The world woke up one Monday morning to find its orbiting sentinels had all died: no GPS, no satellite television, no spy in the sky.

The biggest inconvenience?  Satnav.

Older drivers got out their maps. 

But the young.

In one hour the world lost sight of 100 bicycle couriers, a thousand Uber drivers, and more fast food delivery operatives than you could count.

Within a week governments started printing up to date atlases.

Within a month the world had mostly learned to cope.

Within a year nobody cared. 

Except the mothers of the pizza delivery boys who never came home…

©jane jago

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…

This time the door opened into a big room, with floor-to-ceiling windows and a view over the rooftops of Level 39 to where trees and grass grew in the only municipal park in this level.
“That you, Nero?” a voice called from what I guess was the kitchen.
Katie Scarlett swayed like a leaf in the wind and I braced her with my hands around her slender waist.
“Yes it’s me. And I have your daughter with me.”
O’Halleran barrelled out of a door to our left and grasped Katie Scarlett in his brawny arms. I signed to Myk and Zig and the three of us went to enjoy the view. The low-voiced conversation behind us went on for some time, and it seemed to me that Mister Aitch was having some small difficulty pacifying his little girl.
I heard the staccato snap of high heels crossing the floor and Katie’s hand sneaked into mine.
“If I asked nicely, would you lend me a shooter, Sam?”
“What happened to your little stingy gun, babe?”
“Had to lose it when I shot some kid through the leg.”
I laughed. “Taking liberties was he?”
She nodded. “Now. About that shooter.”
“No. I’m not lending you heat so you can shoot your daddy. No matter how pissed off you are.”
Her laughter was lazy, and throaty, and warm.
“I wasn’t really going to shoot him. Just wanted to scare the cold bastard as much as he scared me.”
“Fair enough. But the answer is still no.”
“Spoilsport.”
She left hold of my hand and I heard her walking back to daddy, only this time her footfalls didn’t sound so all-fired mad.

Myk put a big hand on my shoulder and I turned to see a smile in his eyes. He signed “good work,” and we fist-bumped.

We carried on looking at the trees as they speared their way into the ‘sky’ until the voices behind us finally wound down. I turned to see Katie Scarlett with her arms around her father and her face buried in his shoulder.
“Not crying, I hope. You’ll mess your face up good if you are.”
“Nope. Not cryin’ just settlin’.”

O’Halleran motioned to a big table that looked as if it might have been made of real tree wood, and we all took seats. There was a bottle in the middle of the table, and a tray of crystal glasses the like of which I didn’t think I had ever seen before. Katie Scarlett poured ten-year-old bourbon with a lavish hand.
“And now,” she fixed me with a steely gaze, “I think Mister Nero has some explaining to do.”
Zig signed something to her, but the moves were so quick and so subtle that I didn’t catch any of it. Whatever it was brought red flags of embarrassment to her cheeks, and she cast down her eyes.
“Sorry Sam. Uncalled for.”
I handed around my best good old boy grin.
“No worries, babe. And I do have some explaining.”
I touched my wrist unit and Sugar appeared in the vacant chair at the foot of the table. O’Halleran licked his lips, and that riled me.
“A little respect, now, or we walk.”
He glared at me for a long moment, and opened his mouth to say who knew what, but Katie Scarlett forestalled him.
“Manners Daddy. Sugar may only be a hologram, but she is still entitled to be treated respectfully.”
The big man subsided and I nodded to Sugar.
“We are here,” she spoke briskly and not at all in her usual breathy little girl voice, “to talk about why anybody might find it worth their while to poison Mister O’Halleran’s mind against Sam and Katie Scarlett. I have some information that might clear things up a bit.”
As soon as she stopped speaking a short movie played itself out on the white wall opposite her chair. It was night and two figures walked along an unfamiliar street. The woman was wrapped around the man like a morning glory vine, and they stopped under a convenient street lamp for a bit of canoodling. The man’s hands were all over the woman, and as she lifted her face to be kissed Katie Scarlett’s features were revealed. Then the man turned his head.

