The name’s Nero, Sam Nero. Private eye and augmented android. Me and my holographic sidekick, Sugar, operate out of an office on the fifty-fifth level of The Last City. We do okay. But some days are a bit bumpier than others…

When a dame whose everyday walk is as smooth and studiedly sexy as a big jungle cat, and whose make-up is as immaculate as a well-pressed designer suit, arrives in your office at a shambling run with her face all over tears and snot it’s a safe bet that something pretty bad is wrong.
I was lost in thought, with my feet propped on my desk and my hat tipped way down over my eyes, when my office door was thrown open in a dramatic fashion. I barely had long enough to wonder why in the hell my holographic door was now making an eldritch shriek, when Katie Scarlett O’Halleran and her exceptional bosom landed almost in my lap. She was crying, and her face was a mess.

She grabbed me by the lapels and tried to shake me.
“Sam. Sam. You have to come. Somebody has taken Daddy.”
I sat bolt upright and squared my shoulders. Anybody brave enough to mess with Mister Aitch was certainly a big fish, and I guessed I was about to go shark fishing. I grasped the sobbing girl by her slender shoulders.
“Calm down Katie Scarlett, and tell me what happened.”
“I already told you,” she all but screamed, “somebody has taken Daddy.”
“Details Katie, details.”

I gently compelled her to sit down, and held onto her until her chest stopped heaving and she took two steadying breaths. Then I got the bottle out of my drawer and poured her a stiff one. Her teeth chattered against the side of the glass, but the act of drinking calmed her almost as much as the bourbon.
“Daddy’s personal alarm sounded about an hour back. Me and the twins ran, but his office door was locked. When we broke the door down he was gone, and there was blood all over.”
“Okay,” I said, although I didn’t think anything was okay. “Where are the twins now?”
“Flirting with your holographic floozie. We set droids to watch on the office and came straight here.”
I decided now was not the time to react to the slur on Sugar’s character. Instead, I reached into the locked drawer of my desk and pulled out two extra weapons, a mini blaster that I stuck in my sock, and a weighted sap that slipped into my pocket.
“Let’s go then.”

The twins and Sugar were in animated sign language conversation.
“Sugar,” I said, “if anybody comes looking…”
“I don’t know where you are, and I certainly never saw these folks.” She flashed me that empty-headed smile that I knew hid a mind like a steel trap and wiggled her assets. I gave her the raised eyebrow and we left.

The trip down the glides was tense and silent. Katie had herself together but she was only holding by a thread, while the twins obviously looked to me for a lead. I’ll admit it. I was worried. So much so that I didn’t even bother to exchange words with the young chancer who thought it would be a good idea to put his hands on Katie Scarlett; I just broke his wrist before I threw him off the glide. Myk gave me the thumb, and Zig grinned a tight grin.

At Hood’s Bar, everything looked smooth on the surface, the booths were full, the bar droids were just about run off their feet, and the holographic pianist was playing that damned song. Again. The undertones of worry were there if you had the eyes to see them, though. The droids were jittery, and every security guy had a hand on his weapon. Oh yeah. It was tense and they were all looking to Sam Nero for a lead.

“Office,” I said and followed Katie Scarlett’s long legs down the familiar corridor. She signalled to a guard droid, who opened the door.
“You all wait here.”
I strode into the office then stopped in my tracks. The blood was wrong, it smelled wrong. I rolled back the plastic ‘skin’ from my fingertip and bent to touch the red fluid. It was blood all right, but not human blood. It was rat blood. Somebody had recently killed one of the rats that inhabit the tunnels that honeycomb The City. So why was that blood artistically splattered all over O’Halleran’s office?

From ‘Sam Nero and the Case of the Dutiful Daughter’ one of the stories in Sam Nero PI by Jane Jago

Alejandro had lived all his life in north west Columbia, so when he arrived at a top British university, as well as being incredibly proud and excited he also had some trepidation about making the move.
In the event, he settled in, made friends, did well on his course and became a very successful student.
But at the end of his first year he told his tutors he wouldn’t be coming back. “It’s seasons,” he explained. “Back home we have the same temperatures all year around. I just can’t get used to it changing so much. Does my head in.”

