ongoing health issues meant I miss getting Ostraya up on Monday – sorry people.
its nearly at the end anyway… but I will try to get it back up like normal on this coming Monday.
For those of you who unaware my wife and I are moving to the country and building a house with some lovely views where I can sit on the verandah and create new and interesting stories for you to read.
Originally the build wasn’t supposed to start until March but has now been brought forward to late next month. How badly this will affect my writing I am not sure but it will entail numerous trips to the site which is 2.5 hours away – each way.
The Hareccan Problem should be out – maybe the end of this month but more likely early November.
Taroniah at Sea is going to be affected as will Kyron the Conqueror which I had hoped to have out early January and April respectively.
I may be able to keep to those schedules (particularly if do some actual work on my Xmas break) but the seemingly never ending random health interruptions are not helping.
Anyway – back to scribbling…..

Late – sorry folks – real life distractions


“That’s the in-between. It’s been proposed that it represents the dark matter that physicists say makes up most of the universe but which they can’t actually find anywhere. People who can see the in-between are what we call dimensionals, and one of the attributes of that ability is that they cannot see through the natural, permanent gates. You two should come to Embassy and have Xen Wolfson or Destiny’s mother Q test your dimensional abilities.”

“Q?”

“Everybody calls her Q at her request. Technically, she is Quail Quicksilver. Although there is some confusion about where that name originates as it is not a proper name in the witch naming system.” He turned to the young woman next to him. “Do you know, Destiny?”

“I’m not exactly sure. Mother is a bit vague about it. I’ll have to ask my grandmother, Rustle. I think it’s something that happened on Arrival when she was there just after the near miss with the comet, but I’m not entirely sure. In Ash, she is officially Quicksilver Rustledaut. I’ll have to see if Uncle Xen knows. Otherwise, I’ll have to go to Ash and ask. I probably should take you to meet the grandparents sometime anyway.”

“I’m aware no one seems to know who your father is, and your mother isn’t saying. I overheard her reiterate that in the Kitchen one day. Do you know?”

Destiny shook her head. “He was one of the Helaos, as I understand it. You wouldn’t know about them. I’ll explain later, Roly.”

Andrew suddenly realized that when the lad had said partner, he’d meant these two were a couple, not just a team.

“So you only have one set of grandparents to introduce him to.” He couldn’t stop himself from saying, although he grinned to make it less offensive, hopefully.

The girl grimaced, her hands in the air, but Lord Roland laughed.

“Which is a good thing. At least for me. Only one disapproving parent and one pair of grandparents. I’m getting off lightly.” Destiny hit him in the shoulder. “So your grandmother is named Rustle? Who’s your grandfather?”

The girl seemed to shrink a little. “Wolfgang Oldham, the Auld Wolf. The God of War.”

This revelation actually caused the brash young man to pale.

“He is a God? Your grandfather?” Andrew found himself asking, although the name Wolfgang rang a bell for some reason. “He’s not a real god.” The girl replied disparagingly. “Our world was settled by genetically engineered refugees banished to the planet by Earth. Well, an Earth. The final thirteen who were the most powerful and the most dimensionally capable Tellies,” she paused and looked at Andrew, who knew exactly what she meant, having read that term in his grandmother’s journal, so he nodded for her work to continue. “They were wired into their gate machines somewhat like they do in the Alliance. When that Earth decided to banish all the genetically engineered people, somehow or other, they managed to escape to the planet the last fifty thousand genetically engineered people were being marooned on, destroying the gate complex in the process. Because they had been wired into the machinery, they were brain-damaged when they arrived, and they became the focus of the collective subconscious of the population.”

The Mentalist Lord and the girl looked around and then back to Andrew.

“Well, the Alliance split after the attack on the Three Hundred. The Japanese all withdrew from the Alliance and then sometime later turned around and attacked Home. They were defeated, and all the Tier 2s had their gate complexes destroyed, along with many of the Tier 3s as well. With no zivvy being made anymore, there is some doubt as to their ability to recover. The Alliance is currently reorganizing into large trading blocs under President Vinogradov rather than hierarchical Tiers. As far as I am aware, no Japanese worlds have joined or even been asked. President Vinogradov is trying to do away with the constant invasions, chipping, and slavery in general throughout the remaining parts of the Alliance where he can.”

Andrew cocked his head slightly. The man had been speaking English, but he had an accent.

“English is not your native tongue, so what’s your accent?”

