The Vanishing Star: part 2

New weaponry arrives on the battlefield

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

The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1980s 1970s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real

Previously: Lola Styles continues to recover from her wounds, while the war on Palinor intensifies…

Outskirts of Kunac. Palinor.
3203. Early Frostfield.

They came before dawn.

The noise woke young Poltrix from the nap that had overtaken his supposed guard duty. He snapped to attention, nearly falling from the wooden stool he’d carried up to the top of the watchtower. A sound like nothing he’d ever heard, almost like a huge gate being opened and closed, but extremely fast, or perhaps the flapping of a dragon’s wings. It was not the sound of an animal, though; it was too metallic, too artificial.

He squinted into the dim morning, the sandy dunes beyond the city walls stretching into the distance, the mountains far away, a road winding its route. Everything was grey, the only colour a subtle orange glow in the sky. The noise was louder, cacophonous, filling the air on all sides.

And then he saw it: a flying contraption, long rather than wide, bars slung beneath, a glass dome on the front, and a shimmering haze vibrating above it. It descended into his view, moving fast, approaching the city wall. Poltrix did not recognise it, but that didn’t matter: he reached for the bell that would sound the alarm.

Something dropped from the side of the contraption and a plume of smoke burst from its rear, propelling it towards the city walls. It took only a second for it to hit, a detonation of rock and sand and fire erupting from the impact. Another projectile was fired, and the wall was down.

From the dunes came an army, riding wheeled vehicles, some open-topped, others with revolving treads that left thick tracks. Turrets atop some of them boomed, sending a shockwave rippling across the sand. There was no need to ring the bell: everybody in the city already knew that an attack was underway.

From the horizon he saw more white smoke, arcing up into the sky, higher and higher. A series of rattling booms shook the tower, each one signalling the city’s doom. The arcs of smoke curved gracefully, completing their ascent and speeding back down towards the city. Poltrix rushed to the other side of the tower and flung open the window, just in time to see explosions rain across the neighbourhoods in which he’d grown up. From where he stood he saw markets obliterated, houses destroyed down to the foundations, trees shredded, irrigation waterways evaporated. He watched as skin was blasted from bodies, leaving only charred shadows.

By the time the sun came up an hour later, half the city was flattened, and the rest had surrendered.

The Appilan Rainforest.

Pylpo liked being the messenger. She couldn’t do magic, like Maxim or Yana or Daryla. She wasn’t a koth, like Lykasra, so couldn’t rip anyone’s arms off. She’d never received the kind of combat training Krystyan specialised in, nor did she have his tactical brains. That didn’t mean she was useless, though. She knew medicine, and she could climb.

Sitting on a thin branch above the forest canopy, she looked out over the endless sea of trees. Sea was right; making the climb, pushing through the leaves and emerging into the sunlight always reminded her of swimming in the ocean and coming up for air. The Appilan trees were tall, the kind of tall that didn’t exist anywhere else in the Triverse.

The Owkehu had a web of messengers at key points through the rainforest. Each only had a vague understanding of where the others were, just enough to send a messenger spell in the general direction, but not so much that they could give away firm details during an interrogation. Pylpo carried a receptor that had been imbued by Maxim with a particular elemental signature, one that matched the spell being cast by the messenger on the other end. It was supposed to ensure that nobody could intercept and read the message, because it was a load of gibberish without both parts of the key.

Pylpo didn’t really understand it, but it seemed to work.

She sat comfortably on her perch, tinkering with the receptor. Only the wind kept her company up there, and her thoughts. The seasons continued to slide by, the leaves starting to shift to a darker hue. It never became properly cold in the Appilan rainforest, not like up on the Peak, or the nights in Bruglia. You had to be a detective to spot the changing of the seasons in the rainforest. Different animals, a shift in the density of insect clouds, new mosses and mushrooms and flowers.

She sighed.

If only their real detective would wake up.

“I’m just saying,” Yana was saying, “that it’s the biggest unsolved mystery of our time.”

Krysytan rolled his eyes, not even trying to hide his irritation. It didn’t bother him in the slightest if she found him rude. “We don’t have time for mysteries, Yana.”

The woman was obsessed with portals, as everyone knew. She was a brilliant wielder, formidable on the battlefield, and as the heir to one of the great houses she also held significant political clout, should she wish to use it. Sometimes he wondered whether her obsession with two-century-old magic spells was a way of avoiding talking about her inheritance. The rebel princess. She’d been a good bit of PR back at the start.

There was a shout and Pylpo came sliding down from above, hopping to the clearing floor. “Got a message!” she called, unnecessarily. Always so enthusiastic, so energised. There was a time when Krystyan had valued that, had seen it in himself. Now, it made him all the more tired.

He took the cylinder and pulled out the script. “There’s been an attack,” he said, scanning down the page. “It’s Kunac.” He glanced up at Lykasra.

They glowered, a low rattle in their throat. “Kunac? It was stable the last time we were there.”

The city state of Kunac had been one of the first to be liberated. They’d removed the ruling house in one swift move, literally beheading it and handing it back to the people. No bloodshed, save for the Lord and his family, and nobody had mourned their passing.

He read the report out loud. “‘They came at dawn. This might be the last message we get out. The city is destroyed. Every street. They bombarded us with weapons I’ve never seen before. Not magic. Mid-Earth weaponry. Flying, and on the ground.’”