For an instant Katie Scarlett stared, then she sprung up from her seat like a vengeful goddess.

She’s fast, but I’m faster and I was on my feet in time to catch the clawing hands and hold her away from me as she kicked and screamed. It took her a goodish while to recognise that she was getting nowhere, and soon as she started running down I transferred both of her wrists to one hand and used the other to lift her chin.
I made my voice hard.
“Katie Scarlett, you need to stop acting like a baby and just listen to me. You’re all over snot and you’re making an exhibition of yourself. Capiche?”
For a long moment her reaction hung in the balance, then I felt the tension leave her body. I handed her my handkerchief and she blew her nose firmly. She made to hand the crumpled square of linen back, with the ghost of her three cornered smile hovering above her lips.
“You keep it babe.”
“Thank you most to death, Sam. But who? That’s not me? Isn’t you either is it?”
“No. It isn’t either one of us.”

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

The door opened.
The line of light widened and Jacob’s heart beat a tattoo of terror.
It was too late to be dad, he had blundered up the stairs two hours ago shouting, yelling, drunk as always. Jacob had kept hidden under the duvet, cuddling Mr Tomkins.
No. Dad would be fast asleep and snoring now.
But the door still opened and a shadow fell over Jacob’s bed.
Then he saw who it was and the terror fled.
A few minutes later he was bundled up on the back seat of mum’s car, still clutching Mr. Tomkins.
They were escaping.

E.M. Swift-Hook

His Sister’s Keeper is a brutal dystopian sci-fi new from Jane Jago

The two female figures were hurrying – as much as was safe on the cracked and buckled asphalt of a street right on the edge of civilisation. They were well wrapped against the frozen rain, but acutely aware of the eyes of scavenger children with their fingers and toes blue from the cold. The smaller of the two stopped in the sickly yellow glow of a dying street lamp. She took a few coins from her pocket and placed them in the circle of comparative light.
“Eating money.”
Her companion snorted. “They’ll only buy burny.”
They fell silent, and had walked only a little further when a dark-coloured van screeched around the corner. It came at speed, accelerating from the main street, with its cheap bars and whorehouses, into the foetid quiet of the alley. It halted in an area of deepest darkness and the side door opened with an electric whoosh. Something heavy was thrown into the gutter and the vehicle was reversing away almost before the watchers in the darkness had time to compute its presence.
The two women ran to where the contraband had landed. It was as they had feared. The woman was naked, and lay like a discarded doll in the filth. They turned her over and she made a small noise.
“Not dead.”
“No. Not yet. We taking her in?”
“I guess…”
The big woman bent at the knees and lifted the body with ease.
“There’s nothing of her.”
After which the silence fell again, save for the sound of footsteps, and tiny mewing noises from the broken lips of the one being carried. Behind a disused refuse recycler there was a scarred brown door. It opened at their approach and a wide figure stood in the lamplight. He held out his arms and the bulky woman gratefully handed over her burden.
As he turned the light fell on the face of the woman he carried and even the two hardened whores who had picked her up drew in their breath in pity. She had been so severely beaten that her face resembled a lump of offal, and her thin body bore a variety of bruises of various colours – from the red and purple of fresh weals to the green and yellow of healing injuries.
“Yesu. How is she alive?”
“I don’t know. Look at her hands.”
The younger of the two whores looked and felt her stomach rise into her throat. “Why does she have no fingertips?”
“No fingerprints. No identification. Somebody went to a great deal of trouble to make sure she wasn’t recognised.”
“Oh. Yeah. Poor little bitch.”
The big man looked kindly at the two working girls. “You gave her half a chance, before the sewer rats got to her.”
He carried his burden to a small, but well-equipped infirmary, where he laid her on a bed and managed to get an IV line in her arm. Morphine to ease her pain was the first necessity. Once she was as comfortable as he could make her, he gently cleaned and dressed her wounds. She didn’t seem to him to have any broken bones and he elected not to move her to the X-ray machine. Having done all he could he pulled a chair to the side of her bed and sat down to think.
“You pissed off some serious money and power, didn’t you?”
Needless to say she didn’t answer.
It was to be many days before she showed any sign of life at all. One of the older whores was doing a bit of cleaning when she heard a kittenish mewing noise coming from the bed where the unknown woman lay. She went across and looked down to find the girl’s eyes were open although they seemed to be staring without seeing. Acting on instinct, the whore put a gentle hand on the least bruised bit of flesh she could see.
“You’re safe now, luv.” The eyes slowly tracked to her face and she could feel the effort in even that small action. “You just rest. Ain’t nobody here gonna hurt you no more.”
The words seemed to get through, because the broken girl sighed and her eyes closed. The whore went to the red plastic phone that hung drunkenly from the wall. She jiggled a strange, circular dial and waited. When a deep, masculine voice replied she spoke.
“Markus. The kid Bronwen and Sal brung in woke up. Briefly. I told her we wasn’t going to hurt her and she went back to sleep. Only it seems to me like now it’s actual sleep, not being unconscious.”
“Thanks, Ella. I’ll come and see.”

