The third volume in the Gaia Collection,  The Gaia Solution by Claire Buss, is out now!

Zac stood in his office and scanned the briefing file in front of him, looking up briefly as Colonel Archer arrived. He was aware of her standing to his left but said nothing as he finished looking over the report.
‘So, not what we’d hoped, Archer.’
‘No, Sir. Fewer groups of refugees are arriving. I don’t think there will be many more. We can clear cities 24, 30 and 11 from the board. They’re not viable.’
Zac glanced at the map on the wall. It was accurate as they had been able to make it. Everyone who arrived at their camp was questioned carefully to determine which city they came from, which cities they passed and other important environmental information. 
‘You can take 36 off the map, as well as 15.’
‘Were they both destroyed by New Corp?’
‘No. 36 is full of radiation, it won’t be safe to inhabit for decades to come. Shame really, a stronghold in the mountains would have been a tactical advantage.’
‘Not when you read the latest report, Sir.’ Archer bit her lip as she waited for her superior to catch up on the results of weeks of investigation. She caught herself tapping her fingers impatiently and held back the urge to speak before he’d finished reading. Finally, Zac put the handheld down and leaned heavily on the desk in front of him.
‘The entire country?’
‘That’s what it looks like, Sir.’
‘And the calculations are correct?’
‘To the best of our knowledge.’ Archer paused. ‘Who are the people you brought with you, Sir?’
Zac pushed himself to standing and began ticking names off his fingers. ‘Artem you know. From City 42 we have their former rebel leader, Martha Hamble with her son as well as Archivist Kira Jenkins and former Force detective Jed Jenkins with their children. Dr Max Carter and Dina Grey are scientists, originally from Camp Eden, and Ash is one of Jed’s men.’
‘Perhaps their scientists can independently verify the data for us. It might also make them join our cause, when they know some of the facts.’
‘I don’t think we need to worry about whether they will join or not. None of them are pro New Corp.’
‘How do you know, Sir?’
Zac closed down his info wall, indicating that he wanted to leave the room, and Archer came with him as he swiped to exit.
‘New Corp wiped out Artem’s complex…’
‘Yes, we know that, Sir.’ Archer interrupted.
‘Kira’s parents were there. As was one of the new mothers from City 42. With her child.’
Wide-eyed, Archer paled and took a step back.
‘Are they all… dead?’
‘Completely annihilated. I don’t think we need to be worried about them being motivated to help us. We might have to hold them back.’ Zac gestured at the discarded handheld on the table. ‘Make sure they get a copy of your latest report. I want them to have all the facts.’

A Bite of… Claire Buss

Q1: How much do you see your Gaia books as being about our actual future? 

A lot of the technology I mentioned has basis in things that are being developed at the moment and my use of sweeps is an extension of how invasive social media can be, especially Twitter. I do believe that the next mass extinction event will be manmade, and I like to think that the planet, guided by Gaia perhaps, is capable of balancing itself out despite the damage mankind is making. Is it inevitable that one ruling, faceless company will be in charge of everybody’s life? You tell me. 

Q2: If there was one thing from the Gaia series you could have in real life, what would it be and why? 

Solar-powered transport would be awesome, I’d love a skimmer. 

Q3: Cats or dogs – and why?

Neither. In theory, both are loveable with many attractive qualities, but I have small people, they provide all the walking, pooping, feeding and cleaning I could possibly want.

Claire Buss is a multi-genre author and poet based in the UK. She wanted to be Lois Lane when she grew up but work experience at her local paper was eye-opening. Instead, Claire went on to work in a variety of admin roles for over a decade but never felt quite at home. An avid reader, baker and Pinterest addict Claire won second place in the Barking and Dagenham Pen to Print writing competition in 2015 with her debut novel, The Gaia Effect, setting her writing career in motion. She continues to write passionately and is hopelessly addicted to cake. You can find all her books on Amazon, share her thoughts on her blog, follow her on Facebook stalk her on Twitter or sign up for her newsletter. You can also participate in her Facebook group.

Mist draped her in a clammy blanket. Her footsteps seemed silent on the wet pavement, but there was a sound.

Was it her own breath catching in her throat? Or something more sinister?

Unthinking, she upped her pace, feeling, or thinking she felt, sour breath on the back of her neck.