E.M. Swift-Hook

They had taped her mouth for the trial.
“The woman may not speak. Let a man speak for her,” the judge decreed. “What is the charge in full?”
“The woman committed the crime of questioning something a man said as being offensive.”
“Was it offensive?” The judge asked, determined to be fair and just.
“Exhibit A.” The prosecutor showed all the men of the jury and they knitted their brows in puzzlement. “As you see,” the prosecutor went on, “it was something no man would see as offensive, but this, this woman, said she found it so.”
A rumble of contempt and anger was heard through the jury.
“How dare she?”
“Who is she to say?”
“What difference does it make what she thinks anyway?”
“No one cares what she thinks. She’s only a woman after all.”
The judge banged his gavel to bring order to the courtroom.
“So, who speaks for this woman?”
A man stood up looking a little nervous and cleared his throat.
“Your honour, this woman wanted to say that she found this offensive and degrading to women.”
The judge frowned and the man sat down quickly.
“Degrading?” The judge gave a snort. “Who else wants to speak for the woman?”
Around the courtroom, here and there a woman tried to rise to speak, but each was pulled down and her mouth taped shut by the men – and women – around her.
“So how does the jury find this woman?”
“Guilty!”
“Guilty!”
“Guilty!”
The word echoed around like a chanted orison.
The judge brought the gavel down again.
“Let all her words be struck forever from the record so none may see. They might offend the men or encourage other women to speak out.”
Around the courtroom, most of the men nodded at the wise judgement and some of the women did too. Those who did not were left too afraid to speak up, too afraid to say, in case their taking offense at the fate of the woman was seen as an offensive thing.

E.M. Swift-Hook

The ocean wars saw small fish cowering in any shelter they could find while the leviathans of the deep cruised in search of things to kill.

What they found was each other.

The waves bloomed red and the sea foam blew pinkly in the breeze. 

For a while, the kings and queens of the deep ignored the carnage.

But even they had to awaken to the disaster that stalked above their heads and broke the silence of millennia to agree this must stop before the great predators made themselves extinct.

The killing stopped, but not before whole families died, unmourned.

©Jane Jago

Imagine waking up one day unable to recall who you are or where you came from – only to find you are serving a sentence as a convict conscript for crimes you have no memory of ever committing…

