What happens when the hunter becomes the hunted…

Defeat was always a bitter cup from which to have to swallow, but Kahina Sarava determined from the first that it should not define her.
True, she now had to endure exile in the grand house she liked the least of all she owned. It was a sprawling, over-ornate residence built in the heart of great natural beauty and originally intended as a place where she could entertain and impress the powers of Central. It suited her political enemies to have her there, isolated and cut off from any place of influence. But, it was not entirely without benefit. Freed from the endless need to joust for political advantage, she had considerably more time for some of the other things that mattered. Such as pursuing her lifetime’s work: Future Data.
So she stood, back straight, defying her age as the fussily dressed man climbed from his vehicle and walked the short distance to where she waited in front of the main door to her house. The security people who flanked her on either side, guards set to both protect and contain her, stiffened visibly as her visitor approached.
“Garn, what a delight to see you.” She had been expecting him. Though when the brief message informing her of a visitor had come through earlier that day, his name had not been mentioned. “I think this must be the first time we’ve had a get together since you arrested me. What would bring you all the way from Central to visit me in person? I am sure you could gloat quite adequately over link.”
He was a big man in many uses of the word, and it amused her to make him feel uncomfortable. There was little enough by way of human entertainment for her here and no small responsibility for her incarceration rested on his shoulders.
“Right,” he said, and she could see he was sweating despite the temperature being pleasantly cool. “Maybe we could go in and talk somewhere a little more private.”
“I can offer you anything here, except privacy.” She made an elegant gesture with her hands, unfolding them to indicate the attentive security detail. “I am not permitted that even when I sleep. My link connections are watched and my conversations monitored.”
Garn Jecks seemed unperturbed, but then his mind was not very flexible. If he had arrived with a fixed idea of some objective he wished to achieve, that would be both the full extent and narrow focus of his thinking. Laser like — if a laser were some solid substance and not fluid photons. Such inability to embrace the broadest view whilst still keeping the details in sight irritated Kahina. Her own mind suffered no such limitations, and she tolerated it poorly in others.
“I will make the necessary arrangements,” he told her. Matching actions to words, he turned to issue brief orders to the security detail, then added more by link to the invisible watchers who controlled the remote monitoring of her residence. They all moved quickly to obey, but then he was their supreme commander, the man in charge of the Coalition Security Force.
A short time later, Kahina found herself sitting in her favourite room, ambianced to remind her of her mother’s study with shelves of books and curios, heavy looping curtains at the windows and the antique wooden desk. She had chosen not to occupy the desk, Jecks wasn’t someone who would be in the slightest bit intimidated by her doing so. Instead, she sat in one of the comfortable, deep-cushioned chairs set either side of a beautifully carved and inlaid table. Jecks sat opposite her having just dismissed the last of his entourage. He was visibly discomfited. Kahina played the perfect hostess.
“Can I offer you any refreshments? It’s not the shortest of hops here from Central.”
“Right. It’s not. But thank you, no. I’m a bit pressed for time.”
She couldn’t resist another dig.
“I am fully accessible by link, you know.”
Jecks didn’t trouble to answer that. His preoccupation was blinding him and Kahina wondered if the poor man was even aware how much that showed.
“There has been a — a development.”
“A development?”
He almost squirmed.
“I have just received some information which has brought into question our previous conclusions regarding the Future Data project.”
Kahina considered feigning surprise.
“Oh?”
Jecks looked as if he had swallowed something that settled ill in his stomach. For a moment, he glared at her.
“So you already knew.”
She didn’t trouble to reply, instead allowing her expression to reflect the untroubled confidence she was feeling. Jecks muttered something under his breath then started pulling up a remote screen of what appeared to be some security surveillance. Not the best quality and from a static camera, but when he zoomed the image and froze it, the result was perfectly clear.
“Oh dear,” Kahina said gently. “How very embarrassing for you. I wonder what you plan to do about that?”

From Iconoclast: Mistrust and Treason a Fortune’s Fools book by E.M. Swift-Hook – which is only 0.99 to buy for a limited period.

