Month: November 2024

Influences: Joe Haldeman

The Forever War and its sequels. Did I like them? I’m not sure. But do I ever remember them. The scale, the inconsequentialness of the people. The tragedy. The sequels got a bit weird and seemed less profound. I’m sure those of you who look at the Total War setting will easily see some influences in the wormholes and the scale af space travel and maybe also in the military bits.

So, I don’t know if you’ll like it, but if you haven’t I’d certainly suggest reading Haldeman. I really only feel The Forever War is the one you truly shouldn’t miss.

The Forever War

The Half Elven Orphan #9

Disclaimer: This is not the final version as it will be available from the usual e-book sellers and eventually, bookstores. Rather, it should be seen as an (almost) final draft. If you are interested in becoming a beta reader, or you have any comments, suggestions or thoughts that you feel I should consider before publishing please drop me a line using the contact form.

Captain of the Militia

Thirty years later, Aubree was in her fifties. She had never remarried after losing her husband. Ala had gently suggested some possible candidates, but Aubree had never taken any interest. Together, they lived quietly together in the same small wooden house that Aubree had invited Ala to join her in three decades before. They were not wealthy but they managed to get by. The house was drafty and it wasn’t in terribly good condition, but they managed to keep the main room warm in winter, in no small part due to Ala’s gift. She never let Aubree notice that she was using her fire magic to make the hearth burn brighter and longer. Ala had accrued quite a collection of skills that allowed them to get or make plenty of things that they could barter. Some things they could even sell for a little coin. Thetwick had grown to a size that should properly be called a town, though it didn’t posses a Ducal charter or the fortified walls that a proper town had. It did have a regular market, the only one in the whole of the Westmarch, which offered them a place to sell their excesses.

In 944, a crier came on a caravan. Crier was a big word, usually it was a job done by entertainers and story tellers, hoping to catch some coin for their trouble. There was a Guild of Criers, though and proclaiming the news without being able to display the guild’s symbol wasn’t likely to bring you any coin. The main the thing the Crier’s guild stood for, was the accuracy of the information being presented. This crier visited Thetwick a few times a year, he was a grizzled old man, with a limp. He wore the Crier’s Guild emblem on a chain round his neck, though he was only an apprentice. He had been discharged from the Duke’s regiment early because of his leg, Ala had heard. She’d gone to see what the caravan had brought, so she was close when he took his place in the middle of the market, climbing onto a stone pedestal that stood there for the purpose. She always stopped to listen to the crier, if she could, she often learned something new, at least, though not necessarily something useful.

“People of the Westmarch! Honoured Thets! I bring news today, of Taladaria, of Verdon and Sheffield. There is even word from far Erythrae! Most importantly, I bring news of the Counts of Oakharrow, news of a marriage!”

Ala listened attentively. Criers wanted people to hang around, so most of them begun with the most inconsequential information first.

“In Taladaria, there is a shortage of onions! The harvest went poorly and thus the price has skyrocketed! Perhaps, dear Thets, there is an opportunity there, eh?” it was a accompanied by a questioning expression as everything he said was embellished with great gestures.

“Who cares?” Someone yelled. “Get to the good stuff!”

“In Verdon, my friends, the Count fell from his horse, right on market day! It turns out, the honourable Count had partaken of a little too much of his own fine ale!”

“Did he die?” came another call from the crowd.

“Thankfully, only the great Count Louis’ pride was injured!”

“That’s not news! Get on with it, man! What happened in Oakharrow?!”

“Honoured people of the March! I wil get to that in just a moment. First, the news of Sheffield! Simon Urgyll, Baron Sheffield, has raised taxes in the Barony! There is great discontent and it is said that there are even whispers of revolt! Matters are made worse as the Baron is said to need the funds make is castle even more luxurious! At the same time, there are those who say it is long overdue, that the Castle in Pearson will collapse if it is not repaired soon! Who is to say who is right? I hope to be able to tell you more, dear Thets, when I next pass through your wonderful village!”

“Thetwick is a town, dimwit! Get to that Oakharrow marriage!”

“In due course, my esteemed people of Taladaria! First, I must speak of Erythrae! I have news of Crown Prince Hubert! He has won the last tournament of last year’s season, even at the tender age of sixteen! He vanquished the favourite, a Knight named Hillary de Briande, who serves in the retinue the Prince of Dirstad! Such prowess at such a young age shows great promise for is reign!”

He wasn’t insulted again. Ala wasn’t sure whether people had given up, or if they reckoned he was out of subjects and had to finally talk about the marriage in Oakharrow.

“Now, finally, citizens of Thetwick, I will speak of the news of your northern neighbours, Oakharrow. This Kaldmeer, Phoebe Sabran, Lady and heir of Oakharrow, of fifteen summers, married Acanos Botic, Lord of Vanskell! I don’t need to tell you, wise Thets, of the importance of this, I am certain! With no male heir in Oakharrow, the choice has fallen on this lord from Vanskell, brother of the Baron of a Selinan fief! The Botics are in great favour with King Justus the Fifth of Selinus! They are said to hold an importance and prestige far beyond that which is accorded to a mere Baron! Acanos is, according to Selinan traders a respected commander in Selinus who has led the King’s armies to do his bidding succesfully in the past! Does this mean the independence of Oakharrow comes to an end? I am not certain, dear Thets, but it seems that is likely to be the case! Perhaps then, here, in the Westmarch, far on the Western border of the great and true Kingdom of Iurrak, your situation has become more uncertain. The Westmarch shares a long border with Oakharrow… perhaps, it now also shares a long border with Selinus, our ancient enemy? Who can tell what wil happen next?”

He left a long pause and straightened himself up from his last exaggerated gesture.

“That concludes the news I have brought, dear Thets, please don’t begrudge your humble crier his bit.”

It was the traditional way a crier asked for money. He stepped down off the pedestal and removed his hat, which he turned and held up, so that people could deposit bits of silver in it, the customary way a crier was rewarded for his efforts. The same man would be telling stories tonight in and around the drinking hall, Ala knew, without his guild symbol on display. Many people came to give him money. The news about Oakharrow caused a lot of consternation and she could hear people discussing it all around her. It was obvious that the news had caused concern, which Ala understood, though she immediately felt the urge to learn more about Oakarrow and Selinus.

She already knew that Justus, King of Selinus and fifth of his name had not been on the throne for long. Ala had heard rumours around town that claimed that something had changed in Selinus since the old king, a half elf who had ruled for three centuries, had passed. Ala always kept her ears open for news about Selinus, as its Kings and Queens included the occasional half elf, including King Justus’ predecessor, Selinus VII. Selinus VII had spent centuries on the Selinan throne, meaning that Justus V was six generations removed from his predecessor. Selinus VII who was the Selinan King responsible for the peace that had held, to some extent, since 601. Justus himself was human, but it was said that his only child and heir, Viola, was a half elf too.

For weeks, Thetwick’s single drinking hall was lively with speculation about what the events in Oakharrow might mean. Ala didn’t dare go inside, of course, but she was kept up to date what the talk of the town was by listening in on the conversations of the horse breeders she often worked for and the caravanners that sometimes passed through Thetwick. Nothing of note happened until Wogekind 944. On a day that was shaping up to be as boring as many of the countless others Ala had seen, people started calling out that a caravan had been sighted. A few boys had come running into town from the fields to the south, bearing news of its approach.

It was customary for some of the farm boys to run into town when they spotted traders cresting Knockback Hill. That way everyone knew a caravan was coming and people had a chance to gather their wares and set up their stalls. Visiting merchants were a big event in Thetwick and Ala loved seeing the travellers and their wares. There were always riches, aromatic spices and exotic things on display, all things that Ala and Aubree couldn’t afford. Palady had always said Ala could go look at the caravans, but that she should keep both her headscarf and a hood on, seeing as not everyone took well to half-elves. Palady had reminded her of this so often that Ala took it very seriously. She had discovered early on that Palady hadn’t exaggerated. Thankfully she had been able to run away then. Still, caravans were far too exciting to stay away from. She often talked to the caravanners when they seemed friendly or harmless. Even though they usually seemed a little less prejudiced than the Thets, she always took care to make sure her ears were invisible and her hair was always dyed a mousy brown as Palady had always bid her.

A caravan always caused a flurry of activity, people would come into town, bringing their excess produce and any things they had made which they might be able to trade with the merchants. The boys that brought the news also described the approaching caravan to anyone who wanted to hear. That way, people knew whether it was big or whether the caravan master looked like he might be rich or not. The caravan that approached today was apparently both big and wealthy which was a reason for the Thets to make a special effort to bring out as many trade wares as they could. Ala always took the things she and Palady had left over, as well as items they made specifically to trade with merchants. She had dried mushrooms and herbs and Aubree was skilled at embroidery, making very nice scarves and cloaks when they could afford the materials. She was usually able to sell some things to the caravanners.

Raw produce was generally too voluminous a cargo to be worthwhile for the caravans. Things like home made spirits or iron bars from Irin mountain ore could be sold to the caravanners, as well as small, valuable items like richly decorated textiles or jewellery. As mining the Irins made one a prime target for orcks, the most important business that was conducted was the trade in horses. Trade with caravans was how most of Thetwick’s prized horses changed hands. It was the main reason for caravans to bother visiting the otherwise out of the way town. Other than the horses, Thetwick didn’t have anything else to offer that could not more easily be purchased without the six day detour that it took the average caravan to get from the caravan stop in Hightower, just over the river in Taladaria, to Thetwick and back. The road to Oakharrow was too poor and the ford over the Clearflow River too unreliable for caravans to continue North. The only other place to go would have been Seraphim but that was a dead end too, with no way for a caravan to make it safely across Seraph Creek into Greythorn.

By the time Ala got to the marketplace there were already men negotiating transactions and hands being shaken as greetings were exchanged and earlier agreements were reaffirmed. She realised she recognised the caravan, it was one run by the Von Taupenhausen family and it only rarely visited Thetwick, perhaps once every four or five years. The Von Taupenhausens were very rich merchants indeed. It filled her with a sense of anticipation, as the last time it had visited, she had met the Caravan Master’s daughter, a girl named Rosamund. Rosamund had been travelling with caravans since she was nine years old and was able to tell her many interesting things. Rosamund had even bought some things from her that visit. When Ala arrived, some traders were already unpacking items that were foreign to the Westmarch. She could smell the spices and see high quality fabrics being set out. The first disagreement of the day was also loudly being resolved. The argument was between Rosamund, who spoke with far more authority than Ala remembered from her previous visit four years before and one of the horse ranchers. Rosamund had been in her teens when Ala had last seen her and she’d grown into a buxom, pretty young woman who was obviously more interested in practicality than style. She dressed accordingly, wearing a dark, robust travelling dress, though it was well tailored and looked like it cost more than Ala and Aubree spent in a year. She wore the pin of a Journeywoman of the Caravanners Guild, a grade that she was young to have achieved. Rosamund had a kind of approachable innocence to her that Ala thought must be helpful when trading. Certainly, if her father left everything to her, she must be rather good at it.