The individual who had been observing the interview from behind the holofacade stalked across the room towards him and through the non-existent wall. Under any other circumstances, Vane would have appreciated the sight. This woman was certainly worth looking at – a heart-shaped face, perfect skin, and trim physique. Added to which Vane was between relationships and had been for much of the last year, the demands of his work making it close to impossible to fit in any kind of personal life. But he had already decided from their short acquaintance that he disliked this woman. He disliked her arrogant attitude and he disliked the agency she worked for. Anger raised the colour in her face and set a blue flame in her eyes, she held her slender body taut, breasts thrust out towards him like weapons of war.
“What the hell happened there? What do you think you are playing at, Commodore?”
The question was snarled at him, her lack of professionalism appalling.
“I’m not playing at anything. This is a very serious issue I am required to bring under my consideration, not any kind of game – uh -” her security badge was unhelpful: ‘C. Tyran, CSF’, so he used the polite form of address: “ – Var Tyran.”
The woman smouldered in front of him, shoulders squared up as if in a fighting stance, whilst the sheer, clinging, fabric of her outfit left little of her feminine outline to the imagination. Vane found it hard to focus for a moment, and to his irritation that allowed her to seize the initiative.
“I thought I made it clear to you before the interview, Commodore. The process needed nothing more than pure formality on your part – just ask the questions and grant the discharge. In fact,” and here she paused to stab in the air towards him with an accusing finger, “you, agreed. Now we have questions raised and if this runs as far as the CRD it could take forever to get the process completed – if indeed it ever is.”
Vane felt his jaw tightening again. Something about this woman seemed to have an extra cut through on his emotions.
“I am not,” he said, “prepared to put my name to any discharge. I know what kind of man Revid is and in my professional judgement, it would be a huge mistake to allow him to exist anywhere other than my Legion. The facts show he is utterly unsuited to civilian life.”
“The facts?” The woman sounded dismissive “I’ll give you the facts Commodore, they are very simple. It is in the interests of the Coalition Security Force for this man to be discharged into the community. And that means it is in the best interests of all who are responsible for the security of Central to comply with whatever is required to facilitate the process. Knowing that you don’t need any other facts – only obedience to orders and duty. And I am ordering you to cancel any further inquiry, declare yourself satisfied, and recommend the discharge.”
Vane bit back the retort he wanted to make, furious at himself for letting her get to him. He forced calm into his voice – calm and command.
“You have no authority to give me orders.”
Her mouth opened to reply and, for a moment, he thought she might argue against the inarguable. Instead, she looked abruptly away from him, allowing her hair to swing forward and hide her expression from view. One hand moved to brush the hair aside, exposing her face in profile, like a cameo, each feature highlighted in perfect proportion. When she looked back at him, her expression had changed utterly, as if he were facing a different person. For a moment the shadow of something cold, hard and calculating seemed to linger, then it was gone, softened into a small rueful smile. She inclined her head apologetically.
“You are, of course, quite right Commodore. I don’t have that authority and I regret implying that I do. Please accept my apology. I fully accept the ultimate decision in this matter is yours and I shall report so to my superiors.”
She looked almost forlorn as she turned away and walked across the room, leaving Vane uncertain what to do or say in the face of her capitulation. So he said nothing as she collected her things from the desk she occupied during the interview. He watched her lean over to grab something that was rolling out of reach. The fabric of the stylish suit she wore, pulling tight around her hips as she did so. For some unaccountable reason his victory, whilst just and essential in this case, was not a comfortable one. He wondered if there was some way to offer a less bruising outcome from her perspective.

From Trust A Few – book one in Haruspex, the second Fortune’s Fools trilogy by E.M. Swift-Hook – which is only 0.99 to buy for a limited period.

Five years before Agatha had sat in that chair and made a decision that affected the rest of her life.
“It would be to our mutual advantage,” he had said. “Your contacts, my capital. What’s not to like?”
And on paper he was right. It was just she could not dismiss that odd nagging sensation deep inside – an irrational unease. But it was indeed irrational, so she had brushed it aside and signed the deal.
Today she sat in the same chair and finished filling in the forms that would cripple her life for years to come through bankruptcy proceedings.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Big Eric wants a word. He’s a troll. About eight feet tall and in possession of muscles on his muscles. He may not be too bright, but he’s afraid of nothing and adheres to a very strict code of conduct.

If Eric doesn’t like you he will mostly ignore you but if you persistently get on his norms he will seek you out and, pointing a thick finger at your face, he will say, slowly and clearly, “I don’t like you.” (At which point, if you have even half a brain you will back off and stop twisting his tail.)
If you carry on after a warning he will come and find you again, and he will probably chastise you with one of his big, knobbly fists.
If you have something he wants he will ask you nicely (of course, if you don’t hand it over he still has the option of a fist or his club)

Given the above you can perhaps see why he’s not best pleased by the phrase ‘Internet Troll’.
To his way of thinking people who hide behind keyboards, false identities, and cutesie avatars while they lay into anyone who disagrees with them do not deserve to be called trolls. They are, he avers, worthless cowardly pieces of oooflah (trollish for excrement).

Don’t dignify those whose only function in life is to make other people miserable by calling them after a life form possessing a certain brutal nobility.

No. Let’s find another phrase.

