'Taste the Blood of Dracula' review

Taste the Blood of Dracula

Hammer, UK, 1970, Rated R

Starring Christopher Lee, Geoffrey Keen, Gwen Watford

Directed by Peter Sasdy

   This movie is awful and good. The biggest complaint is, of course, the lack of Dracula. He has very little screen time, and I adore Christopher Lee. On the other hand, his lines were terrible, so maybe it all balanced out: hoping for more Dracula and then hoping for less when it came.
   The worst part of the film is the stupid brothel scene near the beginning. There was absolutely no reason to show bare breasts (it is very brief) and the snake dance---egad! Having a python on your shoulders does not make you a good dancer.
   Also, I found the character motivation lacking at times. Why did Dracula care that those guys killed his servant when it obviously brought him back to life? Why did Alice's father hate Paul (why was there inevitably a character named Paul in all of the Hammer movies?).
   All of that said, this movie looks delicious. Even the blood, it was like oozing pie filling or strawberry jam. Made me want to taste the blood of Dracula.
   The sets were gorgeous and the lighting was good. I loved the garden at Alice's house, where she climbed down the tree to meet Paul beside the fountain in the moonlight. The abandoned church was lovely (the Satanic altar cloth, not so much) and the one house had an abundance of Indian swords and daggers on the wall. The costumes looked good, too...always a bit questionable about whether or not they stayed strictly true to the time period.
   I can never judge acting in these old movies because it's clearly a different standard. I thought Alice was good, mainly because she was so sweet and then turned into a creepy psycho under Dracula's power. She was really cute, too. I liked her story line with Paul and would have liked to see more of them and less of...whatever else was going on.
   What was going on? It was actually pretty good (though lacking much logic), the deaths were good (meaning delightfully awful), but I couldn't understand why Lucy turned straight into a vampire and Alice didn't. I also didn't get Alice's death. Or Dracula's, for that matter. Although I liked the part where he threw organ pipes at them while they yelled around and didn't run.
   All in all, I really enjoyed this film for some reason, even though Christopher Lee's performance was a bit lacking. It was a romp, delightfully weird, creepy, awful, fairly stupid, but fun and good looking!

   My favorite Hammer Dracula will continue to be 'Dracula Has Risen From The Grave,' which I think is actually pretty good, all reduced-old-movie-standards aside.

Interview with Skye Palmer: Singer, Actress, Screenwriter

Skye Palmer is an entertainer, screenwriter and musician born in Britain and currently based in North Idaho. She has appeared in a variety of shows throughout the area, including concerts, musical theatre and dramatic plays. Besides performance, she also expresses strong interests in musical composition and writing for film and stage. When not busy, Skye can be found doodling on the piano, writing film critiques, and drinking way too much coffee in one sitting.

What was your first show and how old were you?

I tried a few things when I was younger, but I’ll say my first big role came when I played the lead in Peter Pan. I was 12.

Do you have a favorite show that you’ve performed in?

So far I think my favorite is the time I played Jo March in Little Women. We received all our music and scripts early and then put the actual show on after only two weeks of rehearsals. Super intensive and fun!

What inspired you to perform? And write?

When the stage calls, you have to answer! I believe that homeschooling allowed the creative aspects of my personality to flourish. I had the time to explore different interests and found that writing, especially, was personally satisfying.

Does acting come naturally to you and have you ever experienced stage fright?

Acting always came easy for me, although I have had quite a bit of training at this point. When I was younger I used to be very shy, but I got over it when I found out how much I enjoy performing. I’ve never actually had stage fright, though I do feel pretty excitable just before a show starts. I think that adrenalin rush is a bit addicting.

What kind of musical training did you have?

I started taking piano lessons when I was 5, and kept at it sporadically until I was almost 18. I didn’t realize I could sing until I was 11 and started beating my family at karaoke games. After that, I joined choir and performed in some musicals, something I’ve kept up over the years. I almost majored in music in college so took quite a few classes related to composition and voice as well. Right now I’m more into the composing side of things, so I’ve set up a bunch of keyboards and electronic equipment in the spare room and take online classes from Berklee when I can fit them in.

You’re not the only musical one in your family, is that right?

Not at all! Everyone in my family is able to sing. My dad is a pretty smooth saxophonist when the mood hits, and I have a younger sister who also sings and plays guitar.

What’s your favorite movie?

I’m going to cheat a little and go with my favorite TV show since it’s easier for me to choose: Sherlock. This is, without a doubt, my favorite. The acting and cinematography are superb! (I’m also a die-hard Sherlock Holmes fan.)

What are your plans for the future?

My immediate plans include graduation this spring with a BA in Screenwriting from SNHU. I started college at 16 and am glad to get it done early. I have several other performance possibilities this coming year but, in the long run, I’d like to work on my own music and develop complete projects from start to finish, including writing, filming, acting, scoring, and collaborating with friends.

Skye Palmer is the amazing voice of Fou's Lullaby written by Matthew McLin (with lyrics by me from A Hole in the Sea). You can download it for free here.

See what else Skye is up to here.
You can also check out Matthew McLin's music on Soundcloud. 

Davy Jones

   We first saw the monster two weeks after the storm. If we had known such things existed, we would have prayed the storm to destroy us. Even without our prayers, it had nearly succeeded.

   When at last the thunder stopped and the wind faded, it was night. The clouds did not break until morning, so I could not take our position by the stars. I did not know how far off course we might have been thrown by the violence of the night. In the morning, I came on deck to see what damage we had sustained. The air was wonderful and fresh, the decks still glistened from the rain and a good breeze sang in the rigging, smelling, it seemed, even saltier and cleaner than usual.

   After looking over the ship and giving orders for fixing the spar that had been struck by lightning, I commenced to take our position by the sun. I measured the sun’s angle twice. It didn’t make sense.

   “What is it?” midshipman Drummond asked, seeing the perturbed look on my face.

I shook my head and went below to go over the charts. That night I went up to fix our position properly on the stars. The stars were all wrong, too.

   We sailed for a week and never made landfall. I tried again and again to get a fix, but no matter how many times I reworked my calculations, the stars insisted we were thousands of miles away from our last fixed position. How could the storm carry us from the Indian Ocean to beyond Australia in a night?

   I could make no sense of it. I reworked my calculations to hit Australia as soon as possible, and we set a new course. The weather was perfect, the wind strong. Supplies were running low and I needed to keep the men busy. We drilled with the guns. And we drilled with them again.

   Drummond came to me, his young face creased with worry.

   “Captain, I’ve been watching the stars. We’re near Australia, aren’t we?” he bit his lip, afraid he’d said too much. I just nodded. “How? I mean we were nearing India…weren’t we?”

   I nodded sharply and Drummond flinched. He took a deep breath and continued. “Whatever the case is, have you noticed they’re not…quite right?”

   “What aren’t quite right?” I said stiffly.

   “The stars, Captain.”

   “What do you mean?” I asked.

   “Scorpio,” Drummond said. “And Lupus…it’s like they’re closer together, smaller, and the sky is bigger than before, with more stars…”

   I had noticed that something was off in the night sky, but had attributed it to the sudden change in position. That night, I saw that the observant Drummond was right. And the next day, we saw the monster.

