Artemis

by Philip Palmer

  25 For explanations of these wrestling terms with animated images, click here. – Ed.

  26 It does, which is why I’ve allowed this digression. – Ed.

  27 Not really Artemis. In fact, it makes me think that – sorry, I’m talking aloud here. I do that, sometimes, when I’m reading. I answer the author’s rhetorical questions, I shout out advice to the protagonist, and I—Sorry again! This is not meant to be about me! – Ed

  28 I’ve read this report. It makes for chilling reading, and of course, prepared the ground for the subsequent Exodus Laws. Although, on the other hand, what else are and were we supposed to do with these truly evil people? – Ed.

  29 In particular, Brosnan, Ennis, Goddard, and Mohammed. – Ed.

  30 See in particular, Fleischer, Camre, Bamborough, and Thomas. – Ed.

  31 See The History of Dissent during the Year of Corporation Hegemony by Professor Gillian Tobin (Way Out of Orbit Books; for a discounted edition, click here). – Ed.

  32 See Prisons and Dungeons Through the Ages by Professor Wexford Gillingham (Way Out of Orbit Books; for a discounted edition, click here). – Ed.

  33 See Best Lawyer Jokes ed. Rutherford Green (Way Out of Orbit Books; if you want to buy it, click here though personally I think you’d be wasting your money). – Ed.

  34 See Journal of Moral Crisis in the Modern Age, vol. 4,344,333,222, pp. 45–94. – Ed.

  35 See The History of World War II by Professor Mark Jones. – Ed.

  36 See “The Principles of Quantum Teleportation” by Dr Mark Ruppe, Dr John Bompasso, and Professor Jean Everett, Quantum Stuff, vol. 3,344. – Ed.

  37 See Hell Erupts: The Story of the Giger Prison Riot by Sheila Hamilton (Way Out of Orbit Books; click here), and by the way, this book was ghostwritten by me! (Hamilton was Deputy Governor of Giger before she was shot and almost killed in the riots). – Ed

  38 © Giger Times. At the inquest into Governor Ferguson’s death, however, the forensic team concluded that death was caused by two exploding bullets, one in his body, whilst he was working in his office. Prison authorities claimed live explosive ammunition was commonly used in routine staff training exercises. This apparently was believed by the credulous jury and a verdict of Accidental Death was recorded. – Ed.

  39 And did. – Ed.

  40 Which also occurred. – Ed.

  41 Forty-five unconscious bodies were recovered from this room, plus two dead body-armoured guards. – Ed.

  42 Artemis had clearly counted them by this point. – Ed.

  43 It was of course common practice for police officials on Corporation planets to be professional gangsters. And indeed in the early years of the Corporation, very few planets actually had any kind of a police force. – Ed.

  44 You see? I told you about this earlier. – Ed.

  45 After intensive checking, it emerges that the planet-to-planet shuttle craft used in Giger Penitentiary was indeed the XL453 model, not the more common XL501. – Ed.

  1 Harumph! This line creates the impression that Artemis has some grasp of the art of self-editing. With respect, this is not so! – Ed.

  2 Cassady changed her name to Gemma Fried on arrival on New Earth VI, after purchasing a forged identity. – Ed.

  3 True. – Ed.

  4 Numerous examples of this technique in action have been deleted. – Ed.

  5 Also all true, as confirmed by the records of the courts and police department on New Earth VI. – Ed.

  6 There’s no basis for this number. No one ever succeeded in counting these creatures. – Ed.

  7 I can confirm that she did indeed so do. – Ed.

  8 I asked Artemis this question, and she told me that for her it was a toss between Milo Shamus and the famously fat detective Nero Wolfe. – Ed.

  9 Who I really liked, and considered to be my friend; though we never actually met. – Ed.

  10 Who appears later in a later digression. – Ed.

  11 Broadly speaking, this is a correct analysis, if lacking in detail. – Ed.

  12 Also true. – Ed.

  13 Not magical at all; Artemis just doesn’t comprehend the maths that makes the quantumarity possible. Although nor, in fact, do I. – Ed.