How about cowardly assholes?

Masked women sounds glamorous and sexy, but in truth…

Daughter, wife, mother, grandmother – which discounts neighbour, friend, secretary and all the other socially acceptable faces.

It’s surprising, when you think about it, how few women are in custody – or the divorce courts – because their masks were so suffocating that they threw them aside and did all the things society thinks they shouldn’t.

Who hasn’t longed to skinny dip in a dark sea with a dangerous lover?

Who hasn’t looked across the breakfast table and wanted to flick marmalade?

Mary took the dare.

They wrote this on her gravestone:

‘Died Laughing’

©Jane Jago

A brutal fantasy tale of piracy, friendship, romance and revenge on the high seas…

Next morning, a meeting of a select group of the most feared and respected of pirates took place on the Pink Pig. Jack took the chair and laid out his plan. About halfway through, Mary laid her face on the table and groaned. He looked at her in some severity.
“Hush up now. You get your chance when I finish.”
By the time he had finished speaking, she had herself together.
“Okay,” she said. “It’s certainly a plan. And probably has at leat half a chance of working. And I know you have to kill this Spaniard with your own hand if you don’t want to be fighting your own kind forever. I just wish it wasn’t so fucking dangerous.”
“Me too.” Jack grinned fiercely. “But there is no other way to eliminate Don Esteban and come out of the deal with a profit.”
“So we do it then. The only alteration I’m determined to make is that the Pig will be hove to behind the jaws of Hell’s Maw, just in case you need help.”
For a moment it looked as if Jack was going to argue, but in the end he just ducked his head. “I guess it’s no good asking you to keep out of danger.”
“Not when you are running your fool head into a noose.”
The hashing out of the details took a surprisingly short time and once the meeting broke up the other pirates returned to their own vessels. Mary and Jack leaned on the taffrail and watched them go. Down on the ground one of the less intelligent prodded his captain with a grimy forefinger.
“Cap’n Teach,” he said in a voice that hovered between horror and respect. “Is them pair doing it?”
“What pair? Doing what?”
“Tall Jack and Bony Mary. Doing It.”
“Very probably.”
“But. But. He’s a shortarse. Don’t even come up to her shoulder. How can…” the voice tailed off and Teach laughed a short bark of genuine amusement.
“They probably don’t do it standing up.”
Mary took an unripe apple out of her pocket and flicked it ground-wards with unerring accuracy. It bounced off the head of the inquisitive sailor, who cringed.
“Mind your own business, nosy.”
She turned a laughing face to Jack, who favoured her with a wicked grin. “I think we now have to figure out a way to prove Teach wrong.”
For a moment she didn’t catch his meaning, but when she did her own eyes lit with unholy amusement. “Impossible.”
By way of an answer he grabbed her hand and dragged her into the forecastle cabin slamming the door firmly behind him.

Three weeks later and nobody was laughing. Mary sent up a silent prayer to the god who protects idiots and then set her mouth in a grim line as she manoeuvred the Pig into hiding under the overhanging rocks at the mouth of Hell’s Maw. Her crew obeyed her in unusual silence.
Out in the blue water of the bay, Jack and his crew were busy perfecting their performance. It had to look good or they would be sunk. Maybe literally. As the sun climbed towards its zenith all they could do was hope that all their confederates had done their parts.
As it happened, they had.

Jane Jago

There will be more from Bony Mary and her crew next week…

So now the party’s over
And New Year’s all rung in,
You’re clearing up the kitchen
Throw bottles in the bin.
You wipe your brow and wonder
If it is all worthwhile
As last years dreams are ashes
Upon the compost pile.
For this year looks so empty
Through the window of your eyes
So bleakly lies the future
In a fog of truth and lies
And your heart feels heavy
As you set the place to right
Hearing all the laughter
Your guests shared there last night.
It doesn’t really take too long
To tidy up the room
After all, was only you
The others were on Zoom…

E.M. Swift-Hook