as she drank half of her bottle off in one swallow.
      She wiped her face. “He fights like a wounded animal. No sense of competition. It’s all or nothing, one chance, go for the throat or die.”
      Vasiht’h frowned, flexing fingers and remembering blood. “You think you can get him past it?”
      “Maybe,” she said. “Bring him back in two days. Same time.”

Jahir said nothing to him about the surprise lesson, but Vasiht’h felt no wash of resentment in the mindline, nor any awkwardness in their daily interaction. Only that dim resignation, and a sense of purpose. But when the nightmare came again that night, it woke them both.
Jahir said nothing, staring at the ceiling. Vasiht’h didn’t press. He had two patients now, and knowing when to grant them their silences was part of his job.

      Jahir continued the lessons until their patient’s coach reported that she was ready to resume her real training. On that day, she met the two of them on the piste and grinned. “We’re done here. You know why?”
      “Why?” Jahir asked.
      “Because I’ll never make a fencer out of you,” she said. “Your heart’s not in it. Instead, I am turning you over to my best friend…” She dragged a Tam-illee male over and clapped him on the shoulder with a grin. “I think you’ll find his style a lot more suitable.”
      “And what do you teach?” Jahir asked warily.
      The foxine walked over to the weapons rack and plucked two staves from it, tossing one to the Eldritch. “The fine art of denial. Of attack, that is. Though you’ll find this stick will crack skulls a lot better than her little toothpick.”
      Their patient stuck her tongue out at him and said to Jahir, “In the end, you’re not into the game. Andreth won’t teach you sports. He’ll teach you how to win fights.”
      Jahir inclined his head to her. “Thank you.”
      “Good luck,” she said, and added with a smile at Vasiht’h, “And thanks for keeping me from going stir-crazy waiting for the leg to finish healing.”

      The nightmares ceased. Jahir went to his practices diligently, and several months later, Vasiht’h surprised him with a staff to replace the ones he borrowed from the salle: a long purposeful-looking thing hand-carved from the wood of a tree native to Seersana where they’d gone to school together. Vasiht’h had had it made to measure for his friend’s height after consulting with the Tam-illee instructor, and had even arranged for ornament based on some research: metal rings at the end, and a long strand of silk ending in tassels to confuse the eye.
      Jahir looked at it for a long time. Then went to one knee, holding it upright with one hand, and with the other offered—and Vasiht’h accepted—the gift of one of his rare embraces. Even rarer than the embrace, though, was the shared memory that Jahir passed him as he rested his head against Vasiht’h's. A circle drawn on cold damp earth. The smell of a wet breeze and bruised loam. The flush of anger, hot on wind-chilled cheeks, at an insult that could not be allowed to stand. The knives… the fight, flashes of it, fierce and quick as light racing the length of a steel dagger. The wound Jahir had taken, a deep slit in the meat of his shoulder, and the thin slice he’d managed in return.
      “You fought?” Vasiht’h said. “A… a duel. Over someone.”
      “And I lost,” Jahir answered, voice rough.
      The taste in the mindline was wrong, too complex. “And…?”
      “And the scratch I gave him… the wound became infected,” Jahir said. “And he died. Died of a scratch. A scratch I can heal someone of within seconds now.”
      Vasiht’h's skin crawled with the depth of his partner’s revulsion. He tasted bile in his mouth.
      “I’m sorry about the nightmares,” Jahir said, low.
      “I’m sorry that happened to you,” Vasiht’h said, and rested his cheek against his partner’s shoulder. “Did I…”
      “No,” Jahir said with a sigh. “You made it better, not worse. Thank you.” He brought his hand around, rested it on Vasiht’h’s back, just below the nape of the neck: five fingers, long, always cold. No blood: nothing but the comfort of family.
      “Any time,” Vasiht’h answered, and sighed.

***

That’s the staff up there, but fitted with a spear-head. Some more hints into Eldritch culture.