Ala walked around a bit, waiting until the argument was over, since she wanted to talk to Rosamund. It didn’t take long for an agreement to be reached, it seemed to Ala that Rosamund had gotten the price she wanted in the end. She’d obviously noticed Ala hovering nearby.

“Ala, wasn’t it?” said Rosamund as she saw her approach. “You haven’t changed a bit. Again.” The young woman was smiling, but was clearly wondering how that was possible.

It was about four years since the last time the Von Taupenhausen caravan had visited, a fact that Ala hadn’t really thought about. She felt like she had to explain.

“I’m… a half elf… Mistress,” whispered Ala, hoping no one else would be reminded of it.

“Ah. That sort of explains it, a little. The first time I was here must be a decade ago. I think you looked the same then too. Anyway, good to see you. How are things in the Westmarch?”

“Much the same as your last visit. Not much goes on in Thetwick.”

Rosamund nodded, scanning the area before looking back at Ala. “I see you have a bag. Did you bring some things to trade? We’ve just come from Peyrepertuse, so we’re nigh on empty and I’m looking to replenish all manner of things. I’m afraid I don’t have much time to chat right now, father leaves most things to me these days while he… well I don’t think he does much of anything. So come on, what have you got?”

Rosamund bought everything she had with her, giving her a price that seemed more than fair. The woman gave the impression of wanting to buy half of Thetwick if she could get the price she wanted. Ala was a little disappointed that Rosamund didn’t have time to chat, but she was pleased she’d managed to sell everything so quickly. She continued along the length of the caravan to see if there was anything else interesting, since she now had quite a few silver coins, taking care to stay out of everyone’s way.

She noticed a burly, muscular man in chain mail with a moustache and sideburns standing by a powerful looking horse, checking its saddle. He seemed out of place. He had more bearing than she would have expected from a caravan guard and he carried himself with a different intent than a guard, she thought. His back was straighter and his eyes keener. He wore a large and beautiful longsword at his hip. She was sure the weapon had to be worth a fortune. On his belt there was also an elegant dagger with a wide crossguard and a belt pouch. His horse was a slightly aged, but still mighty, destrier. It had a kite shield slung behind the saddle on the right, displaying the Duke’s colours.

Ala was as fascinated by swords and swordplay as she had ever been. She was always interested in people who looked like they knew what they were doing with a blade. She still desperately wanted to learn how to use one. Any warrior who carried a sword like that with such practised ease fascinated her. She still spent a lot of time pretending sticks were swords, swinging them about when she was alone in the forest. She had even made herself several wooden swords over the years but she didn’t really have friends to practice with. Anyone she had managed to rope in swiftly lost interest or was scared off by her intensity.

She wondered if the man was a noble. Only nobles and their men-at-arms were allowed to wear swords. His shield only displayed the Duke’s colours though, not a full coat of arms. That was strange for a noble, they usually wanted to display their wealth and having a craftsman elaborately decorate a shield was a preferred way to do so. Not that she had seen many nobles, but those she had seen had often had shields which proclaimed their coat-of-arms. She knew a man-at-arms, as a member of the Duke’s retinue, also normally displayed the full coat of arms of the noble he served on his shield. She didn’t think it was a rule though, more of a very common custom. It did leave her wondering who this man was, since he was armed, but not a man-at-arms or a nobleman. Rosamund surely knew, but she was engaged in another lively negotiation.

Caravan guards were also allowed to be armed of course. They had to be signed under a caravan master’s charter to make it legal. But it didn’t make sense for a caravan guard to be displaying the Duke’s colours. If they displayed anything it was usually the caravan guild’s seal, but most didn’t even bother with that. If the caravan came all the way from Peyrepertuse, Ala decided that the man might have something to do with the Duke’s regiment, even if he was alone. Only a Duke, Prince or a King was allowed to keep standing regiments and the men who sometimes returned to the Westmarch from their service had the same straight backed posture that this man had.

If an army or a war band was marshalled it consisted of nobles and their knights and men-at-arms and the standing regiments kept by Dukes and Kings. The only thing Ala could think of was that this man must be a member of the Duke’s Regiment. That was even stranger. Since when did the Regiment dispatch individual soldiers anywhere? The men who returned from it didn’t normally return riding war horses sporting the Duke’s colours. She had to admit this man looked capable and experienced enough, but she thought that soldiers of the Duke’s regiment always travelled in groups.

The interesting looking warrior was around fifty years old and she could tell his moustache and sideburns hid some nasty old scars. He seemed to be taking in his surroundings, taking a long moment to look around him. He took a deep breath, breathing in through his nose, like he was smelling the air. Like someone coming home after a long absence, Ala thought to herself. Two of the teamsters were unloading heavy iron bound chests and long bundles wrapped in canvas from the cart. The big man said something to them and went to talk to Rosamund’s father, the caravan master, who rose to bid him farewell. Ala was watching all this with interest. The two men clasped hands and a small pouch was exchanged, which Master Von Taupenhausen seemed pleasantly surprised by. The warrior called to some of the many children standing around watching the caravan.

“You, with the dirty hair, and your friend. Also, you two, stop throttling each other or whatever that is you’re doing and come here, I have a job for you.”

The four boys stopped what they were doing and approached him warily.

“Want to earn some money, lads? How about it? You going to carry those chests and for me? Help me put those bundles over my mount for me?”

The bravest of the four, the boy with the dirty blonde hair looked at him. Ala knew him of course, his name was Chad. He frowned before speaking.

“How much, milord?”

“An eighth each.”

Chad nodded to the man, then gestured to his friends to come forward. They came to where the bundles and chests stood, each attempting to carry one.

“Hold on lads, here’s some rope, tie the bundles together so we can put them over Rico’s saddle. It’s not far, that’ll be fine for the walk. You lot are going to have to carry the chests, got it?”

With some direction, the chests and long bundles, which seemed to be long weapons, like spears and halberds, were manoeuvred onto either side of the horse, tied together so that the weapon bundles hung on either side of the animal. The warrior carefully checked that the rope wouldn’t chafe, making some adjustments so that there were several layers of leather and padding in between the horse and the rope. Ala liked seeing that he cared for his horse, she had seen people treat their mounts very differently too often.

Some other boys were now looking on enviously. There weren’t many opportunities for children to earn an eighth in Thetwick. The four boys struggled with their heavy cargoes and made slow headway. They quickly adapted, switching to dragging the chests behind them. The big man followed behind at a leisurely pace, leading his horse in an unhurried manner.

He seemed content just to look around, not minding the slow progress at all. Some of the other children had started to follow too, but they quickly grew bored with the slow pace. The man clearly knew where he was headed. Soon Ala was the only one still cautiously following, though she was keeping her distance.

“Girl, I can see you, you know,” the big man called to her.

She stopped.

“Stop hiding!” he continued, “come up here and walk with me, you can make yourself useful by answering some questions if you’re so set on seeing where I’m headed.”

Ala considered running away, but the man’s sword was just too interesting. He didn’t seem angry, more goodnatured than anything else. She was too curious. She stepped out from behind the tree where she was hiding and hurried forward and fell in beside him.

“Sorry milord,” she said.

“I’m not a lord.”

She glanced at his sword. He noticed her look. “Confused by the blade, are you?”

She gave a small nod, not really daring to say anything.

“The Duke has allowed me to continue bearing weapons as his man-at-arms, even though I’m retired from his regiment now. Nice of him huh? Though, of course it’s in his name that he asked me to wield it. What’s your name, girl?”

“Alagariel… sir… they call me Ala…” She decided to be bold, “what’s yours… sir?”

He stopped walking, “wait? Alagariel? Really?” He turned towards her so she turned towards him too, if a little apprehensively.

“Take down that hood,” he commanded with a nod of his head.

She decided it was better to do as she was told. His tone was that of one accustomed to having his orders followed.

“Well, well. Quite the beauty. Of course… age much slower… a few more years… well maybe more than a few…” he muttered more to himself than to her, nodding slightly.

Then his eyes lit up, as if he had thought of something. “Is Aubree still around?”

Suddenly he seemed animated. She was almost shocked, then decided it wasn’t a strange question if Thetwick had once been his home. Aubree was around the same age as he was.

“Yes, master. I live with her now. Since her husband died.”

It wasn’t strictly true. Aubree’s husband had died a few years earlier by the time Palady passed away. If Ala told the story this way though, it sounded less like charity. In the meantime Ala was thinking. She remembered a young boy, Bernie… he had left to join the Duke’s Regiment when he was around twelve or thirteen. This could be him, she decided.

“Aubree’s a widow? Hmm….” He seemed to consider that for a moment, then changed the subject.

“You know Old Kendrick? You must have, you’re older than I am. Anyway, he once told me the story about the patrol that brought you in. I was a wide-eyed little boy, wanting to know all about soldiering. Kendrick must be long gone by now, eh?”

“Yes, master,” she said, like she always did when adult humans who told her something she already knew and expected her to answer.

“I’m guessing… that must have been… around a century ago by now? It must be something like that. Palady, I think that was her name, wasn’t it? She was the only one who would look after you, or that’s what Kendrick claimed. Brave woman. Aubree is her great-granddaughter.”

The way he said it like a sort of history lesson.

“I know, sir… sorry… master.”

He looked puzzled for a moment as he thought. “That’s right. Of course you do. Silly of me. You were there…” he stopped again for a moment to look at her, clearly considering something.

“You just look so young…” he continued. “Takes some getting used to you know, when you meet someone who looks like a child… and then thirty years later she still looks like one… well just perhaps fourteen or fifteen winters now, maybe, if you were human. I suppose there is some difference. Still, it’s… unusual,” he said, somehow feeling that he needed to explain why he was telling her things she already knew.

Ala felt some sympathy for him. She supposed from his point of view, it was a little strange. Even if he’d met elves and half elves on his travels, he was unlikely to have ever met very young ones twice with three decades between meetings. She forgot about her theory when another thought came to her. She was suddenly curious if he knew anything about her she didn’t.

“I never really spoke to Old Kendrick, sir, I don’t think… what did he say, sir? Was he really there, do you think? I only know what Palady told me.”

He turned away from her and continued walking, the horse following along. The four boys had made little progress. Ala wasn’t sure they would think it was fair pay in the end, considering how hard the work was.

