I wanted to let you know that Simple Service is now available for pre-order in ebook, and for sale in paperback! The ebook will go live September 9. Here’s the blurb:
A lost starship.
A lost colony.
Two factions.
An expendable son.
When the colony’s governor requisitions the colonists’ personal weapons, Peter Dawe’s father sets him a simple task. Get their weapon back. But the Marss have all the technology, and Peter, a second generation colonist, the youngest of ten, the expendable son, must contend with the guard, palace politics, and his biggest problem of all, Simon, his brother.
And, for the promised snippet, here’s the beginning:
CHAPTER ONE
Peter Dawe had no trouble seeing. Luna had not yet risen to turn her white gaze on the ground and brighten everything almost to day, and Deimos’ dull red face was dark that night. The darkness gave Peter the advantage if his trackers weren’t pan. He was. The descendant of grandparents genetically modified back on Earth, he had the curling horns tight to his head, the night vision, the extra strength and the endurance that those not so gifted lacked.
He leaned against the wall of the small, quiet house and listened.
The trackers were good, almost silent, but Peter had inherited the enhanced hearing geneered into the pan, and he made out the noises and knew what they meant. There were at least three people, and the rub of wool on leather wasn’t too soft for Peter to hear.
The governor’s men carried swords. The first generation on Nwwwlf had ridiculed swords, but the more foresighted had not scoffed. Humanity on Nwwwlf had rapidly lost the god-like powers that had brought the race from another star.
He trusted his pursuers weren’t carrying blasters. He had one of them back now, rescued from the governor’s barracks where his family’s old-tech blaster had been taken after it was stolen—“requisitioned” in the words of the men who had come for it. The heat signature on the blaster was very clear to him. It would show up for any other pan.
One of his pursuers suddenly gulped air, and another hissed for silence. They knew he could hear them. They knew he had better hearing, better vision, and was stronger; and they hated him for it. It made him think they’d seen his head.
They hid maybe one hundred meters away, up the narrow lane between the small stone houses of the new peasant class that worked the communal fields and were grateful for it. Given the fact he could hear them and given that he couldn’t detect their heat signatures, he knew they were behind one of the houses like the one he’d plastered himself against.
The stone of the house felt cool through his shirt, and he leaned his head against the wall, listening. Its occupants slept, their breathing clearly audible through the open window next to him. A smaller person, a child maybe, turned over.
He needed to reach the Beautiful and cross its wide waters.
Another pair had tracked him as well. He could detect no signs of them, and it worried him. He doubted they’d gone home.
He couldn’t let them see him. What he carried at his belt had to just disappear, untraceable to him and his family.
Slowly, gently, he took a step, and his bare toes touched damp turf, Earth grass, not the spongy ground cover of Nwwwlf. First Landing was Earth-rich land.
The men were quick. The noise of a striking match reached him almost at the same time as someone lofted a torch high before it fell to hit the street. They needed the light, Peter noted with grim satisfaction. He didn’t.
He didn’t need to stay near it, and slid to his left, around the house corner and back into darkness.
The darkness lasted only seconds as he made his way across a patch of cabbages, for someone foolishly lit a lantern in the house behind him, a householder no doubt worried by the noise.
“Did you see him?” one of his pursuers shouted at the householder.
“No,” came the fearful reply. “Who are you? What are you doing?”
“Leave him,” another voice said.
Peter crossed the backyards of two houses, ducking behind a clothesline without touching damp sheets. He sent up a prayer no more householders would wake, no one would light any more lanterns, no one would indulge in worry or curiosity and so risk their necks as to call themselves to the attention of the governor’s men. It wouldn’t be his fault, but he would feel responsible.
He reached another space between the houses on the next street over, and waited in a small alley.
Torchlight bobbed in the yards behind him.
“Hands up,” a voice said from the doorway to his right.
“Or we’ll shoot,” said another from the row of houses facing him.
Disbelieving, he flung his hands in the air, dropped and rolled. They might have bows. Neither would be trusted with a blaster, a precious blaster.
An arrow buried itself in the dirt where he had been standing. Maybe the archer was pan and could see in the dark.
The roll brought him to his feet facing north and toward the river, and he ran. He ran flat out. If only men chased him, he would outdistance them. If one proved to be a pan, it was better to face him alone.
He flew across the hard-packed dirt of the narrow lane. Voices sounded behind him as his pursuers abandoned all attempts at stealth. He breathed easily and his legs stretched out in long, ground-eating strides. He could run flat-out for longer than any man.
He wasn’t so sure about another pan.