“Russian or German. That’s the other two main branches of the Alliance. We’re far more intermixed than the Japanese are. I expect that trend will continue until it’s just all one Alliance rather than Russian and German sections.”

“And this, Embassy? Is that in the Russian or the German part of the Alliance?”

The girl quite clearly bridled at that assertion.

“Certainly not! Embassy is an empty world where all the various worlds can come and build an Embassy and discuss matters peacefully rather than resorting to violence as well as trade with other worlds.” She nodded at Lord Roland. “The Alliance only just opened its Embassy very recently. Before the attack on the Three Hundred, the Alliance was regarded as a serious enemy by all the other polities that have embassies on Embassy. Disco has given aid to several groups fighting the Alliance, although the Empire of the One was mostly responsible for spreading the Plague and the attack on the Three Hundred.”

Disco! Andrew thought with amusement. He looked at the foggy gate again.

“The Japanese gate I could see through, and they had machinery on the far side for creating the actual dimensional gate.”

The girl nodded with a smile. “Yes. There are several worlds that use powered gates, these days mostly just for exploration. Once they find somewhere interesting, they come to Disco and get them to open a permanent gate back to their home world. Our gates are created using magic and natural phenomena that are found in the in-between.”

This was getting stranger and stranger, although possibly not.

“The in-between?”

Lord Roland nodded towards the gate.

“You see a rotating circle with a fog in the middle, correct?”

“Yes.”

“So do I.” Simpson put in from the back of the ATV.

“I don’t.” Henderson put in. “I can see their lawn.”

Andrew looked at Simpson briefly and then smiled at her when she looked at him before returning to his two strange dimensional travelers.

“If you close your eyes, do you sometimes see a blue that looks like soda with lots of bubbles and things in it?” Lord Roland asked.

Andrew nodded.

“Not a vehicle bay with tanks and cyborgs?”

“Nah. Looks like someone’s front yard.”

That was odd as normally the gates were opened from a large warehouse-like complex with lots of machinery on the far side that was required to create the dimensional gate. Mind you, he’d only ever encountered one gate before they took it down, but the gate had definitely been inside a large building, and some of the Japanese prisoners had confirmed that all the gate complexes looked very similar as they had all been constructed to the same blueprint, apparently.

The guy was dressed in casual, indeterminate clothes and looked to be in his early twenties. The young woman was very tall, but he could see that despite her height, she was quite young, probably late teens. She was dressed in a dark grey jacket and pants outfit over a black t-shirt with lots of pockets. They looked neither Oriental nor part of the Triple Alliance, as far as he could see.

“Hello.” The man said in English.

They were both keeping their hands in view and appeared to be unarmed, which meant nothing, as they were both clearly mentalists. Andrew hopped down from the ATV and stepped to the side to make sure Simpson had a clear field of fire before walking forward a little. She had her rifle resting on the window sill of the ATV door but not pointed straight at the two strangers.

“I’m Lieutenant Harris of the Ostrayan Defense Forces. Who are you, please?”

The two looked at each other.

“Officially, I am Destiny Quicksliverdaut of the Department of Interdimensional Security and Cooperation on Embassy. My partner is, technically, Master Mentalist Lord Roland Fey, currently attached to the University of Embassy while he researches his Doctorate in Mentalist Studies at the University of the Alliance on Home.”

Andrew had no idea what the Department of Interdimensional Security and Cooperation was, but he knew what the Alliance was. He heard the click behind him as Reynolds took the safety of her rifle. Lord Fey held up his hands, palms out, in a sign of peace.

“You people obviously had negative interactions with the Alliance, yes?”

“You could say that,” Andrew answered dryly.

“Well, you have nothing to fear from us. I’m an academic, and my partner is a junior agent of Disco. She was experimenting with opening gates, and we saw the gate scars this world has and naturally started with the northern hemisphere, which is normally the center of civilization on most near Earths.” He looked around. “Your world appears to have had a nuclear war at some time in the past, and then, I take it,” and he nodded at the ruined buildings across the road. “One of the Alliance worlds attacked you. Is that correct?”

“Yes. From the surviving prisoners, we learned that the world they came from was called Tier 4 Tomkya. They decided to invade us when they were attacked by something called the Plague. Later on, they were reinforced by people from Tier 3 Natori after their Tier 2 world was grounded following a failed attack on the Alliance’s home world. Natori had trouble first with the Plague and then with the zivvy remover and decided to throw in their lot with their Tier 4 and move here as well.”