Because life happens…

Growing older is sometimes quite fun
When you look back on all that you’ve done
And can take a deep breath
At each shibboleth
You once suffered but have now overcome

E.M. Swift-Hook

Dues of Blood is free to download until 9 March

The tattooed face broke into an ugly snarl, as the spearhead nearly grazed one shoulder of its owner’s powerful frame. He lunged forward, the double-headed axe swinging and the crowd yelled as he claimed his kill, severing the arm of the spear-wielding warrior at the shoulder in a fountain of scarlet and removing his head with a backswing, as effortlessly as a chef might slice through a soft cheese.
It was a very popular kill. This animal, who had the fighting-name ‘Therloon’, had been the new darling of the Alfor crowds since he had arrived in the arena a couple of moons after the Fair. He was of the nomadic folk from the Eastern Continent and had their renowned tenacity and powerful build combined with a flair for the theatrical and a spectacular viciousness that was all his own. Playing to the crowd like the professional he was, Therloon swung his axe around his head and roared, his face contoured into a hideous grin which must have been visible even to those who stood furthest from the edge of the arena. The crowd responded to his signature salute and roared his name.
The powerful Easterner turned to where one opponent remained facing him. The smaller man held his sturdy frame prepared, the curving sword he gripped in one hand looked as frail as a blade of grass against the life-harvesting scythe of Therloon’s whirling axe. But the crowd expected good sport before they had their final glut of blood. For this was no ordinary combat unfolding before them and the money that rode on the outcome of this single bout would have paid the wages of half the troops Qabal Vyazin had been mustering on the outskirts of Tabruth. This was the kind of match that men waited years to see and could only be provided by this, the most prestigious Arena in Temsevar – that of the city of Alfor.
It occurred to Torwyn, watching this display as he ran a hand through his short terracotta-coloured hair, that there were many places better to be than standing less than ten paces away from the axe-wielding maniac and on the wrong side of the high barricades which protected the crowd from the fighting-slaves within.
Facing Therloon, now alone, stood the one they called the Sabre, whom the crowd had just seen defeat his own previous opponent with a classic display of athletic grace and skill. Now, invisible to all except those in the audience closest to where he stood, he shifted his weight very slightly, as if knowing what to expect. The charge, when it came, made him move quickly aside and turn to duck under the axe whilst bringing his own, lighter, blade across to cut at the bigger man’s back. It was not sufficient to do any real damage to his opponent, but enough to gain an appreciative call or two from the crowd and Torwyn could tell it had angered the Easterner.
“Sabre! Sabre!” He evidently had supporters out in strength, probably as many as were there to cheer for Therloon, but then few fighting-slaves were as well-known as the Sabre because few survived six years in the Arena as he had. Few overcame for that long the ever more creative and dangerous demands made on a crowd-pleasing favourite which turned life and death combat into gore-fest theatre or blood-drenched farce.
If it had not been for the coming war this fight would never have been allowed so soon. To end deliberately, the career and crowd-pulling earning power of a top fighting-slave was not a decision made lightly by the lanista of an Arena. More especially when the lanista was well renowned for being a tight-fisted miser, who kept his fighting-slaves in the minimum conditions and invested all his money in crowd-pleasing exhibitions and expensive exotics.
The dance of death continued on the blood-stained sand of the stadium between the unwieldy axe, made agile and serpentine in the hands of the powerful Easterner, and the insubstantial blade of the sword weaving the will of the man who held it. From the first, it had been apparent that the sword was no real match for the heavier weapon with its much longer reach. It was only because the man who held it seemed to possess almost precognitive reactions and a creatively robust athleticism, that the inevitable end was being delayed so long. The tension became palpable and the focus of the two men was absolute. For them, the world had shrunk to the circle of sand and the sweep of feet, hands and weapons.
