A sci-fi story of love, betrayal and Space Pirates!

Dekker walked in, bouncing on the balls of his feet and grinning. Beside him was a heavyset woman, her long hair braided and a younger woman, looking barely out of her teens with a face like the business end of an energy snub, blunt and hard. Dekker waved a hand towards her. “Daiyu, Goldie, this is Panvia, our new engineer. And I’m going to guess Tols has been a bit of a naughty lad and not told her quite the truth.” An edge of menace had slipped into his tone as he finished, banishing the banter. Pan’s brain seized with cold terror, leaving her unable to move or make a sound.
Tolin had taken a step towards the three when they first came in, placing himself beside Pan as he did so. Now he moved to stand between her and the others.
“I already told you, she didn’t need to know. She didn’t…”
“But now she does,” Dekker said quietly.
“I don’t think it’s quite the big deal you two seem to think it,” the heavyset woman, Daiyu, put in. “Why don’t we ask Panvia herself what she thinks instead of you two making like grets in rut at each other. It might come as a real surprise to you both, but she’s got a voice and a mind of her own.”
They were all looking at Pan now and something in Daiyu’s words released her from internal lockdown. The fear seemed to take a step back and she was able to draw breath again.
“It’s just all a bit much to take on board,” she said, hearing how thin and weak that sounded. Tolin put his arms around her and drew her to him. She didn’t resist and turned her head so her cheek was pressed against his shoulder.
“I know,” he said. “And I’m sorry. I meant to tell you. Dek isn’t a regular kind of pirate. He’s been a good friend to me. To others too. And after I lost my ship, it was Dek who set me up with the new one. Without him, I’d have had nothing.”
Pan’s brain was working again – running in overdrive. The odd conversations she’d noticed in the past between Tolin and other freetraders, taking an excessive interest in where they were going and what they were carrying. Sometimes to the point of rudeness. Even asking her to talk to some of the more reticent freetraders to find out for him. It was always explained away as part of sussing out trade opportunities, but now…. Tolin was a pirate’s runner and she had never even realised. She had been working for pirates all that time too, even if she had never known it.
And piracy was a capital offense under Coalition law.
Her mind reached back and reframed all that had happened from the moment they met in the stark and ugly light of that revelation. Even the way they met, like something out of a romantic drama, he must have set that up too. The blood ran cold in her veins freezing her emotions into grotesque ice-sculptures in her psyche. They glared at her with hideous leers – guilt, betrayal, hurt, rage, terror, despair. One day there would be a reckoning needed with each one of them. But none could touch her at this time. With the calm clarity that bestowed, she knew that whatever she said next was going to determine her prospects of survival in the short term and the course of the rest of her life.
Gently disentangling herself from her betrayers arms, she stepped back and gave a nod of acknowledgement to Daiyu before addressing her words to Dekker.
“If Tolin says you helped him out when he was in a bad place, that means we both owe you, big time. I’m not sure what you want of me. But if it’s a just a decent engineer, I can do that.” This time she knew her voice sounded steady and strong.
Dekker’s old-too-young eyes bored into her and she met them unflinching. Then he grinned. Sudden and hard. His fist thumped into her arm, painfully. “Welcome to the crew, Pan.”
Tolin pulled her into a new hug and Daiyu was smiling.
“And yes,” Dekker went on, “what we really need is a decent engineer to keep this place running, fix up the ships we bring home and tweak our best girl so she’s at the top of her game. Randja had an accident on our last run. Didn’t make it home. So we’re sorely in need of your skills here.”
The other woman, the one Dekker had called Goldie, stood slightly apart, her face expressionless.

Roguing Thieves is a Fortune’s Fools story by E.M. Swift-Hook. There will be more Roguing Thieves next week…

They called her Nanny Bee, although as far as anyone knew she had never been a wife or a mother, let alone a grandmother. But she was popularly believed to be a witch – so Nanny it was. She lived in a pink-walled thatched cottage that crouched between the village green and the vicarage. The Reverend Alphonso Scoggins (a person of peculiarly mixed heritage and a fondness for large dinners) joked that between him and Nanny they could see the villagers from birth to burial.
Nanny’s garden was the most verdant and productive little patch you could ever imagine, and she could be found pottering in its walled prettiness from dawn to dusk almost every day. People came to visit and were given advice, or medicine, or other potions in tiny bottles or scraps of paper – but they always had the sneaking suspicion they were getting in the way of the gardening.
But there again, digging is second nature to gnomes.