“He was… well,” he seemed to consider for a moment, “the tale he told seemed believable. Or it did when I was thirteen. I have no reason to doubt it and no way of knowing whether it was truthful. In all honesty I have no way of knowing for certain, Alagariel. I’ve known men who like to exaggerate, but then I have also known those who downplay things or say nothing at all. I… I don’t rightly know how Old Kendrick measures up. I wasn’t really thinking about that sort of thing when I was thirteen.”

He stopped to consider her a third time.

“This is a bit of a shock for me, girl. Girl? You’re older than I am. I have a full military career, even manage a little distinction through my service. I come back home… and you’re still adolescent. You look as old as I was when I left. You’re some sort of elf mix are you? That’s what my ma always said.”

“Yes sir. I’m a half-elf.”

There was something about the way he asked, like he didn’t believe her. Where else did he think the slow ageing and the ears came from, she wondered?

“If we’re going to get along, Alagariel, stop calling me sir. I’ve worked for a damn living all my life.”

“Yes s… uhm… what do I call you then? Is master alright… s… ehh… ma..ster?”

She wasn’t about to use ‘Bernie’ after all.

“Oh yes… you wouldn’t know that. I’m Bernard. Just call me Bernard.”

“Uhm… OK.. Master Bernard.”

“So how do you keep yourself busy, Alagariel?”

She was surprised by the question. Adults didn’t normally ask her anything they wanted a real answer to.

“I go to school. Sometimes. I help in the fields during the seasons. Sometimes I hunt. Mainly I help the horse breeders.”

“So you know horses?”

She shrugged, “they seem to like me… si… Master Bernard.”

“Do they? That’s good then, there’s always a place for people who know horses.”

“Are you good with a sword?”

He grinned, “where did that suddenly come from?”

She shrugged, “I like swords.”

“Well, I’d say I’m pretty fair. Good enough for the Duke anyway. There’s places where that means something.”

“Do you know how to teach people to sword fight?”

“You’re just full of questions aren’t you? I’ve taught before, yes. Quite a lot. The Duke has a Regiment to run and all… why?”

“Will you teach me?”

He frowned, “what on Vatan for?”

“Well… I just really want to learn… Please, Master Bernard?” she asked, worried she sounded as if she was pleading. She was, of course, but it wouldn’t do to sound that way.

His look changed to mild surprise as he realised the intensity with which Ala was regarding him.

“Really? A girl who wants to learn to sword fight? That’s not something I hear every day.” Bernard looked at her again for a moment, quite seriously, before he spoke again. “I will consider it,” he said, in a way that made her believe he meant it.

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Dropship Down Teaser

I’ve decided to post the first three parts of chapter 1 of Dropship down, just to give people an idea of what that’s going to be like.

Disclaimer: This is not the final version as it will be available from the usual e-book sellers and eventually, bookstores. Rather, it should be seen as an (almost) final draft. If you are interested in becoming a beta reader, or you have any comments, suggestions or thoughts that you feel I should consider before publishing please drop me a line using the contact form.

Chapter I: The Conscript

o/b droopy 385, altitude 27000m, climbing
Montgomery, Celestia II
2097.208.0913 local time

As her altitude indicator dialled through twenty seven thousand meters, the drop ship was thrown violently sideways by the exploding missile. Immediately the aircraft went into a steep, near vertical dive as alarms screamed into her ears. A Christmas tree’s worth of coloured, flashing, indicators demanded her attention as she looked over her right shoulder, trying to see the damage to the wing. The explosion hadn’t damaged enough optical sensors to hamper her view, though she noticed the image inside her flight helmet’s visor was lagging as the system struggled to compensate for partial data. She knew it tried to calculate missing parts of the image based on the surrounding sensors.

When it had caught up, microseconds later, it gave her a clear view of the engine nacelle, or at least what was left of it. The right gun turret was gone. All she could see was jagged holes with smoke pouring from them. It looked as if large chunks of shrapnel had passed straight through the forward emdrive. She spoke into the intercom, giving the battle damage report that procedure dictated the copilot should. She spoke louder than she had intended.

“Detonation. Very close, starboard side. Damage… hydrogen fire… hull decompression and… impact damage. We have obvious external damage and we’re losing fluids. I think the front emdrive is completely gone.”

No one acknowledged her report. There was an augmented reality overlay displayed in her visor, which showed countless components on the starboard side of the drop ship outlined in yellow, red and several shades of dark orange. A crowd of diagnostic icons insisted many things were badly wrong. Most importantly, the starboard cryogenic system was failing fast and they were trailing large clouds of vapour, making them visible for at least thirty kilometres in every direction. Just about every system that was meant to hold pressure was losing it rapidly and temperatures were already close to the point where super conduction would deteriorate into normal, resistant conduction.

As electrical resistance increased, the superconductors would get hotter, which would rapidly cause the emdrive to melt if emergency systems didn’t shut it down quickly enough. Other icons indicated a host of other problems. The system annoyingly also insisted on informing her that things like the telemetry system was only partially working too. It was information that was irrelevant to their predicament that the pilot assistance AI really shouldn’t be bothering her with. Without the cooling system, their main motive force was gravity and the only thing telemetry could do if it was working, was let the accident investigators know that it had happened. Assuming they ever found the crash site, a few thousand kilometres from the nearest friendly position.

“Cooling is about to go,” she said into her mic.

Again, there was no response. Geoff ‘Wil’ Wilbur, her pilot and vehicle commander should have responded. He would have, if he could, she was certain. She suddenly realised that one of the indicators that normally only came on during testing, meant that the flight control system was no longer receiving control inputs. She switched the controls to her station, though she didn’t change the flight path. Thankfully, the warning indicator disappeared. Her control column was still working, then. Her visor was still displaying warnings for high speed descent. Contrary to old, aerodynamic, flying machines that were in danger of ripping their wings off when they went too fast, the drop ship she was flying was so massively solid that that wasn’t supposed to be possible. It briefly occurred to her that it might not be true with certain kinds of battle damage, but she had no indications that the drop ship had suffered that kind of structural damage. She decided that getting to thicker atmosphere was worth the risk. She couldn’t be certain all of her passengers would have gotten to an oxygen mask when the pressure hull was breached.

After a few seconds more she decided that there was nothing more she could do to the control system that was going to change the outcome. The liquid hydrogen cooling system for the emdrives had ruptured somewhere near the starboard engines. Emergency valves had cut in before the fire had gotten out of hand but that meant that the two starboard emdrives that needed cryogenic cooling to deliver any significant thrust, weren’t getting it. The front drive was destroyed but other than the cooling problem, she thought the rear one probably still worked. The system claimed it did, anyway. With no power on the starboard drives, the only direction the Droopy was going, was down.

At best this was going to be a slow crash, rather than a Hindenburg style fire ball. There was no chance they were flying home. Both of the drop ship’s starboard emdrives were effectively useless. She could disable the safeties, allowing the remaining starboard emdrive to draw power. Without cryogenic cooling that would almost instantly turn it into a pool of molten metal. It was still something that was worth doing in the moments before they hit the ground. It should bleed off a little velocity, at least. It was a testament to the EV-722’s legendary ruggedness that the drop ship hadn’t already fallen out of the sky yet. The instructors back in flight school had repeatedly claimed that a Droopy could fly aerodynamically but she had never really believed them. Officially, it was a ‘lifting body’ but it seemed that was a term that designers were allowed to use even if in reality what they manufactured was more like a brick with small wings, which was fairly close to what a Droopy was.

Altitude was dropping fast and airspeed was stable. They were at terminal velocity. That speed was giving them aerodynamic lift, though she couldn’t use it until they had descended into breathable atmosphere. Still, they were gliding, in the same sense that a stone that has been aerodynamically shaped by nature’s whim glides. She spoke into her mic again, giving a summary of their situation, but knowing that it was futile.

“Wil, the starboard cooling is out on the emdrives. Rear one would work, if it had cooling, I think. The pressure hull is compromised. Lost… guidance electronics too… There’s no way she’s making it back or to orbit. Crash landing at best.”

Geoff Wilbur, her pilot and commanding officer who was seated to her right, still didn’t respond at all. She couldn’t pretend he was busy any longer.

She clicked her helmet visor to transparent, which switched off her \gls{var} feed from the outside of the ship, allowing her to look around the cockpit. She wasn’t prepared for the smoke and scattered debris. She could hardly even see the tiny cockpit windows. The space was barely recognisable. The smoke looked like it might be pink? Was she imagining that? There was a reddish haze and small pieces of debris on her visor. Nothing in her field of view was on fire, thankfully. She could see that fragments and shrapnel either from the missile or the hull had dug themselves through parts of the cockpit and a significant portion of the instrument panel in front of her. As her flight helmet seemed to be working fine, she didn’t actually need it, but it certainly looked ominous. In addition there was what could only be human tissue and blood spread all over the panel in front of her too. It didn’t feel like it could be hers. She had to steel herself before she finally dared to turn her head right to look beside her.

Geoff was obviously dead, his upper body a barely recognisable heap of bloody pulp. She quickly looked away again. She couldn’t help but swallow before looking around the rest of the cockpit. The smoke was clearing slowly through a number of jagged, fist sized, holes through the starboard side of the hull. She had to close her eyes and swallow a few times more before she clicked back to the light and sanctuary her helmet view offered. She took a few more deep breaths and forced herself to concentrate on the more immediate problem of the impending crash.

Giselle Simard’s apartment, La Tribune
Marseille, Earth
2093.250.0954 (four years earlier)

She’d packed the few things she considered valuable in her rucksack. It wasn’t like she had many possessions that were worth anything. One of her favourite possessions was a nice Nokia-Samsung reader that she used a lot. She wanted to take it with her as it held most of her collection of books. She’d bought it from a guy across the street for a third of the retail price and had almost certainly fallen off the back of a truck somewhere. It was a potential hassle she didn’t need; so she decided it was smarter to leave it behind and wistfully threw it on the pile with her other discarded belongings. Underwear, spare socks, her cheap prepaid communicator and some sanitary products and cosmetics made up the rest.

Another gadget she owned was a set of mediocre AR contacts that she had never dared to use. She turned the case over in her hand. It was something else she would have liked to take with her, but wouldn’t. They’d been a gift from a boyfriend. They were of the type that was cheap because they were ‘ad enhanced’; it meant they interfaced with every marketing system nearby and profiled the user extensively. The resulting digital signature was very specific. She’d read a number of articles on the subject. There was no way to know for sure if the police had some way to link her to the ad profile, but if they could, they’d be able to find her very easily. She was far too worried the police could find her if she used them with any regularity, so she opted to leave them behind now too, throwing them on the pile. There were stories around the neighbourhood of people that had been arrested because law enforcement had isolated their ad profile. It was the same reason why she didn’t have any active social media accounts. She knew of too many people who had been tracked down and arrested that way.