Hampered by their need to carry torches, his pursuers started to fall behind. Ahead of him lay fields where oats and cabbages had been harvested, and he confronted only ridges of dirt and irrigation ditches between him and the river. They’d make it even harder for his pursuers to catch him.
An engine sounded behind him in the night, and it was close enough to worry him. It was a small motor, with an almost inaudible purr to it in the distance, but Peter heard it. They must have had a motorbike nearby. There’d been no time to send for the precious thing.
He had trouble believing that they were willing to risk a machine from the starship, but apparently the blaster he carried was worth it. He wondered if the bike, too, had been taken from his family. The family bike had vanished shortly after he’d learned to ride it at twelve.
The purr grew in volume. Voices carried to his ears, voices asking what was going on. Other voices woke their families to come see the motorbike in the night. People lit lanterns and torches and came outside. At least one of the governor’s men started screaming at everyone to get back inside.
The motorbike had a light, white and streaming and pure, and it sliced the darkness open like a wound.
He could have turned and shot it with the blaster, but the thought of hurting the bike felt like sacrilege. One treasured the technology of antiquity. One never put it at risk. Besides, it had been a long time since his family had been allowed to charge the blaster, and he would be damned if he’d risk using the last of it, even though his parents assured him it was fine. Just make sure to fire it now and then.
His feet pounded across the field, mashing the raised rows, hitting the occasional cut stalks. He paid them no heed. There were trees at the river. He needed to reach them.
The bike’s rider didn’t seem to share Peter’s concerns for the old technology, and the bike’s spotlight reached him, casting his shadow before him into an elongated, sharply edged version of himself. The horns curling up from his temples showed in sharp relief on the farmland’s ground.
The biker had no trouble navigating the broken ground, confining himself to the spaces between the raised rows. It was a testament to Peter’s speed that he’d got as far as he did across the field.
The engine’s roar drowned out the voices in the lane, and the changes in his shadow told Peter the bike was almost on him.
He threw himself to the left as the noise and the light telegraphed that the bike would run him down.
Now.
He twisted in mid-air and hit with his right shoulder, and the rest of the roll brought him to his feet again.
The biker braked, the rear wheels sliding out from under the rider and jamming into the ridged earth.
Peter wasted no time and charged the man. His pursuer had stopped maybe fifty paces away, but Peter covered the ground just as the other got the bike back up and gunned the engine.
Peter didn’t slow. His arms pumped at his sides. His knees rose high, and he threw himself through the air. His hands landed first, gripping the handlebars as he let his legs fly out to either side before they closed on his pursuer like a pair of scissors.
His hands slipped as the bike surged forward, but his legs had a lock on his attacker now, and he pulled him to the ground as the bike flew out from under them. He rammed his palm heel into the other man’s jaw and felt the jolt of clashing teeth he wanted.
They hit the dirt with Peter on top, his knees and shins hitting rock and dirt. Peter took advantage of the other’s stunned moment and hit him with a hammer blow to the side of the head. The man’s smooth temple made it clear he wasn’t pan. His attacker lay still.
Peter disentangled himself from the limp form and stood. In the distance the raised voices swarming amidst a tiny sea of bobbing lights grew louder, and someone was shouting, “Stop!” presumably at him.
The bike lay on its side, its engine still keening. It had been a long time since he’d ridden one.
He didn’t weigh the choice to take it consciously. He might even have been faster without it, but he didn’t need someone else getting on it and running him down again. Besides, he wanted it. And unlike the blaster, he could charge it again—fuel it, he corrected himself. He worked hard at his parents’ science, but he struggled with it.
The lights and voices, bobbing in outraged hurry, drew closer.
He picked up the bike, turned it away from the noise, and set it in a row that ran straight to the river.
His inspection took only a second. It wasn’t a horse, but the principles were the same. He swung a leg over the seat, settled himself in, careful not to twist the throttle on the handlebar, and set one foot on the footrest. He had the balance of it, and he remembered that sending it forward would help with the balance. If worse came to worst and he went in the river that gleamed like satin ahead, at least his pursuers wouldn’t have it.
Gripping but gently, he turned his right wrist back and the machine made its roaring noise, but softly, and he lifted his left foot off the ground. He let out the clutch.
He moved, the noise of it filling his ears, and the speed of it playing the air across his skin. He was fast, faster than he’d ever been—his father hadn’t let him go too fast on that old family bike. His eyes streamed. The noise of the people behind him died, drowned by the machine between his legs.
He was grinning, in joy or because the air forced his mouth back. He was going too fast. He experimented with the clutch, the gears, and the brake, and slowed as he approached the trees.