These are kind of like the Alliance’s Aphorisms, aren’t they?

Serial: Earthrise, Episode 64

Posted by jagadmin on April 9, 2013 No comments

Earthrise
Her Instruments, Book 1

Episode 64

      “So I set down here,” Reese said, tapping the map, “then take the crystals into this compound, where you believe the man in charge of it all is waiting.”
      “Marlane Surapinet,” NotAgain confirmed. They were sitting in one of the StarCounter‘s luxurious but small conference rooms, having extremely fresh shipboard coffee. Reese had never been aboard a Fleet ship, though she’d seen pictures of their interiors. Nothing prepared her for the visceral reality. The StarCounter smelled fresh, was clean and well-appointed; its corridors seemed designed for comfort and yet nothing struck her as overdone. And the technology level was simply astonishing. The appliances in this conference room alone would have cost her as much as employing the twins for a couple of months.
      Back to the plan. “I convince him to personally sign over the money for the crystals and then you have your evidence,” Reese said. “And then I leave.”
      “That’s the plan under best circumstances,” NotAgain said.
      Reese eyed him. “What are the worst circumstances?”
      “That they know you’re coming and that you’re working for us, and they imprison you. At which point we’ll come after you, since they’ll have no legal reason to kidnap you.”
      “Okay, I like that option a lot less than option number one,” Reese said, shivering.
      “There’s worse,” NotAgain said. “We have cause to believe they base a lot of their operations out of the Barris, where you’ll be landing. If they have ships there and they realize what you’re doing, your arrival might inspire them to flee.”
      “Why’s that bad?” Reese asked.
      “Because I’d be required to stop them,” NotAgain said.
      Reese shook her head. “I’m so glad I don’t have your job.”
      He laughed. “It’s rewarding work. It’s just not easy.” He tapped the map. “What I’d like you to do is to stay on-planet after you make your drop-off until you receive word that local-space is clear.”
      “That sounds straightforward enough.”
      “We’ll also loan you some men to help secure the area around your landing site,” NotAgain said. “Unfortunately I don’t have a lot to spare, but I can get you at least two, possibly four.”
      “Every extra hand will help,” Reese said. “Thanks. When do you want me to make my final approach?”
      “I’ve called in some help,” NotAgain said. “We should be ready in a couple of hours. Speaking of which, I hope you’ve evolved a cover?”
      Reese nodded. “I think I’ve created a persona I could actually believe.” She smiled wryly. “I’m not exactly the most dangerous person in the world, but I have a good imagination.”
      “Good,” NotAgain said. “I hope your persona wears a button-down shirt.” He set a pin topped with a round black seed on the table between them.
      “What is it?” Reese asked, picking it up. The pin was barely the length of one of her nails.
      “A remote 3deo capture,” NotAgain said.
      Reese started. “This thing? It’s microscopic! I’ve never seen a camera this small on the market!”
      He laughed. “And you won’t find one there.”
      “I guess there are benefits to being Fleet,” Reese said. “Aren’t they going to detect it, though?”
      “They shouldn’t,” NotAgain said. At her look, he said, “We do our best to stay ahead of the curve, captain, but that doesn’t mean we always succeed. That’s the latest in surveillance equipment but you should never assume the advantage. If they find it at all, it will probably be in the same check that finds the weapons we’re lending your crew for verisimilitude. Shrug it off as something any mercenary would have and they shouldn’t think twice about it.”
      “Unless they recognize it as Fleet issue,” Reese said.
      “They won’t,” NotAgain said. “Nor the weapons. We’re careful about clandestine operations.”
      Reese sighed. “I guess I can’t hope for more than that.”
      He shook his head. “No. I’ve already sent the weapons to the Pad room, where your crewman should be waiting—” The meeting room door chimed. NotAgain glanced at the ceiling. “Yes?”
      “Captain, one of the Earthrise crew to see his captain.”
      NotAgain looked at her. “Are we done here?”
      Reese nodded. “It’s probably Sascha.”
      The Tam-illee said, “Thank you, Ensign. Let him in.”
      The door opened on a young human who acknowledged his captain before stepping aside for Hirianthial. For once, Reese allowed her frustration full rein: doing that made it easier to ignore just how gaunt he looked. And was he listing to the side, just a touch?
      “Lord Sarel Jisiensire,” NotAgain said. “It’s good to see you on your feet.”
      “Thank you, Captain,” Hirianthial said. He looked at Reese. “I am given to understand you are following the pirates to their den?”
      Reese had the feeling she’d regret any answer she gave. She scowled. “Yes.”
      “I’m going with you.”
      “You’re crazy!” Reese exploded. “Look at you! You can barely stand straight and you want to waltz into a slaver junction? They’ll tie you by your hair and cart you away before I even open my mouth! What exactly are you going to tell them you’re there for?”
      “I’m your bodyguard,” Hirianthial said.
      Reese gaped at him. No one spoke, so she had to. “You can’t be serious.”