The last thing she took was her martial arts gear. It was bulky, but she had had a compression bag that she packed it into, making it as small as possible. Surely the military wouldn’t mind her practising martial arts? She’d read that it was actually compulsory to practice at least one martial art. She went around her aunt’s tiny apartment one last time, but couldn’t really think of very much else that would be useful. It wasn’t as if she owned worthwhile things other than clothes and she would be provided with uniforms by the military. Everything she needed fit into her backpack.

When everything was packed she’d tried yet again to explain to her aunt that she was going to the conscription office. The small woman looked ill, sitting in her chair. She was only in her mid fifties, but it was always a question how lucid she might be, even in the mornings. She stood in the doorway looking at the underweight woman.

“I’m going,” she said.

He aunt looked over to her, shaking her head. “Don’t!”

“I’ll get arrested sooner or later, auntie Giselle.”

“I don’t want you to go!”

“Your ration card can’t feed us both and it keeps getting harder to get enough money together to get by!”

“Just… stay…” Giselle said weakly. “We’ve managed so far… haven’t we?”

“No. We’re not managing. It keeps getting worse. I just want to arrive without handcuffs on. I can’t carry on living like this. I’m going to go in.”

Her aunt tried to get up, already too inebriated to be immediately successful. She stepped towards the woman, to make sure she didn’t fall. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Don’t leave me, I took care of you when no one else would!”

“I have to go. I’ll send money when I can, I promise. I’ll have a salary.”

She gently pried her aunts’ hands off her wrists and took a deep breath. The woman was crying.

“Goodbye, auntie Giselle. It’s for the best,” she said, wondering if that was actually true.

With one more glance back she left the apartment. It was hard but she didn’t stop and hurried down the apartment buildings’ stairwell. She wasn’t sure she could hold on to her resolve faced with her aunt’s tears. Twelve storeys below, the streets of La Tribune were subdued. They always were when the midday heat was building. It was almost autumn, but it still looked to become another blisteringly hot day. When it got dark, there would be more activity. A lot of it wasn’t the kind of thing you really wanted to be involved in. Not much good went on on the streets of La Tribune after dark.

Would the woman even remember where she had gone she wondered? Eventually, maybe. Perhaps she should have left a note as well? Her resolve wavered for a moment, then she grit her teeth and pressed on towards the end of the street. She’d send her aunt a message.

She’d had to consider how to get to the conscription office without getting arrested on the way. It would be bad luck to be taken in at the last moment after two years of successfully living ‘underground’ as people tended to call it. Putting herself at the tender mercy of law enforcement when she’d decided to sign up anyway seemed stupid. You could never really be sure things wouldn’t go downhill once you were in the clutches of the Marseille police or the Gendarmerie. There was even the off chance someone had reported her presence at the incident two nights before. Two people had gotten stabbed and another shot, which the Police certainly would want to know more about. She’d gone with a friend to a shady transaction on the promise that he’d sell her some cheap mdma and coke from the deal that she could then sell on, but things had deteriorated into an argument about… she wasn’t even sure what. The price maybe? She hadn’t done any of the lasting damage, but she was close enough that she’d had to throw away a top that had blood on it that wasn’t hers. It would be extremely unlucky though, if the police figured that out, she thought. On the whole the people in La Tribune showed solidarity in their dislike of the Gendarmes and municipal Police. It was still better to be careful.

It hadn’t been hard to talk Ludo, an ex boyfriend a few years older than her, into dropping her off on his electric moped. How exactly Ludo himself had gotten out of conscription was a subject he was very closed mouthed about. She’d asked him of course, but he’d never given her a straight answer. He certainly didn’t need to dodge the police, he had valid ration and ID cards and everything as well as usually enough cash to blow. She kind of liked Ludo, though he had a knack for trouble that seemed to be escalating. She didn’t know what he was into, but the impression that he was getting in deeper with the gangs that she tried to avoid was getting steadily stronger. Ludo wasn’t interesting enough to have more than an intermittent and very casual relationship with, but he was kind of fun, she had to admit.

The only logical way for him to have avoided military service would be if he had a medical condition that wouldn’t allow him to serve. Most medical conditions, even very serious ones, would be treated by the military assuming you agreed to a longer conscription term. There was a limit to the term extension they could force on you, though, it was ten years, she thought. If your condition was so expensive to cure that the term extension went beyond that limit, it became a choice. You could get medical dispensation, or take the deal. It was one of the many ways in which the Armed Forces sucked people in and tried to hold on to them as long as possible. Ludo, logically, would have to have been given such a choice to be able to live out in the open without having completed his service.

Maybe that was why he didn’t want to talk about it, it wouldn’t go well with his tough guy image if he had a obscure medical exemption. In any event, he was late as he always was. She hadn’t told him where she was going and had agreed to go with and ‘hang’ him after she’d finished shopping. He would be expecting a date, of course, with a predictable ending. She’d never given him a reason to assume differently. She knew it was unlikely that she’d keep the appointment. She felt a little guilty, but it would have been an eighteen kilometre walk through the heat from La Tribune to the conscription office, all the while with the possibility of being questioned by policemen who might want to know why exactly she wasn’t able to use public transportation and what she was doing so far from her last known address at a time of day when no one in their right mind went out. Most of her life went on within the confines of La Tribune where it was possible to avoid the police patrols and checkpoints if you knew your way around. Walking all the way across town would make avoiding them almost impossible. Ludo would be disappointed if she didn’t keep their appointment afterwards, she knew. So be it. He turned up on his electric moped a good fifteen minutes after the agreed time, which she gave him a disapproving look for. He just shrugged.

“What? I had some important business.”

“Uh huh. Just… take me to Bonnevelne.”

“All the way over there? Can’t we go somewhere closer?”

“C’mon, it’ll be fun,” she lied.

He looked a little irritated as she hopped on, but he went.

Bonnevelne was a mid range shopping area where all the big chain stores were represented. It was the only one in a wide area. Shopping areas tended to be scarce with so little disposable income among the remaining inhabitants of the the planet. There were other shopping areas that catered to the affluent, but even the price of a coffee would be insurmountable there. That kind of retail commerce tended to be in chic, fashionable areas, like the old harbour in Marseille. She doubted the security would even let her in. Also, high class shopping areas didn’t usually have a Armed Forces Recruitment centre.

“Wait here,” she said, hopping off. “I’m just going to take a quick look in there.”

“What? Hold on! Wait a sec!”

She was already off the back of the moped and called back to him, “I’ll just be a minute.”

She disappeared into the massive budget fashion store, H\&M Primark, took a few turns through the aisles and checked if Ludo was anywhere to be seen. It was comfortably busy inside. Most of the people she saw had probably been born outside the European Union. More migrants to fuel the planetary colonisation machine. She checked back behind her one more time. Satisfied that Ludo hadn’t bothered to come in after her, she left out of the opposite side of the store. From there it was a short walk past some fast food chains and a large electronics store to the side street where the conscription office was. She checked behind her several times more, but there was no sign of Ludo. It should take at least ten minutes before he became impatient.

o/b droopy 385, altitude 16000m
Montgomery, Celestia II
2097.208.0914 local time (four years later)}

The engineers who had designed the drop ship’s external view system had arranged it to give the pilot or anyone who could log into the pilot’s VAR view a real time image that was stitched together from the triple redundant sensors placed all over the outside of the hull. The data was processed by the ship’s computers, essentially turning the sensor information into a photo realistic three dimensional model of the surrounding area. That was then used to give you an unobstructed view in any direction you chose, as if you were looking from where you were sitting in the cockpit but without any ship’s bulkheads, windows, struts or anything else in the way. Right now, there was a dark spot in this 360 degree VR, which was probably the exact direction to where the missile had detonated. Normally the processing needed didn’t result in any perceptible delay. You could look through any part of the aircraft. There was normally a light wire frame superimposed over the image. It helped to find buttons on the instrument panel and indicated what the dimensions of the drop ship were, but you could switch it all off if you wanted. It was like sitting in a glass bubble with some flight information superimposed over your view, though even that could be disabled. It was quite spectacular once you got used to the feeling of being strapped to the front of trackless roller coaster. Matching the viewpoint to where the pilot was physically sitting helped with spatial orientation, or so the flight instructors had told her. Aside from trainers specifically designed to have the same functionality as the Droopy cockpit, she had never flown anything that had a different view system to compare it to. The instructors had never mentioned how well the system also worked if you wanted to ignore bloody carnage inside the cockpit.

She spoke into the intercom, keying the cargo bay channel and hoping her loadmaster, a stoic Staff Sergeant named Leibnitz, would be capable of answering.

“Leib, you still with us?”

There was no response. On the unlikely chance his mic was out she pressed on.

“Near miss from a SAM. Wil’s dead, we’re losing altitude and heading in. Prepare for crash landing.”

No reaction came.

There was nothing she could do about it, she didn’t have time to clamber into the cargo hold to figure out what was going on. Doing so probably would do more harm than good. The ship’s autopilot routines should take them down as safely as possible, with or without her, but it was far from infallible. It needed human supervision in case it started doing something crazy, particularly with so many damaged sensors. She knew staying in the cockpit was the sensible choice if there was to be a chance of getting down on the ground alive, no matter how much she wanted to check the cargo bay. She also decided against checking the cargo bay’s video feed. It could only make the decision whether or not to go back harder. She hoped that Leibnitz was alright though she knew he too would have answered her if he could. The rest of the starboard side had been slightly closer to the SAM than Geoff. She focused on putting the image of Geoff’s corpse out of her mind and concentrated on finding a suitable place to land instead.

There was enough airspeed that the drop ship still had lift, but the rate of descent was high and it had to stay that way to hold on to that lift and keep the aircraft controllable. She had some forward thrust available from the hydrogen turbines, they both appeared to be working, though the right hand one was showing less efficiency. It probably had some holes in it. Unlike old turbine powered aircraft, the turbines on a Droopy where there mainly to generate electrical power. As liquid hydrogen was also needed to super cool the emdrives, it made sense to use it as fuel too. In any case, a Droopy couldn’t stay airborne on the turbine thrust alone. Without at least one emdrive on each side working, the machine wasn’t capable of more than an assisted glide. She set the power as high as she dared, decreasing the rate of descent a little, but almost everything related to the hydrogen system on the right hand side of the vessel was either destroyed or cut off from supply by the damage control system. Applying thrust threatened aerodynamic stability, which wasn’t all that hot on a Droopy even when it was working properly. These ships were very much designed around their emdrives. Normally that was fine. You could lose an emdrive on each side and even then it would still fly reasonably well, just not both on one side. The carbon armour enclosing the drives was much better protection than anything an early 20th century flying machine had ever had, but it wasn’t up to withstanding a near miss from an orbital class SAM.

