The Oracle…

“Welcome, T’Kara.” A slight giggle. “Queen of the Robots.”

Nadia resisted an urge to groan at the remark.

“Who are you?” Nadia demanded.

“An ‘Oracle’….” There came a long pause, and then amused laughter. “I find though that I am fond of the word for such in your Falcanian tongue. Know me as Veheer.”

An attempt at a casual telepathic examination of the spectral woman quickly revealed to Nadia that this one’s mental powers far exceeded even those of her own. Shifting her eyesight, an infrared scan made it clear to Nadia this wasn’t a fellow Morningstar, no blue light, or sign of positronics. Damn! What is she? IR reads zero, and no biorhythms. A hologram? “You didn’t answer,” her bright eyes now dangerous slits. “Who are you?”

“I have stood before the Ziggurat of Ur, and witnessed the dawn of civilization.” Veheer intoned. “Watched humanity walk beside his gods, and a poet take a sword up against his deity for the love of a woman.”

Being a Valküri, comfortable in the facade of religion and mysticism Nadia was most familiar with the trappings that this Oracle now employed. She herself routinely manipulated others with such tricks and wondered why this obvious superior mind felt the need to fall back on them when both women understood the charade for its true nature.

Nadia encounters a mystery, which leads to more questions than it does answers while on a diplomatic trip to Iran in “Among Bright Stars…” Neo-human #2.

Arrival At GenKon

On a warm June evening an ox-blood painted Humvee pulled up outside of Genetic Konnections Incorporated. The sky was rusty orange, tinted with a suggestion of the same sanguine shade as that of the military style car that had arrived before the huge reflective glass building.

Four figures concealed in angular shouldered black trench coats jumped out of the Hummer: Kenneth Pierson, a muscular African-American with a shaved head and goatee, Kenneth glanced from side to side surveying the grounds of the empty parking lot, noticing it was not totally abandoned. A purple Maserati 3200 GT was parked next to an old Volkswagen van. Also in the lot, but off on its own a cream-colored BMW. Kenneth wondered whom the vehicles belonged to.

He stood with hands clenched behind his back beside the hulking form of Pierson. Roderik Visal waited, considering what was to come. The tips of his spiky red-brown hair were colored golden blond.

“It’s usually busier when I’m here.” Vance Turner said. “Thanks to Aria I come back and forth here enough!” the lanky man exclaimed. He straightened his glasses, then adjusted his SWAT Cap.

Roderik only rolled his eyes, noticed that his friends looked expectantly at him at mention of Aria’s name. “Any smart remarks Oswald?” He asked, mind still tingled at mention of Aria.

“Nope.” Oswald Knox replied the fourth of the Phoenix Project members from behind coke bottle glasses, which he wore more for their disarming effect then anything else. Who’d think a “nerd” a threat?

“Well, let’s be off.” Vance advanced.

Before they entered the building Roderik stopped to take a closer look at the hourglass shaped DNA emblem embedded in a sign that read: Genetic Konnections Incorporated  ’… Rebuilding Mankind at the dawn of the genetic renaissance. Our eyes are forever look toward the Morningstar.’

“Hmm.” Roderik thought to himself as he stroked his goatee.

The three – Kenneth, Oswald, and Vance fell into triangle formation around Roderik. They’d done this since they were kids. It was the Falcanian way when acting as honor guard to the Shotar.

They entered the waiting room outside the lab, his three friends moved aside, but Roderik halted dead in his tracks. The Shotar found himself looking upon something, someone he hadn’t expected to see this evening. A young woman dressed in a purple lengha-choli, and bedecked in a myriad amount of jewelry sat and read what looked to be a Femina Magazine, a woman’s publication that sponsored the Miss India pageant. Her dark brown hair was tied in a thick braid, which she absently twirled between two fingers. A yellow carnation affixed to the base of the braid as decoration.

Up from her magazine she glanced, smiled at the newcomers. Large brilliant-blue almond eyes radiant with a deep intelligence brightened even more at the sight of the four men. A tiny beauty mark adorned her chin and again at the tips of her kajal accented eyes: Three dots set in a triangle. She stood, smoothed the side of her lengha, the movement caused her bangles and assorted baubles to make a clanking sound. Offering the Indian greeting with her touching palms she said. “Nameste’ I’m Nadia Korelia, you must be the people my parents have been expecting.”

Roderik just waited, frozen in place, mesmerized by the girl’s eyes, he blinked a couple of times until Vance elbowed him. “Ah…” He stammered, while realized that he didn’t make the best impression, yet he couldn’t find his ability to talk. “…Yes we, ah we’re from the ‘Phoenix Project’.” He at last managed to get out and took a deep breath which he almost regretted. Inhaling Nadia’s spicy scent laced with jasmine. He felt giddy. This girl had knocked him off-balance. Roderik wasn’t sure that he’d be able to get out the spiel he had planned for the Korelias – not with this striking girl here to sidetrack him.

Nadia continued to grinned, made it even more uncomfortable for him as she got closer, and smiled right in Roderik’s face. “Perhaps we should go into the lab?” She suggested. “My Maa and Papa will want to see you – they’re intrigued by your ideas.” She pulled on Roderik’s hand. Looking over her shoulder she added. “And so am I.”

As she pulled him to the security door the exotic girl glanced over and smiled, tugged a bit more intently on his hand. There was a noticeable twinkle in her kajal-accentuated eyes at notice of the dumb struck look on Roderik’s face.  She ran a key card through a slot Nadia then punched in a code, in an instant her French manicured nails danced over the keys. The secure doors slid open.

======================================================================

As you can tell this is actually the first moment Sharr (Roderik) and Nadia meet. A cut scene from On the Forge of War.