Behind her, someone giggled – a sound that scraped on her nerves like fingernails on a blackboard.

In the puddle of yellowish light under a sullen lamp, stood a single uniformed policeman.

She ran forward, seeking safety.

He smiled and in the lamplight the blood on his fangs looked black.

©jj 2019

Dying to be Roman by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook is a whodunit set in a modern day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules. If you missed previous episodes you can start reading from the beginning.

It was more than half an hour before she returned to the Tribune’s study, where she found the two men playing a complicated board game, which, by Decimus’ face, Dai was winning.
“Thank goodness you are back, puella. Before I got my arse whipped by a sheep-shagging provincial. What did our master say?”
“Before or after he stopped swearing?”
“After.”
“Well. First off he’s sorry he stuck you with his awkward futatrix of a daughter. Second, he’s putting the word out on Marcella Junius. Going to make it treason for anyone to assist her. It’s going out on the public screens now. With pictures of her victims, especially those poor bloody dogs. Reckons he can winkle her out, and her life isn’t worth a brass penny when he does.”
Dai looked both relieved and pained and Decimus clapped his shoulder with some fellow feeling.
“Don’t think about it. I know there isn’t any proof, but I also know in my gut that the futatrix is guilty.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any doubt of that,” Dai sounded truly disturbed, “I just can’t get my head around it.”
“Which bit in particular?”
“Why. I think I am struggling with why.”
“Money,” Julia could hear the weariness in her own voice, “money and power. While he was venting his fury on me, the boss had all the information we have run through the computers in Rome. Of course, there was other stuff we couldn’t access. Most of which he wouldn’t tell me. But when the computers added up the probability it came out at over ninety-eight per cent that three patrician women hatched a pretty plot to get themselves back to Rome as wealthy widows. It looks like the poor stupid arena curatrix couldn’t cope with the reality of murder – they found some messages she sent to Lydia which hinted she wanted out. She was probably always expendable anyway. I feel sick. And there is a thing I have to tell you, Decimus, and it’s not nice. Sorry Dai, but I have to say it in private.”
She looked into Dai’s face, expecting the shuttered look that indicated another attack of hurt feelings, and was surprised to see complete understanding as he heaved himself to his feet.
“Wait.”
Decimus looked at the pair of them.
“I trust the sheep-shagger. Just talk, Julia.”
She looked at their expectant faces and swallowed the bile that threatened to choke her.
“It’s about Lydia and Octavia Scaevia…”
Decimus actually nodded his big head.
“Lovers, were they?”

Julia felt her jaw drop slightly open and she closed it quickly.
“Probably. It looks like Marcella killed them because the two of them had fallen in love – or lust – and tried to run off together with a big part of the loot. Don’t tell me you knew?”
“Not knew, precisely. But I always suspected that was where her tastes lay. The boy she wanted was more feminine than most women. And there was the way she looked at some of the pretty butterflies that cluster around men of wealth.” He sighed. “I tried to talk to her about it once, but she clammed up like the bitter oyster she was.”
“Honestly, Decimus, what did you expect?. She could hardly admit that to you. Even if she admitted it to herself…”
Julia and her childhood friend glared into each other’s eyes for a moment, and it felt to her as if thirty years had slipped away and she was five years old again, squabbling with the ten-year-old son of her grandfather’s oldest friend. She smiled and Decimus relaxed.
“Aye. I know. But I tried.”
“You did. And honestly I don’t know what else you could have done.”
Dai coughed apologetically and Julia couldn’t help looking over her shoulder and laughing.
“Sorry Dai, are we being embarrassing?”
“No. I was just thinking. If they were planning to kill their husbands, shouldn’t the Tribune be taking extra precautions?”
“I already do. I live with people wanting me dead. Though you can be sure my lads will be extra vigilant. They are not stupid, and at least some of them will have put the clues together.”

Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook

Dark lines
Dirt ingrained
Working hands
Racked with pain
Swollen joints
Twisted fingers
Broken nails
Stains that linger
Hands now useless 
Still and cold
When did we
Become old?