You can keep reading by snagging your own copy of His Sister’s Keeper from Jane Jago

Cherie wanted a dog with every fibre of her being, but the doctors wouldn’t countenance the hair or the drool, so her loneliness grew and each day she faded a little more.

Schnitzel started life as a poster on Cherie’s bedroom wall, his face made her laugh and she seemed to take comfort from him.

When money is no object very little is impossible and Cherie awoke from a fitful slumber to find her favourite poster made ‘flesh’. 

“Schnitzel,” she whispered. 

Who knew that a million dollar artificial dog could give a precious child the impetus to try and live.

©jj 2019

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…

“Can I have access to the data you recorded in the interview? If I could have first hand information…”
Without a word Var Tyran unclipped the wrist unit from her arm. Only a dedicated professional would choose to be wired directly to technology. Vane was dedicated, but conservative. Coming from a wealthy family in Central, the highest level of health and longevity oriented bio-technology money could buy had been invested in editing his genes. He always felt that was more than enough, no need for direct wiring to interface with the tech his work required him to use. He remote-mounted the unit she gave him to an external screen and offered Var Tyran a seat whilst he ran the data stream from the recording.
Vane found it fascinating to match the reactions to the stages of the interview, and something of a revelation to see that, far from being impassive, any number of emotions were being triggered in the brain of the soldier during the questioning. He supposed it was not surprising Revid showed so little externally. In the Legion, any display of emotion would be regarded as an exploitable weakness by those around him. In those conditions, survival meant learning to conceal how anything made you feel.
But, as Var Tyran had assured him, he could find no evidence of duplicity or deliberate lying. His own original assessment of naivety seemed closest to the truth. Revid wanted to be a civilian and was probably intelligent enough to know what it meant – even to appreciate the depth of his ignorance and the insurmountable barriers in his way to achieve his ambition. But if someone was willing to guide him through, perhaps, just perhaps, it could be done. Vane sat for a few moments after the stream finished and wondered if this offered enough. Then he accessed his own log whilst unclipping the unit and returning it to Var Tyran, who was sitting quietly opposite him, her gaze intense, waiting on his decision.
“I think I was wrong about our soldier being a danger to the community,” he said at last, “in fact it seems to me he is the one more at risk.”
She nodded in agreement.
“That was our assessment too, Commodore – and one reason he will be kept under surveillance at all times if discharged. In fact, our neurocologists’ profiling suggest he will find it impossible to adjust to civilian life and within a very short time he will be seeking to return to the security of the known – the military.”
“What if he decided to do so by reoffending? From what you say the ‘no danger to the community’ is in question at that point.”
She did not dismiss the idea.
“It is an extreme outside possibility. Our experts have assured us it is more probable he would simply re-enlist through regular channels. But, either way, it won’t be an issue as he will not be left alone,” Var Tyran said. She sounded confident. “And as soon as he shows any desire to return to the only life he knows, we will pick him up and offer him a way back. He won’t ever get to feel cornered or isolated to the point where reoffending seems to be an option. He will have all the support he needs.”
“Ah yes. Of course, his friend, Jazatar Baldrik. A good man, you will no doubt brief him.” Vane wondered how far he might be able to push here, to find out why the Coalition Security Force was so determined to have Revid released. “And I am sure it will work with whatever plans you may have for him too.”
“There are no grand plans, Commodore, I am afraid it is all a bit more prosaic than you might think.” Var Tyran, it seemed, recognised a fishing expedition when she saw one. “It is simply that this is Avilon Revid we are talking about, a name which still has incredibly high public recognition thanks to his terrorist career which, you will recall, lasted well over a decade before his arrest. So this is a very high-profile case, but it is also his right. His legal team are already screaming foul to the Criminal Rehabilitation Department for us holding him well past the five year limit whilst we’ve run the checks. If we refuse him, then all this will splash the media instead of staying a low-key, business-as-usual event. None of us want that.”

