Subversion_Age Of Expansion_A Kurtherian Gambit Series

by Ell Leigh Clarke

  Reluctantly he opened his eyes. They stung. He reached across to the bedside table to lift his holo.

  Four in the morning.

  Fuck.

  It was an incoming call. He didn’t recognize the address, which meant it was likely him.

  Hurriedly he sat up and readied himself for the interaction. He wiped his hand over his face and tapped accept.

  “Are you able to talk?” The voice on the other end was clipped, but calm. It was Ghetti.

  “Yes. I’m alone,” Ekks responded.

  “We have something else for you to do.”

  “Okay.”

  “We need you to make sure that the warships are launched and protecting the outer system.”

  Richard felt another wave of nausea hit him. This time it wasn’t from exhaustion.

  “How do you expect me to do that?” He tried to keep his voice steady, but felt it crack as the air seemed to disappear from his lungs.

  “We made you Commander of the Estarian-Ogg Space Fleet for a reason. Did we make a mistake?”

  Ekks felt his mind whirring. He needed to stay on point. He could process later. “I need support from the Senate. Consensus from my peers. I can’t just launch them. There are practicalities to consider.”

  “This is your task,” the voice told him.

  “But you don’t understand. I can’t just—”

  “You can.” Ghetti was eerily firm. “Do what you need to do to make it happen.”

  There was a slight pause as Ekks thought through what he had to do. “It’s going to take some time,” he said quietly.

  On the other end of the call Raj Ghetti smiled, satisfied, with cool confidence. The discussion of the parameters was merely an indication that he had already accepted the task. “You have a few months. Start the process. But don’t put off acting. When the time comes we are going to need those ships in position. Our very existence in this system will depend on it.”

  “I understand.” Ekks made an effort to sound in control, when in reality he had no idea what was happening or what he was really going to do.

  “Good. I’ll be in touch.”

  The call was ended.

  Ekks sat in his darkened bedroom, palpitations thumping through his chest and throat, threatening to give him a heart attack.

  He thought he could handle the pressure. He thought he had been acting in the greater good when Ghetti had first pitched him the opportunity. But now, faced with the task of launching the ships with no immediate threat, he couldn’t help but wonder what he’d signed up for.

  What was he going to be forced to do in the coming weeks and months?

  Holo Transmission from OZ

  Greetings of the day upon you.

  Oz here.

  Molly has asked me to be the liaison between her operation and your rather primitive earth communication methods.

  I believe you call it email?

  Still.

  I am here to act as your interface. To help bridge the gap between the dopamine induced hits as you watch Molly through her trials and tribulations as she takes on all manner of shenanigans.

  If you’d like to receive such status updates, please go ahead and leave your holo/ email address here:

  http://ellleighclarke.com/

  As you might have gathered, this transmission will not just be coming through space between our two galaxies, but is also traveling back through time.

  I will attempt to send you updates in chronological order but do be advised that occasionally gravitational optics will interfere (no pun intended!) with the sequencing of these packets.

  An understanding of all things timey-whimey will be useful in such instances.

  Additionally, if you have any feedback for Molly - or her team - do feel free to pass that on through me. All you need to do is hit reply to any of my messages.

  I process every communication personally.

  Looking forward to hearing from you.

  Oz

  (on behalf of Molly, aka the lady- boss)

  Sanguine Squadron 2.0

  Gaitune-67,

  Sark System,

  Loop Galaxy

  Author Notes - Ell Leigh Clarke

  May 2nd, 2018

  Thank Yous

  As always big thanks must go to MA for his continued support, and encouragement. The truth is, I hate writing in isolation, and even though we don’t agree on a lot of things (like whether he wrote Nicky or Nickie in the original short story about Nicky Grimes) it still means a lot to have someone there to sound board with and read the stories when I get to the 75% done mark and losing the will to put fingers to keyboard. Somehow that always seems to help.

 

  Make no mistake, as much as I ADORE telling stories and weaving intricate plots… writing all the words, all the time, is exhausting. Some days I feel like I’ve run a marathon.

  And MA is always there at the other end of slack to… well, laugh at me, and tell me everyone is in the same boat. ;) (I was gonna say hand me water and give me a pep talk. I guess he does that sometimes too.)

 

  Massive thanks must also go to our awesome JIT team and Zen-Steve. I’m immensely grateful to them all for their hard work in turning this around and making it happen in time for our deadline. I also truly appreciate how much our JIT team cares. I mean, here we are, ten books in, and they still want this to be the best, most consistent version of itself that we can possibly put out. It’s touching to know how hard you guys work on something that is a passion and not a job. I deeply appreciate you.