©jj 2019

She sat alone in absolute blackness, just as she had always done. From far away she could hear the music of Carnival, under her cold little feet she could feel the rhythm of the drums, and her nose twitched as the smells of torches, and burnt sugar, and heated humanity, penetrated the narrow blackness of her cell.
She wondered what it might be like to be outside, but that wasn’t  what Carnival held for her. 
    She was the sacrifice. The bastard seed whose mother had not survived her birth. They had, they said, taken her in out of the kindness of their hearts. Tonight she was to repay their care.
    They would blindfold her and carry her through the streets to the temple, where the High Priest would put out her eyes. They had offered her poppy juice, but even though she was deathly afraid she had her pride. 
    Heavy footsteps in the corridor warned her that the time had come and she stood and faced the wall with. A voice outside the door bade her make ready and she closed her eyes. From behind her eyelids she became aware of the yellowness of lamplight, and she tried to keep that warmth in her head, even when hands came around her face and tied the blindfold tightly.
    They hustled her out of her own space and took her in a direction she had not been before. Her nose caught the sense of water and something sweet before she was roughly pushed into a room with a cool smooth floor. Soft arms caught her before she fell and female voices cooed soothingly. 
    “Come lady.”
    They bathed her and perfumed her, rubbed oils and unguents into her skin, and combed out her long hair. All the time they were careful to remind her to keep her eyes closed, but at least their hands were gentle. When she was polished to their satisfaction they dressed her in smooth soft draperies and covered her face with a mask. The final touches were soft boots and a fur-lined cloak to beat the cold of the longest night. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt really warm, and the unaccustomed luxury of it almost undid her carefully cultivated serenity.
     The fluttering women led her to a door she was sure was not the one by which she had entered the bathhouse.
    It must have opened immediately, because she sensed space in front of her. Hands reached out to grasp her forearms, but they touched her with more respect than she was used to. This frightened her. It was, she thought, as if they were giving her dignity just in time to snatch it from her. For a moment she wished she had taken the poppy juice, but then her spine stiffened. She would endure.
    They shepherded her down a long flight of shallow steps. The group halted at the bottom and two large hands spanned her waist, lifting her onto she knew not what. She was gently pressed into a seat. Then hands that felt almost apologetic fastened jingling chains to her wrists and ankles. They moved away and she understood where she was. She was outside. There was sky above her head. As she tried to process the irrational fear she felt, whatever she was sitting on rose into the air and began to move. Once her stomach settled, she understood, she was about to be carried at shoulder height out into the mayhem of Carnival.  
    The smell of street food reminded her that she hadn’t been fed for some days. Then music stabbed her ears like a tidal wave of sound. She wanted to laugh, to cry, to dance. But all she could do was sit in a swaying litter knowing that the crowds stared and pointed even though she was blind. The eunuchs bore her onward, and she thought ‘I’m alone here, why not open my eyes’. She peeped through her lashes to discover the gauzy mask actually allowed her to see. To see bright lanterns, multicoloured sparking lights in the sky, and the upturned faces of many many people. For somebody whose only glimpses of life had been taken at the risk of severest punishment, Carnival should have been terrifying. But it wasn’t, it was exhilarating and the sights and the sounds and the smells sang in her blood. For a while she even forgot her impending doom in the sheer thrill of the night.
    Then it happened. There must have been something spilled on the street, because the left-hand bank of bearers all lost their footing together. The palanquin tilted at a crazy angle before falling into a foetid ditch with its helpless passenger still chained to the seat.
    The next thing she knew was voices.
    “Why didn’t she jump clear?”
    She felt hands at her wrists.
    “She couldn’t. The bastards chained her to the litter.”
    “Why’d they do that? The sacrifice is willing ain’t she?”
    She found her voice, although it sounded strange in her own ears. “Of course I’m willing. Willing to have my eyes ripped out. And whatever else they decide to do with me. Just like I was willing to be kept in a windowless cell all my life.” 
    She didn’t expect to be believed, but something in her voice must have told them she spoke truth because she heard the sound of splintering wood and she was thrown across a brawny shoulder. Then they were off and running, wriggling through the crowds with the ease of long practice. Out through the city gates they sprinted, long before the temple guard managed to fight its way to the crippled palanquin.
    They brought her to the old woman who runs the menagerie that follows Carnival from city to city – who nodded just once.  
    Life as a keeper of big cats may be hard, but every morning she looks at the sunrise and is thankful for her eyes.