Nanny was having a quiet think (okay she was occupied in the closet) when there came a ferocious banging on the door. She adjusted her clothing and made her way to where some person was assaulting her paintwork.
“Whatever is the matter?”
Gladys the Griffin clutched an eggshell to her breast.
“He killed my baby.”
Nanny sighed.
“Who killed your baby?”
“Scoggins the Sadist.”
Nanny removed the shell from Gladys’ front claw.
“Right miss. Why do think this here egg is yourn?”
Gladys shuffled her rear feet and the lion claws dug into the lawn. Nanny winced but pressed on.
“I’m waiting Gladys.”
“It was the gore crow brung it to me and tells me Scoggins has my baby running down his chin.”
“Right Gladys, listen. You doesn’t lay eggs. You got a lion bumhole not an eagle one. And if you did, this here’s a ostrich eggshell.”
Which might even have worked had not the vicar his own self appeared at the corner with egg decorating his chin.
Gladys lunged and he barely got off the ground in time.
He was much too fat to fly well and Nanny idly wondered what would happen when Gladys caught him, but she was too busy tending the scrapes in her lawn to really care.

©janejago

The God-Emperor was playing knuckle bones with his friends in the peaceful fountain garden when the conquistadors burst into the palace. There were many of them, armed and armoured in steel, and they systematically swept every chamber, leaving nothing living in their wake. When the last room was cleared a group made its way along the paved walkways to the place by the largest fountain of all where the children continued to pay their game.

The soldiers brought with them the smell of blood, and their booted feet left reddish splotches on the white stone paving. The last soldier pulled a skinny old woman, in the dress of slave behind him. He held her by her bound wrists, dragging her cruelly, careless of whether or not she remained on her feet. The God-Emperor wrinkled his nose but said nothing.

The only adult in the garden was a young priest, and one of the soldiers grasped him by his braided scalplock.
“Where is your accursed God-Emperor?”
The young priest was braver than he looked.
“He is not here. He and his tutor fled the palace at first light.”
The old woman who they dragged along in their wake shook her head. “He lies,” she spat, “nobody has left the palace all this moon.” The priest gave her a look of such loathing that anybody less in fear of their life would have been abashed, but the old crone met his eyes contemptuously. Then she spat on his feet.

The troop commander, one Don Hermano Gonthalez, marched into the cool of the garden. He carried his helmet under one arm and his floridly handsome face was flushed with bloodlust.
“Well,” he said coldly. “We now know it’s one of the brats. Which one is it?”
“Nobody is telling.”
“Kill the lot then.”

The God-Emperor stood up and faced the tall European.
“There is no need to kill any more. I am he who you seek.”
The soldier looked down at the unimpressive little figure and laughed harshly.
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because you know I speak the truth.”
“Then you will know your life is forfeit.”
“Kill the God, Kill the faith?”
Hermano nodded brusquely then looked into the lightless depths of the child’s eyes, for a moment he knew the true meaning of love and compassion, but he shrugged his shoulders, pushing those feelings to one side. He took a pace forwards and grasped the black topknot in one large fist. The gaze of the God-Emperor did not waver from his face, even when a sword of the finest Toledo steel severed the thin neck and the conquistador was left with a disembodied head hanging from his hand.
“And what of your God-Emperor now?” Don Hermano demanded harshly.
The young priest shrugged. “I know not.” Then he laughed a laugh of genuine amusement, before deliberately impaling himself on the long dagger of the soldier who held him by his hair.

“What is so funny?” The soldier who held the old crone’s wrists shook her brutally.
“I know not.” She said in a voice of resignation. “How should a slave know the thought of the great ones?”
One of the other children lifted frightened eyes from the ground. It was a girl of some ten or so summers, who was as fair as the garden in which she sat. She looked at the conquistador.
“He meant that once the God-Emperor’s soul left his body it will have found another host. Once you killed our brother he lost his divinity. What you hold in your hand now is only the head of an ordinary child.”
Don Hermano dropped the severed head and grasped the shrinking girl.
“Who?” He demanded. “Who? Who?”
She lifted her great dark eyes to his face. “We do not know. Nobody knows. Yet.”
Understanding dawned, and the conquistador gave a great cry of rage as he dragged the girl’s face closer. His blade moved almost of it’s own volition, all but cutting her in half.

Jane Jago

The Dog Days are the high days of summer and a perfect time to celebrate our canine companions in verse and prose.

