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

She was heading home.
Pan stood in the spaceport only half-believing it.
Five years was a long time to be away.
The certificate awarding her qualification in astrotransport design and engineering, sat on her profile so she could see it every time she checked her link. She needed it there as it was still something of a struggle to accept she’d not only completed the course successfully but aced the grades to get a top tier ranking.
An arm sneaked around her waist and squeezed.
“I’m going to miss you.”
She looked up to see Tolin, his gaze drawing her in as it always did. She had never seen anyone’s eyes actually sparkle before she met him. Turning into the embrace, she slipped her arms around his neck so she could pull his head down for a long kiss.
“I’m missing you already,” she said when their lips finally broke free.
He smiled, making her think of every romantic hero of her teenage years. He had the body of an athlete and the chiselled good looks of a male model. Each time she saw him she felt a weird disconnect deep in her solar plexus. They had been together for the last five cycles, nearly half a year, but she still couldn’t quite believe it.
Tolin had walked into her life quite literally. She had been heading out of the simulator suite after one of her sessions testing a design theory she was working on, and he had walked in through the door, so lost in his augmented links that he nearly barrelled into her. At the time she had been completely caught up in the work she still had to do, so she hadn’t paid him much attention. But he had insisted on a fulsome apology and keen to escape so she could write up the results, she had agreed to meet him for a meal in the student cafeteria.
That was when, somewhere between the soup of the day and the fruit salad, they had fallen in love.
Tolin was there to upgrade his pilot’s licence. He was a freetrader and had just made enough credits to be able to up his licence from Class D – restricted cargo and no passengers – to the Class C which allowed freetraders to carry most regular cargos and occasional passengers. It was the baseline for making any kind of decent living.
They moved in together a few days later and shared bills and a bed for the rest of the semester which was Pan’s final session and Tolin’s only one.
But all good things come to an end and here they were. Pan wondered where this left them now. She had a whole stack of job offers to consider, one or two even in Central. Those were the ones she was most excited about. A job in Central meant she would have the right to live there, the right to bring her family with her. It was something she was going to have to work on and she wasn’t sure where Tolin fitted into things. He seemed to sense her mood and pulled her close again.
“I already told you not to worry about me, Pan. I’ve got a business to build and you’ve got a career to start. Let’s see where we are this time next year.”
A whole year.
She opened her mouth to protest and he covered it with a kiss.
“Or maybe less. Tell you what, soon as you have your first vacation time, we’ll take off somewhere. Wherever you want.”
His eyes sparkled and her heart was lost.
“Promise?”
He laughed.
“If you do.”
“I love you Tolin Dreen.”
“And I love you Panvia Dugsdall.”

Mulligan’s Reach was a planet in the Periphery of the Coalition that had very little of its own resources to attract the rest of the galaxy but was perfectly placed to be a trade hub for the further hinterlands of the Sector. As such it had a reasonable tech level, lots of space, but not much by way of wealth trickled down to the locals.
Home was a small house on the outskirts of the one major city. The land here was dry, as rain seldom fell. It needed constant irrigation from the well-maintained network of waterways. The best land on the banks and floodplain of the wide Reach River, had been bought up for intensive farming by one of the corporations long ago. But a few small farms struggled on the marginal land between that and the city, then beyond them some even smaller holdings which allowed their owners a chance to supplement whatever income they might make by other means.
It was to one of these that the groundcab took Pan. In a row of identical buildings, all of an age to need ongoing repairs to stay sound, it stood out as the one with the most foodstuffs growing around it and the least well-maintained facade.

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.

