A call to arms

Racing to the finish

This is my ongoing scifi / fantasy / crime fiction serial. New chapter every week.

The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1980s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real

Previously: Wounded from the crash-landing, the former SDC crew regroup and decide what to do next…

Somewhere over western Africa. Mid-Earth.
1980. March.

The koth’s voice reverberated, causing the air to tremble in the conference room, mixing with the low level vibration and thrum from the airship’s engines. Clarke hadn’t heard a koth speak since he’d been on Ceres. It was somehow reassuring.

Ganhkran cleared their throat and tapped a clawed finger on the large map that had been pinned to the wall. “Everything east of Stratford and north of the river is walled off.” The familiar curl and twist of the Thames cut across the map from left to right. “Koth are kept in the northern segment, aen’fa in the south. Travel in and out of the containment area is strictly controlled. Some are allowed to leave on work permits — unpaid, of course — but most of the non-human population stays inside.”

“Jesus Christ,” Kaminski said, leaning forward on his chair and holding his face in his hands.

“These ghettos can be found in all the major cities. Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh. They’re starting to be implemented in overseas territories, too. There isn’t enough food. Sanitation is non-existent, so disease is surging. Illnesses we haven’t seen on Palinor for a century.”

Grimacing, Clarke shifted his posture, pinching the bridge of his nose while leaning back and trying to look calm. His shoulder ached where he’d been sewn back together, his left arm out of action for a while. “How long has it been like this?”

“It had already begun while you were still in the SDC,” Ganhkran said. “The legislation was already moving through parliament. They had more than enough incidents to point to, and had stoked sufficient fear to have it pass without question.” A flicker of profound regret passed over the koth’s face, as they no doubt thought back to the events in the west end that evening many years ago, when they had first crossed paths with the SDC. “It’s worse outside of the cities.”

“Worse?” Chakraborty’s voice was muffled, her tongue still swollen. She’d fortunately not bitten through it entirely in the crash, and the airship’s medical crew were remarkably capable. Still, Clarke saw her wince as she spoke. “How can it be worse?”

“The camps are where they send dissidents. Anyone refusing to do as they’re told, or who is accused of a crime. Seeking food for their family, for example.”

“What kind of camps?” Clarke already knew the answer.

“Re-education, they call it.” Ganhkran’s fist clenched, the veins pushing through the scaled plating. “Labour camps. Nobody comes back. Nobody comes out. We’re disappeared off the streets. In the last six months they’ve started taking humans as well. Not to the camps — we think to prisons abroad, elsewhere in the kingdom. It started with journalists, then students and university lecturers.”

Kaminski lifted his arms in protest. “What have they got against students? What are they going to do?”

Ganhkran smiled, a sad, pitying smile. “They have studied Max-Earth’s playbook, detective. A long, detailed history from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries of how to subjugate a population. Not by force, not by military action, but through fear, and manipulation of the courts, and a twisting of the truth. Nobody believes it can happen, or can get that bad, until it’s too late to reverse it. The teachings are there to had, for anyone who wants to learn. Earth First, and your Prime Minister Maxwell, were keen studies.”

Chakraborty snorted. “Not my fucking Prime Minister. He can fuck right off.”

Sat beside Clarke, Lola had been uncharacteristically quiet. “What about resistance? Is there any? What of Ambassador Vahko?”

A more genuine smile this time. “Former ambassador Vahko wanted to be with our people in London.” Ganhkran took a deep, rattling breath. “I dissuaded them of that impulse.”

“What of the war on Palinor against Bruglia and the other city states?” Yana had been quiet until that moment. It occurred to Clarke that the woman was far from home, caught up in other people’s conflicts when she already had one of her own to fight. Or, perhaps it was all part of the same tragedy. She was pensive, brow furrowed, clearly under strain. Clutched to her chest was Kaenamor’s journal, now reconstituted into a single tome. It would not be leaving her sight, it seemed.

Ganhkran nodded. “We received an update before extracting you from Addis. It sounds like a stalemate. No movement on the various fronts. The rebels are holding the cities they’ve already captured—”

“Liberated,” Yana corrected, softly.

“As you say. Bruglia and its allies seem impregnable. It’s a matter of who runs out of fighters first. And Baltine in Bruglia has the resources of Mid-Earth to draw upon.”

“He’d already be toast if London hadn’t given him weapons,” Lola said, voice laden with disgust.

“We can’t have a stalemate,” Yana said. “I need to get to the university in Bruglia if I’m going to complete the spell.”

“This spell of yours,” Ganhkran said. “Why is it so important?”

“If I’m right, and if I can do it, I’ll be able to complete Kaenamor’s broken spell. The direct portals between Palinor and Max-Earth will open.”