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.

It was a life between two lives.
Marjeka walked, carrying her infant as she had every day since he was born three weeks before.
The border to the next kingdom lay many days walk ahead. The border to her homeland, now a place of violence and terror, lay many days walk behind.
She walked the sand that lay between the mountains and the sea, her footprints a temporary mark of her passing.
One day, she knew, she would reach her destination, but until then she was trapped between the past she wanted to forget and the future she dreamed about.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Twilight at Noon is the apocalyptic new book from Greg Krojack.

Glenn, a regular guy addicted to watching YouTube videos, Catarina, a Brazilian on vacation in the UK, and Princess, a disabled stray dog chance upon each other after a nuclear attack and travel west to Land’s End, in an attempt to get as far away as possible from the site of the nuclear explosion. With no national infrastructure left, it’s every man and woman for themselves. Vehicles have been disabled by an electro-magnetic pulse as a result of the explosion, so their only choice is to make their journey on foot.
With a journey of almost three hundred miles ahead of them, a journey that’s fraught with danger – not only from brutal invaders but also from other citizens who, in their desperation to survive, resort to theft and murder. The odds of survival are stacked against them.
In this excerpt from Twilight At Noon we find Glenn looking for a place to shelter from the radioactive fallout from a nuclear attack. He knows from watching YouTube videos that he has fifteen minutes to find a concrete building to hide in. An entertainment complex that was constructed in the 1960s and is now scheduled for demolition is in front of him…

