Mushroom Bots + Books!
Anyone have mushroom powered robots on their 2024 bingo card?
Don’t worry, the folks at Cornell U have your back. These fungus-controlled dudes are known as biohybrids. They walk around interacting with their environments and, according to IFLscience, look like something from The Addams Family.
Cornell’s team included neurobiologists, plant pathologists, and robotics engineers. It’ll be interesting to see the ways in which this technology could be applied. For more about it, here’s a link. Or you can click on the image above.
Countdown to Dagger’s Edge
One week from tomorrow! That’s when the long-awaited completion of the main story arc in the Biogenesis universe will be in your hands.
Want a Sneak Peek? Scroll to the end of this email/post to read an excerpt.
Audiobook News: Dagger’s Edge is in production right now and will be available a few weeks after the ebook releases.
Join all the familiar faces, including a certain chatty ferret and a grouchy, steak-loving hunting cat, in this fast-paced adventure, set on a new world for the Biogenesis crew.
Are you ready to dive into a new book?
Check out this specially curated list of books from thirty-five different authors, just waiting for you to peruse.
It’s the end of an era… Or is it?
Only Rick Partlow knows. Yesterday, the final episode in the Drop Trooper series released on Kindle.
Book 16, Kill Chain, is out now.
(NOTE: Some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links, which means I get a few pennies off any sale if you choose to buy…)
Dagger’s Edge, Chapter 1 Sneak Peek:
ONE: UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER
Humboldt Space Elevator
St. Clair Township, Ceriba
Geminate Alliance (Procyon System)
The cabin of the space elevator came to a full stop as it touched down on the surface. A green light flashed, and the elevator’s SI announced. “Welcome to St. Clair Township, capital of Ceriba. Please be careful when retrieving your belongings, as they may have shifted during our descent. Enjoy your stay.”
Elodie Cyr unwebbed and reached beneath her seat for the carrier that had indeed shifted, though entirely on its own. Small paws shoved against the carrier’s soft, screened sides as she hefted its strap over her shoulder and stood, waiting patiently for the passengers in front of her to disembark.
Her own passenger wasn’t nearly as patient—or as quiet. {No likey. Lemme out! Lemme out! I be good.}
Ell resisted the urge to laugh at the mental voice that had popped into her head, courtesy of the evanescent wire embedded in her brain. {Uh huh. Remember what you did the last time one of us fell for that line? Thad had to shell out a lot of credits to cover the trinkets you stole from that woman’s craft booth.}
The ferret inside the carrier chittered. {Was shiny.}
Like that was an excuse.
The line started moving and Ell slipped into the flow. Once inside the station proper, her gaze immediately went high, drawn out of habit to areas within the spaceport that would make a good sniper’s hide.
Old habits died hard. Ell quashed the thought the moment it floated to the front of her mind because in truth, it wasn’t accurate. Good training died hard, especially those seared into the gray matter of one’s brain by the two Ds—discipline and drill instructors.
But Ell’s days as a special forces sniper were over. Her hand reached for the point above her knee where surgeons had attached a bioidentical leg. The original had been mangled beyond repair.
Though Ell had a clear memory of events leading up to the explosion, everything that followed was fuzzy. They’d been on a covert extraction deep in Alpha Centauri’s Sargon Straits. The mission was a success, all packages accounted for, but the timing had been rushed. All indicators pointed to things heating up, but nothing had suggested a coup. But apparently, the Akkadians hadn’t read the same memo.
Damn Akkadians.
Things had hit a flashpoint just as they’d hustled the Geminate Consulate out the back door. Ell had gone high to cover their six, so she was last to retreat. An Akkadian assault ship had hit the airlock right as Ell entered it.
From that point on, all she had were vague impressions. Shouting. Rough hands pulling her inside the ship. Hard acceleration. Shock and pain and then blessed numbness as their medic knocked her out. She’d awakened with a leg that wasn’t her own. A different kind of pain was now her constant companion, every moment of every day.
The complex network of artificial nerve fibers grafted into her own nervous system were made of the same SmartCarbyne that formed her military endoskeleton, which had never given her any trouble. But the protective shell that reinforced bone, organs, and sinew during high delta-v maneuvers was made to protect parts of her body. These artificial nerves replaced them.
Unfortunately, she was one of a rare handful of people whose bodies did not respond well to them. In Ell, they caused a painful feedback loop, a transient neuropathy that never truly went away. She’d been to the best surgeons in the Alliance; every attempt to resolve the issue had failed.
Had it been just the pain, she might have found a way to gut it out, but the carbyne nerves had a funny way of dropping signal strength without warning, causing her leg to collapse. That meant that Ell-the-sniper was a liability to the Special Reconnaissance Unit where she served.
It had been a devastating blow. Being an SRU sniper wasn’t just Ell’s career; it was her life, her identity. But a certain someone wouldn’t allow her to just give up. And damn it, she was too used to following whatever orders Captain Thad Severance gave to fight him. So, when a ‘friend from the NCIC’ showed up and offered Ell a job as a special agent, she knew better than to turn it down.