      “It might work,” NotAgain said.
      Reese composed herself. “I already chose someone to act as my heavy,” she said. “Bryer. He’s tall, he’s impossible to read and he’s got talons an inch long.”
      “Having more than one isn’t unusual,” NotAgain said.
      “But him? Look at him!” Reese said. “You could knock him over with a feather!”
      “What exactly would you be doing to protect her?” NotAgain asked.
      “Reading the minds of her enemies,” Hirianthial said.
      “That’s not funny,” Reese growled.
      NotAgain ignored her, rubbing the edge of his chin. Then he said, “You should take him.”
      Reese looked from him to the Eldritch, then back. “Are you serious? Who would believe him as a bodyguard?”
      “Believe him?” This time NotAgain met her stare with a polite incredulity. “He wouldn’t be pretending.” He looked at Hirianthial. “Am I correct?”
      Hirianthial said. “You have divined my intent, Captain.”
      The world had gone insane.
      NotAgain continued, “If you’re worried about them abducting him you’d have better luck having him in full view; if he hides on the Earthrise they could plan a raid while your back is turned and deny complicity when you found out. Taking him along, on the other hand, would fit the profile of a brazen, self-confident mercenary. I don’t think they’ll doubt his efficacy. And having along one of the men they dearly want to take for themselves would be a significant statement.”
      “Of what?” Reese asked, recovering the use of her tongue. “Stupidity?”
      NotAgain squinted at her. “Captain Eddings, I confess I don’t understand your misgivings. Your Phoenix will make an excellent combatant if negotiations come to blows… but an Eldritch mind-reader at your back will be a deterrent to violence that your enemies won’t be able to equal or anticipate. And the man has volunteered to protect you.”
      “I’m more worried about protecting him,” Reese said.
      NotAgain nodded. “We’ve already covered that. If they want him, they’ll do their best to kidnap him whether he’s in plain view or not. Best to have it in the open.”
      Reese clenched her hands under the table. “If you think it’s a good idea—”
      “I think you should count yourself lucky to have such a resource,” NotAgain said. “And I think you should guard yourself against dismissing his value.”
      Reese sighed. “Fine. He comes. But I hope everything works out as planned… and that’s as planned for option one, not all the rest.”
      The Tam-illee smiled. “You and me both. Now unless there’s anything else…? No? The ensign outside can escort you both to the Pad room.”
      “Thanks,” Reese said. “I’ll be waiting for the signal.” She stepped outside, paused to allow the ensign to gather them with his eyes, and then started after him. She had resolved to remain silent, but the dogged presence of the Eldritch at her back nagged at her until the words broke loose. “This is a bad idea.”
      “Chasing pirates, slavers, thieves and killers?” Hirianthial said. “I find no part of it objectionable.”
      “Not that part! The ‘you coming along’ part,” Reese said. “You’re barely out of bed! Not only that, but you’re not a killer! What good is a pacifist bodyguard?”
      “Be careful what you assume, lady,” he said, and something in his voice, some hint of a husk, put the hair on the back of her neck up. Then, with a lighter tone he said, “I have more than one ability to apply to the situation.”
      “Yeah, let’s talk about that,” Reese said. “I thought you said you don’t read people’s minds.”
      “It is considered immoral,” Hirianthial said.
      “Doesn’t seem to stop you,” Reese said.
      A whirl of white and the jingle of a prayer bell and he was standing in front of her, so abruptly she almost ran into him. Reese stopped only a few inches short of his stomach, and though at this angle she had to crane her neck to look at him she decided to do that rather than backpedal. She raised her head.
      Long ago—far longer than the actual passage of the days—she’d sat beside him in a straw-filled cell and watched a look cross his face that had not belonged on a healer. She remembered being glad that look hadn’t been directed at her. Faced fully with it now, she didn’t stumble away because fear petrified every part of her but her hands, which started shaking. His habit of looking at someone completely was bad enough. She didn’t want to know that his eyes could make her heart palpitate and sweat pop from her skin.
      Before her knees could loosen and dump her to the floor, Hirianthial twisted his head aside and closed his eyes. He visibly composed himself; she could almost see the anger draining away. He straightened, stepped to one side and said, “I find myself unmoved by ethical arguments when they protect men I already know are criminals.”
      Just like that, he was Hirianthial again, the doctor who wouldn’t kill anyone even seemingly in self-defense, the annoying Eldritch who’d fished around in her mind and pulled out her deepest secrets. That she had to force her shaking legs to propel her after the silent ensign only added to her rage. By the time they reached the Pad room, she was ready to throttle him.
      The greeting Sascha started to voice died as he opened his mouth. “Err… do I want to know?”
      “No,” Reese snarled.
      “Riiight,” Sascha said.