  14 Unverifiable, though probably true. – Ed.

  15 For a fuller account, read a different book. Artemis is not one for military detail! – Ed.

  16 Correct – Ed.

  17 For a fuller account of this, read War in Debatable Space: The Extinction of the Great Swarm Mind by Professor Lincoln Yevtushenko (Martial Press). – Ed.

  18 It does indeed. – Ed.

  1 All true, as verified by numerous news reports, transcripts of court hearings, and beaconband blogs – Ed.

  2 This also is true. In fact, from now on I’ll only footnote factual errors when there ARE some. – Ed.

  3 See The Real Dracula by Diablo Jonquil (Way Out of Orbit Books). – Ed.

  4 Tantalising! I know nothing of all this. – Ed.

  5 Daxox was an amateur cryptologist; otherwise this would have been a futile exercise. – Ed.

  6 Only to be found in the seas of the planet of Kaos. – Ed.

  7 It was Marlene Beverley Miro, birth name Saundersfoot. – Ed.

  8 True. Artemis’s thought diary is now considered to be one of the best primary sources for scholars of the Clan. – Ed.

  1 Artemis was incarcerated in the Laguid Bastille. – Ed.

  2 Available for download here. – Ed.

  3 A slight exaggeration; it’s true French is the second most common language in the humanverse, albeit not that common. – Ed.

  4 Confirmed by the SNG Court Records (Appeal Branch); for the judges’ ruling click here. – Ed.

  5 A rare factual error from Dr McIvor; the correct figure is 70.05 per cent. – Ed.

  6 Now available on the WOOO Press Library Archive, as The Story of Annabelle by Geeta Landingham [subcategories: Fiction, Children’s Fiction, Repellently Saccharine Fiction]. (That last subcategory is a rare but I trust welcome editorial jest from, ahem, moi). – Ed.

  7 Randall Shillaker is referenced several times in the text as Artemis’s only friend as a child. His parents were Michael and Angela Shillaker, and they lived on Rebus for thirteen months. – Ed.

  8 I can find no record of where they went. – Ed.

  9 I’ve deleted most of the stuff about the boots. There are six pages of it in all. They were made of alien animal leather, fitted very snugly, up to Artemis’s knees, and were “cool”; that synopsis says all that needs to be said, in my view. – Ed.

  10 There follows a list, now excised, of all the occasions when Artemis wore the boots and the jacket in conjunction. I mean, really! – Ed.

  1 In more accurate Scottish phonetic demotic: “I dinnae think so,” meaning “I think not.” – Ed.

  2 This sounds like a spoof, but is a real headline from the Cambrian Gazette, click here. – Ed.

  3 The Pohlian Times printed this headline fifteen months in a row, after a particularly enthusiastic burst of democracy. Click here. – Ed.

  4 I was SURE this was a gag, but no, it’s yet another real headline, and it’s to be found on the Beaconband news service All the News Fit to Digitally Transmit!!! To read it for yourself, click here. – Ed.

  5 All these examples are invented by Artemis, but are not that far removed from the real thing. – Ed.

  6 After extensive research, I have concluded that this is NOT in fact a real headline. – Ed.

  7 The tone may be fabulistically exaggerative, but the outlines of the historical story are broadly correct. – Ed.

  1 This later turned out to be entirely true, but Artemis didn’t know it at the time. – Ed.

  2 During the editing of this book, I interrogated Artemis about this event. She denied she felt in any way guilty about it. And yet, such was her evident distress, she clearly did. This is the only time so far as I’m aware that Dr McIvor lied to me. – Ed.

  3 Hooperman’s Tree of Life, by Andrew Hoop
erman. – Ed.

  1 For a fuller chronological account of the Clan Wars, read History of the War to End All Wars by Professor Andrew Swift (Way Out of Orbit Books), a volume of which I am also the (unacknowledged, even on the Acknowledgements page, which is typical of academics really) editor. – Ed.