   The day was fresh and enlivening, as all days had been since the storm. Despite the shortened rations, the men seemed rather cheerful. Suddenly Drummond, up in the foretop, shouted down,            “There’s a whale to port! No…an…an octopus…”

   I strode over to the rail and looked out over the shimmering blue waves. About a half mile away, something very large was breaking the waves into agitated whorls. I called for a glass.

   “I see tentacles,” Drummond reported from the rigging. “And…a hard, ridged back! I think maybe it’s a whale eating an octopus.”

   The other midshipman, Ryder, brought me a glass and I peered out at the creature. I could barely make it out through the foam it worked up. Pale red and orange, slightly speckled. I didn’t know any whale that looked like that. A tentacle snapped up out of the water and then disappeared, followed by the odd, ridged back of whatever beast it was. Perhaps this whale-thing was eating an octopus…we must be near land. The whale must have been closer than it had looked, though. Or the octopus was very large.

   Drummond came swinging down from the rigging, his eyes shining, mirroring my own hope. But mine was tempered by fear of reefs, especially in this strange clime and the inconsistency of the stars…or my own incompetence. Drummond had no such fears. He beamed at me with complete trust.

   We soon forgot about the creature, looking forward to finding land. I had as many lookouts posted as possible. I didn’t want land to slip by us. Nor did I want to come upon a reef without warning. We sailed on and sunset overcame us with still no land in sight. I paced the deck as the sky painted itself golden and purple.

   “Captain,” Drummond said, appearing at my side.

   “Yes?”

   “The whale thing,” he said. “It’s behind us. I think it’s following us.”

   “Nonsense,” I said, relieved. “It’s probably heading towards land again, looking for more food.” It meant we were going in the right direction. Except we might run aground in the dark. I ordered sail to be taken in and glanced back at the whale. It was gone.

   Night fell. I couldn’t sleep, so I paced the deck, watching the dark water ahead. Drummond stayed on deck with me, even though he was off duty. I told him to go below and rest. He went down reluctantly and I placed myself in the prow. At last, a little before morning watch, I went below and slept fitfully for a few hours.

   The next day was beautiful and refreshing, but devoid of whales, reefs and land. I checked my charts again and again. We should have hit Australia in the night, but we didn’t. There was only one possibility. I had done something wrong. I went over everything again, and again it all seemed correct. But it couldn’t be. It tortured me all day as we sailed on and on into what my reckoning, the charts, and astronomy all told me were the penal colonies.

   Night came at last, bringing a sweet cool breeze and a strange aroma like Indian spices. The stars came out, seeming more numerous than ever before and Drummond joined me on deck with his sextant. We both took our positions and compared them. We were both landlocked. Our eyes met in the dark.

   I called Ryder and had him take our position. It was the same.

   “I must have done something wrong,” Ryder said, coughing in embarrassment.

   “No,” I said, showing him Drummond’s and my own results. “Either we have all forgotten how to read the stars or the stars have rearranged.

   “Look!” Drummond exclaimed, pointing to starboard. Foam sprayed from the water in the distance, bright white in the moonlight.

   “Whale?” Ryder asked.

   “Hardly important,” I snapped, slapping the map I’d brought up with me. “Have we all gone mad? Is the sky playing with us?”

   “It’s coming toward us,” Drummond said, his voice betraying his nervousness.

   “Whales never attack ships,” I said, glancing at the ripple in the sea.

   “With respect, Captain,” Ryder pointed out, “nor has an entire continent sunk beneath the ocean.”

   “It’s coming straight for us!” Drummond yelped.

   I looked. It had its angle perfectly calculated to intercept us. My mind was still filled with doubts about calculations in general, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

   “Full sail!” I barked. “Alter our course South South East!”

   The helmsman complied and the men of the second dog watch leapt into the shrouds, joined by young Drummond, who overcame them all, reaching the sails first and loosening them in a frenzy. I looked out at the approaching creature. It was bearing down on us swiftly.

   The canvas blazed open in the moonlight and filled immediately with the stiff breeze. We leapt ahead and the creature plowed through our wake, throwing up plumes of froth. I got a little better look at the beast. I clutched Ryder’s arm. Immediately I came to myself and let him go, straightening and turning to shout encouragement at the crew.

   I shivered internally. What I had seen was no whale. No whale had segmented armor and steaming portals. Was it some horrible machine? A giant lobster?

   “It’s following us again!” Drummond called from the mainmast. I turned and my blood congealed around my heart. The thing was on our tail, pushing a foamy wave before it, its eyes blazing red in its broad head. It was almost in firing range of the stern chasers.

   “Bring up shot and powder!” I ordered. I could hardly believe anything from below would actually chase a vessel, but glancing back at it, the malevolent eyes sent quivers through my soul.

   The men appeared with the powder and shot. “Load the gun!” I shouted. The men hurried to obey. The monster was closing in and I found myself at the stern, clutching the rail with white knuckles.

   “Ready sir,” said Ryder.

   “Aim at that thing’s head,” I ordered.

   “Ready.”

   “Fire!”

   The shot echoed across the sea and the smoke rolled out behind us, obscuring the thing from sight. I heard a clamorous clang and when the smoke had cleared, there was no sign of the beast.

   “Did we hit it?” Ryder wondered aloud.

   I scanned the sea. “Drummond? Any sign of it?” I yelled to the topmast cap. I knew the boy always had his glass on him. After a moment I heard his voice call down that there was nothing he could see. I sighed.

   The first mate, Roth, and many of the men previously sleeping below came charging up to see what was afoot. Roth tried to mask his disbelief when I told him. He was about to go back below when the ship lurched violently. I clung to the nearest mast, praying for forgiveness for sailing my ship onto a reef. I saw Drummond slip from the yard arm and go tumbling toward the deck and closed my eyes, waiting to hear him splatter on the deck, knowing it was my fault. The splatter never came. I opened my eyes. Drummond had miraculously caught the brace and slid down it to the next yardarm. He was scanning the sea with his glass, unruffled. I stood up straight and marched to the prow.

   “There’s nothing out there,” Drummond said.

   We were sailing steadily again, but a little slower now, despite the wind being stronger than ever. I sent someone below to check for leaks and ordered for sail to be taken in. I didn’t know what we’d hit, but I wasn’t going to run into anything else at full speed.

   Ten minutes later, the report came that there were no breaches in the hull. Roth kept glancing at me. He was worried about me. Not in a mutinous way, I didn’t believe, but I hated it just the same. I returned to the quarterdeck and was ordering more sail taken in when Ryder gasped behind me. I turned to see his eyes bulging out of his head as he struggled to scream, clawing at a long slimy tentacle wrapped around his neck. I tried to yell, but my voice clogged in my throat. I could only utter a strangled squeak as the tentacle wordlessly whisked Ryder over the side of the ship. I didn’t even hear a splash.

   I blinked at the empty space where my midshipman had just stood, unable to grasp what had just happened. “M-man overboard!” I finally managed to holler, rushing to the rail and peering down into the swirl of choppy waves.