©jane jago 2019

Build me a house for my dreams to indwell
Where hope forms the frame of each door
Build it of bricks that are solid and true
Each one a plan without flaw
With a meadow behind of the flowering kind
Enclosed with a fence that withstands
Where the crazy ideas I’ve had down the years
Gallop and gambol and expand.
Build it so high it caresses the sky
So the pinnacle of my ambition
Can fit safe ‘neath its roof from uncomfortable truth
And one day e’en come to fruition.
Make it a place where the sun always shines
And the rain falls so softly as well
A place where my dreams nurtured by sunbeams
Can grow to make heaven of hell.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Time is certainly a tricky thing. Mumsie seems to have scant grasp of it for sure. The amount of occasions she has declared she would be visiting the local tawdry tavern for ‘a quick one’, vowing to return within the hour, only to roll back inebriated post-midnight, are too numerous to count.

Indeed, it was whilst awaiting her return one such evening that I came upon a slender tome, a mere novella, which claimed to be a true classic of speculative fiction by a gentleman who preferred to be known by his initials, as is now such a modern trend. I recalled reading some platitudinous parable by the same author when I was at school, the story of a sighted man who discovers a country where everyone else is blind. But this, the cover blurb assured me, was no such. It was science fiction!

So to the review.

A man makes a time machine and is doing a lecture tour about it. He uses the device, goes hundreds of thousands of years into the future and lands in a social allegory. Here the effete and pretty Eloi (think elves) are hunted by the troglodytic Morlocks (think orcs). Our hero completely messes up when he tries to save the day, loses the girl (who is killed) and runs off in his time machine. He then stops at a couple more pointless and empty places on equally ridiculous timescales, before he somehow winds up back where he started in time for his next lecture.

One star for encouraging the entrepreneurial spirit by advocating lecture tours for scientists.

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound thoughts in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

“Papa. You have to fire Baba,” Eunice declared.

Her father looked at her.

“Why would that be?”

“Because she’s a Shinny. They are cannibals.”

“Cannibals? Wherever did you get that idea?”

“I read it on Scuttlebut.”

Papa raised his brows.

“Do you have any idea what scuttlebut is?”

“It’s the place where you go to find out stuff.”

“No. It’s not. It’s gossip. The word even means gossip.”

Eunice looked mulish. “Don’t be silly, Papa. If it’s on the web it must be true.”

“Oh child.”

He sent Baba away, afraid for her safety in the face of electronic lies.

©jj 2019

An extract from The Long Game by Jane Jago.

‘… as it seems we have a while to wait I promised your wife I would tell you my story. But before I begin my part of the tale there are things I need to say about the thirteen houses, things that are secrets and must never leave these four walls.’ Her listeners nodded, so she carried on. ‘Many of the houses prize purity of line above anything. They marry cousin to cousin, and sometimes closer than that. This is, as anyone who breeds animals must know, not a good thing. The pure bloodlines of many of the families have been contaminated by inbreeding. There are idiots and deformed children who are quietly disposed of, but the inbreeding goes on. Consequently, the Neders are congenital idiots. The C’hin carry the falling sickness. Most of the Shaughnessy women are barren. The Frankish men are generally impotent. And the Schiapetti are just plain depraved. I could go on, but I’m sure you have the picture.’