There was more detail, but he could read it later. Mid-Earth had entered the fray, then. After the new regime in London, and the crackdown on portal travel, Krystyan had wondered if it would come to this. He’d run the scenarios with Lykasra, calculating the likelihood of a foreign actor becoming involved, and what it would mean. They’d expected an increase in funding, or training, but provision of weapons hadn’t been deemed a high probability. It couldn’t be Max-Earth: none of their technology worked at all on Palinor, and they’d never bothered to retrofit any of it using older designs and power sources. Plus, they wouldn’t have the will.

It had to be Mid-Earth. It was Baltine in Bruglia, cutting a deal with his counterparts in London and at the Joint Council. Styles had warned them about an alliance of bad actors across the Triverse. A limitless supply of weapons, pouring through the Bruglian portal.

Perhaps Yana had a point, after all. It was always the damned portals.

There was another shout, from across the camp. “Hey!” cried Zlati, jumping up and down and waving her arms. “Hey! Everyone, come quickly! Lola’s awake!”

Some good news, then, at least. Krystyan stayed in his seat, as did Lykasra. He watched as the others dashed across the clearing, as Daryla burst from her tent.

His eyes caught Lykasra’s and they stared at each other, neither needing to say anything. The war had changed. That meant they needed to change as well.

---

References

• We glimpsed some of the rebel tactics back in ‘A Distant Rebellion’ (August 2023)

• The concept of a magic telegraph service was first introduced in ‘The Escapists’ (January 2023)

Meanwhile.

I tend to steer clear of directly commenting on politics here, but the UK government is making it really hard. Their plans for embracing AI include watering down copyright law in favour of large tech firms. Ed Newton-Rex explain why that’s not ideal for creatives in this article over on The Guardian.

The silliest bit of the proposals is that they were drawn up by Matt Clifford, a tech investor venture capitalist. Venture capitalist types who invest in tech are perhaps not the best people to consult about major sea changes that will affect massive swathes of society and culture for decades to come.

A tech investor goes all-in on AI. Didn’t see that one coming.

As Ed points out, a lot of the other recommendations aren’t bad — so it’s a real shame that the price seems to be selling off the creative industries.

In better news:

• Simon Owens
  writes an excellent newsletter about the evolving media landscape. If you publish in any form, it’s worth a read. He brought my attention to an interview by
  Taylor Lorenz
  with the CEO of Patreon, Jack Conte. It’s full of fascinating insights, and the whole thing feels quite hopeful.

• After a month off due to waves at all the stuff, I finally got back to the Babylon 5 rewatch. If pioneering 90s sci-fi is your thing, do come join us:

• Useful advice from growth hack expert

  Alex Dobrenko`
  , as always:

• I always forget to look at Goodreads, but happened to swing by yesterday and spotted a couple of lovely new reviews of No Adults Allowed:

Thanks,

Shannon W Haynes

and JP!

Right, on with the notes for this week’s chapter…

Author notes

I don’t think I’ve talked about the origin of the rebels’ name. Here’s a snippet from my notes:

Although they try to resist labels or being overly defined, the rebels have acquired the name Owkehu (from ‘owōkē kūhu’, literally meaning ‘truth wizard’).

That translation is from the Pi’aian language, which is an aen’fa dialect. Yes, it’s entirely made up. I’ve been using Vulgarlang for a couple of years to generate the non-English Palinese languages in Triverse. The system has all sorts of features and I use it in a very basic manner, doing straightforward translations into a fantasy vocabulary.

It helps create consistency in the fictional languages, which has been increasingly useful as Lola has strayed from the portal hub area. Pi’aian is a lyrical language.

For example, “hello, how are you?” translate to “Pēwa, ’ai paupā kū?” I tend to drop some of the accents in the main text for the sake of simplicity.

There’s another language that I’ve generated called Kveti, which is spoken by koth. This is more abrupt, harsher, more suited to the unique vocal chords of koth. “Hello, how are you?” translates to “Tsvo. O dru u?”

Anyway! Fun stuff.

From the very beginning of writing Triverse I’ve had a couple of large-scale ideas floating around. One was the idea of Palinese magic being used on Mid-Earth — a tricky prospect as spells can’t be cast there, but we’ve established that spells already conjured on Palinor can be maintained for a time after transiting through the portal to London. This is how the Napoleonic War was won, much faster and more decisively than in our timeline.

The other idea was the reverse: Mid-Earth weaponry being used on Palinor. Mid-Earth uses steam and combustion to power its vehicles. Think mid-20th century, but more polluting. Those vehicles and weapons are not subject to the degradation that makes Max-Earth robots and tech unable to function on Palinor. Hence the concept of having a Lord of the Rings-style city assault, but with tanks and helicopters.

The critical part here is Lola waking up, which we’ll get to properly next week. A lot of what’s happening in the background on Palinor is setting up what’s to come. Remember, we’re in the final stretch of Tales from the Triverse. A season-and-a-half to go, I reckon. Of course, I haven’t defined how long a season is, so that’s about as vague as I could be…

‘Enter the fray’ is a phrase I use a lot. I think it’s been in all my books to date. It’s a deep reference to a single panel of a Transformers comic I read when I was about 10, written by Simon Furman, and has been embedded in my mind’s eye ever since. Here it is:

I imagine someone will enter a fray at least one more time before we’re done with Triverse.

Thanks for reading, as always!