***

We are… $5 toward our Thursday episode! And roaring toward the final climax of the book. *rubs hands together gleefully*

Also: why yes, Hirianthial has a scary past! Whatever gave you that idea. >.>

Xenopsych Case Studies: Finite

Posted by jagadmin on April 7, 2013 No comments

Case Study: Finite

      Neither of them believed their patient could fit into their apartment, and yet at the scheduled time the door opened and nine feet of alien pressed between the jambs, feathers slowly popping out to frame the alien’s body. And then, in a rush, the entire creature was in their common room, shaking out his wings and the vast train of his tail. At their disbelieving stare, he leaned toward them, showing them the side of a toothed beak in what served his species for a smile, and said, “Narrow bones.”
      They did not force him to squeeze into their office.
      Their patient was an Akubi, one of the few true alien races of the Alliance, giant, bird-like creatures with horned heads and hints of saurian scale along the sides of their long, muscled necks and on their backs. Their particular visitor was male, the smaller and duller of the three sexes: the males were the hunters, and their feathers and hides came in camouflage colors of mahogany brown and dull gray with a faint gloss of iridescent purple. Their smaller bodies had evolved to navigate the more cluttered canopies of their world’s enormous trees, leaving the larger females to the skies, and the spectacular plumage that attracted groups of males to feed their clutches.
      While the Akubi in the Alliance were few, they made for genial neighbors. They were amazing mimics—which meant their patient spoke Universal better than Jahir had when he’d first gone to college on Seersana—and for all their true alien origin they were often less alien than some of the stranger third generation engineered species, like the Phoenix. They had such stable temperaments that finding one on their appointment schedule had been unexpected. Once their visitor had settled on the floor, mantling wings so enormous Vasiht’h felt a breeze over his bare toes, they asked what had brought him by.
      “It bothers me,” the Akubi said, “that the sky is finite.”