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Smashwords: July Summer Sale July 1–31

I’ve entered my books into the Smashwords Summer sale, they range from discounted prices, and FREE reading with the provided coupon codes. Go over and check it out if you have a Smashwords account, and if you don’t, you really should join up!

 

Sale begins at one minute past midnight on July 1 Pacific time.

My full catalog can be found at the link below:

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Falcanian

 

Coupon Codes:

FREE - SSWIN

75% off - SSW75

50% off - SSW50

25% off - SSW25

Nadia – NSFW!!!

 

 

I have been reworking book 2, of The Falcanian Legacy Series book covers. I figured as Frederika gets heavily featured in ‘On the Forge of War’ – both in the story as well in various incarnations on different covers, its only right to place Sharr’s first wife, and queen Nadia, called T’Kara on the next book cover. Also she takes on an active role in shaping things on a political level in ‘Under A Raptor’s Wings’. The teaser cover actually has the bad guy on it, but it was seeming very flat…

This is not a cover, only a character portrait. Mmm… women featured on two book covers. Now I’m not sure what I’ll be doing for the third book. The teaser cover currently has ummm a male, who is very important to the story.

It’s almost a pity I’ll have to put clothes on her for the final version.

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Not Christian, Or Pagan…

London Film Museum (Photo credit: otubo)

Writing The First Technomancer has, at moments forced me to evaluate assumptions about the character of Merlin. There are things we take for granted about him. We assume he’s of the British Isles, usually an old man, with a long white beard. Many of us likely think of Nicol Williamson, as he depicted Merlin in John Boorman‘s Excalibur. I know I do. In that movie he’s sort of an otherworldly creature, a man, who is not a man. Very often, someplace in the back of our minds we also tend to think of Merlin in terms of Druids. I do know he is largely depicted as a pagan, and a Druid in The Mists of Avalon.  A book which splits up male and female spirituality from a very Wiccan, and more broadly Neo-Pagan perspective.

One of the things I’ve set out to do, is make my Merlin beyond any sectarian notion. He is neither (Neo-) Pagan, nor is he a Christian figure. Not that I think many Christians seek to claim Merlin as a representative of their faith. Modern Pagans on the other hand…

A taste from The First Technomancer:

Merlin laughed, and the bishop glowered.

Matters of religion seldom entered Merlin’s equations, not that he thought of himself as a materialist, the inverse in fact, given the scheme of his life. Sure, he made a study of the Druids, whose ways and teachings were now on the wane, relics. But he also counted the Christian messiah as among his blood relations, an uncle. Neither pagan, or Christian, he stood beyond both. Tormenting this bishop, was but a bit of innocent amusement, he harbored no ill will towered Christians… and in truth thought they were a necessity.

As you can see, I actually make my Merlin a nephew of Jesus! Yeah, that’s probably not going to go over well with some of the more militant, strident Neo-Pagans.

Me, I come at all this as a Deist, of  a sort. What sort exactly? Well, you can get a good sense of my metaphysics from my novels. Its a bit unconventional.

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Battlestar Galactica: The Case Of Cami

IMG_6908.JPG (Photo credit: mhuang)

Talking about manipulating emotional reactions made me recall Battlestar Galactica’s two-part miniseries. Short version, mankind gets bombed to near extinction, survivors of the Cylon holocaust band together and try to find a new home.

But there’s a problem, not all of their spaceships have Faster Than Light drives. With the distance in years since watching the series, I realize now it’s actually sort of illogical that there would be any ships without FTL. Why? You see spaceships are almost like a car in BSG. People either use publicly, or privately purchased ships to move between the Twelve Colonies. The whole reason humanity still has space travel when they left Kobol for Caprica and the other worlds is, well they’re spread across 12 planets, which are not at all close to one another. Regardless, even if they were – they’d still require ships which moved a bit faster to move between even worlds “nearby”, sublight would not cut it!

Yet, Laura Roslin happened upon a group of survivors, some of whom seem not to have FTL. Wait what? Why are they in space? Taking a jog around Caprica? That seems a waste of a space ship when you live in a universe that has found a way to beat the speed of light problem, and you keeps star travel around for the presumed purpose to visit and make war on your fellow Colonials, every spaceship built should have FTL. [Next we'll talk about lack of FTL in Firefly - though, Browncoats oddly seem to have artificial gravity...]

In any event, this convenient segue into a moment of drama, and yes that is what it is, was  purely intended to tug at your heart-strings. The writers even knew enough to put a human face on the situation.

Enter Cami, we don’t know much about her, but she seems to like “chicken pie” and expects to meet up with her parents at the Caprica Spaceport.  Yet knowing that, we already by this time guess her mother and father are toast. I suspect President Roslin knew it as well when she spoke to the little girl.

Fast forward a few hours, and the Cylons will soon be swooping in to wipe out the civilian fleet – but wait, not all the civilian ships have FTL, there is not enough room, or time to move those people to ships with FTL. Roslin is forced to make a “Sophie’s choice”, leave some humans to their death, so others will live, or stay and die with them. In what proves to be one of Laura Roslin’s first of many knife-edge choices, she chooses to order the ships to jump before the Cylons arrive to kill them all. Oh, and little Cami – her ship lacks FTL. I guess she will be seeing her family after all…

The scene was setup to echo Lyndon B. Johnson‘s ”Daisy” Political ad, to do exactly what we are talking about here, cause an emotional reaction. Though, in that case it was meant to win an election, not pull one into a piece of entertainment.

I can recall there being much internet outrage because of this scene. Between this, and Six’s “mercy killing” of a baby in its stroller I have a feeling some viewers felt manipulated. But you know what? This is not wrong to do as a writer. People kept watching, and BSG developed a following. Had Ronald D. Moore and his writers written anything less, I don’t think the miniseries would have become a weekly program.

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