They continued to descend steeply while she focused on finding the least dangerous landing site that they could reach. Her efforts to get the Droopy more level were taking them close to stall speed. The flight computer was protesting about it. She craned her neck further round, cycling through visual options that allowed her to inspect the outside of the aircraft. Besides the holes in the starboard side of the cockpit, there was a line of vicious looking gashes along the rest of the fuselage too. There was also a surprisingly large hole in the starboard wing that made her marvel that it was still attached at all. She dreaded finding out what had happened to her cargo of infantrymen. The SAM, a huge TEL launched missile that she thought was probably of the Chinese FM-65K type, was designed to take out the massive orbital landing barges that were used to move heavy equipment to and from orbit, It had detonated some distance from them. Had it been any closer it would have been the end of all her worldly problems. Seeing the damage around her she found it hard to believe that she herself was unhurt.

She clicked her view back to “in cockpit”, a sub conscious, misplaced hope making her unable to stop herself looking at the mangled heap of flesh to her right again. She took a deep breath. Wilbur was only remotely recognisable as a human being. She’d liked the man but forced herself to stop thinking about it. She’d become good at that. A lot of people she knew, some of whom she would have described as friends, had already died on this planet. A detached part of her mind thought it was strange that there was no trace of the man’s flight helmet. Beyond his remains were a number of holes in the fuselage where large chunks of shrapnel had entered the cockpit before ripping Geoff to shreds. There was a lot of blood and tissue smeared along the right hand side of her pressure suit. The zero friction nanoscale coating on the outside of her visor had cleared the blood and muck that had been obstructing her view a few moments earlier. By now she was almost completely convinced none of the blood was hers. Not that it would be the first story about someone who hadn’t realised they were wounded she’d heard.

Wilbur had done a good job in dodging the first Chinese SAM, but two had been fired at them. With missiles the size of a FM65K, that constituted a significant effort on the part of the Chinese. It was the second one that had done the damage. She swallowed down more bile and turned forward, towards her displays and clicked her helmet back to external view. They’d lost enough altitude that the computer showed her a line with her projected flight path. It displayed where it expected the Droopy to hit the ground if she didn’t make any course adjustments. It also helpfully mentioned that the projected speed of impact had a high likelihood of being fatal for all passengers and crew which it did by displaying a death’s head icon and “92%”. Laura absentmindedly imagined the software design meetings that had led to the decision that a death’s head would be the best way for the flight software to communicate survival chances during an emergency.

The drop ship she was flying was a EADS model EV-722 “Oie” which meant “Goose”. It was nicknamed a “Droopy” by everybody in the EU military. It was the main way of getting troops and material around the theatre of operations. Currently, the ‘theatre of operations’ was the planet Celestia II, the second and only habitable planet in the Celestia system. The Droopy had been designed as the first attempt to apply emdrive tech to the problem of tactical military transport. A Droopy wasn’t the latest in military tech by anyone’s definition. In fact, it had been in service longer than almost any other aircraft in history. Only an ungainly 20th century American bomber called a B-52 Stratofortress could claim an even longer service life. She’d read an intelligence brief that the Americans were in the process of converting them to emdrives though the exact reasoning behind the modification was lost on her. A B-52 bomber was aerodynamic, making the emdrives seem rather superfluous and far too big to practically store on a space ship, after all.

Droopies were battle proven, solid and had been continually upgraded for many decades. She had never found much to complain about the vehicles’ quality though it certainly looked antiquated. It was designed around the systems and cargo volume it had to accomodate. It wasn’t terribly manoeuvrable, but it was rugged and the crews loved them. ‘Droopy gets you home’ was often repeated among the flight crews as well as the troops that were regular passengers, like it was a sort of mantra. Of course, she’d seen more examples than she could remember where that hadn’t been true. She was certain that Droopy 385, which she was trying to get onto the ground in as few pieces as possible, wasn’t ever going to get anyone home again.

All other ‘small scale’ airborne and vacuum weapons systems in EU military service were unmanned, with the exception of orbital landing barges, but those relied purely on emdrives – no aerodynamic design beyond what was needed to keep it upright in free fall. Laura had no idea why its designers had bothered with that feature. As if there was some advantage to dying upright? Chances of of surviving if you were in a free falling landing barge were very low. It wasn’t like anyone was issued a parachute any more.

Other than Droopies and the landing barges, all other small air and space craft were operated by a combination of AI and remote control. They were drones. Electronic counter measures conditions meant that all drones were equipped with semi autonomous AI. Ideally they were operated at distance by a pilot however. The stupidity of AI systems was universally cursed. The problem with remotely operating drones was the quality of electronic counter measures. If a control link was severed there were means by which ground troops within line of sight on the ground could request tasks from drones. It worked reasonably well if the task was close enough to the preprogrammed templates and the troopers had some idea of what they were doing. Reality seldom seemed to be quite that helpful and letting AI handle all drone functions seldom led to the desired results. If you wanted AI based drones to work well, you needed constant human oversight.

On the whole, AI had never really delivered on the promise that the technology had once seemed to offer. So, after a few disastrous failed attempts, most notably at the battle of Marrakesh in 2039, a policy of human pilots for human cargo had been brought back. The EV-722 was improved and put back into service as the primary drop ship. Pilots like Laura were still responsible for operating Droopies, and that was the way had been for the entire 71 years since the drop ship had been introduced into EUAF service. The version that she was about to crash into the ground however, was called a mark 27, the most recent iteration of the tactical utility transport version of the design. However good a piece of equipment the Droopy was, the one she was in was going down and they were a long way from any friendly support.

EUAF R&R Zone, New Vegas
Overton, Celestia II
2096.202 (a year earlier)}

It was her first time on in-theatre leave at the resort zone of New Vegas. The settlement had the ambition to be a city, it certainly advertised itself that way. On the flight in it had looked more like a medium sized town to her. An area almost as big as the town itself was dedicated to a third echelon support base. It made sense to do major maintenance on equipment while the associated crew was on leave. The support base had quickly sprung up next to the EU’s primary R&R destination on Celestia, offering New Vegas a source of income from its permanent staff and logistic needs in addition to all the soldiers on leave, manically spending their wages. She could see three very large buildings, presumably hotels, under construction by the waterfront. The massive building printer frames had nozzles busily moving back and forth, spewing out a concrete and fibre mix to create the structures, also placing multi-coloured data and power cables as they moved. Along the waterfront she could make out quite a few people, which had to be vacationing EUAF personnel.

She was looking forward to her leave. Mostly. The last three months had been exhausting and while the army did plan rest days for its aircrews, it didn’t always mean it actually happened. She knew she was in need of some downtime. With two months travel time by star ship back to Europa or Earth, “in theatre leave”, as the Army called it, made operational sense. Sending people back home would require four months of travel time, passing through contested space twice. Since that wasn’t safe or practical, there was funding as well as staff available to make sure that there was suitable entertainment for the troops not too far from where the fighting was. It had been three months since EU troops had landed on the planet, but New Vegas was already transforming on account of all the EU troops that it catered to. On a slow day at the LZ, she had discovered some old brochures in the depths of of Celestia’s local net, praising New Vegas as a wonderful Space Cruise destination. It seemed the town had once been making some headway to becoming a premium market vacation spot for the wealthy. Now, it was almost exclusively concerned with providing distractions for the EU’s vacationing military. Celestia II was a pretty planet and New Vegas had a National Geographic quality coastline that was being put to effective recreational use.

In the years after the Chinese invasion, New Vegas had fallen on hard times with the both the local and interstellar tourism industries completely disappearing. That wasn’t necessarily a result of the Chinese invasion, Laura knew the PRC’s massive population had a substantial wealthy component. If tourists weren’t visiting Celestia, it was because the PRC didn’t want them there. That meant that economically, the EU’s arrival was a godsend, but the previous incarnation of New Vegas had almost completely disappeared. It had become a party town filled with nightclubs, bars and the businesses that catered to what troops were looking for on leave. Soldiers wanted alcohol, gambling, drugs and sex, interspersed with some more relaxing things like food, cinema, swimming, golf, football, pool and other sports and leisure activities. All soldiers in the EU military were expected to practice a martial art, so there were also quite a few places to practice. New Vegas was catering to those needs and the EU was willing to pay to make sure all of it was available, pretty much with the exception of the drugs. Not that that made much difference, it’s always been impossible to stop drugs. Off world and designer drugs were very expensive however, there was no way for smugglers among EU personnel to bring in enough to satisfy demand. The drugs the Celestians could provide from their local stock however, were plentiful and cheap. Mainly that was cannabis and the pungent smell was all over the place in New Vegas. You could hardly fault the locals for getting what business they could out of the EU presence. Laura had heard some rumours that the Celestians were growing coca too, in the mountains, but according to several infantrymen she’d overheard it certainly wasn’t having an effect on the price of cocaine yet. There was stiff discipline in the EU military if you got caught but in reality the only thing the military sought to do was curb excess. The EU military simply couldn’t afford to get rid of everybody that lit up the occasional joint.

Of what was on offer, Laura had always been into sensations like sex, adrenaline and food far more than things which dulled the senses. She’d done her share of experiments, but been so annoyed with what it did to her performance in the dojo that she’d almost immediately given up on anything that altered her consciousness other than caffeine and sugar.

She’d arrived in New Vegas together with a few hundred other troops from LZ Danjou. She’d ferried in a Droopy with a full platoon of forty raucous, singing infantry troops. Laura had then dropped the Droopy itself off at the maintenance facility for third echlon overhaul. She’d probably be flying a different one back to Danjou. One good thing about being a droopy pilot was that she seldom had to pay for her own drinks. The ground troops tended to be rather appreciative of droopy crews, obviously all the more so if they were young and female. They knew who was who among the pilots and her crew had a good reputation for coming through when the going got rough. She always ran into people from units that had been pulled out of a tough place by the forty second squadron. If she stopped to think about it, she had to admit that both she and the other droopy crews often took extreme risks getting to and from EU positions. It was nice that it was at least appreciated by the troops she was doing it for. She’d also never really been short of attention from men, so she didn’t think she would be needing the services of the various brothels that blatantly advertised their services all over New Vegas.

By the second day she’d spotted a sufficiently attractive specimen while out swimming. He obviously wasn’t wearing his fatigues, but she could tell he was an officer because he was wearing a ‘Army Officer’s Academy’ t-shirt. She knew that the institution was in Dresden at the old German Army officer’s school. She was on leave and he wasn’t in her chain of command, which made him fair game. She came out of the water, expressly didn’t fix her bikini top so that it was showing more of her breasts than strictly necessary or decent and walked up to him.

“Hey soldier, come here often?”