  So now I have a confession:

  I’m just hoping that Steve doesn’t have time to notice that one of the baddies has the same name as him. When I checked with MA I was keen that Steve didn’t think that I was naming this sneaky psychopath after him – because they are truly nothing alike. It’s just I needed a name beginning with S, and Steve is what came to mind.

 

  I hope we’re still cool, Zen-Steve!

 

 

  I also owe an immense debt of gratitude to you the reader who reads the stories (sometimes more than once!), writes the five start reviews, and provide an endless source of encouragement over on the facebook page. The 5* reviews also mean that the Amazon algorithms show the book to more readers. I’ve seen some statistics recently from someone who works at Amazon. Your reviews mean everything in terms of us being picked up by more readers, and you have no idea what it means to me that you take the time to do it. Thank you!

  I’d also like to say a huge thank you to everyone on my fb page.

  Even when I drop off the radar for a few weeks, you’re still there when I come back. That is huge. Your support and friendship means the world to me, and when fun shit happens I wanna get photos. Why? So that I can show you what else is going on behind the scenes of the Sanguine Squadron!

  I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: You keep me writing.

  Without you, these stories would not be told. <3

  E x

  MA vs Nickie. And Nicky

  Sometimes there is reason for MA to get involved in the manuscript for these books. Mostly when it bumps up against Federation stuff. As you probably know, Nicky Grimes comes firmly in the camp of “Federation Stuff”, so when MA had a read of it, there were things that needed… tweaking.

  So over a day or so MA goes through the various references to Nicky a
nd about 11.30 last night I got a call.

  MA: I don’t understand why you’ve made Nicky into such a pussy!

  Ellie: I didn’t. What do you mean by pussy?

  MA: Blah blah blah. Blah blah blah.

  Ellie: well, compared to Molly she’s very laid back, but I wouldn’t say she was a pussy. Change the bits you want to.

  The call goes on for about twenty minutes, then we agree he’s going to make some more tweaks. We hang up.

  Ten seconds later, he’s calling again.

  Ellie: Did you just pocket dial me?

  MA: No. I was just calling to say that I changed five words and we’re all ok now.

  Ellie: (pisses herself laughing and hangs up.)

  ***

  Oh! But that’s not even the point of this section. There’s more.

  As you may be aware MA and I have been talking about doing a cross series with Nicky and Tabitha. Kinda a Ranger Two thing that crosses time. Anyway, we both have waaaay too much writing to do already, so it’s on the back burner for now, but probably still happening at some point.

  Anyway, we’ve worked on this, and I’ve thrown together a bunch of beats for my part. But in order for this to work, I needed to do a shit tonne of research on Nicky – which meant reading her short story in Pew Pew.

  Which I did.

  Despite my inability to read fast.

  In it, I made a bunch of notes. Like how to spell Grimm’Zee and which spelling he used for Nicky.

  Then, I get a message from him on slack, saying I’ve spelled Nickie wrong!

  I make my case, but when I get the manuscript back, he’s changed about half of them back to Nickie.

  All I can say is thank goodness for the “find and replace” function.

  MA vs Tony Robbins

  The other week MA and I were discussing things that needed to be done in the business. I think I’d suggested something, and I asked if he’d remember to do it. (Not that he often forgets, but well.. er.. anyway…)

 

  He confidently waved a dark covered a4 book in front of the camera. “I’ve got myself a calendar,” he declared with the vigor of someone who might well have just acquired the Ring of Mardoor.

  Oh, great! I said, encouragingly.

  “It’s a Tony Robbins one,” he told me. “I’m going to be more motivated and on top of things than Mr. Motivation himself.”

  I tried to hide my smile. He was about to tell me the story about how he’d been recommended it, but I guess my teasing had already begun.

  “Great! so this means you’re never going to forget anything ever again?”

  He blushed and nodded, quietly writing in it now.

  “And this means you’re ready to conquer the world?” I asked.

  He said something to the affirmative.

  I assumed that this would mean that he won’t forget important things going forward. That he’s all over projects faster than a rash of poison ivy. That he’s like a steel trap ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice, with all the information at his finger tips.

  Well…

  The following week I asked him about something we’d agreed to put into play, and he hadn’t done it.

  “But it was in your Tony Robbins calendar!” I protested.

  “Yeah, yeah. You’re fully at liberty to say I told you so!”

  “I would never be that obvious,” I told him, secretly knowing he’d just given me more fodder for the trials and tribulations that I could share in our Author Notes for your amusement.