It was a sunny Sunday morning and Nanny was listening to the church choir while she pricked out some seedlings. She was idly wondering who possessed the piercing soprano that was permanently half a beat behind the rest when a shadow fell over the potting shed. She put down her dibber and went outside. A winged horse hovered over her tiny lawn.
“Ho sister,” it said, “there’s trouble at the castle and you wanted immediately.”
“If His Greediness has got himself indigestion again, I ain’t coming.”
“No. It isn’t that. There’s something happened to the lordling. His wife is in her chamber sobbing and he’s nowhere to be found.”
“Oh right. Hang on. I’ll just get my bag.”
“And maybe change your gardening boots?”
“Oh. Right. Okay. I’ll come out the front door.”
It’s not every day that you get to ride on the back of Fledge his own self, but Bee was a prosaic being and rather resented being pulled away from her petunias.
Fledge dropped neatly to earth in the stable yard and walked quietly to the mounting block. Nanny jumped down and bowed to the horse.
“I thanks you for my safe ride.”
“You are welcome.”
The castle functionary who awaited her sneered down from his great height. Nanny ignored him and stumped off towards the private apartments. To his chagrin, the tall clerk had to run to keep up with her. The door guard saluted her with his pike before winking broadly.
She walked sturdily into the formal presence chamber and chaos. There appeared to be upwards of a dozen people all shouting at the very tops of their voices. The only pool of silence centred around a slender figure cloaked in rose-pink velvet, who stood right in the centre of a patch of sunlight. She turned her perfect face and smirked at Nanny, who chose not to notice her.
“You’ll have to be polite to me when I have the young one’s ring on my finger,” beauty hissed.
“Oh. I doubt it,” Nanny spoke absentmindedly as most of her brain was taken up with assessing the situation around her.
As far as it was possible to make any sense, the Lord and his Heir were nose to nose and both were puce with rage. Her ladyship was alternately screaming like a banshee and having recourse to her lace kerchief. The other shouters appeared to be various staff members and functionaries who could safely be discounted.
Nanny ambled over to where father and son were having their ‘discussion’ and knocked politely on the younger man’s knee. He stopped yelling at his father and looked down.
“Ah, Nanny,” he said genially, “can you make this old fool see that I’m firm in my resolve.”
“Your resolve to do what, sir?”
“Why to divorce my unfaithful wife and marry my true love.”
Nanny looked into his fair and foolish face and sighed. She beckoned and when he bent down he was felled by a scientific blow from a knobbly little fist.
As soon as he hit the ground the air wavered about beauty and she began to look less beautiful. She looked at Nanny with loathing before she picked up her skirts and ran.
“When he wakes up he won’t remember any of this. But somebody needs to explain to his wife that she is NOT to withhold his conjugals if she don’t want this to happen again.”
Nanny went back to her petunias, deeply grateful that gnomes only consider sex in an abstract manner, and only as it pertains to other people.

Jane Jago

I wasn’t afraid, but to another woman his heavy cold hand would have been terrifying.

As he ushered me into the room I kept my eyes lowered and my thoughts to myself.

“The place of books.”

His oddly sibilant voice echoed through what instinct told me were locked bookcases. The lectern in the centre of the room with its single open volume called my feet and we walked.

Before I stopped, I knew what I would see. Emptiness. Hungry, impotent, emptiness.

“Touch it.” My escort sounded oddly desperate.

I turned to face him and made my voice mildly incurious. “What is today, Messire Scarlett.”

“It is Thursday the forty-third of Summer, my lady.”

I turned back to the book, and, even as my escort made to press my hand to the vellum, I moved, snake-quick, so his own hairy palm kissed the blank page.

And the moving finger writ.

Marmaduke Scarlett – born Monday the fiftieth of dark winter, deceased Thursday the forty-third of summer. 

Scarlett screamed as his body decomposed around him until there was naught left but an evil smell.

It is hard to be afraid when there is nothing out there more terrible than you…

Jane Jago

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

It was a breathlessly hot day, and the feral dogs were mostly gathered in the shade of an olive grove. Big Denzil watched his mate pick her way between the sleeping forms. He greeted her.

“Do you walk well, mother of my pups?”

“I do,” then she flattened her ears to indicate amusement. “One’s eldest male pup is feeling less well though.”

“Tell on, my beloved.”

“He and Three-Toes found a dead fish down by the cistern. A long dead fish. Three-Toes’ dam warned them.”