Simpson was already stowing her portable cannon in the back of the ATV and grinned at him as she jumped into the rear compartment.

“Henderson, you drive,” Andrew commanded, jumping in the passenger seat. Stevens piled in the back alongside Simpson.

In seconds they were racing up the main drag with the other ATV right behind them and turned right into Mercer Street while Stevens got on the radio to let their commander know what was happening. They roared under the uncollapsed section of the bridge there, then down the slope, past the park, and into North Gilong. The downed overpass had been bulldozed enough that the road was passable, and they raced past the burnt-out shops facing the old highway and then the cricket and football grounds. He closed his eyes and felt for the gate.

“Next right.”

Henderson did his best to get the thing up on two wheels as he turned into the side street, and they powered down the road heading for the bay.

“Slow down.” He ordered and felt for the gate.

There were a few civilians about, a work crew trying to repair one of the brick warehouses, presumably hired by the owners of the business who were trying to get things going again without having to do a total rebuild. They approached an intersection that had empty ground on either side, apart from a small rectangular shed on the left corner. The gate was there somewhere.

“It’s in or behind that shed.” He said, pointing.

There was no driveway from the side street, and there didn’t appear to be one from the street they were on either, so Andrew assumed that the entrance was further down. The lack of a driveway didn’t stop Henderson, who simply drove over the destroyed fence and up the dirt bank while Simpson brought her rifle to bear and Andrew threw a shield around the ATV. The second machine followed them but kept behind as per the doctrine they had worked out.

There was all manner of junk piled up in the yard at the rear side of the shed, piles of rusting somethings, old crates, and drums. Plus, two people who were attempting to work their way through it. They must’ve heard the ATV coming because they’d stopped what they were doing and were simply standing there seemingly defenseless, but Andrew could tell they were well-shielded. The male was a bit under two meters and had dark hair. The female was slim, tall, two meters or more, and had dark glossy hair that seemed to glimmer purple in the light.

Behind them was a large door on the side of the shed that was standing open, and through the door, he could see an apparently rotating lighted circle that looked a lot like a gate. Unlike the Japanese gate, which he could see through, he couldn’t see through the rotating gate as the center looked foggy to him.

“What do you see through the gate?” He asked, hoping someone else could see something.

 “Looks like a lawn or at least a grassy area,” Henderson answered.

The following weeks were full of horror as the full extent of the Japanese invader’s lack of regard for the rules of war became evident. Hundreds of local civilians had been killed in the fighting despite the best efforts of the authorities to evacuate civilians in front of the  Japanese advance. Hundreds, possibly thousands, more who had been taken prisoner had been killed by the enemy after the fighting was over when they proved to be useless to the Japanese. No one who was crippled, paraplegic, or unable to work physically survived at all after their occupation of an area. Mass graves were found, and the laborious task of identifying the bodies began.

Captain Greaves found Andrew, and he was carted off to the Ostrayan headquarters, where senior officers congratulated him, and he was given several medals. Apparently, his report had been quite eye-opening. They were particularly interested in the fact that he could detect the beacons when they were operating. It seemed none of the other Ostrayan mentalists could detect the beacons like it appeared he could, so he was promoted to Lieutenant and put in charge of a beacon-hunting squad. He was given a Sergeant, six soldiers armed with a variety of weapons, and at his special request, Jessica Simpson was transferred in from the Nuzeeland corps.

He quickly discovered that the Sergeant and the six troopers were some sort of special forces, in the traditional sense of the word, if not undercover SAS, and weren’t overly impressed with being assigned to a rather uninspiring newly promoted Lieutenant. Simpson impressed them with her shooting, and they both impressed them once he started teaching her how to do magic, which they now had time to begin. He developed a routine, which the Sergeant in the special forces chaps kept him to religiously of checking for a beacon every hour on the hour regardless of what they were doing.

Epilogue

Andrew felt something mentally and closed his eyes, where he could see the silver thread reaching toward him. It wasn’t all jagged like the Japanese gate threads but rather smooth like a hose. It connected with the world somewhere in the north and well away from where he was, but even as he watched mentally, it wiggled, broke free, and moved. He could see it moving around the world in some definition of around and world, and then it reattached somewhere in the ruined industrial area in North Gilong.

He decided that it was definitely not one of the Triple Alliance powered gates, at least not one of those he was familiar with, but he was almost certain it was a gate of some description. The Japs, or someone else from the Triple Alliance,  had twice tried to reconnect with bright, jagged, writhing electrical snakes but hadn’t found any beacons to attach to. He had watched mentally as they writhed around briefly each time and then snapped out of existence.

