Short Fiction

Colin Fraser

Fraser is the rumpled, hatchet-faced man Judy keeps circling back to even as she chases a stage career and richer company. He wants to marry her, but she wants to see the world first, and his dry jealousy of the industrialist Snyder curdles into curiosity when she describes being paid to have her brain waves measured. His skepticism about the well-funded 'mad scientist' Kennedy makes him the natural reader's proxy as the story's early mystery takes shape.

Simon Dalgetty

Dalgetty sits alone in a coral-walled bar, straining to overhear Bancroft and his companions discuss why their enemies haven't gone to the government. He deflects the chatty rec girl Glenna with a fake name and a shaky smile, his nerves shot from the effort of concentration. His discipline and dark humor mark him as someone already deep inside a dangerous game, and his decision to stop listening and start acting drives the story forward.

Captain Corun

Corun commands a voyage into the Xanthi archipelago alongside the sorcerer Shorzon and the grim Imazu, who warns him not to become any woman's blind slave. Haunted by memories of family and old comrades, he feels a cold hollow of loneliness that Chryseis seems to answer when she finds him at the rail. His hunger for connection and his hard-won freedom are set on a collision course as the ship nears enemy territory.

Bo Jonsson

Bo Jonsson is a rough individualist of the Trojan boom towns, the kind who drinks at the Last Chance on Achilles and knows the iron rules of hospitality and rescue. When Johnny Malone dies in a bar brawl from a poisoned needle, Bo is left holding the body and then hunted across two hundred square miles of dead rock. His terror, his dry mouth, and his refusal to surrender make him the story's engine of survival and revenge.

Ray Ballantyne

Ballantyne and Elena are stranded together with four packs and a hundred rounds, and he keeps cracking wordplay while she tries to read whether he's human or something colder. She's spent two years undercover inside Thomas Bancroft's organization and knows the setup is a web of mutual surveillance. His emotional control unnerves her even as his questions about reinforcements and the Institute's plans push the pair toward an uneasy alliance.

Alfric

Alfric of Aslak fights his way through a hostile city beside Hildaborg, stripping corpses for disguises and ready to cut down a captive guard until she stops him. He scorns prophecy and priests, yet the Book of the Sibyl has named him, and everyone in the ruined Empire seems to want his head. His hardness unsettles Hildaborg even as she admits Valkarion may need a man like him, and his demand for answers drives the early unraveling of the prophecy.