He really wanted to keep the bike, just as badly as his father had wanted him to get the blaster back.
He entered the trees at what would have been a jogging pace for him, and navigated between oak and sycamore planted early in the human settlement’s first days. Luna appeared low in the sky now, and the sycamores glowed a white welcome to the satellite whose resemblance to the moon of Earth gave her her name.
When he reached the other side of the copse, a pebbled beach spread before him. His brother’s boat was pulled up at the far end where Peter had made sure to hide it earlier.
He turned off the motor. He didn’t think his pursuers would hear its quiet purr as he walked it across the rocks, but he took no chances.
The noise of his feet on the pebbles sounded loud in his ears, but the cries of those behind him were faint and, he hoped, confused.
He reached the spot where he had hidden the boat and saw with relief that it was still there—not that he’d been worried. Dead branches covered it, obscuring its sleek lines, and he pulled them off and dropped some between two boulders that reached to the edge of the lapping waters. The rest he tossed far and wide, where he or one of his brothers would have to collect them again later. They were pine boughs, rough and sticky with dried sap. The trees of Earth had reached this far up the river, maybe even farther up the banks of the Beautiful. It was not, his father liked to say, proper terraforming. They didn’t have that on Nwwwlf.
He pulled the boat down to the water, the scrape of its hull on the rock making him cringe. There would be lights and more noise if they were close, he told himself, but still his skin crawled.
The sloop sat in enough water for the keel. He had the mast down. It was small enough for one man to row, but long enough to hold the motor bike.
He turned his attention to that next. He lifted it and found it heavy but not impossible. Holding it by one of the deeply indented tires and the frame, his tendons and muscles straining, he heaved it over the gunwale and laid it as gently as he could in the bottom of the boat. It fit well enough and he didn’t think he’d hurt it. He was very careful with the cables, unsure what they were but having to assume they were important. The bike was a machine, and there should be nothing unnecessary on a machine.
He considered his prize for a moment. The river was calm, and the night thick with stars not clouds, but in his experience metal could rust and he was taking precious cargo across a body of water. There could be splashing.
He wore a loose-fitting flannel shirt. Peter was a good height, but not the tallest of his brothers. His shirt would have to do. He unbuttoned it, pulled it loose from his jeans, and carefully tucked it around the handle bars with the controls and the fork at the front.
He got in the boat, settled himself, and started to row. The sail was too dangerous—too visible—during Luna’s rise, and he’d be heading south and west, downstream at this particular curve of the Beautiful, as he pulled himself and his precious cargo across the wide river. According to his parents, the Beautiful meandered across the valley of First Landing from west of north to east of south, but above the city itself it possessed a different relationship with the landscape.
Peter had the powerful build of most pan, with real bulk on his shoulders, upper body, and arms. It made him appear older than his twenty years to some, but the mass stood him in good stead as he rowed. His pull on the oars was almost effortless, and he’d taken the route often enough and he knew the sky well enough that he let himself review the night’s events.
He didn’t think he’d made any mistakes. He’d blackened the curling horns that spiraled from just above his ears. Their normal, nacreous sheen otherwise provided poor camouflage. He’d made his way through the roof of the barracks and had attached the confiscated blaster to his belt. It was only when the guard had regained consciousness that he had been forced to run and hide, making his way slowly as the number of pursuers increased.
He had worked hard not to let them see him. His was not the only family which had had to surrender its defensive technology, but there was no reason to invite the governor’s men to come after his in particular. If his father didn’t kill him, his brothers would. One of the many reasons his father had been adamant that Peter only get one was that he wanted to ensure that Peter got the Dawe weapon. Nigel Dawe protected his family first.
If the governor could take it by theft, so could Peter take it back by theft. The governor had issued an order, calling it legally mandated—like that made it right—and ordered all WesHem households on the far side of the river to surrender their blasters. The order had said nothing about swords or bows, but the westerners were sure the Marss would have liked to take them, too. As it was, the Marss, the group of settlers who had long ago seized control of the government, clearly had informants, because for three days before the official confiscation date, those families who had brought the Earth weapons on the starship as part of their possessions found them gone. Nigel Dawe had sent his son to First Landing to retrieve the Dawe’s weapon. The official gloating had made it easy to learn their whereabouts. The rest had been simple until the discovery of the guard he’d knocked out.
They hadn’t seen his face. He was sure of it. They might have seen his horns, but there were more pan families than just his who were furious at the governor’s outrage.
The dip, sweep, and long pull of the oars drew him closer to the river’s other side. A blob of darkness, hiding the reflective surface of the river, told him he was closing on his destination.