‘My own story begins when I was fourteen years old. Until that time, I lived with my parents at Massimo Schiapetti senior’s quinta two days’ ride south of the city. Just after my birthday, some women came from the big house and examined me to make sure I was a virgin, and that I was physically ready to bear children. Then they took me away from my parents to the house. There were a dozen or so of us, all told, gathered from the Schiapetti holdings, and after we’d been at the house for a few days we were bathed and nicely dressed and then paraded in front of the master and three strange men. The master pointed out a redhead from the distrada, and the three men indicated an interest in two other girls, myself and a shepherd’s daughter. I later came to understand that the Schiapetti sold me that day. Sold both of us. My companion was about seventeen, and as blonde as a wheat field, with impressive breasts and a stoical temperament, I was tiny, white blonde and scared out of my wits. If I had not had that older girl with me I don’t honestly know how I would have managed. Her name was Breda, and as we were whisked across the country in a closed carriage, she explained exactly what was likely to happen to us. She made it seem bearable and told me it wouldn’t be forever. She knew of other girls who had been taken this way and were later returned to their families more or less unharmed, and with a gift of money.’
‘After what seemed to me to be an endless journey we were brought to a hunting lodge where there were about twenty girls ranging in age from seventeen to twelve years. We were there to serve the pleasure of Seamus Shaughnessy, and to bear him the children his well-born and well-connected wife could not. The housekeeper wasn’t unkind, but she did make it clear that there was no escape, and that we’d better please the master or else. We never asked what ‘or else’ was, we were too afraid. Seamus was by that time nearing seventy, and a life of dissipation had left its mark on him. I prayed that he wouldn’t want me, but he did. Myself, Breda, and the twelve-year-old were chosen. Then the young one disappeared. I learned many years later that she threw herself off the roof after her first night in the master’s bed. I guess I’m of a more pragmatic turn of mind as I managed to take Breda’s advice and concentrate on the prospect of a good breakfast while the old sot was fumbling about me. At the end of a fairly unpleasant fortnight he returned to the city and we waited. As it turned out we were both with child. Seamus was tickled pink and we were brought to the family’s estate by the great river to give birth. Lady Shaughnessy was also brought to the estate to await the delivery of ‘her’ children. She was, it turned out, a deeply maternal woman, who wanted babies to love and care for. She was even kind to us.’
‘I went into labour first, and a long difficult time I had of it. I was really much too young and too small to have a baby, but, fortunately for me, I come of tough stock and I survived. I only saw my daughter for a few moments before they took her away. My friend Breda’s son was born dead. The cord was around his throat, and the midwife they employed wasn’t skilled. Breda managed to creep into my room three days after my baby was born to tell me that she had plenty of good milk and was feeding my little girl, also that the family had decided to keep her on as wet nurse and then nursemaid. She told me that my baby had been named Anita, and promised to love her. With that I had to be satisfied. I never saw either one again.’
‘I was sent home after my body healed, with a large present of money. It was enough for my family to leave the quinta, and buy a small inn in a valley close to the Imperial highway. I went north to learn healing and midwifery, determined to protect women from the unskilled and ham-fisted ‘care’ that cost Breda her child and almost cost me my life. I spent the next twenty-plus years in hospitals and monasteries, biding my time until my youthful looks faded and I could return to the city and ply my trade.’
‘In the meantime, my daughter grew to be a real beauty, as famed for her gentle kindness as the loveliness of her face. She was, it is said, very much in love with a half cousin from a humble branch of her father’s family, but such a marriage for Seamus Shaughnessy’s only daughter was not to be countenanced. And when she was nineteen her father married her to the forty-year-old Massimo Schiapetti. It was, by all accounts a loveless match, although Massimo was kind enough to his wife, and pleased to find her fertile. A year after the wedding she presented him with a son, who they named Rodrigo: he died of influenza at the age of four. Two years after Rodrigo’s birth Anita fell pregnant again, this time she gave Massimo a daughter, but lost her own life in the process. I arrived back in the city in time to learn that I was a grandmother, and my daughter was dead.’ An paused for a moment and wiped her tears cheeks with her wrinkled old hands.
‘My granddaughter was name Anaya, and she inherited her mother’s beauty, but her father’s nature, growing more and more vicious and depraved as she grew older. She had a succession of lovers and was notorious for her treatment of her servants. When she was twenty-five her father negotiated a marriage with the Emperor’s only son. It was a politically splendid move, but on a personal level it could scarcely have been worse. She loathed him because he either couldn’t or wouldn’t satisfy her sexually, and he despised her because she was stupid and vicious. Even so, they remained married, and I oversaw five accouchements in which she presented her lord with six children. Five sons and Princess Ana.’
‘So there you have it. My daughter, conceived by rape, and married for politics. My granddaughter, conceived for politics, married for politics, and murdered for politics. And my great-granddaughter, also conceived for politics, but with half a chance of making a life of her own…’

Jane Jago.

The life of an elderly delinquent in limericks – with free optional snark…

I am old, which in turn makes me proof
Against all of the follies of youth
I don’t think that the net
Is the coolest place yet
Or that reading it makes it the truth

© jane jago