It’s been a little while. You’ve probably forgotten that you even subscribed to this old thing. I have a new novella that I’m funding via pre-orders through Indiegogo.

Since I have the space here, have a taste of the opening for The Loneliness of the Deep Space Cargoist:

Inez Stanton was on the john when the siren started going off. She slapped the comms panel next to her and a cheerful voice rang out, “Saluti, comandante.” Great, something fucked up the language control.

“What’s happening?” she said, a little startled at the loudness of her own voice. How long since she had spoken out loud?

“Мы пострадали от мусора.” It took a few seconds for Inez to remember her Russian. Debris. Shit.

“Where were we hit?”

“Rahtikotelossa.” Was that, fuck, Finnish? Still, given that the ship wasn’t actually destroyed, it was probably the cargo hold.

Inez finished cleaning up and pulled up her jumpsuit. She grabbed the fire extinguisher from the dull metallic corridor wall and approached the door to the hold.

“I hate to ask this, god knows how you’ll respond. Is there air pressure in the cargo hold?”

“Les barrières tiennent.”

Right. So, she could breathe. She grabbed a respirator anyway and opened the inner door and peered through the outer door’s porthole. Immediately, she could see there was no upper bulkhead covering the third furthest from her. It looked like it must have been a glancing blow more than anything, though, because none of the cargo was even disturbed.

“How long will the barriers hold?”

“Tilu dinten, di speed urang ayeuna.” Well, that was no help. She closed the door to the cargo hold and put the respirator and fire extinguisher back. She crossed the hundred feet to the cab and opened the door there.

“Thank you, whoever there is to thank,” she whispered, seeing that her panels were still in English. So, just a bit over three days, as long as nothing else had gotten jarred loose with the hit. She pulled up the star maps to see if there was anything within three days. Fang’s Waystation was going to be the closest, about two and a half days away. It would be tight, but she’d make it if nothing else went wrong.

“Why did you think that?” she whispered at herself.

She set a new course for the waystation, and killed the siren. It was giving her a headache.

She marched back out through the storage room to the closet that held a lot of the most important parts of the ship. These included the air recycler, the power cells that controlled everything but the drive core, and the ship’s computer. The computer was literally the smallest part of what was in the closet.

Inez pulled out the core of the computer and turned it over in her hands. No obvious physical damage (though she was by no means an expert). She grabbed a test lead from next to the computer and plugged it in. The core lit up and she could see the test reboot sequence running. After a few minutes, it began the slow blink that showed it was ready.

“What’s your status?” she asked the computer.

“Working at 89% of nominal.”

She wiped her brow. She was surprised to find that she was sweating, given that the temperature in the rig was usually a constant 20 degrees. “Good. Can you monitor our progress to the waystation?”

“Pêgirtî, serwer.”

Well, that didn’t work. She stowed the core back into the computer case and closed the closet door. Hard.