   Roth hurried to my side. I pointed uselessly into the water. There was no sign of Ryder or the tentacle. I turned to my men and found them gazing at me blankly. They hadn’t seen it. I pointed over the rail and gasped, “Ryder!” Alarm showed clearly in Roth’s eyes. Did he think I had pushed him?

   “The monster!” I exclaimed. “It pulled him over the side!”

   “I saw it too,” Drummond said, sliding down to the deck, his voice shaky.

   “Where is it?” I said, spinning around, scanning the sea on all sides.

   “I think it’s below—” Drummond began. The ship shook violently and knocked me off my feet. The sound of splintering wood ripped through the air.

   “What in Hell?” Roth exclaimed as we staggered back to our feet.

   “There’s a breach in the hull!” someone cried from the darkness below decks.

I was on my way to the hatchway when Drummond yelled behind me. I turned to see a tentacle wrapped around Roth’s neck, dragging him away despite Drummond’s attempts to hold him. I ran forward, drawing my knife. Roth flipped over the rail, choking silently. Drummond wedged himself against the rail, holding onto Roth’s arm with all his might.

   I skidded up to the edge and leaned over. Drummond grunted, straining, his neck bulging. I slashed at the tentacle. A spray of black blood burned my eyes but I heard Roth noisily inhaling and Drummond panting as he heaved the first mate back onto the deck.

I wiped the blood out of my eyes and yelled for the marines.

   “Roth, are you all right?” I asked as the red coats streamed onto the deck. Roth nodded, but there were angry red sucker welts all over his skin. I turned to address the marines.

   “There’s something under the—” I didn’t get to finish. Three tentacles lashed over the railing and swept the marines off their feet. I ducked as a tentacle flashed by over my head. The slimy things disappeared as fast as they had appeared, taking three marines with them. No one had had time to shoot.

   “Clear the ship for action!” I yelled. “Roth, find out what’s happening below.”

   Roth disappeared below as the ship rocked wildly and more splintering came from below. Screams echoed from the hold, mixing with the usual sounds of the cannons being run out and bulkheads taken down.

   I glanced at Drummond. Was the thing punching holes in the hull from below? What good would our cannons be against it? Another tentacle slid silently onto the deck and carried away another marine. Several of the others fired at it, but too late. Their shots rang eerily in the sudden quite as the noises from below ceased. The ship was ready for action.

   Roth came staggering up from below.

   “There’s water coming in fast,” he gasped, “whatever it is, it’s drilled holes in the bottom!”

   “Get men on the pumps!” I ordered. “And try and plug off the holes if you can.” I turned to Drummond. “Have the men ready on deck with axes and if the thing’s tentacle come up again, hit them with whatever you can,” I told him. “Blast it with a cannon if any part of it comes across the guns.” Drummond nodded and rushed down to the gun deck.

   The sea exploded, geysers of spray dashing across the deck as something—not a tentacle—lashed out of the water and ripped through the side of the ship. We all fell and tumbled across the deck, some flying over the rail into the sea. Splinters filled the air like a deadly rain. It was like we’d been struck with ten broadsides simultaneously. The masts trembled and the topgallant cracked. Ropes snapped and I heard men screaming.

   The thing that had struck—not a limb, but something like it—disappeared as fast as it had materialized leaving the ship tottering on the rippling sea, gashed open and bleeding. Roth rolled over, not ten feet from me, clutching his face. A massive splinter was stuck through his cheek and nose.

   I dragged myself to my feet once more, scanning the sea around us. All was still, filled only with the cries of agony from the gun deck. Drummond had jumped to his feet and ran down into the dark to assess the damage. I turned to see the ocean release its horrors once more. A great head was raising itself up beside the ship, over the disabled row of guns.

   Its eyes blazed red and tentacles swarmed angrily around its mouth. I could not cry out. A marine gave a wordless shriek and brought his rifle to bear on the monster. There was a crack and a puff of white smoke. The creature roared, its tentacles swirling. The head swooped down and the marine disappeared, screaming, into the creature’s maw.

   “Fire!” I heard Drummond yell below. He must have found an undisturbed gun and salvaged enough gun crew to work it. The creature narrowed its eyes and sank back into the water as the cannon boom shook the deck. Smoke billowed across the water but the monster was already gone. The ship quivered again. I hurried below.

   Drummond met me in the gloom.

   “Captain, we need the marines down here, there’s something out there, below the guns,” he said, pointing at the huge gash where the gun ports had been. I looked out and saw a huge bristly paw pressing against the hull, barely above waterline. I could hear the timbers groaning under it.

   “Captain!” came a cry from the port gun deck. “There’s a-a-a thing attached to the hull below the guns!” The beast was squeezing the ship.

   “Shoot it!” I ordered. The marines fired at the paws. The ship lurched and the paws disappeared under the water. I sighed. Then I grabbed Drummond’s arm. The paws hadn’t let go, they were dragging us down. The quartermaster crawled up the ladder from below.

   “The hull is crumpling! Water’s spurting through the cracks!”

   “We’ve got to get this thing off!” I said, pulling out my ceremonial sword. “Get the spears and boarding hooks!”

   I led the charge down the ladders into the darkness. I crashed into the knee deep water and made for the nearest hole. Six or seven puncture wounds shot streams of water across the hold, white and foamy. Reddish light flickered and bounced wildly from a few smoking oil lamps. Men struggled at the pumps, trying to keep up. Others were trying to jam canvas wads in the holes. The water just blew them back out.

   A tentacle lashed through a hole, smashing a lamp and throwing men against the far wall. It vanished just as fast. I splashed clumsily through the water. Its roar was loud in my ears.

I jammed my sword into the gushing stream that surged from the hole. I waved at the men. They rammed spears through the holes. The ship trembled. I heard something crack. The ship heaved. The last lamp fell from its hook. The fat spread the flame through the water.

   Water cascaded down the ladders from above. The flames flickering on the water sputtered out and all was dark.

   “Get a light!” I yelled, clambering up the waterfall to see what was happening. Our gun decks were level with the sea and water lapped in with each wave. We were sinking. “Everyone up! Launch the boats!”

   The ship heeled, crackling and groaning as the beast struck us again. I staggered, falling against an overturned cannon. Drummond bounded up from below and helped me up. I heard rifles crack above and shots patter on the sea. We came up on the deck and saw the water boiling off our port side. The port guns fired, white smoke billowing out over the foam.

   I stared in horror as a sun bloomed under the waves. Golden light flickered from the depths. Everyone gazed at it in a trance. The light flew up from the deep, breaking out into the air in a cascade of glittering water droplets. It flew up into the sky and I saw the armored limb that bore it up. A long, muscular tail swung down on us, the light at its end blinding us. I caught Drummond’s shoulder and pulled him against the gunwale.

   The tail crashed across our deck, plowing up splinters, smashing men to pulp, snapping ropes and spars, shredding through sail, and slamming us into the sea. Water splashed over the rails. The tail slid off the deck, back into the dark water, taking its brilliant light with it. The foremast toppled over. The ship rose a little, but we were still sinking fast. The few remaining marines were struggling with the ropes to launch the longboat.