“Heads up. A portal has attached somewhere in that ruined industrial area in North Gilong.  Load up! It doesn’t feel like a Jap one, but I could be wrong, so we need to get there fast and shut it down before they get another army through!” He yelled at his people.

Sorry – forgot Ostraya this week – next week.
The Harrecan Problem is next – still WIP so some time away yet – maybe end of October but STCWN (Subject to change without notice)
Taroniah at Sea (either side of Xmas) will be followed by Kyron the Conqueror (March-April)

After that the timetable gets variable as we are building a house in the country at the delightfully named Emu Vale with the build supposed to be starting in March – this will no doubt involve numerous trips up to the Southern Downs to check on progress (2.5 hours each way)
And then we will be moving – having to get internet etc organized – so no doubt more interruptions and delays.
I will do my best to keep up the schedule but no promises.
The Princess & The Gangsters is still my planned work after the next Kyron and then Taroniah at (Something) and Kyron the (Something) These two are probably the start of the 4 book battle with the big bad but again STCWN.

Next: After Ostraya I have the problem of what to serialize:
1. The one unpublished finished book I have written (needs a re-write but hay, good enough for here, right?)
2. Snippets from books I am working on but are NOWHERE near finished
3. Snippets from the next Taroniah or Kyron book – might be a bit spoilerish though
4. Serialize the first book I wrote here – On The Rocks – might garner some new interest in that series

Please let me know which you would prefer!!

It has been brought to my attention that some of you still have the wrong e-book file for Kyron the Magician (Kyron the Bowman)
If that is the case please contact me I will send you a pdf file for hte book.

Peter

Kyron and his mercenary army have taken the Marhingian capital, killed the King and most of the Kingdom’s nobles. Kyron now must decide if this is a raid or a conquest and, if a conquest, how he will organize his newly gained Kingdom. King Kyron the First sounds pretty good to a farmboy from Malia, he has to admit. Unfortunately, the neighbors are acting anything but neighborly, and someone’s trying to assassinate him. If that weren’t enough, his old friend Prince Nalren and the Kingdom of Framland are threatened by their neighbors. It appears Kyron’s life was never meant to be easy!

A bit late – sorry

“Bloody hell,” Simpson said, looking over his shoulder. “Is it still working?”

“I’m not sure. You want to go and tell the Captain we found another one while I look around and see if there are any others?”

That attracted the attention of some other soldiers who had come over to see what they were doing.

“What you’re looking at, bro?” One of them asked.

“Japanese beacon for their portal. We destroyed one around the corner up there, which was the one they were using, so I’m not sure that this one is still working.”

“Shit!”

The men began backing away, and then a fellow who had lieutenant’s tabs on his collar came up.

“Did you say that was a Japanese beacon?”

“Yes, sir. I don’t know whether it’s working or not.”

“Right. We’ll assume it’s still operable, and I’ll get some serve defensive situations set up.”

He turned away and began organizing the men that were present. They began setting up barricades at each end of the section of the road and then calling for heavy weapons. Andrew looked at Simpson and shrugged.

“Personally, I’d rather they didn’t have a working beacon to home in on,” Andrew said quietly.

She grinned and nodded. He looked down at the beacon and used a slice to cut the plastic device in half. There was a bit of a spark and a puff of smoke, and that was it. They looked at each other, shrugged, and headed back toward her Captain. They found him at the head of the alley sitting on a bench having a drink of water. He gave them a nod as they came up.

“We found another beacon down there in the next section of this road, sir. I couldn’t tell whether it was working or not, but it still seemed to be at least partly functional, so I made sure it wasn’t working anymore.”

The Captain nodded. He looked tired. Glancing at Simpson, she looked tired as well, and he guessed that he probably looked that way too. It had been a busy few days. He felt like he had stretched his magic every which way fighting the enemy mentalists. And he still preferred to call it magic rather than calling it mentalist abilities. From that point on, all that was left was mopping up a few pockets of resistance. A few diehards kept fighting till the end, but most of the mentalists had been killed, and without their control, the Japanese civilians began surrendering en masse when it was obvious the war was over, and they had lost but weren’t going to be mistreated. Most of the survivors were women and children as the men had been used in the front lines and taken huge casualties, particularly in the last weeks as the Ostrayans, with help from the Nuzeelanders and even the Indonesians, had got their act together and counter-attacked.