He hoped his father had sent Thaddeus to meet him. Thaddeus would be ecstatic over the motor bike. Peter might even talk Thaddeus into not mentioning it until they had thought about it, studied it, and kept it a while from their other brother still at home. Yes, he hoped it was Thaddeus who would be waiting for him.
A point of land stretched far into the river, like it had thought about being an island but found it too much trouble to cut all ties. It flooded regularly, so no one had bothered with the Nwwwlf version of terraforming, although he’d thought he’d seen a young willow on it a few days earlier. It was the sort of thing that gave hope for an Earth-like future in the valley of First Landing. Elsewhere was too much to think about according to the original settlers, who included people like his parents and their cohort.
He was now far enough on the river’s other side that he could let the current carry him to the small beach on the northern side of the little isthmus. He was also far enough that he was allowing himself the smallest jubilation. He’d succeeded in his task, and he’d acquired an amazing piece of old tech.
Voices carried over the night air, and his jubilation faded. His father hadn’t sent Thaddeus. Peter knew the voice that waited for him better than he wanted to, and he could figure out the others. His brother Simon had brought friends.
Silently cursing Simon, and his father for sending him, Peter shipped the oars, unbuttoned his jeans and dropped them on the bench, and slowly, carefully, wearing only his shorts and with no splashing, slid into the dark river water. If Simon and his friends were at the beach, his plan wouldn’t work. But if they weren’t, he didn’t want to be upset with himself later for not trying for the chance. He meant to keep the bike.
The water’s cold bit through his skin and into muscles that were starting to grow tired. He knew this cove well, and walked thigh-high through the water, dragging the boat behind him toward the isthmus’ northern end, away from the voices. It was Simon’s boat. Peter had to get the bike out of it.
Simons and the others were laughing. That was because they were idiots. Anger he hadn’t felt at his pursuers boiled up in him. Simon was the ninth of ten offspring in the Dawe clan. Peter was the tenth. Simon had no love for Peter, and Peter knew it. And Simon consistently courted disaster for not only himself but his family. He said it was because he was brave.
Simon and his friends should have been silent. Being on the other side of the river was no guarantee of safety, but the noise helped Peter now. He walked the boat through the water and pulled it up under the rubbery stalks they called aspertrees. In the daylight they were dark green mottled in indigo. Now they were just inky black, tall, and tubular. The ground was spongy and easier on his feet than the pebbles on the river’s other side.
Fountains of fronds and grasses sprang from the ground beneath the Nwwwlf trees, and he pulled the boat under them. He could still hear his brother laughing with his friends. He was about to remove the bike when he thought he heard them moving. Maybe they wouldn’t bother looking at the boat. After all, he had what he’d been sent for.
He took almost more care concealing the boat on this side of the river than he had when he’d beached it on the shores above the city.
He shoved the little sloop hard between two tall clumps and pulled their sprays far forward over the bike, always listening for a change in the voices. How had they not even posted a watch?
He scraped most of the water from his legs and quickly pulled his pants on and snagged his shirt before anyone arrived.
“Little brother,” Simon called.
Peter controlled the impulse to jerk away from the boat. Simon would just come and look. And take. He kept buttoning his shirt.
Simon stepped out of the trees. He was not quite two years older than Peter, but taller and leaner. Where Peter had blue eyes and blond, curling hair, Simon was dark haired, with eyes of dark brown like their mother’s, but without the warmth that shone in hers. Simon had not blackened his horns, and they shone in the moonlight with a pearly, iridescent glow.
“Get back, Simon,” Peter hissed.
Simon raised a languid hand. It was a graceful movement, but Peter was not deceived by its grace. Simon was powerful. “There’s no one here. I would have heard.”
Peter spat. “Like you heard me? And came to help with the boat?”
Again, the languid shrug, this time with two hands and both shoulders. “I know you can cope just fine on your own. That’s why Dad sent just you.”
Peter moved away from the boat. He was beginning to hope he might succeed.
“Because of that,” Simon continued, “and because you’re the expendable one.”
Peter had heard that before. Simon’s theory was that Simon had originally been the expendable ninth child, but their parents had been forced to have Peter because they discovered they liked Simon too much for his role. No additional child had come after Peter, so, clearly, they had not liked their tenth child as well.
“Let’s go,” Peter said.
Simon smiled, and his teeth glowed white in the moonlight. “Let’s not. Not yet.”
Peter stood still. It hadn’t worked.
Simon gestured at the boat’s hiding place. “Instead, let’s see what you have in the boat that you’ve hidden from me.”
Pre-order here for September 9 delivery, or pick up the paperback…
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