Normally, the element of drama would have featured far more in any performance by either man. The Easterner was famed for his love of blood and to watch him fight was to watch a butcher at work in a slaughterhouse – but a butcher with a malicious streak of sadism – and the crowd, never sated, loved that. By comparison, the Sabre was known for the humour and finesse he brought to his savagery, playing with his opponents in burlesque ways which would have the crowd fired up with laughter and then stunning them into silence by the breath-taking skill of his acrobatic agility.
Even now, apparently pressed to his limits, Sabre found time to dance a brief step or two with a flower in his teeth, thrown by one of the crowd. It proved to be an expensive crowd-pleaser as the Easterner seized the moment to strike and Sabre, ducking under the blow, raised his own weapon ineffectively to deflect the lethal weight of the axe. It barely turned the heavy slicing blade but at the price of being smashed away from its owner’s grip.
Disarmed, the Sabre dived into a desperate, ground-covering roll that brought him distance from the certain death of Therloon’s backswing, and a few more precious moments of life. But his move was accompanied by the groans and boos of the watching throng. Those who had placed their money on the Sabre were most vocal in their disappointment. The fight was lost and many who had bet on the old favourite knew they would go home the poorer. But the let-down was soon overlaid by a fresh building of anticipation. There remained the catharsis of the kill itself, and Therloon was a master of spectacular, messy killing. That was something to look forward to. The Sabre’s last show would be an essay in violent, agonising death and those he had just robbed of their winnings would enjoy that revenge.
Torwyn watched the Easterner as he advanced across the floor of the arena. Therloon was fully aware that this was his moment and the exaggerated grin that split the tattooed face was as much leer of derision as smile of victory. Only those nearest the edge of the arena heard the tattooed man’s words as he approached his unarmed foe.
“You want to take back what you said before?”
The Sabre backed off step by step as the other man advanced, his arms spread wide in a gesture of pacification or surrender and the roar of contempt from the crowd at this sign of cowardice swelled close to riot.
“Take it back? Why should I?” he said as if puzzled by the question.
“Because on that depends how fast you die.”
“I don’t see why.” The Sabre’s tone was soft. “No matter how quickly or slowly you kill me it is all still true, Gant. You are an imbecile, a laughably dumb brute. You have less intelligence than the beast they named you for.”
An animal growl in his throat, the Easterner shot forward, the long axe held lightly in his hands. Sabre stepped back in a nervous retreat and in doing so missed his footing and tripped, sprawling backwards over the body of Therloon’s previous victim. He fell on his back, arms wide, body spread open and helpless.
The Easterner charged the last few paces, his face congested by anger and hate and Torwyn knew he was going to make this kill one his audience would long remember. Then the fallen man moved. His body rolled suddenly backwards, looking for all the world like a street tumbler, legs disappearing over his head and he finished the movement smoothly on one knee, the spear he had rescued in the process of completing the roll, held in his hands and braced solidly against his foot.
Therloon could no more have shifted his course at that point than taken flight and his eyes barely had time to widen in horrified comprehension, before his stomach was impaled upon the spear.
Sabre was on his feet as the impact was carried through, driving the point home deeply, twisting it to bite into the spine as the Easterner went down. Standing above his fallen foe, the sturdy fighting-slave looked down, without compassion at the tattooed face which was broken now by a rictus of agony.
“How fast do you die?” he asked savagely, for once allowing the fury and disgust to boil up through his veins. But the Easterner was beyond words, lungs pierced by the ripping barbs on the side of the spear’s head and breathing only in wheezing grunts.
The adoring ululation of the crowd ran like a hurricane around the arena and a monsoon of flowers and ribbons rained down onto the blood-drenched sand.
“Sabre! Sabre! Sabre!”
Torwyn straightened up and looked around as if seeing the scene for the first time. Then, strangely impatient and with no more than the most perfunctory of gestures to acknowledge the adulation, he ran his hand through his short rust-coloured hair and strode back through the now open gates, into the dark tunnel beyond.