Glenn sprints towards the building.
Something he sees out of the corner of his eye stops him in his tracks. A young woman is walking around in a circle, muttering to herself, her face devoid of expression.
For a split second he feels an urge to ignore her and get himself to safety but he isn’t the type of guy to leave a fellow human being in danger – especially if he can do something about it. He knows he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he leaves her outside to die.
He races towards her, calling out as he runs.
“Hey. Are you alright? We need to get undercover.”
The woman doesn’t see him, although her eyes look straight at him.
Maybe she’s deaf. Perhaps the explosion’s damaged her hearing.
He points to the building. He accentuates the movement of his lips, in case she can lip-read.
“We have to go in there. To be safe.”
The girl’s empty eyes blink.
“Pelo amor de Deus. O que é isso? Me salva Senhor.”
At least now he knows she isn’t deaf. He doesn’t recognise the language but maybe she knows a few words of English. Many foreigners do.
The girl stops asking God to save her and looks at Glenn. He smiles, hoping that she might feel more at ease.
“Do you speak English?”
She shakes her head.
“Não. Nada. Brasileira. Falo português.”
“Brazil? Portuguese?”
He only knows four words of Portuguese. That had been all he’d needed when he spent a week in The Algarve. Por favor, cerveja, obrigado, and banheiro. Those four words – please, beer, thank you, and bathroom encapsulate his entire Portuguese repertoire. They were the only words he’d needed at the time. He’d muddled through all other situations with a few gestures and Google Translate on his phone.
He goes to take her hand. She snatches hers away. He points at the drab building before them.
“Come with me.”
The young woman shakes her head.
“Tenho que voltar pra hôtel.”
A word Glenn recognises, hotel.
He points at the complex again.
“No. Not hotel. We have to go there.”
“Minha amiga. Tá me esperando.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand a word you’re saying. But we need to get inside that building.”
He’s desperate to make her understand.
“Now! Please! Otherwise we’ll both die.”
The girl looks at the building, and then at Glenn. She can see that he seems genuinely worried for her.
“Okay.”
The couple hurry to the entrance of their sanctuary.
Lady Luck is looking down on them favourably – the door’s unlocked. Glenn pushes the door open and ducks inside, pulling his new friend behind him, not worrying whether she wants to follow or not.
The darkness inside the building is a complete contrast to the brilliance of the light outside. Glenn turns on the torch app on his phone, which was in his pocket when the electro-magnetic pulse hit and fried anything connected to the national electric grid. The light from the phone casts a shadowy light over what had once been the foyer of a multiplex cinema. He gestures towards a wide central staircase.
“We need to go downstairs. There used to be a nightclub downstairs. We’ll be safe down there.”
The young woman looks at the staircase.
“Descer?”
“Yes. Descer. Go downstairs.”
Normally, the young woman wouldn’t have trusted a total stranger so easily but he seems to know what he’s doing. She’s a stranger in a strange land, a proverbial fish out of water. She has no choice but to trust Glenn, who seems intent on saving her life. That can only be a good thing. Teaming up with him is probably her best chance of survival.
As they make their way downstairs, Glenn stops suddenly and points to a sign above a blue double door. The Armitage Theatre. He pulls open the doors.
“In here.”

A Bite Of… Greg Krojac

Do you believe in your characters? And is such a belief necessary to make readers believe in them too?

I think the author needs to believe in their characters. We know they’re not real people but they do need to have authenticity. If we don’t create authentic characters then – unless they’re extraordinarily bizarre and fantastical – how can we expect readers to identify with them and care about them? If the reader doesn’t care about what happens to characters, even if it’s an unlikable villain and their caring is demonstrated by wanting to witness the downfall of the antagonist, why should the reader continue reading? 

If you could ask your literary hero one question, what would it be?

If we’re talking about an author, I would ask Bernard Cornwell if he has always had a passion for historical novels and what are his favourite novels and recommendations in that genre.
If we’re talking about a character, I would ask Richard Sharpe (from Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series of books) what drives him when he is going into battle – is it the desire to beat the enemy, the will to survive, a sense of honour, or the responsibility to his men?

Favourite snack? And do you eat it often?

Before I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, the answer would definitely have been chocolate. But now, I like to indulge myself in a bowl of acaí at least twice a week, Acaí bowls are essentially thick smoothies made of pulped and flash-frozen acaí berries that are pureed with other frozen fruit and then served in a bowl with various toppings. I eat mine with sliced banana and powdered milk sprinkled on top. Plus, it’s a healthy snack too.

A late starter to creative writing, Greg Krojac published his first novel in 2016, at the age of 59. Now, just five years later, he’s written and published several novels, novellas and short stories.
He likes to move between the sub-genres of science fiction, writing stories about dystopic worlds, post-apocalyptic survival, comedy-horror, YA fantasy, time travel, space exploration, and others.
​An English teacher, born and bred in England, he’s lived in Brazil since 2007 and shares his life with Eliene (a successful amateur distance runner), their cat, Tabitha, and their dogs Sophie and Simba (soon to be joined by Patch, their son).
You can find him on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and his own website.

“Listen here, bonehead. They are talking about castration if you don’t stop.”
Scraps pawed his phone and the screen flashed up a message.
“Stop what?”
“Stop harassing bitches and offering violence to random males. It’s taking up too much of their time.”
He licked his scrotum meditatively, but the message must have got through, because he was much more careful about his phone use thereafter.
So careful that it wasn’t him hailed off to the veterinarian in a dog van.
No. It was his arch enemy Jaws whose testicles were removed.
Learning to hack enemy phones had been worth it.