Their patient had just moved to the starbase, and to its central city, which had been built in a spherical bubble on the starbase’s skin, half its globe facing the hollow interior and the other half facing outward, forming the commercial docks built, maintained and overseen by Fleet. The bubble was, of course, finite… but the “ceiling” of the bubble was very, very far away. The city-sphere itself was large enough not just for the existing habitations—and their attendant parks and water environments—but also for growth, expanding outward into broad flat fields of short grass. The city even had climate: not severe, of course, but enough variation in temperature to trick the fruiting trees in the greenspaces into giving evidence of seasons. Most days, a citizen of the starbase didn’t even think that they were in an artificial environment; the only external clue was the distant spindle that showed pale as a midday moon in the sky.
But it was finite. And for the Akubi, who’d freshly come from skies as broad as a true world, the knowledge that somewhere above him was a clear plastic wall was enough to give rise to panic attacks. He’d heard that Jahir and Vasiht’h did work in dreams: since his subconscious was fueling his distress, he’d been hoping they could heal it directly.

      For two months, they trawled the dreams of a true-alien and found them… astonishing. Not because they were unfathomable, but because they were: were fathomable, were real, were breathtaking in their immediacy. In dreams they flew alongside their patient on vast dark wings, through pewter-colored clouds into forests shadowed in black and purple, through wet air smelling of something strange and yet familiar. They felt the tickle of their mustaches against their breasts as they hunted climbing prey, tucked wings close and dove. They tasted blood, and it was good, hot liquid on tongues, stinging the insides of their mouths to life. They felt the euphoria of breaching the canopy to the free air above and dancing there with the third sex, the waiting-sex that could be either male or female and spent much of their lives waiting for the environmental cues that caused the change.
      It was not an idyllic life, but it was a real one, a primal one, and they heard it in their minds as a heartbeat as urgent and complex as a drum song.
      But they could not heal their patient of his fears.

      “This is going nowhere,” Jahir said, resting the side of his head against a hand. He was slouched on their sofa and taking up most of it, as usual. “Not that the experience hasn’t been intense, but I fear we’re getting more out of our sessions than our patient is.”
      The mindline between them was sour as a underripe grapefruit. Vasiht’h loosened a mouth that had puckered in response, rubbed his cheek. “Maybe we’re going at this all wrong. Maybe we should be trying exposure therapy.”
      “You want to make him fly at the barrier?” Jahir said.
      Vasiht’h glanced up at his partner. “That might be a little extreme for a first try. But he’s never actually seen the barrier. We could take him there. On the ground.”
      Jahir was silent, but the mindline hummed with the intensity of his concentration. It stopped abruptly and the Eldritch said, “So systematic desensitization, in vivo.” He chuckled a little. “A bit straightforward for two espers who usually dream-walk to do their work.”
      Vasiht’h's mental shrug tasted like flat seltzer. “If a Medimage platform doesn’t work, you might as well try a plain old scalpel.”

      Teaching relaxation techniques to a giant alien bird proved more difficult than navigating his dreams, partially because Akubi were more naturally relaxed than any Pelted or humanoid species they’d worked with. Jahir brought a handful of sensors and used them to monitor their patient’s vitals, but they rarely fluctuated in response to the techniques they taught him. He learned them anyway, grinning at them with a turned face and an enormous yellow eye that seemed to glitter in amusement at their perplexity.
      Once the patient had control over the techniques, they brought him to the barrier. No one lived that far out from the center of the city and the starbase wall, so they were undisturbed: one bipedal humanoid, tall; one centauroid, squat; and one avian shape that dwarfed them both, standing together on a plain of short green grass where it ended at a thick clear wall. Through it, one could just see the exposed interior wall of the starbase, stretching away toward the limit of their vision.
      The sensors reported no change in the patient’s heart-rate or breathing, no special excitation of the brain. The Akubi looked up at the wall and said simply, “I don’t like it.”

They tried exposure therapy for several weeks, going so far as to send their patient on a flight along the inside of the barrier. The Akubi navigated all these challenges with seeming equilibrium, but did not report a decrease in his anxiety. “The world should not have an edge,” he said, to which Vasiht’h said privately to Jahir, “What can we say to that? He’s right.”