From Transgressor: Dues of Blood a Fortune’s Fools book by E.M. Swift-Hook which is free to download until 9 March. You can listen to this on YouTube.

The cover is designed by Ian Bristow, you can find his work at Bristow Design.

Brenda slapped Oisin’s little green hat. “What the frag is poteen?”
His smile was even more foolish than usual. “Tis bathtub whiskey ma’am.”
“Bathtub whiskey?”
“Home distilled. So it is.”
He grabbed another deep slurp before anyone else got chance. Staring at the sky though half-closed eyes he began to sing.
“Oh, Danny boy, the pipes…
What happened next had even Big Brenda clapping her hands over her eyes. The sight of a naked leprechaun, capering around the sundial and playing a loud tune on his fiddly-diddly, isn’t something you easily forget.
No matter how hard you try.

©jj 2022

Roguing Thieves is a previously unpublished Fortune’s Fools story by E.M. Swift-Hook.

Pan didn’t go back to Central.
She’d filed her resignation to Rota there and then and mailed it. By wedding a citizen of Central, Jennay had secured that same right for her adopted children, they no longer needed Pan for that. Jennay’s happiness had opened the way to her own.
For the next three years, she was living as a freetrader.
Home became a neat two berth, system flight capable, planet hopper. Big on cargo capacity for its size but lacking on just about every other front. Tolin, his looks almost perfectly restored and his body having regained its tone, was back to his old carefree self again. The memory of the fire on his previous ship that had maimed his face and nearly taken his life, seemed to be receding from him. Some days Pan almost fancied she could see the old sparkle back in his eyes.
It was a gloriously irresponsible lifestyle compared to the heavy weight of box ticking and regulation which working for Rota had been. As long as they picked up and delivered their chartered cargo of goods and passengers within the window of time agreed, they could set their own agenda. It felt like one long romantic vacation, seeing the sights of the galaxy and getting paid to do so.
Other freetraders were less fortunate. Where Tolin owned their ship outright, others had to pay off cripplingly high loans. Where Pan could run whatever maintenance was needed herself, others had to pay premium rates to keep their vessels space worthy. Despite that, Pan found the freetrading community were mostly good people to know. They might be close-mouthed and competitive when it came to trade contacts, but they would look out for each other, pass on tips and warnings and help out a friend in need.
Which was why she was not that surprised when Tolin asked if she would mind helping out some old friends of his who had a ship that needed some work.
“We go back a long way,” he told her as they lay tangled together in the bed that filled their entire tiny cabin. “These guys helped me a lot when I was starting up. Now they’ve hit some bad times. They can’t afford to get their ship patched up and until it is, they can’t fly and make money.”
It was something that they had both seen before and Pan had sometimes been able to help out. She could also see this meant a lot to her man, but she didn’t want to promise something she couldn’t deliver.
“I’ll take a look, of course,” she said, “but it depends what the problem is. If whatever I need to fix it is too expensive for them, there’s not a lot I can do.”
Tolin rolled over to drop a kiss on her lips.
“Thanks, love. I think you’ll be fine. They’ve got access to a full-on maintenance bay, just need someone who can use it.”
Which probably should have rung an alarm bell somewhere.
But it didn’t and six days Coalition Standard Time later, they were docking on a dust world.
The winds of the broken biosphere, ripped across its surface hurling dust, grit and larger objects at rock gouging speed. If the planetoid ever had a name it was not mentioned on any navigation chart. This was marked as an empty system, no inhabited worlds and none listed as fit for human exploitation.
“It was an early-expansion stop over,” Tolin explained as they slipped down through the tumult, relying on the gravity shielding of the dock below to protect them from the highwinds and debris. “From back when they couldn’t make the full run from Central to the Middle Worlds in one jump. The Coalition abandoned it a long time ago as there’s nothing here but the dust. Dek found it and him and a bunch of his friends use it as a sort of base.”
Pan did a rapid calculation. “Early-expansion? That would make this place at least three hundred years old. I can’t think they will have much in the workshop to help out with modern vessels.”
Privately she was thinking that any environment capture settlement that old on a planetoid like this was going to be a dangerous place to be. The risk of some system failing had to be horrifically high. But as the ship settled into the dock she tried to push those thoughts away. They were here now and the sooner she had a look at this ship, the sooner they could be on their way.
But Tolin knew her well. “I think you might be surprised. They had an engineer here for a while who equipped the place and fixed it all up for them. So I don’t think you need to worry about the life-support giving up.” He no doubt meant to reassure her, but as the grating clunk of an archaic locking system secured the vessel, Pan found herself far from comforted.
The outer hatch opened and a man bounded in. There was no other word for it. He was a bit below average height, with a slight frame and wiry muscles. He seemed to be fired by nervous energy, bobbing on the balls of his feet.
“Tols. Great to see you again and this must be Panvia?”
His head turned sharply as he glanced between them. Like a bird’s. From his face Pan reckoned him anywhere between thirty and seventy, the prime of life, but his eyes as their gaze switched rapidly between Tolin and Pan, looked ancient. Pan had seen the same cold and weary expression on too many of the older freetraders. Those who had fought too hard and done too much of the bad stuff, just to keep flying. Those who had turned to smuggling when legal ways of paying their loans and dockrents had dried up.
Tolin was smiling, but something about it felt forced.
“Yeah. Pan, meet Dekker Loxly. We go way back.”
Dekker stepped in and slapped Tolin on the back, hard enough to make him need to take a small sidestep to keep his balance. He might look smaller than average but Pan realised he was strong enough despite that.
“That’s right, Panvia. Me and your man here, we’re like brothers. Blood brothers. Isn’t that right, bro?”
Tolin nodded, but his smile seemed to be fading as he did so. Dekker bounded back and gestured to the main lock with one hand.
“Now you’re here, let’s not waste any time. I’ll leave you to make yourself at home in the maintenance bay, Panvia, and me and Tols will go and catch up on old times a bit and sort out what we’re doing.” He flicked up a screen and shared it to Pan. “This is all we have on the tub that needs patching. Hope you can fix her up.”
Pan wanted to protest, but something in those eyes held her tongue. Tolin was already following Dekker from the ship but turned briefly to give her an odd ‘get on with it’ look which seemed to carry a silent warning. And that was the only reason she bit back the sharp retort that had been burning her tongue.