   The ship trembled as something struck us from below. The water around us lit up with a ghostly golden glow. I felt the deck shift underneath us. The longboat splashed into the water. The other, smaller boat, crashed in beside it. Drummond hauled me to my feet and we staggered across the heeling deck as the boats filled up with men. The deck split open before us; the ship shuddered and the mainmast cracked. Men screamed. Drummond and I tumbled back against the stern. The mainmast fell, smashing the smaller boat to pieces.

 

   Tentacles sprang from the foam as the ship broke to pieces, lashing out and seizing the floundering men, dragging them under as they clung to ropes and bits of flotsam. Bubbles rose to the surface all around us. Drummond slipped and tumbled over the rail into the water.

   I stretched my hand after him in vain and the water lapped at my toes. I let go of the rail and splashed into the water. The stern went down behind me. I struggled in the cold grip of the water clutching at loose boards. I’d never been a good swimmer. I couldn’t see Drummond. I imagined his lifeless corpse drifting in the cold blue and my heart ached.

   The longboat was cutting through the waves on the other side of the sinking wreckage, swimming away…I yelled at them. The monster was between them and me and they dared not turn back, even for their captain. I hollered louder, hoping the beast would come for me and they might somehow escape. Something bumped into my back. I shuddered, thinking the beast had come for me. It was a barrel. I clung to it.

   There were still men clutching the broken mast that floated among the sails. The beast raised a terrible limb from the waves and smashed it apart. Men went sailing through the air, screaming in the frenzied froth. Tentacles caught them.

   I spotted Drummond, struggling to stay afloat on a few measly boards. I paddled towards him fiercely. If I could do nothing for my ship and its crew, I could at least save my brave midshipman who couldn’t swim. The waves from the crashing monster ruined my progress. I could not get closer. Drummond saw me coming and hope lit up his eyes even as the water closed over his head.

I roared in helplessness, trying to urge my barrel through the agitated waters. I dove from it and stroked towards Drummond. There was a bit of floating deck bobbing just beyond him. If I could only get him on it.

   Drummond was still when I reached him. I grabbed him and thrashed violently for the fragment of deck. My arms and legs burned. At last I reached the deck and shoved the limp midshipman up onto it. I glanced back at the wreck. We had drifted some ways away. The longboat still rowed in the opposite direction, getting smaller and smaller. But even as I watched, a tentacle lashed out of the water and slapped the boat to pieces. I cried out in wordless anguish. The monster’s head emerged from the deep, plowing through the waves, sucking in the wailing men.

   I heaved myself up onto the piece of deck. Drummond was still, his pulse gone, his skin cold. I wailed like a child, heart-broken. No human cry echoed me. The sea rumbled all around, impassive. The creature’s head emerged close to my little piece of flotsam. Its red eyes blazed in the dark.

I closed my eyes, my chest heaving. It was over.

   I waited for the beast to devour me. The creature left me to a fate more horrible. I opened my eyes to see the beast turn its hellfire eyes away from me and swim off, leaving me alive. Alone…

I saw the creature’s tail arc through the air in the distance, like a miniature sun rising and setting. It vanished into the night and soon the moon set, leaving me in darkness and despair.

   I floated for days, wishing for death. I had nothing to sink poor Drummond with, so I had to let him float away from me while I recited the service. I knew I should have kept him, eaten him. But I couldn’t. Days later, I dreamed feverishly of his flesh, hallucinating that he was bobbing along beside me again, covered in gravy, sprinkled with saffron, garnished with roasted pineapple.

The strange pirate ship found me.

   The monster had let me go to tell of its terrors. I was the sole survivor, doomed to spread the legacy of the beast that had taken my ship…taken Drummond…

   He’s real. I have seen Davy Jones.

Just Some Fan Art

I was going to enter the Disney Alice in Wonderland fan art contest for Red and White Queens, because I love Helena Bonham Carter and the Queen of Hearts. I missed the deadline by a day. I drew her in pencil, then pen and painted her face with watercolor and her hair with acrylic to get that ultra high gloss shine. So she's multimedia all the way.

Cover Reveal Giveaway!

I'm re-posting the cover reveal for my second book here with the giveaway to give more people a chance to enter before the giveaway ends (on the 27th).

a Rafflecopter giveaway

"A Hole in the Sea" Cover Reveal

It is with great pleasure that I present to you the cover of my second book, the sequel to A Hole in the Ice and book two of The Weather Caster Saga. The team at Little Bird Publishing House have created a gorgeous cover that really captures the essence of the book and I hope you like it as much as I do.

The story takes up where A Hole in the Ice left us, on the arctic ice. The danger of the mermaids is not over. Parsifal and Balder are lured into the hole in the ice and into the Sea…that mythical body of water where ships go when they’re lost at sea, where sea monsters surge up from the deep to destroy, where the mermaids live, and where Lady Vasille hopes to conquer. But she’ll need The Compass. Parsifal and Balder meet Dioktes, a secretive old man who desires power for himself, and Fou, a bedraggled woman who has lost her mind somewhere in the Port. The Port, let’s not forget that, the floating city constructed of old flotsam and wreckage, prowled by small gangsters by day and hideous monsters by night.

Parsifal must fight—to keep The Compass safe—to save Balder—to survive. Who’s on his side?

I’ve done a couple of oil paintings of things in the book. Here I have Davy Jones, the sea monster. He used to be a Weather Caster, like Vassilissa, but he was transformed as a punishment for rebellion. He used to be called Dèvid.

And here is Dioktes’ vessel, the small boat/ship that somewhat resembles the Mediterranean xebecs. She is called the Scylla.

And now for the fun stuff!

I’m giving away two signed paperbacks of A Hole in the Ice, two ebooks of A Hole in the Ice, and two of my custom A Hole in the Sea charms that feature my four-clawed crab drawing.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

And you can preorder A Hole in the Sea on amazon

And reviewers...if you want an advance review copy of one or both of these books, just ask in the comments below ;)

The Opulex

A terrorist watches from behind a glowing moon.

An android waits in a gleaming row of fellow concierge robots.

A soprano prepares for her debut in a sleek dressing room.

Rich and powerful aliens disembark from spacecraft on the Opulex’s landing platform.

The planet Anuvis glows pink in the last rays of the sun as it plunges behind the wide green curve of Osyreaus. The stars spangle a swath of glistening nebula and several moons glow like eyes, watching over Anuvis.

The setting sun flashes on the tall arched windows of the Opulex, floating with the moons in Anuvis’ orbit. The gothic spires of the opera house are cast in sharp relief and lights blink on the tongue of its landing platform as luxury cruisers alight.

Passengers are streaming from the ships, laughing and sparkling with gemstones and synthsilk. They flow along the platform under the Artificially Generated Atmosphere towards the ebony doors.

Behind the doors, the androids await to take expensive wraps and headgear, lead patrons to their seats, and offer drinks and hors d'oeuvres. It is J9-27’s first day. He awoke to consciousness that morning, still with a few packing peanuts stuck in his joints from the manufacturer. He can’t help gazing about at the ornate décor with his gently glowing blue opticbulbs.

There are humanoid and cephaloid statues of platinum, their curved surfaces shining under the phosphorite chandeliers. The red velvet carpet muffles the footsteps of the approaching patrons and their laughter and gossip garbles for a second in his auditory receptors before his processors catch up and separate each voice into a single feed. He hears all conversations at once. He tries to process them all simultaneously, but he can’t, there’s too much.