Paddy Dog was never disobedient, on the contrary, he was the epitome of good behaviour. He would come when called, sit on command, lie down and wait patiently outside the local shop for his owner.

And he hated water.

So when Paddy Dog jumped in the river, his owner was surprised, especially when Paddy Dog was pulling at something in the water and wouldn’t leave it even when called.

His owner, disgruntled, eventually went to see and found Paddy Dog trying to rescue a kitten which had fallen in the reeds.

Paddy Dog now has a friend called Tabby Cat.

Eleanor Swift-Hook

In a modern-day Britain where the Roman Empire never left, Dai and Julia solve murder mysteries, whilst still having to manage family, friendship and domestic crises…

Julia Llewellyn was at that stage of her pregnancy where she couldn’t imagine why she ever thought having a baby was a good idea. She was used to having a lithe, boyish body, that ran and jumped with ease and delight, but currently she was close to the shape of an egg and prone to sudden bouts of indigestion and cramp in her limbs. The thought of nearly three more weeks of this with the intense summer heat, was almost too much to bear. So it was with some relief that she sat in the shade in the secluded walled garden where Cookie grew her herbs and found she felt neither sick nor uncomfortable. It couldn’t last, but for as long as it did she was content to raise her face to the sun and daydream a little.
The world, she thought wryly, was rapidly turning upside down. Not only had she and her beloved husband Dai managed to get through the best part of a month without her wanting to throw something at his handsome head, but his sister, Cariad, who she had always thought of as little better than a wharfside strumpet had come home after a break to recover from a very traumatic experience and seemed to have turned over a new leaf.  She appeared to be really trying to appreciate having a good kind husband and two beautiful children. Julia still nursed doubts about the durability of this sea change, but hoped for everyone’s sake it was going to last.
For her own part, Cariad’s children, Felix and Cassia were a big reason she held on to any hope that being pregnant was worth the undoubted discomfort. The duo was one of the delights of her life.
Currently, Felix was out in the hills with his father and his uncle Dai, mounted on one of the sturdy local ponies Dai’s brother Hywel bred as a hobby. Ostensibly Felix was having riding lessons. It would have been rather more honest to say that he was having a whale of a time away from the constraints of being the only son of a very important man.
Julia idly wondered what Cariad and Cassia were up to, and it seemed to her that her fancy had conjured them to her side, because she heard Cariad calling her name urgently then Cassia’s voice sounding uneasy.
“Mam, I think Aunt Julia is asleep. Do you?”
“I don’t know, carissima. But if she is we really must wake her up.” Cariad’s musical voice was not entirely steady. Concerned now, Julia opened her eyes and sat up.
“What is it? Is something wrong?”
She had a sudden private dread that the beauty of the family must have got herself into more man trouble, and braced herself to refuse if she was to be asked to cover up an indiscretion. To her surprise, Cariad’s face was pale with anxiety and her Llewellyn blue eyes were swimming in tears.
It was Cassia who spoke. “We were feeding the ducks on the pond past the fruit trees. Mam got a message on her wrist phone from a man who is playing a game. He said he has stolen Pater and Felix and Uncle Dai. I don’t think that’s a nice game to play. Mam said we should tell you so we came straight here.”
It took a second or two for the meaning of the words to sink in and when they did her own heart tumbled in freefall with fear for Dai. Then something shifted deep in her psyche. It was cold and hard, cutting off the emotion, like a stone door slamming shut. Sleepiness banished, Julia went from somnolence to action in a single breath. She heaved herself to her feet and grasped Cariad’s cold hand.
“Come on,” she said gently, “pull yourself together and let’s see what is to be done.”
Cariad made what had to be a superhuman effort, then forced a smile. “Yes. Silly of me. It’s bound to be a mistake.”
Cassia looked at her with tolerant patience. “I was playing with Mam’s wrist phone when the message came in. I saved it for you.”
She handed over the expensive brand phone and Julia pulled up the menu on it’s curved screen and pressed the play button. The face that looked back at her was mostly covered by the dark fabric of a ski-mask except for a pair of dark eyes.
“We got your man and your son and your brother. You do as you are told and they comes to no harm. Mess us about and we’ll send you your son in pieces. Starting with his fingers.”
And that was it.
Julia felt her throat constrict as a ball of panic and rage bubbled up in her stomach. With sheer force of will she thrust it away again and pulled herself into a place where clarity of thought was possible. She used her own phone and tried Dai’s number. There was no reply and after a few desultory call tones it went to voicemail. Reaching out, she struck a small silver bell on the table beside her and a few moment later a porter stuck his face around the gate which led into the walled garden.
“Please fetch Edbert for me.”
The man nodded and disappeared. Julia gave her attention back to Cariad who hovered like a lost ghost clutching Cassia’s hand tightly.
“I think you should take Cassia indoors to see what Cookie has been baking today.” That made the little girl smile widely and begin to tug on her mother’s hand. Julia held up the wrist phone. “Can I borrow this for a bit?”
Cariad nodded, and even managed a taut smile of gratitude as Cassia towed her towards the house, chattering excitedly about cakes.
Julia input another number on her own wrist phone and Bryn Cartivel’s homely features filled the screen.
She didn’t give him a chance to speak. “Bryn. I need you here as quick as you can and you’d better bring Gallus. There’s something bad going on with the Magistratus and Dai. I’ll tell you when you get here.”
To his credit, and Julia’s relief, Bryn didn’t argue or ask for more details.
“Okay. We’re not too far away as it goes. Should be with you in ten minutes.”
As she was making the call, Edbert appeared on silent feet. Julia found she couldn’t begin to say what needed saying. Instead, she replayed the message on Cariad’s wristphone, holding it up so Edbert could see and hear. As the vile words finished, his whole body stiffened like a hunting dog scenting prey and he showed his teeth in a fierce grimace.
“Well,” he said, “we’re not having that are we?”
Hearing the message again made Julia nauseous, but she managed to dredge up a thread of voice. “No. We are not.”