“But they knew better?”

“They did. And they were as sick as humans…”

Jane Jago

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…

The Villa Papaverus was a typical provincial dwelling for those Citizens of rank and status serving far from Rome and wanting to keep their civilized comforts. A large U-shaped building on two floors, set in the midst of its own estate, with a walled garden to the rear and outbuildings dotted around. It had become home to Dai Llewellyn and his new bride when he took on the role of Submagistratus in Demetae and Cornovii little less than a month previously. The villa went with the job as its official residence.
When the two men rolled up there in the late afternoon, Dai’s diminutive Roman wife, Julia, who had a shrewd handle on her husband and his friend, was waiting with a spicy dish of mutton and beans. She had asked their cook to heat and serve it when her husband told her he and Bryn were coming, and kept it hot over a spirit lamp.
“That smells a bit exotic,” Bryn was cautious, though clearly tempted.
“Worried me at first,” Dai admitted, “but my lady wife persuaded me and it goes down very well.”
While they ate, Julia sat quietly, assessing the mood as one of generalised frustration. When Bryn finally put his spoon down and barely suppressed a satisfied belch she eyed the pair with some asperity.
“You may as well tell me, you know. I will find out anyway.”
Prior to her marriage, Julia had been an Inquisitor in the Vigiles herself, reporting directly to the Praetor in Rome, so this was no idle boast. Bryn grinned appreciatively, as Dai launched into an explanation of their morning. By the end, Julia was feeling truly grim, and it must have shown in her face as Dai was frowning with concern.
“What is it love?”
“You aren’t going to like this, but … ”
“What am I not going to like now?” He sounded weary, but also wary and angry.
Bryn put a hand on his forearm. “Remember, Bard. Didn’t we agree that whatever we have to deal with, it being Roman doesn’t make it Domina Julia’s fault?”
For a long moment nobody spoke, then Dai shook his head.
“We did. Sorry. I was just about to get bang out of line. Again.”
Julia, being too used to the pain of Dai’s anti-Roman outbursts, was surprised to find how much Bryn’s championship affected her. She smiled at him and stiffened her spine.
“You still might … We are going to have to tread very softly indeed. This is a temple sacred to the cult of the Divine Diocletian. That is one of the key foundations of the current Emperor’s right to rule. It has real power. And if we are not careful we could wind up getting told to turn a blind eye. It’s happened before.”
The men looked at her in glum silence. It was Bryn who found his voice first.
“What would happen,” he asked, “if we were ordered to keep our noses out?”
Julia favoured him with a sudden street urchin grin. “We’d have to investigate quietly.”
Dai just looked at her for a moment before leaning over the table to kiss her on both cheeks.
“Then maybe we shouldn’t be investigating too noisily now.”
“Stealth might be better. We need to hack into the computers at that temple. And we need to do so pretty bloody quickly.”
“That sounds like something you could do.”
“Probably. Very probably. Unless, of course, some irrumator has already erased the relevant files.”
Bryn wrinkled his brow. “I didn’t think you could ever really erase stuff from computers.”
“You can’t. Not if an investigator is in the same room with the computer. But you can certainly bury it deep enough to stop it being found remotely.” Julia sighed. “All of which means I should get right on it. You two go and look into some sheep stealing or something and keep out of my hair.”

From Dying to be Cured a Dai and Julia Mystery by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook one of the stories in the SciFi Roundtable’s anthology Gods of Clay .

Glossary
Please note these are not always accurate translations, they are how these terms are used in Dai and Julia’s world.
Demetae and Cornovii – Wales and several English Midland counties including Shropshire.
Domin-a/us – Ma’am/Sir. Used to superiors both in rank and social status.
Diocletian – the reforming emperor who established the foundations of a new Roman Empire and the point at which this history divided from our own.
Irrumator – cock sucker.
Praetor – an extremely high-ranking official
Submagistratus – a more junior official with legal jurisdiction over an area, under the authority of a Magistratus.
Vigiles – Police. In Dai and Julia’s world the police are a sub-branch of the military.
Villa Papaverus – Poppy House. Dai and Julia’s ‘goes with the job’ residence.