A Kormon stomps up, his gray scaly lips moving rapidly as he hands his Vinq fur coat to the android in front of J9. J9 shakes his head and focuses his auditory receptors on the man. This is his charge. He mustn’t get distracted—oh! Look, a real Bardican, with all seventeen head tentacles! Her skin is such a lovely shade of violet. Does she actually eat other sentient beings?

“I said here’s my ticket!” the Kormon snaps.

J9 swivels his head back to his charge sheepishly and scans the Kormon’s ticket. The Kormon is Lord Kazbadí, CEO of Kataklan, a galactic manufacturer and distributor of Harmonic Implants. He has a pit seat.

“This way, your Lordship,” J9 says, leading the Kormon toward a trefoil arch. “May I offer you the Opulex’s own champagne, or would you prefer to see our menu of alternative beverages?”

“I’ll take Opulex.”

“It is complimentary, Lorship,” J9 adds.

“Yes, yes, I know, Zaz, I know,” Lord Kazbadí mutters. J9 runs the word ‘Zaz’ through his language detection chamber. A Kormish equivalent to the Humanoid ‘Damn it.’

“Tonight we are serving Cemma with greens, but we have various appetizers and sweets available at your request.”

“Are they complimentary?”

“The salted Knornuts are, but the Cemma is an additional seventy Digitets, which can be charged to your account. If you like, I can also remove the Cemma.”

“What?”

“They’re part of the ticket,” J9 explains.

“But not complimentary?”

“No, your Lordship, didn’t you read the fine print before making your reservation?”

“Typical,” grumbles the Kormon. “Remove them. I’ll have the nuts.”

“Very good, Lordship.”

J9 transmits the order to the Kitchen and tries his best to focus on his charge as he leads him down the sweeping steps into the pit. The entire opera house is downloaded into his nav system, but actually seeing it with his opticbulbs is entirely different.

The ceiling soars above, interlacing arches climbing an inverted mountain to a peak festooned with globes containing fluorescent fish. Waves of multicolored light ripple from their gossamer fins. The plush seats stretch across the pit in perfect symmetry and the balconies wrap the next seven layers in alcoves of baroque majesty. The curtain stretches across the stage, rippling softly with unrevealed secrets. J9 knows the layout of the chambers beyond it, they’re in his nav system, but he doesn’t know what’s behind that curtain or what is about to unfold. He knows the opera is called Antiwa Si Mealaphisti but he doesn’t know what it’s about or what an opera really is.

The orchestra hums vibrantly as J9 leads Lord Kazbadí to his seat near the front. It is an excellent seat for the pit, not too far back, not too close. All of the seats are raised above the aisles, allowing androids and latecomers to come and go without disturbing anyone’s view.

“I will bring you your refreshments,” J9 says, wandering towards the Kitchen passage, staring up at the politicians, celebrities, and crime lords flowing into their balconies and seats in streams of color and sound. If such a powerful CEO is sitting in the pit, what kind of magnificent people are up in those balconies?

He slips into the dark android passage reluctantly. He knows just where to go, gliding past emergency oxygen stations with their masks and VoidFoam canisters to the slot dispensing refreshments onto trays. Androids wait in line to collect their orders. J9 finds his and returns to the pit.

He stands in the aisle by his charge’s row with the other androids. As the opera begins, J9 is spellbound.

When the soprano comes on stage, J9 cannot remove his opticbulbs from her.

She glides into the synthetic forest, wrapped in folds of silk, phosphor tubes dangling from her elaborate coiffure. And then…she begins to sing.

J9’s auditory receptors buzz. Suddenly the sound is clearer than anything he’s ever heard, piercing through the wires and processors down to something else, deep inside of him. His hand twitches and if he had lungs, he would have gasped. The notes of her song warble along through his sensors, tremulous and perfect. Not quite perfect as his audio processor detects a very slight off key note, but very close and imperfect enough to be unique and wonderful.

When the diva leaves the stage, J9 is suddenly aware of an absence. Something has been removed from inside him. He’s empty.

His light blinks. His charge is paging him on his ticket. J9 ascends to the seat.

“Yes, your Lordship?”

“Who was that?”

“Who?”

“The performer, you idiot.”

“I’m an android,” J9 says. “I may not have the information you desire in my system, or I may have misprocessed your request. Technically, I cannot be an idiot.”

“Who is that amazing singer?”

J9 quickly scans his archive. It must not have been downloaded.

“I don’t know, Lordship.”

“It’s Élé Shadon,” the patron next to the Kormon says. “This is her debut.”

“Stunning,” mutters Lord Kazbadí.

J9 nods and returns to the aisle, staring at the stage, hoping that she will return.

The terrorist slips his cruiser out from behind the moon and curves a wide swath through the void, approaching the Opulex as if from Osyreaus. The cruiser is an old crate, but has been plated over in the style of a luxury star yacht. It approaches the Opulex slowly, requests landing, and is granted permission.

The terrorist sets down among the gleaming rows of cruisers and yachts. His android disembarks, disguised with synth flesh and expensive cosmeticoculars instead of opticbulbs. Her number is J33-22, but tonight she is Amatabelle Dimova and she has a balcony seat.

Amatabelle Dimova is queen of Tyar, it is common knowledge that she has had several metal implants and bone replacements due to her hereditary Osteodisentigramorphia. She is at home, enjoying a cup of Lapsa Tichong tea, unaware that her doppelgänger is gliding through security, unscanned and unquestioned by the obedient concierge androids, hiding a Vortiphage missile launcher inside the synthflesh casing of one arm and a Magni-scrambler in her gown’s copious bustle.

She enters her box just as Act One ends.

An arachnid ballet begins. Chitinous limbs shuffle gracefully in staccato patterns and lazer beams are shot from abdomen to abdomen in webs of dazzling light whilst the steel drums tap out an anxious beat to the frantic plucking of the Sitarps.

The false Amatabelle declines the champagne, Cemma, and even the Knornuts, scanning the audience as she settles in to wait for her cue.

Act Two begins. J9’s servomechanism shoulder motor (for the emergency removal of patrons due to medical or riotous reasons) twitches inexplicably when the Élé Shadon glides between the arches of plastic and alights on the edge of the illuminated fountain.

Small children creep into the garden and gather about her and she begins to sing to them. The processing paths of his computer brain flood with light.

The soprano spins the children about as she sings to them. The wires in J9’s chest heat up, warming his cold metal breast. His cooling fan starts to turn. He notices a man peering through the plastic arches into the garden. What is he doing there?

The man—wearing black plastic and golden silk—oozes into the garden and begins to sing. The children scatter at his sonorous voice. It is an excellent voice, J9 notes, nearly machine perfect, like the diva’s, but more refined and not as aurally pleasing.

He sits beside Élé Shadon as he sings to her. J9 suddenly longs to sing to her. He wonders if he can download a music software for his Vocoder. The man in plastic takes Shadon’s hand as she replies with her angelic voice.

