by P. K. Lentz
“Wait, what? Only survivor?”
“Four... three... two... two... two...”
“I can read,” Blaik said. “Can you count?”
A long pause, then: “Hardline.”
Every hair on Blaik's body stood. Instinctively, he clutched the arms of his chair, buttocks clenching in the softness underneath. In a flash, the not-window turned from solid white to a field of violet—a rare, but familiar shade—in which thin, string-like shadows flitted and drifted.
Hairs settling, Blaik's body slowly accepted that it was safe to unclench.
“Subverse,” Qilliara informed him.
“It's the color of your eyes.”
“That's why I picked it. Pretty common, though.”
“Picked... your eye color?”
She gave a casual affirmative.
“What did you mean, 'only survivor'?”
“All of the shattered layer fragments like yours are about to be... gone.”
“Right, the war,” Blaik remembered. So much battling for space in his mind. “What happened? Did the Mind Collapser work?”
“It worked,” Qilliara said. “The Gra's Supreme Intellect was neutralized. Turns out they're just as dangerous without it. We're abandoning all but twelve layers to the Gra.”
“Sorry to hear it,” Blaik said. “Who's we?”
“The few hundred humans left who know the war exists and can fight it.”
“Few hundred... that seems small. What about those who don't know? Like my little pocket.”
“When their layers are taken or destroyed, they just... end. It is painless. The Gra have no use for them.”
Blaik stared wide-eyed at the churning, violet expanse of subverse. Scratch would not have to continue on without him, after all. It was doomed.
“And what use do you have for me?” he asked. “Why did you come back? Am I a recruit?”
Qilliara said nothing, only looked at her ovals, occasionally swiping fingers on one. When it became apparent she had no intention of answering, Blaik persisted:
“When you heard your people were abandoning my section of the universe—” He couldn't say that word without emphasizing it. “—to the enemy, you said: 'There's someone I have to go pick up first.' Am I close?”
“I owe you no explanation. If I did, I still would not say the things you want me to. You're here. Let that suffice.”
“Fine,” Blaik said. “But by the time I left, I was calling you Qil, and you didn't—”
“Let it go.”
“—choke me. But fine. I'm very glad to be here in your... hardliner. What did you say it was called?”
“Extravagant Proposal.”
Stumblingly, Blaik pronounced it, more or less. “Are those words? What does it even mean?”
“It means...” Qilliara paused for thought and finished: “a fancy plan.”
“Fancy Plan,” Blaik repeated. “That I can say.”
“You will not refer to this vess—”
“Let it go,” Blaik interrupted.
From her seat, Qilliara gave a hard look of warning before returning her attention to the controls of the Fancy Plan.
“Where are we going?” Blaik asked after as much silence as he could endure. “How long is it?”
A swift movement of Qilliara's fingers caused a variety of floating, translucent images to materialize in front of and around Blaik. “I told the ship-mind you were a child,” she said. “Learn something, or play games.”
Taking a moment to decide that it wasn't worth taking offense, Blaik began stabbing colorful shapes around him with a finger. Many were labeled in bold, clear letters with words that he could read but not always understand. Others bore pictures he was able to interpret to some degree.
A few shapes in, Blaik gasped as a strange ghost-beast appeared in the space ahead, blinking, moving. chewing. A soothing, feminine voice spoke as if from the air around him:
The YAK has long, thick fur which keeps it warm at the high altitudes where it lives. It is very useful to primitive humans, who use it to carry heavy loads and consume its meat and milk. Yak butter is a—
When Blaik waved his hand through the image, the creature vanished and the voice fell silent
“It talks,” Blaik said. “Can I talk back?”
Yes, the voice replied.
“I don't want to learn anything right now. My head's already spinning.”
Would you like to play a game?
“No.”
Holodrama?
“What's th—no.”
Music?
Blaik thought. He had not heard much music in his life, but the few times he had, it had seemed like a nice idea.
“Yes, that's good,” he said. “Music.”
Specify.
“Um... music,” Blaik repeated. An assortment of sounds filled his ears. It took a moment to sort them out and decide he found them unpleasant. Like what a yak might sound like as it was turned into butter.