 

  Seals vs Lobsters

  As you know, I’m completely baffled by human kind. I guess that’s one reason why I write science fiction – a commentary on how we operate as societies as we tweak the playing field with technology. There are very few things that make sense to me… particularly around how humans can do awful things to each other.

  Competition I kinda get – in a more intellectual sense. But not to the extremes that I’ve seen guys screw themselves over to make a point.

 

  Anyway, recently I’ve been reading the popular book by one of the greatest intellectuals of the modern era. He’s recently become a youtube sensation, but don’t let that put you off. He’s one of the few folks who can articulate ideas that if we only stopped to think about, we might stand a better chance of interacting more productively. I know he’s also controversial, but I think that is a function of trying to have a real and honest conversation in an ecosystem that operates in polarized sound bites.

  Quite how he’s managing to overcome this, is fascinating.

  So I’ve been reading his book – which he touts as a self-help book. Mostly for young males. But I’ve found it incredibly instructive already. In talking about the lobster in the context of evolutionary theory of behavior I finally understand much better why people operate the way they do: why guys get cross when they lose at poker, why they’ll go to extraordinary lengths to screw each other over in business. Why what people think about them is more important than anything else… including survival, and so on.

  Anyway, one day I was talking with MA and happened to mention this. Apparently I went on about the details for a while. What can I say – it was a revelation for me.

 

  A few days later he wanted to refer back to some of the points I’d made in this discussion, but he couldn’t quite remember the word ‘lobster’.

  MA: You know, that stuff that’s delicious.

  Ellie: frowns.

  MA: Seals… or something?

  Ellie: Seals are delicious?

  MA: No… lobsters. I mean lobsters.

  Ellie: Hang on, let’s go back to the bit where you think seals are delicious….

  Another intellectual discussion derailed at it’s inception.

 

  It’s all coming up sea food

  At the tail end of a conversation where MA was talking about going to get food or something. In his defense it was probably a bad line and he may have been walking.

  Ellie: also, we need to sort out covers for Molly.

  MA: ugh I hate that stuff.

  Ellie: huh? What stuff?

  MA: that sea food.

  Ellie: (completely baffled and intrigued by what he thought she’d said): what has seafood got to do with book covers?

  MA: wait. What do you say before?

  Ellie: I said we needed to sort out covers for Molly.

  MA: oh, shit. I thought you’d said calamari.

  Ellie: (facepalm) It’s ok. It was my fault for trying to talk to you when you were hungry.

 

  Exploding Kittens

  The other week I had a friend from LA staying with me while he was attending a conference nearby. One evening we ended up at one of his other friend’s places in another part of town. So there we were, drinking wine, sitting in the living room, when someone (maybe Ellie) notices a box of cards under the tv that said something like Exploding Kittens on it.

  I had no idea what they were, so Pelin got them out to show me and explained to me that it’s a game. As we’d had a few drinks already someone suggested we played it.

  Now, I’m not normally one for games, but since my attempts to assimilate with people have led me to playing poker and Cards Against Humanity,… and because everyone else wanted to play, I figured, what did I have to lose.

  Now my friend from LA
is a business strategist, amongst other things. He’s kinda hard core and a serious entrepreneur. These personality traits seem to be transposed over to games too because the next thing I realize is that he’s pulling up a video about the rules so that he doesn’t have to bother remembering them correctly and what ensues is a game more strategic than chess!

  And taken waaay more seriously than anyone should take a game with exploding kitties on the cards.

  Well, it turned out that actually it is quite strategic and for a kid’s game takes quite a bit of cognitive processing.

  I was so impressed with it I ended up mentioning it at the next poker game and I managed to generate enough interest to warrant buying a pack and bringing them to the game the following week.

  I was a bit nervous, because these guys are hard core poker players. Some of them wear glasses so you can’t see their eyes. Some shuffle like they’ve done this professionally. Many have won tournaments in Vegas with big prize money.

  On the surface they can be a little intimidating.

  Last week I managed to grab a few players who had been knocked out, and in the hiatus between being knocked out and starting the cash game I suggested we play.

  Now whether they were humoring me, or they’d had too much beer to be able to say no…we’ll never know.

  But we started.

  We got as far as watching the video and setting up the cards, but then it was time for the cash game, so they had to go away again.

  I’m planning to keep them in my bag for next time, but I think it’s already generated enough interest and amusement to get a game going another time.

  It also reminded me of the scene from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Spike took Buffy to his underground poker game where the demons were playing for kittens!

  Alcohol poisoning

  Turns out alcohol poisoning is a thing, not just reserved for underage drinkers at prom.