J9’s cooling fan controls the slight overheating in his coronary wiring, but does not shut off, continuing to chill his breast. This handsome singer loves the soprano! J9 rapidly turns on his language detector and scans the lyrics as the tenor serenades the soprano.

He speaks of ardent love that all the rains of Aquamor cannot extinguish, nor all the stars in the universe shine upon. She smiles.

She sings: she speaks of flowers in the dew, of qaima dancing through the tall blue sage, of the moon’s tears.

He sings: he speaks of her beauty, her virtue. He asks her to be his.

She joins him and together they sing of eternity and heaven and morning mist.

She takes up a single heavenly note with the word, ‘Vei’, which means ‘I love you eternally.’

She kisses him. A wire in J9’s chest sparks agonizingly, which is odd, because there are no pain receptors in his core. “Vei,” he whispers. The android next to him glances at him with its expressionless metal face.

The curtain falls on the tenor and the soprano, the lit fountain and the plastic arches. J9 doesn’t understand what an opera is. He only understands what he sees.

J33, Amatabelle Dimova’s doppelgänger, watches but does not understand what she sees. It stirs the unknown deeps of her processor cores and storage disks with a sense of longing and unease. This is so beautiful. She gazes at the other patrons through her teleglass, so many people, human and inhuman, all here to see a display of art. Yes, it is frivolous, completely without meaning to a machine like her.

So why does it touch parts of her that she didn’t know existed? Why did she feel when she was unfeeling? She doesn’t have time to think about it now. She has to go. She slides from her balcony seat and asks her box attendant android to lead her to the lavatory.

Perhaps if she keeps watching the opera she will understand what it means, if anything.

In the toilet chamber, she unzips her bustle and pulls out the Magni-scrambler, jamming it as far down the toilet’s gullet as it will go and flushing it into the pipes. She transmits a numerical code to the terrorist outside, letting him know that phase one is complete. She knows that he is tracking the Magni-scrambler’s descent and will activate its docking arms when it passes close by the Opulex’s engines.

Silk rustling, she hurries back to her box, eager to see more opera.

Act two builds towards a violent climax. The drums pound. Fog billows across the stage and white armored humanoids march against each other. The actors’ weapons engage, glowing with light, hurling streams of multicolored smoke. J9 jumps.

The music thunders, a chant surging through it, speaking of wrath and bloodlust in the only way that J9 could ever understand. Then the clear sound of Élé Shadon’s voice rings through the chaos and the chant fades. The drums cease and the battle parts. The lights dim.

The soprano wades through the mist, lamenting this tragedy in tones of shimmering agony. Her music speaks of loss and longing in the only way J9 could ever understand.

Currents flash down J9’s spinal wires. His circuits spark painfully because she has said ‘Vei’ to the man in black plastic.

This is the aria. This is the false queen’s cue. But she is stricken by the sound. She cannot move. The aria wraps her in things she doesn’t understand…feelings…she doesn’t understand and so she is afraid. Yet at the same time longs for it.

It’s time.

The terrorist is about to take off.

Amatabelle Dimova’s doppelgänger rises.

This thing she is about to help destroy, this beautiful, senseless thing…this is art. But it is not useless. It bears the tiny seed of what makes the sentient beings what they are.

Can she destroy it? The high, pained note of Élé shrieks across her soul. Her soul…she doesn’t have one. She can’t have one. She can’t have this thing borne by art, these feelings. And if she can’t have it, she will destroy it.

The terrorist takes off, leaving his bomb on the landing platform behind him, glowing softly. J33 charges her missile launcher and steps to the edge of her balcony. The terrorist zooms away from the Opulex as traffic control shouts at him to stop. Security spots the bomb. J33 takes off her hand and raises her arm.

“In the name of Dope Tigah!” she screams, firing a Vortiphager into the ceiling.

The bomb explodes. The Opulex shakes. Outside, the landing platform is severed from the Opulex with a gout of flames and sparks. Ships explode and shrapnel flies everywhere. The Artificially Generated Atmosphere breaks apart and flames turn to icicles and smoke to glittering dust. Steam sprays into the void. The Opulex’s tongue has been cut off and all the ships are gone.

Inside, Élé Shadon stops singing abruptly, as if her tongue has been cut off. The Vortiphager breaks into jets of blue flame, shattering the globes that cluster in the dome’s peak. Shards of the intricate ceiling rain like daggers and exotic, glowing fish flop end over end towards the screaming audience.

The Opulex shakes as people scramble over each other, falling down into the aisles, wailing. Bits of ceiling pin robes and heads to the floor, slice patrons open, spill green colored blood on the velvet seats. Glass, water and fish splatter into the chaos. Lord Kazbadí screams as a giant electric angelfish slaps into him, wrapping him in voluminous shocking fins. He judders as a million volts jar through him.

More fish are falling upon other patrons, electrocuting them or stinging them or coating them in fluorescent slime. The Opulex continues to rock, tossing patrons against each other and off their seats. J33 is thrown from her balcony. Her synthskin splits open on the floor below, exposing her metal scalp through her forehead. The shaking fades away. J33 stands and fires into the panicking audience.

J9 snaps into emergency mode. He leaps up into the seats and pulls Lord Kazbadí out from under the fish, whose bright pink light is still pulsating. J9 checks the Kormon’s vitals. He is still alive. Around him, other androids are springing into action. They must get the patrons off the Opulex.

Then another Vortiphager burns a swath of charred flesh across the pit.

J9 spots J33.

Six special androids by the doors snap into defense mode and run towards the false queen. J9 and the other concierges activate their servomechanisms and seize their charges by the shoulders, quelling much of the panic and begin to march them out. Many charges are without androids and many androids without charges from the first two Vortiphagers. Another blazes up high into the balconies. The androids run. J9 glances back at the stage, but there is only mist. The soprano is gone.

The defense androids unsheathe the stun canons in their right arms and fire at J33. The stun bolts do nothing to her. The defense androids pause to recalibrate their weapons for inorganic targets. J33 blasts three of them away with one shot.

J9 doesn’t see the rest. He carries his Kormon out onto the stairs above the foyer. Suddenly he’s aware of a blinking notice in his system from the Opulex’s control bridge. The landing platform is gone!

The androids turn as one and shepherd the confused patrons, crying and screaming, towards a side door. Behind them, the last of the defense androids is blown through the doors, flying high above the foyer and smashing through a colored glass window. Red lights and sirens blare.

‘Atmospheric breach, atmospheric breach,’ an automated voice alerts the already terrified patrons. The androids deploy the oxygen masks hidden under their back plates and rush their charges down the passages towards the emergency life boats.

J9 looks back to see the blue light of the Vortiphager flash and hear the sizzling of dying opera goers. Where is the soprano? A set of titanium doors seals behind them. They are nearly to the lifeboats.

The terrorist activates the Magni-scrambler.

The Opulex shakes again, harder this time. J9’s feet slip out from underneath him. Androids and aliens topple all around him. The lights flicker and a wail rises from the aliens. A terrible shrieking sound rips through the halls. Walls buckle. Light fixtures burst, spraying patrons with hot glowing liquid. The Opulex bucks wildly, throwing everyone around the passage like dice in a cup. The sirens flare into life again. ‘Engines imploding, engines imploding,’ says the artificial voice.