  1 Headquarters of the Anti-Clan Maverick Warfare Squad led by Brigadier Fraser. – Ed.

  2 I think it’s fairly obvious that the war criminals targeted by squads like Artemis’s were given code names associated with Tarot cards, for ease of remembering. The full list is:

  The Fool: Mikhail Hendry

  The Magician: Living Spirit

  The High Priestess: Sinara Lo

  The Lovers: Jezebel Kave and Hiro Asbury

  The Empress: Gina Goodrick

  The Emperor: Nemanja X

  The Hierophant: Viviana Arcola

  The Hermit: Donny Brea

  The Hanged Man: Gabriella Orix

  Death: Michael Troilus

  Temperance: Edela Barrow

  The Devil: Hispaniola Morgan

  The Star: Jacques Parole

  The Moon: Ioan Harfleur

  Judgement: Hayley Summerson

  Of these 15, all but 5 were captured or dead by the time Artemis joined the Kamikaze Squads, as you will soon learn.

  The other ten capobastone, who died/were captured before Brigadier Fraser joined the Maverick Warfare Unit, never got to be Tarot cards. – Ed.

  3 As already explained. – Ed.

  1 June Carter, Michael Brown, Wayling Anderson. May they rest in peace. – Ed.

  2 The Jayhawker Squadron were an élite team created by Hendry for the sole purpose of planetary destruction. – Ed.

  3 To locate Makai in The Spherical Atlas of Planets (Way Out of Orbit Press), click here. – Ed.

  4 Religious/scientific cult, but you probably knew that. – Ed.

  5 SAP location here. – Ed.

  6 Agra, Loper of the planet of McCoy, no surname. May she rest in peace. – Ed.

  7 Admiral John Hinchcliffe. – Ed.

  8 Official figures say 11,000, but this was a reasonable approximation on Artemis’s part. – Ed.

  9 There were no civilian survivors, and approximately 983,000 day-old corpses were found in various locations on the planet. However, 34,333 guerrilla warriors survived in closely guarded underground locations, and were liberated by the SNG invasion force. – Ed.

  10 She’s kidding here. Artemis has a very good mathematical mind. – Ed.

  11 According to Saunders’ Encyclopedia of Alien Life this is quite true, though it sounds pretty unlikely to me. – Ed.

  1 Gabriel Antonio Santiago. May he rest in peace. Also let us also honour the memories of Tomas Fuente, and Caterina Lyras, who died on that same mission. – Ed.

  2 Jean Angela Block did survive, but a year later, after fully recovering from a successful whole body transplant, she perished during her third and final mission. May she rest in peace. – Ed.

  3 This was after the big Sparkler-Heebie-Jeebie war, but before the Heebies went into decline and started to de-evolve. – Ed.

  4 This implies that Teresa Shalco could have declined Artemis’s challenge back in Giger, since Artemis was then masquerading as a vangelista, and was hence junior in Clan rank. Presumably she dared not do so for fear of losing “face,” i.e. warrior credibility with her fellow Clannites. – Ed.

  5 I don’t think so either. Poor Artemis – she lost a dear friend in this mission, and my heart goes out to her. – Ed.

  1 Catrin Alison Willard. May she rest in peace. – Ed.

  2 From the planet of Asgard. – Ed.

  3 From the planet of Serenity. – Ed.

  4 From the planet of Sky. – Ed.

  5 From the planet of Herorot. – Ed.

  6 From the planet of Luce. – Ed.

  7 From the planet of Cambria. – Ed.

  8 The sims on the Rock were conducted without the benefit of Artemis’s detailed knowledge of the Citadel’s security system, via the planet’s satellite QRC. – Ed.

  9 It can be assumed that Artemis has acquired a seventh brain chip for Majalara, but forgot to mention this. – Ed.

  10 Andres Mariano, Maximilian Jones, and Sheena Shaw. May you rest in peace. – Ed.

  11 My consultation with the Earth QRC confirms this is a shapeshifting Nagual, from the now-terraformed planet of Destiny. – Ed.

  12 ! No comment. – Ed.