Ganhkran looked sceptical. “That portal still resides in Bruglia. What difference will it make?”

“It undermines London, for a start,” Lola said. “Maxwell and his sycophantic idiots wouldn’t be the centre of attention and able to call all the shots.”

A new voice came from the corner of the room, tentative but excited. “Perhaps Max-Earth would come in on Palinor’s side and help?” It was Jiraa, the young man who had helped them after the crash. He’d carried Chakraborty through the portal station, then had continued to escort her to the airship even after she was shifted to a stretcher. With compromised service robots still pouring through the portal, nobody had questioned it when he’d hopped up the ramp onto the airship. He’d remained aboard even as it took flight.

Clarke smiled and looked down at his lap. The kid was an optimist, even if he didn’t know what he was talking about. They probably needed a bit of that.

“Regardless,” Yana continued, “it will destabilise the situation. That stalemate will collapse, one way or another. We’ll be able to make our move in the confusion.”

“Forgive me for saying so,” Ganhkran said, “but that strikes me as something of a leap.”

“You never know,” Clarke said, getting to his feet. It was a not inconsiderable effort. “It strikes me that we have an opportunity here. Yana needs to be in Bruglia. We need to do something about London. It’s where the Joint Council tower is, and they’re up to their necks in all this. Max-Earth’s going to have no choice but to deal with that rogue AI, after what it did in Addis. Maybe this is all the same thing.”

“How so?”

“We make a fuss in London. Yana and Lola’s lot cause some trouble on the Palinor side. In the confusion, Yana gets to the portals and works her magic. We take the whole lot down at the same time.”

Kaminski shifted in his seat and stared up at Clarke. “We? Are we freedom fighters now, Clarke?”

He clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth. “We have been for years, Zoltan. Ever since they murdered John. We just didn’t know it for a while.”

They were all walking, even Kaminski, but were a sorry sight. Ganhkran led them out onto the open deck of the Blue Tarn, the air rushing over them as the ship powered its way through the sky. Ahead was the coast, and then the Atlantic, and then they’d be on their way to the portal that floated just above the ocean. Ganhkran had never been there before. Perhaps they’d have time to step through the portal, to breathe the air of home and feel the sands with their feet.

Odd, how this awkward group of humans were at the centre of all things. If Mid-Earth, and London especially, was the pivot around which the triverse moved, these former detectives and their strange entourage were the fulcrum. Not Prime Minister Nigel Maxwell, nor Chancellor Everard Baltine, Ambassador Charles Matheson or any of the other traitors in the Joint Council tower. Ganhkran sensed a shifting of power: slow, subtle to the point of being imperceptible. At a certain moment it would accelerate to a flood.

Or perhaps they were being dramatic, and foolish, and simply becoming swept up in the rescue from Addis. The spectrum of possibilities remained so wide, and they were all of them so ill-equipped to understand what could be. That’s how the triverse had been seized by those power-crazed conspirators in the first place. A collective failure of imagination, exploited. A childish dependency on checks and balances, on the stability of the state and the markets and the institutions.

But then it could go both ways. Earth First had swept all opponents aside. They had been given power by the electorate, and had abused it. Another change was due, and Maxwell and his thugs may be just as blind to its coming.

Kaminski’s fear was gone. Or, if not gone, transmuted into something new. It was anger, infused into his veins. They’d nearly broken him, but he was still standing. Albeit with a dodgy leg.

He leaned on the rail, staring at the trees and roads and towns drifting by far below. Chakraborty was on his right, her arm hooked into his. Lola to his left, and Clarke next to her. The four of them, all having bled, but still alive.

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking straight ahead at the ropes connecting the gondola to the balloon, as they flexed in the wind. His voice caught in his throat.

Chakraborty squeezed his hand but said nothing. The ship’s doctor said it would take weeks rather than days for the swelling to go down.

“What for, Zoltan?” Lola tilted her head, nuzzling his arm with her hair.

“I nearly lost it,” he said softly. “After the crash. I wanted to give up.”

“It’s OK,” Clarke said.

“No, it’s not. You were right, Clarke. About all of it. We keep going, and we take down every one of these motherfuckers. I want to see them behind bars. I want to see my dad. I want us to be able to walk Borough Market without being arrested. I want to knock down the walls of these fucking camps and round up every traitor who helped lay a single brick.” He took a deep breath. “I need to be angry, because that’s what’s keeping me going.”

“We’ve still got the four of us,” Lola said. “We’re all here. We’re pretty good when we put our heads together.”

“Holland’s not here,” Clarke said.

Chakraborty harrumphed. “Yeah, but Holland is a cock.” She moaned at the pain of speaking.