Not much more was required. He turned out to be a Major in the Cavalry and his name was Jurgen Brockdorff. He seemed nice enough and she didn’t waste any time and they were together in her hotel room before dinner. His leave ended several days before hers, which was just as well because he seemed a little smitten. It was fun, but she decided it was better that it came to an end, because she sensed he was a guarded about his home life. She strongly suspected there must be a spouse back home. Not that that was strange. Jurgen had had military ageing therapy, just like she did and was ten years older than her. Him having a wife and possibly a family fit right in the normal profile for career military officers. It didn’t matter to her, but she wasn’t looking for complications so a nice clean break seemed the most sensible course of action.

Laura thankfully found that she was able to relax on leave. She’d found herself a seaside bar where the bartender, a woman named Marianna, made wonderful cocktails both with and without alcohol. Marianna was an American settler, born on Celestia and talking to her was intriguing. She found she got along well with the woman, who was a few years older than her. Even just a few casual conversations with someone who wasn’t a soldier were very welcome. Conversations with Marianna taught her about the way the planet was before the PLA arrived. She also learned also how the Chinese troops had behaved when they came. She’d been concerned that being on Celestia for her leave would constantly remind her that the war was close by. The concern had been unfounded. New Vegas was peaceful and other than the comings and goings from the maintenance base and the military vehicles that were everywhere, it could have been a resort town anywhere.

New Vegas was a better holiday that she’d ever had on Earth… though she vaguely remembered a beach somewhere from when she was very very young. She wasn’t certain if the man in her memories was her father, she didn’t really remember him. He’d certainly been gone before she was quite conscious of the concept of family. The town had a Kyokushinkai karate dojo she visited, though it wasn’t busy and the level wasn’t all that high, still it was interesting and educational to practise karate for a change. There was an hour a week of aikido there, which she was able to visit twice too. She swam a lot, went scuba diving and sailing, all courtesy of the EU army and even tried her hand at both of New Vegas’ golf courses, which she found to be terminally boring. She also found some more pleasant male company for the second week of her leave. Despite the relaxed pleasantness of her temporary life of leisure she really was feeling ready to head back to the droopy squadron by the end of it. She wasn’t completely sure why. After a moment of self reflection she had to admit that she was missing active duty. She craved the action and the idea of actually doing things made her feel alive. It was a bit of an awakening, learning that she actually liked being a drop ship pilot, a job that forced you to do your best work when situations got the most difficult. She didn’t mind leaving New Vegas when the time came and didn’t even feel any apprehension when she flew the droopy she was ferrying back towards Danjou. It would be more than five months before she got another chance to come back to New Vegas.

EUAF Recruitment Centre, Bonnevelne
Marseille, Earth
2093.250.1043 (nearly 3 years earlier)

She walked in to the office, which was decorated like it sold adventure holidays and presented herself to a thirtyish looking woman seated at the reception desk. The soldier looked bored. She wore a speckled camouflage uniform which was familiar from news feeds. People in EU army uniforms were a very rare sight on the streets of La Tribune. She’d read somewhere that the camo pattern was called flecktarn and hadn’t changed much from what the German National Army had worn a century and more before, back when national armies were still a thing. The woman had reddish hair in a short ponytail and her name tag read ‘Berger’. You could never be sure about age these days but she thought the odds of a junior administrative soldier on a recruitment posting having received ageing treatments weren’t high. Some people were talking in a room off to one side and she could just make out some movement through the open door.

“Can I help you?”

The woman had a slight German accent to her French.

“I’d like to register for conscription.”

The soldier looked kind of tough, Laura thought. She had three chevrons on her sleeve, with a shorter horizontal bar just beneath them. That might mean she was a type of Sergeant? She wasn’t certain. There were some other insignia on her uniform which she didn’t know the meaning of.

“Alright. Let’s see. First, thumbprint on this gizmo here, then an iris scan with this… DNA swab… inside of your cheek and a drop of blood.”

She put her thumb on the scanner, then had to look into a kind of camera. Lastly she ran the swab fingerprint, an iris scan and a swab from the inside of her cheek for a DNA check. Last was a small pinprick of blood from her index finger.

“OK,” Berger continued, “just a few seconds to process it all…”

The woman entered some data into the terminal, then looked at her with an expression she found hard to place.

“So… a little late, are we?”

She didn’t say anything, just shrugged.

“Says here you were supposed to report… about two years ago?”

“Err… sorry? I guess?”

The woman didn’t really appear to care, just rolling her eyes at her and shaking her head. She knew exactly how long she was overdue for her original conscription date, but she managed to stop herself from making any smart ass comments. She didn’t think doing so was going to improve the woman’s opinion of her. She wasn’t certain whether Berger actively disapproved of her or was simply annoyed by something on her screen.

“You want a new name?”

“What?”

“You can choose a name. It’s the law. Or you can have the computer assign one. Computer suggests… Christina Magdeburg, Sarah von Bruhl or… Laura Clausewitz. You can choose whatever you want, as long as it fits the guidelines, though.”

“Why is it suggesting all German names?” She thought Laura Clausewitz didn’t sound too bad. She’d always liked the name “Laura”.

“Look. All I know is that the given name is randomised from what was popular around when you were born, together with some regional DNA considerations or something. Last name is something to do with a genealogical database or the like and I think regional DNA is also factored in to that. I don’t really know, to be honest. It does tend toward choosing the last names of famous people, or it seems to as far as I can tell.”

“So there was a famous person named Clausewitz? Or Von Bruhl?”

“Probably. No guarantees on how famous though. Could just be an obscure entry for a tennis player or a one hit wonder pop star a century ago on Wikipedia.”

“Who were these people?”

“Don’t know. It doesn’t say.”

She’d already known that changing her name was an option but the automated name generation was a new twist. She’d even given it some thought when she read about it. She wanted a new start… and there were some things from her old life that she could do without. It would probably be best if people like Ludo couldn’t just look her up. A little anonymity might be good, she’d decided.

“Just one sec, let me check that this Clausewitz person wasn’t a total idiot.”

Berger waited not quite patiently while she checked on her communicator… Carl von Clausewitz. He was a General in the nineteenth century and author of a book, it seemed… it must be a famous book, as it was the first hit on the search… It was called “On War”. How fitting, she thought. She also saw that there was a message from Ludo, asking where the hell she was.

“I’ll go with Laura Clausewitz.”

“Uhmmm… alright. Really?”

The woman seemed a little surprised.

“Isn’t that OK?”

“Just doesn’t happen very often. People who want a new name make up all sorts of strange things for themselves. Movie star names are popular. Had one guy who wanted ‘Optimus Prime’ after some 20th century cartoon, believe it or not.”

“A guy wanted to be named after a cartoon character?”

“That’s what he said. Mostly, people just stick with their birth name though. He did, too, in the end. ‘Optimus Prime’ was against the guidelines.”

She didn’t feel like she had better ideas.

“I’m sure. Laura Clausewitz it is.”

It sounded foreign to her own ears. She’d get used to it, she decided.

“OK. Your call.”

The woman pressed the enter key three times in rapid succession.

“All done. Just one more thing, get into that booth, strip naked. It’ll 3D scan your body and face as well as weigh you. Keep your hair in a ponytail.”

“Right. Completely naked?”

“That’s what I said. The army isn’t interested in modesty. The scanner will determine your sizes and I’ll hand you an overall to put on. You can use your own underwear.”

She wasn’t really interested in modesty either. She’d mostly asked to be sure Berger really meant naked.

“Alright.”

She went into the booth and after identifying herself with her thumbprint as well as a few beeps and flashes of light the screen directed her to change posture a few times, displaying an example, then flashed and beeped more and eventually displayed the message “scan complete”. A moment later the Berger cracked the door and handed her an overall and some sneakers.

“Right, put those on.”

When she emerged Berger looked her over for a moment. Her expression was hard to judge. Was it mixed feelings? Resignation? Her face changed into a more serious expression.

“The law says I’m to inform you you’re now a member of the Army of the European Union. You are therefore subject to martial law from this moment forward. So, welcome home.”

‘Subject to martial law’, sounded awfully serious.

“Alright… why did you say ‘welcome home’?”

“Old informal army tradition. New recruits are welcomed home. Not all that crazy really. The army is the only home many soldiers have ever known. I just like saying it.”

It wasn’t something Laura had ever heard of, but she tried to remember it for future reference.

“So, now what?’

“Follow me.”

The woman led her into an office with a large table and gave her a empty military duffel bag.

“Alright, your bag. Unpack everything, item by item. It all goes into the duffel bag. Rules are I have to check everything you have with you and before you ask, the answer is ‘no’. There’s no privacy here. I am legally allowed to check, smell, operate, read and view and whatever else everything you have with you.”

Laura complied without complaint, taking everything out one by one.

“You’re a martial artist? What’s your poison?”

“Aikido.”

“Black belt, eh? Cool. That should serve you well. What’s that?”

One thing she had done in the two years she’d been dodging the draft, was pass her Shodan exam, or first dan. At least the time hadn’t been completely wasted.

“Hakama. Traditional Japanese trouser skirt thing we wear when we practice. It’s a bit of pain in the ass, if I’m honest.”

The woman nodded, seemingly genuinely pleased, but continued paying close attention to each item that went into the duffel bag. Laura could understand the military wanting to know what conscripts took onto a base. A lot of the people she knew would certainly have brought along a substantial stockpile of drugs and possibly weapons.

“Right, looks like you don’t have anything that’s restricted. That’s the first time in weeks.”

“People try to bring illegal stuff?”

“Yeah. You wouldn’t believe the kind of stuff some people try to sneak past me. I have to call the MP’s most days.”

“Some people must freak out. Doesn’t that get dangerous?”

She shrugged. “I can take care of myself. Also, I have this,” she pointed to a chord around her neck. “The MP’s are just across the hall.”

“Panic button?”

“A call the MP’s button. Excited civilians aren’t usually a reason to panic,” Berger said it with the matter of fact bearing of someone who didn’t worry too easily.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

“You’re not spending your whole conscription doing recruitment, are you?”

She laughed, “hell no. I’m on light duty. Recuperation.”

“You were wounded?”

“Yep.”

“What happened?”

“Chinese bomb blew my legs off.”

“Seriously? When was this?”

“About eighteen months ago. Medical troops know their shit, eh?”

“But so… do you get out soon?”

“No. I switched. I’m a lifer now.”

“You’re staying in the Army after you lost your legs?”

“They fixed them too.”

Laura shook her head, “what do you normally do?”

“Pioneer. You know what that is?”

Laura shook her head.

“It’s a type of Combat Engineer. Clearing minefields, destroying obstacles that kind of thing. Sometimes we build a bar for the troops or put together a new base or something. Usually it’s fun. Lots of variation. Mostly good people in the engineers. I like it there. Better than where I come from, that’s for sure. Now, that was a lot more than one question, so let’s move on.”