From Dying to be Fathers by E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

Advice on growing old disgracefully from an elderly delinquent with many years of expertise in the art – plus free optional snark…

You are old, let me just make it clear
That even your knitting is queer
You should knit baby clothes
To warm tiny toes
Not merkins in purple cashmere

© jane jago

See how the light falls
Stripes on the ground
Beneath us the mosses
Muffle all sound
And we run like children
Forgetting our days
As silence and sunshine
Tempts us to play
On the bosom of summer
When tender leaves cling
When grasses grow verdant
And small brown birds sing
See how the light falls
Kind as a kiss
And we thank whoever
For moments like this

Jane Jago

A sci-fi story of love, betrayal and Space Pirates!

Trailing in the wake of the two men, Pan found herself in a spacious underground docking bay. There were five docks in this underground hanger. Three were occupied, one by their own ship. It had a rotating floor which was moving slowly to bring another vessel in line with the launch doors overhead. A glance was enough to tell Pan that it wasn’t the ship she was here to fix. This one was an ex-military conversion. A systems interceptor. Small, limited cargo capacity, built for speed and maneuverability in normal space. The kind of thing a wealthy dilettante might pick up as a fun toy.
If this belonged to Dekker and his friends, she didn’t see that they could have too many money worries, but perhaps it was just visiting like herself and Tolin.
Tols.
She had never heard him called that before. He’d always been quietly insistent on people using his full name. ‘Tols’ and Dek were just vanishing through a door that she assumed led into the rest of the settlement. Deliberately holstering her anger at being pretty much ignored, she headed over to the third ship in the dock. She could agree with Dekker on one point at least, the sooner she got started the better. Then she could get the job done and they could go. Maybe as soon as Tolin got back from his male-bonding session.
Of course it wasn’t that simple.