There will be more Roguing Thieves next Sunday…

Let’s pretend
That it’s all gone away
Let’s pretend
That everything is fine
Let’s pretend
And let’s go and make hay
Let’s pretend
That all is now sunshine

Close your eyes
To what everyone knows
Close your eyes
To what is happening
Close your eyes
And away it will all go
Close you eyes
Until truth is biting

Block your ears
To the figures that rise
Block your ears
To the struggling breath
Block your ears
To the desperate cries
Block your ears
To the high toll of death

Turn away
After all it’s not you
Turn away
From the consequences
Turn away
And who cares if you do?
Turn away
And hide in pretences

Let’s pretend
That it’s all gone away
Let’s pretend
That everything is fine
Let’s pretend
And let’s go and make hay
Let’s pretend
That all is now sunshine…

E.M. Swift-Hook

Hengist’Dog’Gethick is one of the stars of the science-fiction show Starways Pathfinders.

Dog was half drunk and wondering if he should have accepted the invitation to join his best friend in the dive bar on thirty-three. Teram was the kind who liked to go slumming — said it kept him grounded. He ran the family salvage company and was the hands-on type who liked to do the work at the sharp end. His idea of a good night out was to go drinking with his hard-core salvage crews.
“They are good people, Dog — and they would be made up to meet you.”
“No. They would be made up to meet Sub-Commander Arlan Stude, not Dog Gethick, jobbing actor.”
Teram did not deny it, just rolled his shoulders as they took the glides down.
“They won’t recognise you anyway without that uniform and the sexy half-mask,” he confided. “But you got to know what you are to these boys. They won’t miss an episode. You are like their hero.”
Dog shook his head and altered course to avoid his towering bulk blocking the way for a couple with a baby.
“It’s all crap. Just kids’ stories in grown-up words. None of it real. Not like it’ll ever happen. I don’t see the real Strands ever funding a space exploration mission. They’d not see profit in it.”
Teram glanced up at him.
“You don’t get it do you, Dog? It’s not that it’ll never happen — everyone knows it’ll never happen. It’s that it shows something bigger than this.” He gestured to the buzz of humanity around them. “These are people penned into the cage this city’s become — you, your show, it opens the doors of that cage for a while. Opens the doors and lets in hope. More than hope. Real belief in a future that can be more than this.”
That was too much, and Dog shook his head. “I’m an actor, not a fucking messiah.”