Laura looked at the woman again, seeing her in a different light. She wondered if there was something to what she said or whether she was just nuts. Five minutes later she’d signed one more form and been escorted to a spartan room with sturdy oak furniture. It reminded her of a retirement home lounge.

“You’ll wait here until transport arrives. There’s free coffee and tea from the machine. Oh, there should be some cookies left over there, too, if you’re lucky.”

“Transport?”

“To pre-basic holding. Basic training starts every few weeks. You’ll be kept busy at pre-basic till it does. Any questions?”

“Uhm…. Well… can’t I just come back when the training starts?”

“Look you know a lot of people avoid conscription right? You must have too, seeing as you were supposed to report almost two years ago?”

Laura’s expression must have gotten a bit concerned, because the woman continued with a more reassuring tone.

“Don’t worry, I don’t care and the army doesn’t really actually do anything about it either, but what it does have is pre-basic. It’s insurance against people changing their minds.”

“There’s no way around that?”

“Oh there is. You can get out of it by putting up a bond to guarantee you’ll be there when basic starts, but you don’t have enough in your account. It has less than a euro in it, I looked. It’s also frozen, of course, since you’re a tiny bit late for your conscription date. I’m required to check it. Lastly, your bond would be astronomically high, seeing as how you’ve been missing for two years. Unless you’re a master magician and have a very large amount of cash in your pocket that you just hid from me somehow, you don’t have a choice.”

Laura wasn’t thrilled. Pre-basic sounded a lot like prison.

“So I just go there and wait?”

“Don’t worry, they’ll get you a uniform, three meals a day and keep you occupied with some tests and basic army primers and training. Relax, you’re in the army now.”

Laura was a little flustered. She hadn’t really expected things to go quite so fast. Well, she had, sort of. She’d taken into account that they wouldn’t exactly make an appointment for her to come back… still, it actually happening was more unnerving than she’d expected it would be. There was too much draft dodging going around for the army to let people go once they’d got their claws in, which she knew, obviously. She’d packed all necessities, but the reality of being carted straight off to a military facility was only now dawning on her. She realised she hadn’t really thought through how final today’s decision would turn out to be. Still, it was what she’d wanted, so after she’d adjusted to the initial shock she decided it would be best to simply see where all this took her and try to be as positive about it all as she could manage.

“OK, I guess I’ll just wait around.”

“Good. Trust me it’s not so bad. They’ll give you some course work and possibly some aptitude tests to see what’s the best place to train you. You seem like a good enough kid. For what it’s worth, I really prefer not to have to call out the MP’s on any of you.”

Laura suddenly realised that she’d been a lot closer to that happening than she thought. It was a sobering thought. She was about to settle down to wait when she noticed a chart with rank insignia on the wall. She’d seen it before, online though she hadn’t made any special effort to remember it. She walked over and tried to commit it to memory, realising she wouldn’t manage all in one go. She was able to determine that the woman at the reception was a Staff Sergeant which was apparently one rank higher than a normal Sergeant. One of the other insignia on the woman’s uniform was a Close Combat Badge, she realised. The chart didn’t explain what that actually meant, but combined with the knowledge that she was recovering from an injury, it seemed likely that it must be some sort of indication of combat experience. She settled down to wait. She grabbed her communicator, which had accumulated a whole row of increasingly annoyed messages from Ludo. She sent one back.

“Ran into Gendarmes. Go home.”

It was the simplest way to get him to let up she thought. He might have questions about how she could text while under arrest, but he would just have to live without the answers. Then she switched the communicator off, realising she should get a new one if she really wanted to be free of the La Tribune scene.

Several hours later, after reading everything that was in the waiting room, a white minivan pulled up with two men in the same speckled camouflage. Each had a pistol, body armour and shoulder bands bearing the letters ‘MP’. She was the only passenger at the office. They didn’t restrain her or anything, but in the olive green overall, carrying her duffel bag, she still felt a lot like a prisoner. When she boarded the minivan, she’d looked all around, but she didn’t see Ludo anywhere. Presumably, he’d taken her message to heart.

Two more young men, actual prisoners, also in olive drab overalls, were picked up two blocks away, at the police station. They were handcuffed. One of them was about her age and quite attractive, the other was overweight which she felt tended to make people look older. Despite that she guessed that he too was probably about as old as she was. She wondered how they’d gotten caught.

Lieutenant Hieronymous – AI Study

Lieutenant Hieronymus Arcenaux of the Taladarian Regiment in 994

Lieutenant Hieronymus Arcenaux was second-in-command of the expedition to the Westmarch in the spring of 994. He served in the Taladarian Regiment for many years without any particular distinction after using almost all of his inheritance to purchase his commission from the King of Iurrak.

The Half Elven Orphan #8

Disclaimer: This is not the final version as it will be available from the usual e-book sellers and eventually, bookstores. Rather, it should be seen as an (almost) final draft. If you are interested in becoming a beta reader, or you have any comments, suggestions or thoughts that you feel I should consider before publishing please drop me a line using the contact form.

Chapter 2: Age of Adolescence

The history of the Westmarch has long been defined by the conflict between the Kingdoms of Selinus and Iurrak. Ever since Yves the First founded the sublime Kingdom of Iurrak in 521, just after his great and most righteous rebellion against Viola the Third of Selinus, the two great lands have never managed to improve their relationship beyond a prickly tolerance. When sentiments became violent, the conflict has inevitably played out in the three fiefs that lie between Selinus and Iurrak, Saskill, Oakharrow and the Westmarch from north to south.

The wise and great King Gabriel the First of Iurrak made an ill fated attempt to alleviate the constant disagreements. He negotiated the Peace of Equals, ending eighty years of war between Iurrak and Selinus in 601. In that treaty, it was agreed that Saskill, Oakharrow and the Westmarch would form an independent buffer Kingdom between Selinus and Iurrak. Of course, this would turn out to be short lived. Selinus soon after usurped the Saskill title through marriage and skulduggery. The Kings of Iurrak had little choice but to eventually do the same, though they attempted to abide by the terms of the treaty for another two centuries before Annette de Baerle married Ivan, Duke of Taladaria at King Humphrey the Fourth’s behest in 814. So, the title of the March passed to the Duke when the last regnant Marquis, Xavier, passed away. It is for this reason, that, to this day, the Duchy of Taladaria is the only title within the Iurrakan peerage permitted to hold two regnant titles unified within one person, a right formalised in a special agreement between the King and Peers of Iurrak.

From the Encyclopedia Royalis Iurraka, edition of 975.

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Influences: Iain M. Banks

In my humble opinion, Mr. Banks is one of the great science fiction writers who deserves a place with the great ones like Heinlein and Burroughs. I particularly like his Culture novels, though even the other ones, including Feersum Endjinn all introduced ideas and a descriptive style that resonated with me. I doubt I’ll ever be write as well as Banks, but his worlds have been inspirational, giving a feeling for just how far you can go with science fiction. I wouldn’t call his work terribly easy to read or even all that accessible, but it’s absolutely worth the effort.

Feersum Endjinn
The Use of Weapons
The Player of Games
The Hydrogen Sonata
Look to Windward
Inversions
Excession
Consider Phlebas
The State of the Art
Matter
Surface Detail
The Algebraist

Gene Therapy for Military Personnel

Brussels, 2054.210.0900, (Wed 29 July). The Defence Commissioner’s office issued a statement today that as of 2054.244.0900, (Tue 1 Sep) all ‘critical’ military personnel will begin receiving Gene Treatment using the Mendel-7 process that was developed at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

“The treatment is intended to reduce susceptibility to cosmic radiation, improve muscle tone, increase resistance to hibernation related complications and arrest aging at a physical peak equivalent to around 20 years of age,” according to Professor Dr. Diana Stolberg (58) of the Karolinska Institute. According to Stolberg, other blanket or even specific gene modifications may be added at the request of the military. She suggests things like improved reflexes and peripheral vision are being researched for pilots as well as a number of classified programs. Stolberg is an internationally celebrated, Nobel prize winning geneticist who has recently wholly been absolved of any wrongdoing around the illegal treatment of one or more ultra rich individuals in Paris in the late 2020’s.

Critics have pointed out that the long term effects of the treatment cannot yet be adequately investigated because none who have received the treatment since the first time it was succesfully applied in 2032 have lived with the modified genes long enough to draw scientifically valid conclusions. Additionally, there is the matter of military personnel not wanting to undergo the treatment on religious or conscientious grounds for which the military is currently offering no exemption.

This is an in setting press release for Total War. It is not real.

The Half Elven Orphan #7

Disclaimer: This is not the final version as it will be available from the usual e-book sellers and eventually, bookstores. Rather, it should be seen as an (almost) final draft. If you are interested in becoming a beta reader, or you have any comments, suggestions or thoughts that you feel I should consider before publishing please drop me a line using the contact form.

Learning Things

Ala still went to the school every now and again, usually for a few months or weeks at a time. Normally she would go again whenever a new temple sister arrived from outside Thetwick. New sisters tended to bring new knowledge with them, which was exciting. The temple always offered a few years of schooling to the villages’ children, officially until the age of ten, but Ala’s repeated presence was always tolerated as long as she helped whoever was teaching where she could. The sisters took turns teaching the classes in the mornings. Children with aptitude for it were taught to read, write and do basic sums. Ala already knew how to write in elven from before she came to Thetwick, but she always wanted to improve her command of the human language. She knew she had a ever so slight accent that she’d never quite been able to shake.

New sisters teaching in the school seemed to be better trained in sums than the ones who had been there decades before, like Deirdre. It made it worthwhile to go back every few years. There was usually at least something new to be learned. Ala was certain she had learned all that anyone around her knew about the history of Taladaria and Thetwick. She’d experienced most of what had recently happened in Thetwick herself, which the humans seemed to collectively forget all the time. It sometimes made things awkward, when people claimed that their father or grandfather had done something which she knew to be untrue since she’d actually known the person in question.

Very occasionally, school was very interesting. Not long after the meeting hall had been erected in Thetwick, the Temple of Ceres seemed to have taken a renewed interest in its flock in Thetwick. In the summer of 924, the Temple was visited by a woman, a Canoness, whose arrival caused quite some consternation in the Thetwick Temple. The sisters almost decided to send Ala away from school, until Gera, now advanced in age herself pointed out that Alagariel only looked ever so slightly older than the customary ten years of age that most ended their schooling in Thetwick. So, thanks to Gera’s intervention Ala was attending class, keeping to herself when the Canoness, a stern looking lady named Clair Fichot attended the lesson to observe. The sister who was teaching the class was clearly unnerved by the woman’s presence. Ala had to admit she did look quite severe.