By the time Tolin reappeared she was starting to get genuinely frightened. He came into the cargo hold of the damaged ship, where she was still running diagnostics through the direct-access engineering port. He was clutching a meal-synth carton for her and looking strangely diminished, as if all his self-confidence had been leeched away.
“I come bearing food,” he said, holding out the carton almost as if he was making an offering to some ancient wrathful goddess, which right at that moment felt pretty appropriate to Pan.
She didn’t take the carton, instead she pointed at a pile of crates stacked up in the corner of the hold.
“Have you seen those? Crates of restricted tech with shipment tags three cycles out of date.”
Tolin didn’t even look and there was no surprise on his face, just a sick expression. He put the carton of food on the open service panel, as if it was a flip down table and avoided her eyes.
“You knew?” Pan found herself struggling for words. “If we get caught having anything to do with stolen restricted tech…” She couldn’t even bring herself to finish the sentence “Your friends seem to be smuggling this stuff.”
“It’s not like that,” Tolin protested, but his voice lacked conviction.. “I mean, Dekker and his friends are not like that. They’re not angels and they are sort of roguish, yes, but then so are most freetraders. And they’re not smuggling those crates. They have buyers.”
“If they have to deliver it to those buyers they will be smuggling. You can’t land that stuff anywhere legally,” Pan said hotly. Another thought occurred on the tail of that. “Did they steal it too? Are they just smugglers or smuggling thieves? Or maybe you’d call it ‘roguing’? Roguing thieves? You prefer that?” Pan tried hard to keep the contempt from her tone, but knew she was failing. “And have you seen the hull of this ship? From what I’m seeing here, the reason the engines are out is because it took a burn from the outside. Do you know what that means?”
Tolin said nothing and was studying the exposed engineering port with an intensity it didn’t merit.
“You knew all this sort of thing about Dekker before we came here, didn’t you?” Pan shook her head. Anger morphing into fear and back again, like waves pounding a beach. It felt like a betrayal.
“No one will know we fixed the ship,” Tolin said, still avoiding her eyes. “No one will know we’ve even been here. You just have to fix the ship and we can go.” He made it sound so easy and reasonable.
“Did you see that system intercept conversion out there? I had a look at it just now. The weapons systems have been reinstalled.” She paused to try and swallow down the enormity of what she needed to say. To turn the unspeakable into spoken words. Tolin continued to stare at the engineering port as if it was a puzzle he needed to solve. The silence between them stretched out painfully. “Your friend Dek isn’t a rogue, or a thief, or even a smuggler is he? He’s a pirate.”
“And a very successful one too,” Dekker’s voice came from behind her and Pan spun around.

Roguing Thieves is a Fortune’s Fools story by E.M. Swift-Hook. There will be more Roguing Thieves next week…

They called her Nanny Bee, although as far as anyone knew she had never been a wife or a mother, let alone a grandmother. But she was popularly believed to be a witch – so Nanny it was. She lived in a pink-walled thatched cottage that crouched between the village green and the vicarage. The Reverend Alphonso Scoggins (a person of peculiarly mixed heritage and a fondness for large dinners) joked that between him and Nanny they could see the villagers from birth to burial.
Nanny’s garden was the most verdant and productive little patch you could ever imagine, and she could be found pottering in its walled prettiness from dawn to dusk almost every day. People came to visit and were given advice, or medicine, or other potions in tiny bottles or scraps of paper – but they always had the sneaking suspicion they were getting in the way of the gardening.
But there again, digging is second nature to gnomes.

The flower fairies were at it again, and Nanny’s precious garden was littered with torn petals. The beautiful red ballerina poppies under the kitchen window were all but bald, and even the roses that grew over a rustic arch were beginning to show wear.
Nanny went out at midnight and stood barefoot with the scent of crushed camomile drifting up to her impressive nostrils.
“Whoever is responsible for the desecration of my garden had better come forward now. Because if I have to come looking.”
A sound of rustling petticoats and tinkling laughter heralded the arrival of the crew. To be honest they weren’t looking their best and Nanny laughed.
“Whatever is the matter with you? You look like a set of twopenny halfpenny bawds from a low market cathouse.”
Daisy piped up. “The winner gets to bloom all year.”
“Says who?”
There was a bit of foot shuffling then: “Columbine and Harebell done a Ouija.”
The fairies laughed and chattered with real malice.
Nanny concentrated hard and He came – the Lord of Growing things, with his strangely jointed limbs and his yellow caprine eyes. He clapped his hands three times – the fairies fell silent and Nanny’s garden bloomed anew.
He bowed to Nanny before he faded until all that was left were his eyes and horns.

©janejago

The Master Stonemason was in his eightieth summer and he was all but blind, still his hands knew their work and each chisel stroke was as clean and precise as it had been in his youth. Once he had cut and carved he began the laborious task of polishing, trusting nothing to the hands of his sons, or his grandsons, or the apprentices who watched in something like awe. When one of his sons would have intervened to help the old man, his only surviving daughter stepped in front of her brother.
“Leave him. Let him make his last work as glorious as his first.”

When the last letter was incised and the last square inch of the finest Carrera marble was polished to a soft pure shine, the old man lifted his eyes to the sky and rested at last.

One by one, each man in the yard stepped up and laid a gentle hand on this thing of beauty the old man had crafted.

Last forward was the Master’s daughter. Her homely features were shaped into the tenderest of smiles and she laid her cheek against the cool marble.
“It is perfect,” she said softly, “now come home to your dinner”.
The old man took her proffered hand and they walked away together – leaving the young men to carry the headstone the Master had created to its place on the grave of his beloved wife.

Jane Jago