So the Mouse book is in the hands of my editor now, and - as I've mentioned in a couple of comments on this blog - I anticipate publishing it this month. In the meantime, I've turned my attention back to the second Fringe Worlds novel (working title Efferus), which I actually started quite a while ago, but then pushed a little further back in the queue as the ideas for other books starting hitting me fast and hard.
For those who are interested, I will reaffirm my commitment to finishing the book and getting it published asap. In the meantime, I thought it might be fun to publish the excerpt below. (The usual caveats apply: not yet edited, etc.)
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Captain Ward
“Warhorse” Henry – commander of the Space Navy vessel Mantis Wing – was sitting at a table in his meeting room when a
sturdy knock sounded at the door.
“Enter,” Henry
said loudly. A moment later, the door slid open and Marine Lieutenant Arrogant
Maker strode into the room, right on time for their meeting.
Maker marched
towards the captain, stopping when he was about a foot away from the table and
then snapped his hand up in a crisp salute.
Henry returned
the gesture and then grumbled, “Be seated.”
The captain
eyed Maker warily as the Marine sat down. Frankly speaking, Henry still hadn’t
decided yet whether or not he liked the lieutenant, who had spent something
like fifteen years as enlisted man and then a couple of years as a civilian
before being commissioned as an officer. It wasn’t that the lieutenant was
difficult to deal with – quite the opposite, in fact (although the same
couldn’t be said of the Marines under his command). He’d been on his best
behavior during the past two months – ever since that wretched debacle on
Terminus, when Maker had almost blown up the Mantis.
Somehow, despite a laundry-list of felonious
acts – disobeying orders, constructing and detonating a banned weapon, disabling
(and almost destroying) a Navy ship in the middle of combat, etcetera – Maker
had escaped court-martial. Moreover, Maker’s original mission (which was to
find an alien race called the Vacra) had been extended, with the crew of the Mantis being put at his disposal. In
short, despite outranking Maker by a mile, Captain Henry (and his crew) was
subject to the lieutenant’s commands.
A lot of senior
officers would have chaffed at this arrangement, but not Henry. This wasn’t his first rodeo; he’d actually
had a number of engagements in which his ship was used to ferry lesser-ranked
officers on various missions, and quite often the nature of those assignments
put Henry at the beck and call of someone below his pay grade. Thus it was that
he didn’t have any issue with the fact that Maker pretty much decided where
they went and when.
Thankfully,
Maker wasn’t a jerk about it. He didn’t try to lord his authority over Henry
like several others had done in the past. Outside of dictates about his
mission, Maker left the running of the ship to the captain. Moreover, he always
showed Henry the respect and deference due his rank – such as when he’d entered
the room and saluted a moment earlier.
Maker took a
moment to get comfortable in his chair before asking, “Where would you like to
begin, sir?”
“The woman,”
Henry said. “She dislocated the shoulder of one of my engineers.”
“Permission to
speak freely, sir?”
“Always,” Henry
answered with a nod.
“Thank you,
sir,” Maker said. He placed his hands on the table with fingers interlaced and
leaned forward. “Sergeant Diviana is a highly-trained operative and an
intelligence agent. Your engineer got fresh with her – touched her in an
ungentlemanly fashion – and she reacted.”
“Overreacted is more like it. Granted he
shouldn’t have touched her, but he didn’t break anything.”
“Well, from
this point forward he’ll understand that “No” means “No.” That said, I’ll
remind Diviana that we’re all on the same side and ask that she respond less
aggressively if the situation arises again.”
Henry
harrumphed at that last comment and Maker smiled to himself. After the job
Diviana did on that engineer, the odds of a recurrence were slim indeed.
“Moving on,”
Henry said. “Apparently one of my crew had a run-in with the doctor assigned to
your squad.”
“I wouldn’t
describe it that way, since the doctor really didn’t do anything.”
“And yet my
crewman ended up with almost every bone in his hand broken.”
“With all due
respect, sir, the guy’s an idiot. He punched an augmented man in the jaw. Need
I say more?” Maker asked with a shrug.
“I understand your
point,” Henry replied. “But still, if that Augman provoked him into throwing
that punch, goaded him in some way…”
“Then you
should be thanking us for revealing his stupidity. Everybody knows that Augmen
are tough as nails, and throwing a jab at one is like trying to punch a steel
girder. In essence your crewman should have known better. Trying to blame my doctor for a broken hand
in this instance, just because he’s an Augman, is ridiculous.”
“Fine. I’ll make
sure my crew knows that striking the good doctor with their bare hands is a bad
idea.”
Maker frowned,
not liking the implications of the captain’s statement, but before he could
comment Henry moved on the next item on his agenda.
“Finally,” the
captain said, “your companion.”
Maker smiled
inwardly, pleased at Henry’s choice of words. Most people had a tendency to
categorize Erlen – the exotic alien creature to whom the captain was referring
– as a pet. It was a label Maker loathed (although Erlen himself didn’t seem to
mind), and in the past he’d gotten into more than one altercation because of
it.
Erlen was
rarely far from his side, although these tête-à-têtes
with Henry were an exception. Not because the captain had an issue with Erlen,
per se, but more so because the alien’s presence served no purpose in the
meeting. If a person – terrestrial or
alien – had nothing to offer, Henry didn’t see the need to have them taking up
space.
At the moment,
the captain was launching into the current issue related to Erlen.
“It seems your friend,” he said, “had a brush with
Lieutenant Kepler.”
Maker let out a
slight groan. Kepler again. That guy was
constantly finding a way to be a thorn in his side.
“There was an
incident,” Maker acknowledged, then began struggling to keep a grin off his
face as he remembered the particulars.
“As I
understand it, your alien confederate spat some kind of compound on Kepler’s shoes.
It immediately glued him to the spot. It adhered so completely, in fact, that
my crew had to cut away that section of flooring in order to remove Kepler’s
footwear.”
Maker finally
gave up on trying to contain the smile that had been slowly overtaking his
features. “But on the bright side, there was no violence involved.”
“Maybe by your
standards, but I consider any act that harms this vessel as violence with
respect to my ship.”
“Yes, sir,”
Maker acknowledged, sobering almost instantly. “I’ll make sure the incident
isn’t repeated.”
“I think that
would be best – unless you want your friend confined to quarters.”
“Understood. Will there be anything else, sir?”
“No, we’re
done. Dismissed.”
Maker stood,
coming to attention. He gave the captain a snappy salute which was hastily
returned, then turned and strode from the room.