The lesson continued. It was a history lesson that Ala had heard many times. Most of the sisters did not have much of an interest in history and today’s teacher was no different. Not much changed about in that respect, even when new Sisters arrived. Ala, seeing as she had heard it all before was mainly paying attention to the way the stern woman’s scowl was rapidly turning more pronounced as the lesson progressed. Only a few minutes in, she spoke.

“Sister, if you don’t mind, I’ll take over today’s lesson. Why don’t you sit down and observe?”

The sister nodded and quickly say down in the back, not far from Ala. The Canoness made her way to the front of the classroom and cleared her throat.

“Now children, today I’m going to tell you a bit more about the history of your home. I will be asking questions later, so pay attention.”

The woman certainly had Ala’s attention. She’d always been curious about the history of the Westmarch, but the sister’s usually didn’t go back very far and only covered a time that Ala had actually experienced. Ala had long learned that it wasn’t a good idea to point out discrepancies that she knew about because she’d been alive during the events being described.

“First of all, is there anything any of you particularly wants to know about?”

Ala was excited, since she had lots of things she wanted to know about. It was only after no one else reacted that she dared to raise her hand.

“You, young lass, what is it you want to know?”

“Err… Canoness.. I… well I was hoping you could tell us something about how the Westmarch came to be?”

“Those are things that happened very long ago. But alright, why not? So, how the Westmarch came to be a march, let’s discuss that, shall we?”

Ala nodded eagerly.

“Around 601… you do know all know the current year is 924, don’t you?”

From the blank looks it was clear not everyone did.

“So that’s… three hundred and twenty three years ago, when a peace agreement was reached between Selinus and Iurrak after eighty years of war. That peace was signed at the Ford Inn, where the road to Taladaria crosses the Iceflow river. It was agreed between King Gabriel the first of Iurrak and King Selinus the seventh of Selinus.”

This was all new to Ala and she was loving it.

“Now, this peace led to the Westmarch being formed. The two Kings were tired of all the war between their countries and they were looking for a way to stop it happening again. So, they agreed that three fiefs would become a buffer between Iurrak and Selinus. In the North, bordering the sea, that was Saskill, then Oakharrow in the middle and in the south, the Westmarch, where we are now. Of course, it wasn’t called the Westmarch back then. I’m not completely sure what it was called but one name I’ve heard for it is ‘Difayakwininos’, which I’m probably pronouncing wrong. It’s said that it’s elven in origin but it doesn’t sound anything like any elven I’ve ever heard.”

It sounded familiar to Ala, though it wasn’t quite normal elven she was sure. Part of it sounded like the elven word for ‘house’. She decided not to let on that she understood elven. As Ala was thinking about the old name, Canoness Fichot looked around the room. She had the children’s attention. It was hard to know why but somehow, when she talked about history it seemed far more interesting than what Ala was used to.

“So, Saskill and Oakharrow were independent counties. The Westmarch was made into a march, probably because it also had to guard against attacks from the Orck Mountains and a Marchioness has more rights to hold troops than a Count does. You do all know that the Orck Mountains are south of the Irins that border the Westmarch in the south? The orcks come down in great hordes every few decades and the Westmarch is the first line of defence against them.”

Ala knew about the orcks of course, but the revelation of there being a Marquis was strange news to Ala. She was certain there was no current Marquis in the Westmarch. The Canoness spotted her look of puzzlement.

“Do you have a question, young lady?”

“Eh… well… what happened to the Marquis? There isn’t one is there, mistress?”

Clair Fochet smiled, the first time Ala had seen her do so. It was a very different look.

“Very astute. Actually, there is though. Does anyone know who the current Marquis of the Westmarch is?”

This drew blank stares all around, eventually Sister Penny, who was still sitting in the back, raised her hand.

“Yes, Sister?”

“It’s the Duke of Taladaria, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. It’s not really a part of the story about how the Westmarch came to be, as it happened much later, but the title of the Westmarch passed to the Dukes of Taladaria much later by marriage. Now, it’s not customary for a Lord to hold two regnant titles, but it’s the way things are in the case of the Westmarch. It’s generally frowned upon and I imagine the King of Iurrak accepts it because the Westmarch is so sparsely populated that it needs the Duke’s soldiers if it is to be able to defend Taldaria both from the Orcks and Selinus. Mostly, Kings are quite strict about the one regnant title per person rule. Anyway, now back to the story of the Westmarch and the Peace of 601.”

Ala was sure she’d never had quite as interesting a history lesson in the Temple of Ceres ever before.

“Well anyway, it seems that the intention was that eventually Saskill, Oakharrow and the Westmarch would become a small Kingdom that would stop Iurrak and Selinus becoming angry at one another. It never happened that way though. Selinus soon annexed Saskill though I don’t really know how that happened without it leading to another war. Perhaps it was through marriage, I would have to study it more than I have so far and I simply haven’t had the time.”

Ala went home that day with a lot to think about. Unfortunately the Canoness didn’t stay for long and school went back to being more or less the same immediately after the woman left. It made her sad, she could think of many more questions she wanted to ask the woman. The subject went back to religion, which the Sisters seemed to spend a lot of the school’s time repeating. Mostly, they went on and on about their goddess, Ceres, who was a very boring goddess who was seemingly mostly interested in bovines and agriculture, two subjects that Ala always found it difficult to concentrate on. While she could kind of understand why such a goddess was important in a farming community like Thetwick, she wished the sisters wouldn’t talk about it as much. She preferred hearing about different gods, which the sisters infrequently discussed. Sometimes Guanshiyin, the lady of Compassion was mentioned or Mars, the god of War. Sancus, Belus and Wotan existed too, Ala knew, but their jobs were hard to understand. Belus seemed to be popular in the south and Wotan in the North. There were even more, but other than acknowledge that more did exist, the sisters of Ceres did not consider it fitting to discuss them in their classroom. Ala tried to convince them too, but they told her it wasn’t allowed. Pressing them further only resulted in finding out that the High Priestess in Dirstad had forbidden talk of other gods. Ala didn’t even know there was a place called Dirstad.

Still, despite her many irritations with the Sisters of Ceres, it was there that she had learned about the geography of Vatan. Across the Iceflow River which was the Westmarch’s eastern border lay the rest of Taladaria, the first fief you encountered to the south east was the Barony of Sheffield. To the north east was the County of Verdon which bordered a small stretch of the Westmarch across the river. The western bank of the river was very marshy there making it very difficult to get directly from the Westmarch to Verdon. Other than a few trappers, not many people lived in that part of Verdon as it was almost always damp and misty. Large sections flooded every year and the only settlement of note was a place called Landing, a community of wooden buildings on stilts where trappers came to trade their wares and rest. It was mostly empty during the winter months.

Oakharrow County lay to the North, though there wasn’t a clearly defined natural border there. There was a line of low hills, but it lacked clear demarcation compared to the Iceflow river in the East. For a long time, contact between Thetwick and Oakharrow had been regular and generally amicable, with people frequently visiting each other’s markets and occasional marriages between the fiefs. The ground in Oakharrow was rocky and hard, unsuitable for much more than sheep and goat herding, making it even poorer than Thetwick, especially since it had been independent for a long time. There was never an influx of gold like when the Duke had the meeting hall built in Thetwick or when he’d sent former cavalrymen to breed warhorses.

Ala had seen her share of armies march through the Westmarch as well as attacks by orcks from the South. The fortifications that the Westmarch had had in the distant past, most notably the tower where Ala liked to go and play had already been destroyed a long time before Ala arrived in Thetwick. Taladaria and Selinus seemed to violently disagree about things quite regularly. During her life the Duke’s men had come to deal with incidents with Oakharrow and Selinus, as well as the intermittent bands of orcks coming down from the southern mountains. It didn’t happen often and normally they didn’t get very far but Ala would never forget the great orck horde that came down from the mountains in 861. Everything had been topsy-turvy for almost a year and when they returned after having had to flee Thetwick, it took a long time for the town to recover.

Incursions from Selinus had been something that would happen several times a year for in some periods, then nothing might happen for a decade or more. Sometimes it was a cattle raid and sometimes Selinan nobles decided to plunder a hamlet and once even Thetwick itself had been raided. It was during that raid that Ala’s human twelve year old sister Emma had been abducted. It had been a great shock for everybody in Palady’s family. Emma had been taken by a group of mounted warriors, black knights from Selinus. Ala had only been in Thetwick for about a decade then. Such raids were a part of life in the Westmarch, but even though that was dramatic and shocking, for the most part Thetwick was peaceful during Ala’s time there. Relations with Oakharrow did noticeably deteriorate after King Justus was crowned in Selinus and interaction between Oakharrow and the Westmarch decreased after that. In later years Ala came to understand that the frequency of the raids tended to be related to the presence of young nobles in the regions closest to the Westmarch, mainly the Barony of Greythorn. Abduction, for the purpose of indentured servitude was a disgusting sport for the Selinan nobility. It was also Emma’s probable fate.

For the most part, the people of Thetwick had little to do with the outside world. News from other lands was scarce as travelers from far away were rare. Any news from lands beyond Taladaria or Selinus seldom made it to Thetick. Ala heard the news of a Duke’s passing in the year 920 when she’d been in Thetwick about eighty years. She didn’t really understand its significance at the time. To her, the fact that the old Duke had died and a new Duke, Ivan the Second, had inherited, didn’t change anything for her daily life. As far as she could tell it didn’t really change anything in Thetwick either. She didn’t understand why it was the talk of the town for several weeks. It wasn’t until much later that she realised that the building of the new town hall and the assigning of a permanent Constable a few years after the inheritance was an example of the new Duke setting his house in order and bolstering his Western defences.

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Sunset at 110k+ words!

Sunset, the life story of an important character that features in the Tales of Vatan: Alagariel series, passed through the hundred thousand word (100k) barrier this week. This really a chronological collection of stories that one character in the world experienced and it’s served as a way to give the world and recent history of Vatan more depth and colour.

I generally consider “full book” status to be achieved from about 125k words. At the moment, I feel there are at least  two large sections still to write, as there’s stll more than a hundred years to cover. So, it’s possible that Sunset will end up being a long one. I don’t anticipate two volumes, but you never know.

Belle de Serraient, on of Sunset’s many guises.

Influences: Dan Simmons

Simmon’s Hyperion Cantos (Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The Rise of Endymion),series is a wonderful work that weaves a wonderfully complex future world. The Canterbury Tales style telling of a large part of it, the wonderful references to 19th century poets and poetry and all the other strangeness are an intriguing example of how all sorts or real world history can be woven into a captivating science fiction story. The use of real world history, particularly military history is woven in throughout the the Total War setting.

This series is one I enjoyed reading immensely, so if you haven’t read it, I’d strongly recommend giving it a go.

Hyperion
The Fall of Hyperion
Endymion
The Rise of Endymion