Naval Criminal Investigation Command might not be sexy or glamorous like the special forces, but it would pay the bills.
She’d soon come to realize that the skills she’d mastered as a sniper applied here, too. Keen observation, the ability to blend in with her surroundings, situational awareness, and intense focus were just a few of the traits she’d mastered as a sniper that carried over to her new position.
Then a recent case had turned everything on its ear. Ell was in the game once again—and she was back with her old unit. More accurately, she’d been pulled into a conspiracy that spanned all inhabited space, and them along with her.
Ell shoved the memories aside, annoyed that she’d allowed her thoughts to wander when she should have been monitoring her surroundings. She gave the area a good scan, her head on a practiced swivel just casual enough to not look studied.
Everything was as it should be. The area was filled with passengers coming and going, some running to catch connecting flights, others busy corralling excitable kids or heading for baggage claim.
The only baggage Ell had was tucked into an inside pocket of the ferret’s carrier. Unlike many around her, this trip was routine, part of Ell’s standard commute.
Ordinarily, she wouldn’t be taking work home, but the intel she’d just been given had piqued her interest. She’d wanted more time to study it, but Quinn had gone into mother hen mode and shamed her into going home ‘at a decent hour for once.’
That was when she’d found out he’d volunteered her to babysit the furry little pickpocket slung over her shoulder. She’d tried to get out of it, but her words had fallen on deaf ears.
On a resigned sigh, Ell exited the spaceport. It was a perfect spring day, the sky a brilliant blue and the breeze soft on her exposed arms. The carrier lurched, causing her to widen her stance to stay balanced.
{Ooo pretty. Wanna climb!}
She didn’t have to look to know what the ferret had seen. A new art installation by one of Ceriba’s premiere sculptors had recently been added to the spaceport’s grounds. Ornate brushed silver swept elegantly aloft, as if the sculpture’s two abstract arms were trying to touch the sky. And yes, it was shiny.
{This, right here, is why you’re in a carrier,} she scolded mentally, flagging down the nearest air taxi. {If I let you out, I’d never see you again. And that would break Sam’s heart.}
{Sam-Sam, nice doctor. No make her sad.}
{Then behave,} she said as an autonomous aircar stopped in front of her.
Half an hour later, the vehicle started its descent. Ell’s destination was Montpelier, a suburb south of the city. Its trendy retail district was a few blocks from Ell’s townhouse, and home to Ceriba’s famous Restaurant Row.
The cab touched down, and its fee popped up on her evanescent wire. Ell transferred the credits over and exited the vehicle, accompanied by the excited chittering of a ferret ready to explore new places.
“Just hang tight a little longer. I need to grab both of us something to eat, and then we’ll head home.”
The smells wafting her way made her stomach grumble. A boulangerie was up ahead, and Ell knew from experience that it also had a nice assortment of meats and cheeses to go with its fresh-every-morning croissants. She headed for it at a brisk walk.
Ell was halfway there when the itching sensation of someone watching hit her hard. She glanced casually around, checking faces, window reflections, shadows in unexpected areas, anything that might indicate a malicious presence. She found nothing.
The owner of the boulangerie was an acquaintance; he nodded cheerfully at her as she entered. Normally, she would linger over the wealth of choices. Not today.
She grabbed food quickly and paid over her wire, then waited for the counter to clear before approaching the proprietor.
“Would you mind terribly if I used the facilities?” she asked in a low tone.
The boulangerie had one of those ‘no public restrooms’ holosigns posted out front, but the owner had been there the night a man had been killed outside his shop. He’d seen Ell racing toward the threat, not away from it. And he’d never forgotten.
“Of course. It’s in the back.”
“Thanks, Bruce.” She gave him a brief smile, then slipped down the corridor… and out the back door.
Her SDR was complex enough that it should have caught anyone shadowing her—but at the end of the surveillance detection route, she came up empty. There was no one there, yet the feeling persisted.
The townhouse was in an upscale neighborhood with good security; the street was tidy and well lit. It made it hard to keep to the shadows. Still, she figured she’d be just fine as long as no nosy neighbors came out to ask why she was skulking around in their bushes.
When she slipped inside her foyer, Ell set the carrier down, drew her weapon, and cleared each room. By the time she was done, she had begun to feel a little foolish. There was literally nothing to indicate she was being watched or followed.
Ell holstered her pistol and backtracked to retrieve the carrier. “Maybe Quinn’s right. Maybe I do need a vacation,” she muttered.
She stepped into the foyer and froze. There, standing over the ferret’s carrier, was an Akkadian assassin.
I hope you enjoyed this sneak peek. If you pick up a copy, let me know what you think. Interacting with readers is one of the best things about being a writer.
As always, thanks for stopping by the Speakeasy and hanging out.
Fair skies & tailwinds,
L.L. Richman
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