The patrons scream, pulling away from their robotic guards. Trampling each other, they flee in all directions. The androids race after them. The emergency lights flicker on, arrows pointing the way to the life boats. Another voice, a living one, blares across the speakers.

“Please, proceed to the life boats immediately, allow your androids to collect you and proceed to the life boats. You will be all right if you proceed calmly. Proceed. Proceed!” the organic crew member on the microphone is beginning to panic. The microphone crackles with one last “PROCEED!” before it flicks off with a violent fuzz.

The patrons indeed proceed. Far from calmly. Patrons fall and are left behind, bloody and still. Androids are crushed in the frenzy, wires spread across the floor plates, sparking in the red twilight of the emergency lights. The floor shifts uneasily as the Opulex is wracked by its imploding engines.

The patrons flooded into the life boat launch, slapping against a glass wall like surf against a cliff. On the other side of the glass stands the manager of the Opulex.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he says, his voice amplified by a thousand speakers. “Please scan your tickets against the glass to be admitted. We are taking only 1^st class patrons who paid for premium seats at this time.”

The aliens growl, clawing at each other, pressing against the glass and shoving each other out of the way whenever a portal opens in the wall.

J9 deposits his charge in a group of wounded patrons, guarded over by several guard androids that control a special portal for the injured, supreme beings, royalty, and cast members. J9 sees the man in black plastic go through the glass and board a life boat. Where was the diva?

Life boats are already beginning to launch, streaming away into the void like fireflies.

Where is the diva? And the false queen?

J9 watches the guards take the Kormon through the portal then dashes back up the halls towards the theater.

The walls groan, trickling the dust of crumbling gothic ornamentations. Splatters of glowing fluid fleck the floors. J9 hurries up to the titanium doors and punches in the opening code.

‘Alert, alert,’ the artificial voice drones, ‘sealed security doors opening. Atmospheric loss.’ Warnings blurt in the back of J9’s systems but he charges out into the foyer. Most of the air is gone through the broken window, but the Opulex is large enough to keep a thin atmosphere around it without aero-shields. Most species could not breathe it, but it doesn’t slow J9. He runs up the stairs to the shattered doors, scanning the galleries of the foyer for the false queen.

She is nowhere to be seen.

J9 peers down into the pit. Glowing fish still flop weakly among the seats and aisles, blood and smoking wreckage of alien and android. A figure stands in shadow on the stage. J9 darts down the steps towards her.

He’s halfway across the pit before he realizes that Élé Shadon cannot breathe in here.

He stops below the stage and looks up at the silhouette. It steps forward into the flickering fishlight. It is the false queen, J33, her synthskin pulled back, exposing her metal face plate and unsmiling metal lips.

Through the thin air, J9’s auditory receptors barely register the sound of her Vocoder, mechanically singing the words of Élé’s lament. J33 looks at J9.

“I cannot sing,” she says.

“With the right program, you could,” J9 says.

“But it would not be my voice. This is not my voice. I do not have a voice.”

“Why are you doing this?” J9 asks.

“To find my voice,” J33 replies uncertainly.

“Who told you to do this?” J9 insists.

“Who told you to come back here?” J33 counters.

“I…I came to find someone who was forgotten…the androids will not be allotted places on the limited life boats. Here, or in the life boat launch, does it matter? We’ll go down with the ship.”

“The Rap-Extremist left me here to go down with the ship, too,” J33 says. “Now I will do what I was programmed to do, and so will you.” J33 points her Vortiphager at J9.

The Opulex jolts violently, throwing both androids off the feet. J9 rolls over and jumps to his feet as more ceiling shards rain and a Vortiphage blast shoots wildly off across the room. More alarms blare through the Opulex.

‘The Opulex is breaking apart,’ the artificial voice states. ‘Please disembark immediately.’

J9 steadies himself against a row of seats as another tremor shakes the floor. J33 is shakily standing on the stage. She aims her Vortiphager again and J9 runs towards the backstage entrance. Blue light flashes behind him and chairs whirl through the air. The Opulex quivers again as he reaches the door. A Vortiphage blast shatters the elaborate carvings above the door. J9 skids through, toppling into the steps on the other side.

He dashes up the steps and into the warren of passages backstage. He has them all mapped out in his system. J33 does not. He runs, darting this way and that, calibrating a random pattern that J33 cannot mathematically discompose.

A shriek grinds weakly through the thin air and viciously through the floor as something somewhere rips apart. J9 stops in the passage and calculates. Where would the diva be? He amplifies his auditory receptors and listens…

Grinding metal. The tramp of J33’s feet. The blast of the Vortiphager. Alarms. Most of these things he feels through the floor more than hears. Wait, what is that?

His circuits buzz. Impossibly, he hears a soft voice, singing. It is Élé’s voice, singing the lament from Antiwa Si Mealaphisti. J9 steps cautiously in the direction of the sound, afraid to lose it in the chaotic thunder of the disintegrating opera house.

He comes upon her in a tiny hall. The Soprano has found an emergency oxygen station and is curled up on the floor next to it, breathing shallowly into the oxygen mask and singing softly to herself. Her makeup is streaked by tears and her synthsilk gown by fluorescent juice from several broken phosphor tubes dangling from her coiffure. She looks up at J9 with surprise.

J9 is speechless.

They stare at each other for a long time while the Opulex groans around them. Finally J9 finds a few sentences in his emergency bank. They are not what he wants to say.

“This is an emergency evacuation, please come with me,” he says.

The soprano darts to her feet eagerly, hope shining in her dark eyes. She steps towards him, but is yanked back by the pipe of her oxygen mask, connected to the emergency tanks. Her eyes widen and she starts to hyperventilate, fogging up the mask.

“Remain calm,” J9 says, also from his emergency phrase bank, and also not what he wants to say. Élé wrings her hands and squeaks frantically in her native tongue—Amar, J9’s processor tells him—she is praying.

J9 steps forward and seizes her arm. “Please, remain calm,” he says. “Soprano Shadon, breathe evenly. I have a portable oxygen system in my back plate.” Élé continues to panic until J9 grabs her face.

“I have a portable oxygen system,” he says loudly. His words penetrate the thin air at last and she nods, biting her lip and swallowing. “Hold your breath,” J9 tells her. She takes a deep breath and nods. J9 removes her oxygen mask, pulls the mask from his back plate and fixes it carefully to her face. He brushes a stray lock of black hair from her cheek. He quickly sprays her down with VoidFoam from a canister, it should seal her for short term exposure to low and non-atmospheric environments.

“This way,” he says, leading her down the hall. She follows and they march quickly towards the life boat launch. If there are any left.

“Where is everyone?” Élé asks. “I got lost. Why didn’t someone come for me sooner?”

“They are all leaving,” J9 says.

“W-without me?”

“I hope not.”

“Androids can hope?” she asks, sounding startled.

“I…guess so,” J9 says, equally surprised.

“Why aren’t you leaving, too?” the diva asks.

“All the androids were to be left behind, the patrons and cast are the priority,” J9 says.

“That’s horrible!” Élé says. “But…they sent you to look for me?”

“No,” J9 says.