“No. Something else.”
The sounds shifted, growing both more subdued and more palatable. But still...
“Remember this one for when it's time to sleep,” Blaik instructed. “Something else.”
The sounds changed again: a cacophony at first, from which a rapid rhythm quickly emerged, like the heartbeat of a yak about to become butter and facing the choice whether to flee or to kill. From the pounding rhythm emerged a sharper, higher sound, soaring and controlled. Then the voice of a man whose emphatic bellowing trailed off now and then into screams.
“This one...” Blaik said. “Keep it. I like this. What is it?”
The Skull of Eternity performed by Astral Titan. Do you desire layer origin data?
“No, thank you,” Blaik said. “Keep playing it, and more like it. I'll just watch some subverse.”
The ship-mind chirped what was presumably acknowledgment, and the floating images melted away, restoring Blaik to his true surroundings. They were novel enough that he needed no artificial ones.
Astral Titan remained, but presently the music's volume sank.
“You'll need aural implants, at a minimum,” Qilliara said.
While not fully understanding the remark, Blaik gathered that she was not pleased with his selection.
“It's music,” he said in defense.
“Technically.”
“It's harsh and relentless, and it moves too fast, but... it's beautiful at the same time. A lot like—”
“Don't even say it.”
“A friend of mine.”
“You don't have any friends.”
Blaik scoffed. “We'll see.”
Almost as if she were a friend, Qilliara endured Astral Titan and the other sounds which followed, while the bulk of Blaik's senses reveled in unheard-of, undreamed-of things.
After some time, the music ceased.
“De-line... now,” Qilliara declared. “Give or take.”
A few beats later, the violet expanse bled to the edges of the not-window until it was gone, replaced by blackness.
No, not fully black; spread in loose clusters across the dark were pinpricks of white.
Qilliara's hands swept over the ovals surrounding her chair. “Welcome to the Residuum.”
“What...” Blaik asked, left breathless by the transition. “What's that?”
“Residuum. Our name for the twelve layers that will be sealed off against the Gra.”
“No, I mean...” He indicated the almost-black field. “What is that?”
“This is layer space, and those bright spots are stars,” Qilliara said. “Ask the ship-mind about them later. Having me explain everything won't work for either of us.”
Wide-mouthed, Blaik marveled at this new sight, just one of many since this turn had taken an unexpected turn. As he watched, the spots of light changed, and an object came into view... or not so much an object as a bluish, reddish, greenish cloud of frozen, billowing dust. Soon it filled the entirety of the chamber's front wall.
&n
bsp; “Can I ask?” Blaik asked.
“It's a nebula. A few billion years ago, it was more impressive. It's had many names, but the best one is Neva's Eye, for a hero who died in sight of it. We're not exactly at the center of the universe, but not far off. This layer has a long designation, but most abbreviate it as Layer Zero. And that—”
Suddenly, an object appeared in the dust cloud, small at first and then swelling in size until it blotted out half of the visible 'starscape.' Blaik did not feel any accompanying acceleration. Fancy Plan was quite the vessel.
“—is our destination.”
The destination, to Blaik, was something incomprehensible. Floating in 'space' at the edge of the frozen dust cloud was a strangely shaped mass. Bowl-shaped on the bottom (if it was the bottom), it had eight wide, flat, arms that tapered outward from the bowl's rim in a gentle curve, ending in sharp points. The bowl's inner surface was fully covered with what appeared to be a metal city, at the center of which stood a tall, delicate tower that rose up past the bowl's rim.
The tower ended abruptly and with an irregular edge, as if it had been broken off. And there were dark spots in the metal city, as well, which might have been damage.
“It's called Spiral,” Qilliara said. “Built by a madwoman as a base for her demented army. No one did more damage to this universe.”
“Spiral? I thought a spiral was...” Blaik made a motion with his finger. “It doesn't look like one.”
“You have a very literal mind.”
“Thanks.” Blaik had not mistaken it for a compliment. “This madwoman... she's there now?”