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

You are old, and that prompts me to ask
How certain events came to pass
How you got a gold fang
And a piercing that hangs
And a dragon tattooed on your ass

© jane jago

It’s morning and
blue is the sky
And all the birds are
singing on high
It’s morning and
I sure know why
Summer is bloomin’
cos we’re in July.
July,
would you stay with me?
Whisper your promises
of lazy days.
July,
would you show to me
The beauty of summer
and its hazy ways?

It’s evening and
twilight is nigh
But the warmth lingers
as night comes by
It’s sunset and
the moon’s in the sky
Summer nights promise
as with you I lie
July,
would you stay with me?
Whisper your promises
of lazy days.
July,
would you show to me
The beauty of summer
and its hazy ways?

Eleanor Swift-Hook

Join Piglock Homes and his sidekick Doctor Bearson as they investigate the strange affair of the Dartymuir Dog…

The creak of harness heralded the arrival of the strangest conveyance Bearson had seen in a long time. It was a large four-wheeled cart or covered wagon, with high curtained walls behind which there could be discerned the outline of stout bars. There was about it the rich smell of some carnivore and occasionally the barred sides shook. The equipage was pulled by a team of four heavy horses, whose driver was a short massively muscled man with a multiplicity of tattoos. When the walls behind him shook, he spoke comfortingly in a dialect beyond the understanding of even Homes.
The newcomer drew his strange vehicle to a halt at a careful distance from the hobbled donkey, which, even so, flared its nostrils and would have brayed loudly had not Yore leaped from his seat and grabbed it by the muzzle.
“Can you back off a bit, or I’m liable to lose this beast and the cart into yonder bog.”
The tattooed gent carefully backed his vehicle away and Homes left the donkey cart in to converse with the newcomer in a low voice.
“What do you reckon our skinny friend is up to?” Yore breathed.
“Honestly? I have no more idea than you. You know what he is like. Cards clutched to his scrawny chest until the last second.”
Yore grunted. “Well I’m keeping my hand on my revolver just in case.”
Bearson said nothing, merely displaying the grip of his own revolver for Yore to see.
The sun was just lifting over the eastern horizon when Bearson felt, rather than heard, a sound similar to the one Homes had made the previous night. Almost at once the tattooed gentleman’s cart began to rock alarmingly and whatever was inside it started making eerie ululating noises that ripped apart the quiet of the morning air.
Homes showed his teeth. “Yore, Bearson. Hold your fire unless you are in mortal danger.”
“Aye, aye, cap’n.” Yore spoke sarcastically, but Bearson understood that he would obey Homes.
The noises from the covered cart were becoming louder and louder and the rocking seemed almost fierce enough to overturn the equipage. Before the carriage was altogether overset there came a sound as if the paws of some great dog were slapping on the ground and all eyes turned towards the sound.
“What is it, man?” Yore was heard to ejaculate.
“You’ll soon see.”
The creature that broke out of the high bracken was enormous, and tawny striped with black. It was only visible for a very few seconds before the tattooed gentleman opened a door in his wagon and the creature disappeared.
“But. But. But…” Yore spluttered. “That’s not a dog.”
“No. It’s a tiger. An orange, bouncing tiger.”
Yore ground his teeth. “Orange, bouncing ‘dog’ to the old man. I see. But how did it get here?”
“You are about to find out, I think.”
The woman who followed the tiger out of the high bracken was tall and carried a curled stock whip in her right hand.
At first, Bearson thought it was the woman who had driven them across the muir the previous night, but then he realised this woman was older, and harder looking although there was an obvious resemblance.
She glared at the two carriages.
“I’m looking for my pet.” This woman’s voice was harsh and her accent was transatlantic.
Homes bowed. “Your pet, madam?”
“Yes. The pesky critter has a habit of escaping.”
“And frightening people close to death?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do…”
She laughed, but it was a sound that tore at the throats of those who heard it. “Doesn’t a man who abandons his wife and child deserve a little fright?”
Yore cleared his throat. “The game’s up. Old Sleepytown died last night. So the charge is murder.”
The woman laughed and dropped her whip. Instead of turning back the way she came she ran into the jaws of the bog.
Yore made to go after her, but Bearson restrained him. “Leave her. That’s a mire out there. You don’t want to end your life sinking in stinking mud.”
“But she’s getting away.”
“She won’t get far,” Homes said sadly. “The waymarker poles have been moved so the safe path through the mire no longer exists.”
He stood at the edge of the unnatural greenness as the sun rose and burned away the mists from the muirland.
Yore looked at the tiny figure of the great detective and shook his great head.
“Churches la fem,” he said sadly, “churches la fem”.