  1 This incident is recounted in the official History of Invasion: Earth by Jerome Graham. Dr McIvor’s account appears to be correct; she was indeed the doppelgänger rider responsible for downing the Xerxes. – Ed.

  2 Admiral Sir Henry Morgan, 1635–1688. – Ed.

  3 Hispaniola is an island in the Caribbean on Earth which was a stronghold for pirates in the seventeenth century. – Ed.

  4 Unsubstantiated except by Flanagan himself, a legendary embellisher of facts. – Ed.

  5 Artemis’s story here is clearly based on the account in The Early Years of Flanagan by David Ruckley (not published by Way Out of Orbit Books, though it’s rather good). – Ed.

  6 Again the source here is Ruckley, op. cit. – Ed.

  7 The song is Victory: Earth by The Heinleins; it’s rather good. – Ed.

  1 Readers may be interested and indeed distressed to learn that this volume was downed from the brain chip of Dr McIvor just a few weeks before her arrest on charges so heinous that her lifetime’s pardon for all crimes committed-or-to-be-committed was revoked. She is now – to my deep and abiding regret – awaiting execution on multiple charges of murder. – Ed.

  2 It may be of some further interest to readers to learn that during the period when I was proofreading these volumes, Dr McIvor escaped from custody and is now on the run, somewhere in the humanverse. Praise be! – Ed.

  1 I’ve looked. It’s chilling. – Ed.

  2 Only one of which is published by Way Out of Orbit Books, namely, The War of the Morgans by Professor Henry Pritchard. It’s rather good, despite the many typos. (I didn’t edit it.) – Ed.

  3 I toyed with the idea of editing this paragraph out, on the grounds it’s pretty irrelevant to the story but, well, what can I say? *blush* – Ed.

  4 I’ve deleted a big chunk here. I realise that when Artemis is nervous, i.e. when dealing with difficult emotional material, she becomes excessively garrulous. It’s a forgivable foible, in my view, considering the pressure she was under, and the appalling crisis she was about to face, just a few minutes later in this scene. – Ed.

  5 Still available in novelisation form as Debatable Space, written by some hack called Palmer (Way Out of Orbit Books). – Ed.

  6 After spending two years editing this volume, checking and cross-checking every fact, I would agree with this conclusion. Furthermore I’ve come to think that Artemis is – sorry. It’s not for me as editor to say what I really think of my author. This bold, brave, yet sad and – enough! Must stop. This footnote has become an embarrassing revelation of my own inner feelings, and my sense of admiration of, and indeed love for this remarkable woman. Not to worry, though; later tonight I shall edit it out this whole footnote and replace it with something dry and noncommittal. But first I think I’ll open a bottle of wine and raise a glass to– Artemis! – Ed.

  7 This doesn’t need a footnote; everyone knows how Flanagan and Lena died on a foolhardy expedition of discovery around the double star of Gemini Plus, when they were caught up in a gravity well and sucked into a fiery death. Some (see Nicholson, and Weber) thought theirs was a deliberate attempt to emulate Icarus’s folly in sailing too close to the Sun; and that the whole mission was intended to be a way of achieving a glorious double suicide. But that’s a preposterous opinion, which I only quote in order to mock. (And besides, as we now know, they didn’t die.) – Ed.

  8 As I’ve already explained. – Ed.

  1 Quentin Crazy Horse Gallifrey. May he rest in peace. – Ed.

  2 A long rant now follows in the original tho
ught diary, which I’ve deleted. Among other things, Artemis shares her feelings about Flanagan which are highly conflicted. She was tormented at this time of course because she was sharing a mission with a mother whom she hated. And yet, on this kind of mission, everyone bonds – fear and adrenalin create what has been called an “indissoluble camaraderie.” So love and hate were forming a toxic brew in her head. To compound this, Artemis was clearly in awe of Flanagan, as indeed who wouldn’t be. She tries to express all this in about four pages of disquisition on her own emotional state but reaches no conclusion. And frankly, I take the view that the sooner we get back to shoot-’em-up action the better. Hence my radical edit. – Ed.