“Really?” Kaminski looked round at her in surprise. “Those were the words you thought were worth saying?”

“Worth it,” she said, smiling weakly.

“Ganhkran says it’ll take the best part of a day to get to the Atlantic station,” Clarke said. “That gives us time to come up with a plan, while Yana reads the journal. When we get there, we put the plan to Lola’s friends. See if it could work.”

Kaminski nodded. He let the rage bubble in his arteries, allowed it to flow to his limbs and fingertips. “You know what really gets me about these people? They’re not even clever. Or interesting! They’re boring old men who have all the money but still want more. And they’ve never had a single honest idea in their lives, they just read some shitty sci-fi book and thought it was the fucking bible. Even on Max-Earth, where they’ve kind of solved all the problems, they see that as a mistake. Because it’s compromise. And to them you’re either winning in life or you’re losing. They’re zero sum arseholes. They want everyone else to have less, simply so they can have more. I want to take it all away from them. Their money, their power, their freedom.”

Lola and Chakraborty both hugged him at the same time. “I’d been away for so long,” Lola said, “that I’d started to think it was all about Palinor. Bruglia, and the rebellion. I think for a while there I forgot about London, and home, and all of you. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Kaminski said, fishing around in his back pocket. “You know why? Because I’ve got a packet of fucking cigarettes. Found them in my cabin before the meeting. Look.” He held up the packet. “The real deal. Not Max-Earth fakes.” He flicked open the top and pushed up four. “Fag, anybody?”

Lola grabbed one. “Sure, why not?”

“It’s not big or clever, you know,” Clarke said, taking another.

Chakraborty looked at the pack, then up at Kaminski disdainfully, as if to say really?

He shrugged. “You could just hold it?”

She stuck two fingers up in his general direction, then used them to pilfer a cigarette from the pack.

He lit each of them, his one last, and watched the smoke be whipped away by the motion of the airship.

“Changing the world, then, is it?” he said, cigarette between his lips.

“Callihan would have liked that,” Clarke said.

Chakraborty grinned, then winced. “Fuck, yeah.”

---

References

• If you’re wondering who Ganhkran is, check out the story ‘Random Acts of Violence’ from June 2023.

• On a similar note, Ambassador Vahko was originally introduced in ‘The Ambassadors’, waaaaay back in November 2021.

Meanwhile.

End of season 4! Check that out. And here’s the thing: season 5 is, officially, the final season. I know I’ve been promising an end for a while, but season 5 is it. Exciting times.

Some good things:

• Eric Falden
  is doing consistently excellent work over at
  Falden's Forge
  . I really enjoyed this piece, which balances being extremely nerdy with deep story insights:

  The Failure of Frodo Baggins

• This week I discovered

  The Game Business
  . Will be making it a regular thing from now on. Some good podcasting right here:

  The number of video game articles dropped by over 100,000 in Q1

• This piece by

  Erik Hoel
  led me to this peculiar hit piece from Bloomberg. I had thoughts, which I stuck in this long note:

• Substack recently expanded their live streaming capabilities, which has got me quite excited. I’m hoping to do some live Scrivener tutorials in the near future. You can see my little test here:

Right, let’s do some author notes for today’s chapter!

Author notes

When I started writing Tales from the Triverse, many of its themes and plot points were riffing on history, or on my reaction to political events of 2016. It was me looking back, and dealing with my worries about the future.

Irritatingly, reality has caught up and what was fiction is now reality in parts of the world. Today’s chapter arrives at a natural part in the Triverse story, and in the arcs of our characters, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that it was also a direct response to 2025. Kaminski’s bubbling mix of fear and rage is a fairly decent reflection of my own brain at the moment.

I’ve said before how writing is a vital part of how I process the world. That’s no more true than right now, when the world is being really quite complicated. All that anguish gets pumped into Triverse, into a chapter like today’s.

Hopefully I do it in a way that feels natural, that feels like it would be part of this story even if I were writing it 10 or 20 years earlier or later. There’s no getting away from the fact that all good science fiction is about the time in which it was written, and Triverse is my most personal project to date.

The airship is called the Blue Tarn. Long-time readers (yes, I mean you,

Mike Miller

) will have already spotted the reference to The Mechanical Crown, the serial I published from 2016 to 2019. At some point I’ll rescue it from Wattpad and make it more widely available. If there was ever a character I wrote who came from a dark place and found hope in desperate situations, it was Tarn. Make of that what you will.

The trajectory of season 5 is pretty clear, right? This chapter basically lays it out, in the macro if not the micro. Classic, multi-pronged Big Finale. It’s going to be exciting!

There’s no wait, so don’t worry: season 5 kicks off next week.

Thanks, as ever, for reading.