The bar was not as bad as Dog had thought it would be. It was well ventilated and the people who were vaping whatever noxious substances sat in a side room where an androgyne gyrated naked on a podium. Teram’s crew sat together by the one window which offered not so much a panorama of the cityscape of the kind Dog had at home, but more like a murky glimpse into the bowels of the world — dark and lit by sudden flares.
“So, what do you do, Dog?”
Someone had to ask, and lulled by the strong spirits and the rough but good-natured bonhomie, Dog almost forgot himself.
“I’m an actor.” He remembered in time and quickly added, “Used to do that commercial for Eatin’ Quix delivery?”
That met with a few nods of recall and the topic moved on. But it was too much to expect Teram to let it lie for long.
“So, what did you guys make of the latest SP? You think they will find those Kyruku?” His eyes slid to Dog and he winked. “Makes you think. Aliens and all.”
Dog said nothing as the men around him speculated. “Ain’t no fucking aliens. If there were, we’d have met ’em by now. Stands to reason.”
“Yeah. But The Golden Strand is headed ’cross the fucking galaxy, not just round the block and home; it’s different.”
“Different? You see that view screen they get to see stuff on? Huge thing. Dream of that for our ship. What you say, boss — when we getting that kind of tech?”
There was laughter, and Teram laughed loudest of all.
“What if it was for real, though?” someone said. Dog had not picked up the names; he’d tried, but the faces were too similar — worn, weary and bleak. He recalled an odd conversation he’d had with Heila a couple of days before: she’d been going on about her fans, her people. Well, he guessed these were his people. Gnarled by life before they hit thirty, running on dreams and stardust and the false hope held out by the allure of each episode of Starways Pathfinders.
“What if? You kidding? I’d sign up in a second.”
“Yeah. Think of it. The freedom of the stars. Going where no other fucker’s ever been.”
“Be like, you’d be alive. You’d matter. You’d be doing something — something good.”
Heads nodded and someone called another round of drinks. Dog stared out of the window at the inky sludge that coated it, dulling the grim sights it would otherwise expose.

This is an extract from ‘Star Dust’ by E.M. Swift-Hook, originally published in The Last City.

Life is for endings, and also beginnings
The sweetest befriending, the fierce joy of winning
The shape of a kiss that lives on in your head
Though the lover’s dismissed and the romance long dead
There are moments of pleasure, and hours of pain
With things we might treasure washed out by life’s rain
And the bumps in the road that batter our minds
Make our insides feel cold, and we find nothing rhymes
Even so we must follow the path at our feet
There is no time to wallow, no word for defeat
From the hour we are born, callous fate us disposes
But if we fear the thorns, we will not smell life’s roses

©jj 2022

Admirable advice from Madame Pendulica’s mystic moggy!

As the feline companion of a world-famous astrologer, one is in a unique position to offer help and solace to the hapless humanity who visit one’s human with their sad little problems.
Stops for a while to lick anal sphincter (or rear leg if we are being prudish).
Ah yes, where was I? Human problems, as solved by the wisdom of cat.
‘My husband doesn’t love me any more.’ This cri de coeur from Mona of Winchester elicited an outpouring of the usual wishy-washy claptrap about the incompatibility of certain star signs from she who floats round in bits of handprinted cheesecloth. None of which is any help to anyone – least of all a sad woman who appears as if she owns a lot of pairs of nude court shoes and too many rubber gloves.
Had she turned her guileless orbs towards the source of true wisdom, oneself, the poor, silly human might have been a little bit surprised by the answer.
The unloved Mona’s tale of woe and protestations of wifely perfection leaned heavily on how well she keeps his house, how she serves drinks and snacks to his friends when they visit, and how she never fails to do her marital duty every Friday night.
Even a neutered feline (more of which cause for hatred later) can see that this is precisely not how to keep a human male interested.
One’s own advice would be rather more realistic…
Take off your apron, Mona, and stop equating cleaning with affection. When the male returns from work, pour both of you a big glass of wine and order in a takeaway. When his mates come to watch football, leave a crate of Budweiser and a bucket of snacks and take yourself to see a male stripper. And when he wants a Friday night special tie him up and whip his pink bottom.
You might find out that, indeed, he no longer loves you. You might even find out you no longer love him.
Whatever the outcome, you’ll have had a bit of fun along the way.
Ambles off in search of tuna…

Ailuros the Mystic’s Mog predicts she will be offering more advice next week!

According to Granny, it all was Big Bigger’s fault, but Brenda tended towards blaming Chiggers and his bosom buddy Oisin…
What is clear, however, is when exactly it started.
Big was in trouble, again, and he was skulking in the rhododendrons with bottle clutched to the sweaty mound of his belly.
When his name was called from the back door, he heaved his ass off the ground and ran, leaving his half-empty bottle behind him.
Chiggers led the dash, but Oisin snatched the bottle out of his stubby fingers.
He put it to his mouth and groaned delightedly.
“Poteen.”

©jj 2022