      Four months into their treatment of the alien, Jahir said, “This isn’t working either.”
      “I’ve run out of ideas,” Vasiht’h said, warming his hands on his mug of kerinne and trying not to look disgruntled. The mindline was littered with the detritus of his discontent, though. “What’s left to try? How do you fix the unfixable alien? Of something that, in the end, is a reasonable anxiety? Artificial environments are untrustworthy.”
      “Natural ones are too,” Jahir said, tired. “Frankly, Alliance engineering feels a lot more solid to me than being on a planet without the benefit of high technology.” He smiled a little. “Maybe we should take him outside the starbase on an EVA tour. Give him a break from dealing with the finite. Give him back the natural world so he can breathe and enjoy himself for a while.”
      “A vacation,” Vasiht’h said. “I could use one myself.” At the tickle of amusement through the mindline, he finished, “But not EVA. That’s a little too much reality for me.”
      “Should we make the suggestion?”
      “Why not?” Vasiht’h said.

      As was inevitable, the starbase’s commercial docks had a space reserved for recreational EVA, far from the traffic routes of incoming and outgoing merchant vessels. There, for a reasonable fee, one could be fitted with a slimsuit and attached to a tether and sent off to experience space in all its magnificence. Visitors could walk along the skin of the starbase or choose to float weightless, and several hours later return to the safety of their carefully maintained habitat. The Akubi thought their suggestion intriguing and agreed that being able to fly in any direction without fear of running out of space would be a relief. They offered to accompany him to the EVA area and wait for him to finish, and he agreed.
      For an hour, they sat in the visitors’ lounge, looking out the vast window at the stars and the people floating on the ends of their tethers. They did not see their patient, and after some time sat and passed the time reading, the mindline warm between them with a patience that deepened when shared. When the hour was up, their patient padded into the lounge and both of them stood. There was a stiffness in the alien’s gait that they had not yet seen. The silence in the mindline was a held breath. And then the Akubi spoke.
      “There is such a thing as too much space.”

      They saw their patient only one more time, several weeks later. The anxiety had ceased: confronted with the infinity outside the starbase, the city-sphere had begun to seem very agreeable to the Akubi—”Almost nestlike,” he said. It was not how they’d expected to help him, but, as Vasiht’h observed a few days later, walking alongside Jahir on the way to their favorite café, “we rarely seem to know how to do what we do until it’s done.”
      “Our patients usually have a better idea of what they need than we do,” Jahir agreed. “It’s often a matter of getting them to show us what it is.”
      “The Akubi, though… that’s not really how it happened.”
      “No,” Jahir said with a smile that tasted wry, like strong lemonade. “Sometimes none of us know what’s going on until it’s over.”

For weeks after, they had trouble drinking anything cold, and one or both of them would wake from dreams of flight through a sky neither too endless… nor too small. Just enough space, for life.

***

My goal for the week: write these for fun! I did this one yesterday and would have posted it sooner, but I realized I had no sketches of the Akubi online (or even any modern ones). So I drew one earlier and uploaded it, and there it is. :)

MCAH Online

The Art and Writing of M.C.A. Hogarth

Tag Archives: serial

Serial: Earthrise, Final.

Serial: Earthrise, Episode 71

Serial: Earthrise, Episode 70

Serial: Earthrise, Episode 69

Serial: Earthrise, Episode 68

Serial: Earthrise, Episode 67

Serial: Earthrise, Episode 66

Xenopsych Case Studies: Wound

Serial: Earthrise, Episode 64

Xenopsych Case Studies: Finite

Welcome!

Tip the Author/Artist!

My Recent Pins

Recent Zazzle Stuff

Personal

The Art and Writing of M.C.A. Hogarth

Tag Archives: serial

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Welcome!

Tip the Author/Artist!

My Recent Pins

Personal