©Jane Jago

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

“Well now,” Jack said mildly. “That proves the theory.”
Gobshite appeared at his elbow. “What theory Cap’n Jack?”
“The one that says you can’t get a big fat galleon through the same gap as a slim fast clipper.”
Gobshite spat into the water. “We gonna scoop up the survivors?”
“Nah. Let ‘em swim. The sharks are the other side of the reef.” Then he looked at the face of the rat beside him and shrugged. “Well. Most of ‘em anyway. Drop anchor and put a couple of longboats in the water.”
Jack turned away from the rat and looked towards Hell’s Maw, where the Pink Pig was just inching out of concealment. Mary waved one arm and he waved back before searching the waves for the dark head of his avowed enemy. There was no sign in the lagoon, or, as far as he could see, on the broken hull of the ship. Which meant that the hidalgo was probably in the waves outside the reef. Well, Mary was on her way and, if the sharks didn’t get him first, she’d drag him aboard the Pig and bring him to face his nemesis.
Those few swimmers who made it to the beach were pounced on by Jack’s crew and tied hand and foot. Jack himself remained on the Runner, paying little attention to what was going on in the lagoon, instead, he watched Mary’s ship making its cautious way towards the stricken Spanish galleon. Her girls had pulled two sailors out of the waves, before Jack spied the Don himself with his long black hair streaming out behind him as he swam strongly towards the Pig.
“Careful Mary,” he murmured. “Be careful of him. He isn’t sane. I can smell it from here.”
He watched intently as the swimmer reached his goal. Mary herself stretched out an arm and the man grabbed for her hand. She grasped his wrist and began to pull him aboard. Jack had a very bad feeling, and wished he was closer. The hidalgo was halfway onto the deck when Mary cold cocked him with her free hand. He appeared to go limp in her grasp and she dragged him onto the deck. Jack breathed easier.
Dragging his attention back to the goings in inside the reef he saw that half of his crew were on the beach dealing with Spanish sailors and mercenaries. Most of the other half were quietly busy making the Runner fast. The next job would be to clear the reef so that Mary could bring her ship and its cargo into the lagoon. He was about to give the order when he noticed that Gobshite, and six brawny sailors, had dropped a third longboat into the water and were pulling strongly for the breach in the reef. Jack beckoned his boatswain, Os.
“Who’s idea was that? And don’t be telling me it was Gobby. He doesn’t have ideas.”
“No sir, cap’n. I thought that there gap wants clearing so the mistress can come through.”
Although more than two feet taller than his captain the beefy boatswain looked uncomfortable and a little worried. Jack punched him in a congratulatory manner.
“Good thinking Os. But. How do you reckon six men and a maniac are going to do the trick?”
“I been having a good look, and the ship ain’t stuck that fast. She broke herself pretty good because she hit so fast, but I reckon that if they chop through two sets of ribs each side they can push her free.” He counted on a set of fingers that were as thick and red as raw sausages. “That’s two big sailors with axes. Four to guard their backs. And a maniac. Just because he was getting on my tits.”
“Fair enough.”
The longboat reached the wreck and was immediately mobbed by those Spaniards who had no desire for a swim. Gobshite stood in the bow of the boat with a thick cudgel in his claw and systematically beat back anyone foolish enough to come within his not inconsiderable reach.
“There now,” Os said with some satisfaction, “I knew there was a reason I sent the mad bugger with the boat.”
Leaving Gobby on guard the six brawny sailors leapt ashore. Two began chopping away at the wreckage while the other four threw anyone who objected into the water on the seaward side of the reef – where black triangular fins were beginning to appear in the water. This tactic nipped the idea of interference firmly in the bud, and the Spaniards remaining in the ankle-deep water atop the reef retreated to a safe distance and waited quietly. Of course there was one more attempt to appropriate the longboat, but even a dozen Spanish mercenaries were no match for an undead rat in a mood.

Jane Jago

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