And that is the end of The Affair of the Dartymuir Dog…

Jane Jago

The picnic basket and cooler were on board, Pa looked around.

“Everybody ready?”

The boys yelled but Ma groaned.

“What’s up hun?”

“I reckon this baby is comin’ right now.”

Pa floored it and the truck bounced along the rutted track, finally drawing up outside Grandma’s house. By now, Ma was white and sweating. Grandma come out and smiled.

“You leave Franny here and take the boys to the picnic.”

It was evening when they got back to Grandma’s. Ma sat in bed with a pink-wrapped bundle in her arms.

“Boys,” she said, “come and meet your sister Liberty.”

©️jj 2019

Dermot and his brothers had been diggers all their lives. They earned their living digging, but they also dug for fun. Thus it was that the summer solstice saw them underground on The Plain setting to rights some tunnelling that was in more than the usual disrepair. 
They were making good time so they stopped for a supper of doorstep sandwiches and ochre coloured tea with condensed milk from Erkie’s thermos. When they finished, Dermot, who was a being of few words, belched and cocked a thumb at the workings. 
It was a goodish while later when their pickaxes hit rock. Or, to be more accurate, they hit one rock that stood smack in their way. It was a big one and seemed to have been driven right through the workings. Erkie give it an experimental shove and it rocked slightly.
“It’s as loose as a rotten tooth,” he grunted. “Do us take ‘n out?”
They looked to Dermot who licked the rock and sniffed carefully around the soil at its base. For a minute he frowned, as if trying to call something to mind, then he shrugged his meaty shoulders and gave Erkie and the lads an upward pointing thumb.
They set to work, scrabbling and scrooging in the dirt. To the uninitiated their approach would have looked shambolic, but there must have been some science involved, as the stone slowly began to list to one side. 
“Aisy do it boys,” Erkie recommended, “us don’t want ‘n down here in the tunnel with we.”
The wisdom of this was generally acknowledged and the work slowed to a snail’s pace.
Above ground in the predawn darkness the men in white robes danced around the stones. The Henge had been there since before the ancestors of their ancestors, but the Druids still came there on certain nights to enact their rituals and pray for the souls of those who had already gone to the God. As the sun began to rise the dancers felt movement beneath their feet. This was not something they had ever known before and one by one they grew still and a little afraid. As the light reached the standing stones they watched, with a sense of horror that reached deep into their souls as the giant that was the king stone rocked on his foundations and began to tilt drunkenly. The High Druid would have rushed forward but his acolytes held him back by main force.
It was as well they did, because there came a sort of a sucking sound from the bowels of the earth and the stone that had stood proud for millennia fell to one side with an earth-shattering crash. As it hit one of the sarsen stones it cracked along its mighty length and dropped to the greensward in two sharp-edged pieces.
In the absolute silence that followed this disaster a brown face poked its way out of the earth beside where the stone had stood and a pair of bright, brown eyes blinked in the dawn light.
Dermot took in the scene of devastation, the broken stone, the weeping druids, and the rising sun that no longer lit the king stone in glory. He was so moved that he used up two days’ worth of words in one go.
“Oh bugger,” he said, before disappearing into the tunnel and signalling his crew to get back to work.

Jane Jago