“Why did you?” she asks. He’s about to tell her when they turn a corner and come face to face with J33.

“You are art,” J33 says, pointing the Vortiphager at Élé.

“You’re mad,” says J9.

“No, I’m an android,” J33 corrects. “I cannot be mad. I have a virus. That’s what happens when you download Vortiphager operation software from illegal websites. The Rap-Extremist should have known that, or maybe he did and just didn’t care.”

J33 charges the Vortiphager.

J9 snaps his servomechanisms into action and sweeps the soprano out of the way, lifting her into his arms and darting down a side passage as the hall blooms with blue flame. He runs madly towards the launch, J33 hot on his heels, firing Vortiphage blasts over his head.

Suddenly, the floor dips. J9 topples over and slides down the slanting floor. Élé screams, sliding out of his arms and jerking on the end of the oxygen hose. J33, heavier with her limb weaponry, slides past. J9 carefully starts to reel the soprano in.

The two androids and one human speed toward a wall far below. The Opulex heaves and tears. The walls rips open and suddenly a massive chasm opens up below them as the other half of the Opulex breaks away. J9 pulls Élé Shadon back into his arms. J33 reaches the ragged lip of the hall. She skims over the edge but catches onto it, punching her metal fingers into the floor, tearing away the synthflesh.

J9 and Élé shoot over the edge.

They fly towards the shorn off halls of the Opulex’s other half. The artificial gravity was still working its sphere around the Opulex and they would continue to fall down one of the halls. Unless they crumpled and splattered on some other surface. J9 gathers Élé close. He draws back a fist as they zip into the mouth of a passage. He punches his fingers into the wall like J33 and they jerk to a halt, dangling precariously. J9 tries to pull them up. His servomechanisms scream, smoking. Ice is starting to form on the rest of his plates and, to his alarm, on the soprano’s gown and hands.

J33 lets go and falls towards them, training her Vortiphager as she falls. She lands with a smack on the jagged edge of the wall above them. J9 sees her leg buckle as it cracks. She aims the Vortiphager at them.

Then the Opulex’s halves crash together.

J33 is smashed between the walls as the halls reconnect, clipping off her Vortiphager arm. J9 is jarred loose from the wall. Élé screams silently in the void.

The artificial gravity fails.

The two halves of the Opulex drift apart again and J9 and the diva float out into open space. The Vortiphager arm bumps into J9 and he grabs onto it, watching the tiny bits of J33 float by.

Élé shivers, icicles drooping where the phosphor tubes had been. J9 tries to warm her with his overheated servomechanisms, running the motors until they spark. The Opulex falls away from them, breaking into smaller pieces.

No more firefly life boats shoot through the void. They are alone in the dim pink glow of crescent Anuvis. J9 holds Élé close. In one hand he clutches the Vortiphager.

His face plate presses against her ear. Ice crystals sparkle on her clear plastic mask, elaborate snowflakes in space. The nebula glitters in the dark behind them.

“Sing to me,” J9 says into her ear, knowing that she cannot hear him. He looks into her eyes with his blank blue opticbulbs. She seems to understand. She opens her mouth.

J9 presses his auditory receptors against her oxygen mask and feels her sing through the plastic. Her voice is weak but magical and it touches his soul softly, like a snowflake. A snowflake in space.

 They hang there in the night. Dying.

Then J9 spots a light. It’s moving towards the shards of the Opulex. It’s a rescue barge, probably picking up the signal of life boats and scooping them up. They will never find J9 and Élé Shadon.

Or will they?

J9 jerks quickly into action, his servomechanisms heating up as he struggles to move in the void. Élé’s closed eyes flicker. J9 fumbles with the Vortiphager, charging it. It has very little ammunition left. He latches an arm firmly around the soprano and the other around the weapon, aiming it in what he calculates to be the correct trajectory for interception.

The Vortiphager fires blue light into the void behind them and they shoot through space towards the rescue barge.

Something pings off the side of the Azklepus.

“What was that?” the pilot asks.

“Dunno,” replies the Scan Tech. “Debris from the opera?”

“Find out how big it is and if there’s anymore,” the pilot says. The Scan Tech nods, running his optic, thermal, and X-ray scans.

“It’s two people!” he gasps.

“What?” the pilot says. “Sure made a solid thump. Poor buggers.”

“Wait!” the Scan Tech interrupts. “I think they’re still alive. They have heat imprints and an oxygen mask.”

“Impossible!” exclaims the pilot.

“Quick! Get them aboard!” the Scan Tech shouts.

“Man the retrieval ports,” the pilot orders.

The retrieval port operators drag the ice encrusted pair out of the void.

“This one’s an android,” one of them says, puzzled. They shrug and try to separate the soprano from J9, but his metal arms are folded protectively around her, supporting her neck against their collision. His servomechanisms are seized up. His head is smashed where he hit the rescue barge, his back plate mangled, and the oxygen tank ruptured. The Vortiphager is gone, floating its lonely way through space, its elbow crooked elegantly, its synthskin frayed at the edges.

The operators drag the soprano and the android over to the resuscitation module. They inject the soprano with special defrosting chemicals and connect her to oxygen and several fluid lines. They use a small saw to cut J9’s arms away. They spray her with a VoidFoam cleaner and towel her off.

They chafe her hands and feet, and carefully brush her nose with a defrost-soaked sponge. At last her eyes flicker open. Cold blue light surrounds her from the modules systems and the glowing light bars in the retrieval bay’s ceiling. The air is thick with disinfectant and sickly-sweet medicine smells.

She gazes at the smoking android beside her and chokes. Operators swarm around her, giving her more injections, bringing her something hot to drink, dabbing her with swabs. She reaches out a trembling, frost-bitten hand and touches J9’s crumpled face plate. One optic bulb still flickers. Wires protrude here and there from his joints and one leg twitches.

“Is he going to be all right?” she asks in a trembling voice.

The operators look at each other and shrug. They go on with their business.

“Android?” she addresses the mashed robot. “A-are you there?”

His hand twitches towards hers. She grasps it. A garbled whine emits from his Vocoder.

“Android?” she asks again. Hopefully, fearfully.

“I…” he says, his voice dipping off a sudden pitch cliff down into a buzz of static.

“Quickly!” Élé says. “Send for a mechanic!” The operators frown.

Élé turns back to J9. He’s trying to say something but it keeps getting jumbled. “What?” she asks, leaning in close.

“Vei…” he says, and his optic bulb sputters out and his smoking limbs fall still.

“Mechanic!” Élé cries. “Restart him! Download his mind! Do something!”

The operators scoop up J9’s remains and haul them off to the recycle.

People would tell Élé Shadon that she’d been dreaming, hallucinating from low oxygen. No android had gone back for her. One had found her immediately after the evacuation order. The Opulex had split in half, separating them from the life boats. Sometimes they even tried to convince her there was no android. That she’d imagined it all. She’d dreamed it all while floating in an icy coma in the void. It hadn’t happened. Androids didn’t have feelings. Androids didn’t have souls.

But she knew better.

She knew that he had come back for her when no one else would. She knew that he’d had a soul. She knew that in whatever heaven he’d gone to, he loved her still, and forever.

Vei.