As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

New Release: Salvage – R J Theodore

Salvage - R J Theodore

QSFer R J Theodore has a new queer science fantasy book out (ace, bi, gay, non-binary, trans mtf): Salvage.

Peridot is headed for its second cataclysm. War has broken ancient alliances, sealed borders, and locked down the skies. The Five, Peridot’s alchemist gods, have seen one of their number die and another fall in their efforts to protect their world from invaders beyond the stars. Defeated and diminished, they have ceased to answer the prayers of their people and have left the rapidly unraveling world to fend for itself.

Talis and the orphaned crew of the lost airship Wind Sabre have a plan to set things to rights, but they’re stranded on a rock far from the heart of the conflict. When an old enemy comes and offers them a ship and a path forward, it comes with strings that will pull them further from the home they are so desperate to save.

Can Talis and her crew chart a course through hostile skies, shifting allegiances, and subverted governments before the true enemies of Peridot claim a power that can destroy the world once and for all?

Get It At Amazon | Publisher | B&N | Kobo | Universal Buy Link


Excerpt

Talis left the confines of the harbormaster’s office and returned to the docks, where she could feel the cold breeze caress her face and tug at her jacket. One day, they’d leave Heddard Bay behind and let the real winds whip about them. It was the promise Talis had made to herself, and to her crew who’d given up so much on her account.

Dug, who’d lost his goddess because of Talis. Well, to be fair, not lost completely. The deposed Bone Alchemist was around somewhere, reduced to a squawking, furious raven and bereft of her former powers. It was Talis and the others who’d truly lost their god, Silus Cutter, who was murdered by the Yu’Nyun. But at least Talis didn’t carry any personal responsibility for that.

She was responsible for Sophie, whose dreams of building the most ambitious airship in all four skies had gone down to the trash layer of flotsam with the money that was supposed to pay for it.

And Tisker. Tisker, who followed Talis wherever she led, his faith in her never slacking with the change in the wind.

And their winds had changed, damn it to all five hells. Some days, she lost a sense of the wind entirely. Days like today, when she had to board someone else’s ship and the smells and sounds of it made her body ache with old memories, Talis could work herself into a right sour mood about their situation. But it was one they’d come to as a group. Together. And together was all they had after Wind Sabre dropped to flotsam.

It was just the four of them, as it had been for years before the wreck. Just . . . without a ship. The underground city of Lippen had become their home for the time being.

No. Talis bit her tongue as if it could stop the thought. Heddard Bay, Lippen, and the tiny room they rented there were not “home.” The whole situation was temporary. A refuel stop on the way back to their life. A longer stop than anticipated, to be sure. And might be longer yet if Bill didn’t check in soon.

Hankirk could have helped resolve this, had even once promised her he would—but he’d finagled passage back to Cutter skies mere hours after they’d taken off his ruined arm in a Lippen clinic. He was supposed to stay with Scrimshaw when it was Talis’s turn to see her crew’s medical needs tended to, but he’d taken their defected alien friend and disappeared. Things hadn’t improved in the two years since, so Hankirk had either failed to keep his promise, or failed to try.

Fine. Whatever. Talis didn’t care about Hankirk. He’d failed her at every opportunity—that was all that mattered. Pulling their backsides out of flotsam at the last moment didn’t offset a career’s worth of selfish actions. She cared that he’d handed Scrimshaw back to xist people in exchange for his comfy position in the capital. She cared that she’d had to learn from dock rumors that Scrimshaw had died of xist wounds in Diadem. And she cared that she’d had to carry that news back to their room and witness the grief take another notch out of her crew.

“Oi, Talis!” called out one Bone merchant in the Common Tongue as she walked past his berth. If he followed his usual route, he had a cargo hold full of lambswool, bound for Gladstone. “You still here? Thought you’d have punched through those borders by now.”

She waved a dismissive hand. The teasing was all part of her routine these days. “You owe me a drink. Why would I leave before you served it up?”

Truth was, she was itching beneath her skin to return home. But she and her crew couldn’t just buy transport with the little money they had if they’d arrive with their pockets empty and no ship of their own. Hankirk had a head start on her and was no doubt using it to look for Meran’s other rings for his Veritor bedfellows. Talis and her crew needed to keep him from finding them, either by finding them first, or by making as much trouble for Hankirk and the Veritors as possible.

For now, she played her part, inspecting cargo, renting out dock equipment, hooking up the airship lines and gantries, and spending her days on the docks as close to open skies as she could get without a ship of her own.

Another ship’s crewman was passing her on the docks, close enough to overhear. “If they don’t open those borders soon, I’m going to have to install a sub-Horizon rig.” His ship had bars of copper headed for Ainteague, but once he ran the conductive material to all the islands in Cutter skies. The border closing had taken a huge bite out of his income. “Not fair that the Yu’Nyun getting a leg up when I’m locked out.”

Outside of the empire, the concept of Yu’Nyun “refugees” was laughable. They’d lost their ships, sure, but no way was that enough to make them harmless. The aliens were inevitably going to turn on the Veritors, but those once-xenophobic, still-Cutter-obsessed fools were so entranced by the power Yu’Nyun technology offered them that they couldn’t see the impending treachery. Nor would the regular Cutter folk who looked to their government for protection, guidance, and honesty.

No, there’d be no honesty from the Veritors or the government whose strings they pulled. Certainly not from the Yu’Nyun, who now pulled the Veritors’ strings in turn.

The lot of them had had two years to keep hunting those rings, keep salvaging the Yu’Nyun wrecks to lift what technology they could. And they’d use it to make trouble, Talis knew. They’d awaken another Meran in another simula body, and if Hankirk had learned his lesson about how to control this one, the trouble they’d bring would devastate all of Peridot. It was up to Talis and her crew to stop them.

She hated save-the-world missions. She hated painting a target on her hull and flaunting it in front of the legitimate imperial forces, never mind the Veritors.

But no one else was going to stop this corruption of her nation, her world. Maybe Meran could have, but when Talis thought she could trust the bond between her and the ancient soul of the planet, Meran had proven herself as unreliable as Hankirk. Moreso even.

Gods-rotted rings, and gods-rotted alien tech. The entire Cutter empire would be after them, and Talis didn’t see anyone else trying to stop them.

As usual, it was up to her and her crew to do the job no one else wanted.


Author Bio

R J Theodore (they/she) is an author, graphic designer, and all-around collector of creative endeavors and hobbies. They enjoy writing about magic-infused technologies, first contact events, and bioluminescing landscapes.

Their love of SFF storytelling developed through grabbing for anything-and-everything “unicorn” as a child, but they were subverted by tales of distant solar systems when their brother introduced them to Star Trek: The Next Generation at age seven. A few years later, Sailor Moon taught them stories can have both.

Their short fiction has appeared in MetaStellar, Lightspeed, and Fireside Magazines as well as the Glitter + Ashes and Unfettered Hexes anthologies from Neon Hemlock Press.
They live in New England, haunted by their childhood cat. Find more information at rjtheodore.com.

Author Websiterjtheodore.com
Author Facebookfacebook.com/RJTheodore
Author Twittertwitter.com/bittybittyzap

Join Our Newsletter List, Get 4 Free Books

File Type Preferred *
Privacy *
Queer Sci Fi Newsletter Consent *
Please consider also subscribing to the newsletters of the authors who are providing these free eBooks to you.
Author Newsletter Consent *
Check your inbox to confirm your addition to the list(s)

Leave a Comment