“No. She is gone. Now, we use it.” Qilliara began to look irritated as her fingers swept over her ovals. “No one's answering my hails.” Then, addressing the air rather than Blaik: “Var'agr, respond. Is Separation proceeding?”
She waited patiently and without expression for a few beats. Then her eyes narrowed and head cocked as if she had heard some sound that Blaik could not.
“What?” he asked.
After a delay, Qilliara answered. “A message from Var'agr. Recorded. On a loop. It must have been triggered by my voice.”
“What does it say?”
In all they had faced together on her quest for the Piece, Blaik had never seen worry in Qilliara's violet eyes. Not even when she was webbed up by spiders and looked set to lose her body.
But it was there now. Not a lot, but it was there. And that gave Blaik cause to worry.
Qilliara's fingers made a quick motion on her ovals, and a man's voice spoke the same breathless whisper, over and over.
“We woke her... We woke her... We woke her... We woke her... We woke her...”
EFN
(End for now!)
THE COMING THING
Something nasty is loose on Spiral in...
THE LEFT HAND OF MAGDALEN (2017)
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SOME AUTHOR'S NOTES BEFORE I CRASH & REBOOT
I hate to read the same old story over and over. I hate even more to write it. But, sadly, to a large degree, same is what sells. People want what's familiar, and who can blame them? I began Witch-Queen shortly after learning that even scoring a well-known literary agent was no guarantee of success as a writer, or even of publication. I was finding it impossible to come up with ideas that had potential for mass appeal. I wanted to write what I would like, not what millions would. I DNF'd Avatar. I suffered through a few eps of Game of Thrones before giving that up. With tons of respect to George R.R., I would never dream of reading those novels. My taste is just not mainstream.
So after losing my agent, I thought: To hell with it. I'll write something entirely for myself, and who cares if anyone else likes it. That was Witch-Queen. I set it aside unfinished in order to self-publish Athenian Steel and a sequel, because believe it or not, we now live in a time when (financially speaking) it's arguably better to be a new indie author than a new author with a Big Five contract. (Why? Well, do you want to pay $12.99 for an ebook from an unknown author? Most readers don't.)
Athenian Steel and Spartan Beast are awesome books, if I'm allowed to say. The partnership between Demosthenes and Thalassia in that series is magic that I'll probably never recreate. But those books are heavy, and long, and restrictive in terms of a setting that requires research and attention to detail. I needed a break, and needed to cut loose, so I went back to Witch-Queen, finished it, and here it is, the start of what I really hope will be a long series that's one of pure escapism. No padded plots. No philosophizing. No introspective brooding. And I hope you didn't detect “that kind” of spark between Blaik & Qil, because pretty much No Romance, too, at least not between them. All those things can make for great books (except for padding; I never do that!) but they won't find a home here.
The Avenjurs of Williym Blaik and the Cyborg Qilliara Across the Ruins of Space-Time as a series will focus on fun & action. But it is not frivolous. Hopefully you didn't find Witch-Queen to be that. This isn't meant as comedy or borderline parody like Discworld or Hitchhiker's Guide, by those two departed geniuses. No, in spite of all the lighthearted dialogue, this is still EPIC, and things can get dark when they need to. Next time, for example, I'll aim to get a bit of Alien / Event Horizon vibe going...
I hope you'll join me. If you plan to, PRETTY PLEASE say so in a 5-star review! It doesn't have to be long. You can just tell me that you want more. Because if you don't tell me that, then I won't know. And if you don't tell others, then they won't know that this book is worth buying, and then they won't be able to tell me that they want more, too. Next thing you know, I'm suicidally attempting to write a spy thriller loaded with characters named Jack.
Don't let that happen. Please write a quickie review and spare me that ugly fate. And then join my mailing list so I can give you free stuff and let you know when Blaik & Qil ride again.
You are awesome for reading this book and double-awesome for reading this author's note. Goodbye until next time. -P.K.
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“Bring Me the Head of Sheba Shebari” - On a starship in deep space, a pretty young sociopath encounters a mysterious kindred spirit who makes her an offer...
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