The Valiant goes live in less than two weeks! This is the first book in my new space fantasy, Star Legend, which melds space opera with British mythology. For a taste of what’s to come, read this week’s snippet and meet one of the main characters, Taylan Ellis. Taylan joined up as a new recruit to the Royal Marines to try to win back her homeland, the Britannic Isles.

Missed part one? You can find it here.

Chapter Two

The game of xiangqi wasn’t going well for Taylan Ellis. It was her turn, and she’d been trying to figure out her next move for the last five minutes, but she couldn’t see a way to reverse the tide of battle. The enemy general was well beyond her reach, while her own was trapped in one quarter of the board, harried by soldiers, chariots, and cannon.

She looked up into the face of her friend, Emeka Abacha, knowing she would find no mercy there. He gazed back, amusement twinkling in his dark blue eyes.

“Take all the time you need, little chick,” he said expansively, his voice not much more than a soft rumble among the snores of their fellow Royal Marines in the ten-rack cabin.

She’d never understood why he’d given her that nickname. She was far from little, and her days of being a ‘chick’ were long gone. Abacha was the only person Taylan would allow to call her that, and he knew it. At times like these, he took full advantage of the concession.

Strike that.

She did know why he used the nickname—it was to rile her, and he was doing a good job of it.

She screwed up her face in frustration.

Abacha’s grin grew wider.

Wearing only undershirts and shorts, they crouched over a small table set against the bulkhead farthest from the cabin door. A single overhead lamp spilled its light over the table and aged board game. The lines of the game were nearly worn away, and the plastic pieces were barely identifiable anymore. But the game was the only thing the two insomniacs had to occupy them after lights out, when all electronics were banned.

Taylan reached toward one of her adviser tiles.

Abacha’s eyebrows rose.

She hesitated, her hand suspended over the tile, before she dropped it to her side again and scowled.

Her friend leaned over the table and gave her shoulder a friendly slap, nearly knocking her from her seat. “Concede defeat! There’s no shame in it. It’s only a game. Besides…” he stretched his long arms wide “…it’s late and I’m sleepy.”

Taylan’s scowl deepened, and she studied the positions of the tiles on the board more closely. There had to be a way out of her predicament, if only she could see it.

The figure of her friend suddenly stiffened, and Taylan, sensing the change in him, looked up. “What’s wrong?”

“You don’t hear it?” he asked.

She concentrated on the sounds around her. Aside from the noises of slumber from the other marines, all she could hear was the hum of the Daisy’s engines.

Then she realized what Abacha meant: the engine noise had risen in pitch. They were no longer maintaining orbit, flanking the Valiant, they were on the move. Her stomach registered the new direction. The corvette was descending, which could only mean she was on her way to the surface.

A quiet excitement rose in Taylan.

“We’re going down,” she whispered.

“Uh huh,” replied Abacha, but his look of delight as he’d anticipated beating her at xiangqi had faded. Now he looked sad.

She wondered what was bothering him, but then she felt the beads of her necklace under her fingertips. When she’d realized they were going to Earth, her hand had unconsciously strayed to the child’s jewelry she always wore around her neck.

She snatched her fingers away and looked down, embarrassed.

Abacha was silent, and the cabin remained quiet, the sleeping marines unaware of the changing circumstances.

Taylan raised her gaze to her friend, and saw him touching the side of his head, listening to a comm. Every marine had an implant surgically installed just behind their left ears. When you were given an order, there was no avoiding it, whether you were asleep or awake. If the device sensed you were sleeping, it would break into your dreams with an alarm that wouldn’t turn off until you were conscious. The comm would repeat until you gave the mental response you’d received it.

Abacha’s eyes refocused as the message ended.

Grunts, groans, and the rustle of sheets came from the racks as marines began to stir.

Abacha got up and went to step away from the table, but then he halted. “You didn’t hear it?”

“Nope,” replied Taylan. “What’s happening?”

“Rescue mission. Gotta attend a briefing.”

“Hm. Looks like I’m not invited.”

“Looks like it.”

Abacha began to leave, but Taylan grabbed his wrist. “Rescue mission on the surface?”

“Wright didn’t say, but I guess so. That’s where we’re headed.”

“If they’re sending a corvette down, it must be somewhere dangerous. Did he say where it is exactly?”

“No, he didn’t.”

Overhead lights came to life. Three or four grumbling marines dropped from upper racks to the floor and hastily pulled on their uniforms. The sleepers who hadn’t been called to the briefing groaned and pulled their blankets over their heads.

Taylan hadn’t released Abacha’s wrist. She was thinking.

“Hey, I have to go,” said her friend.

“How about…” She hesitated. “Wanna swap places with me?”

He sighed. “You know I can’t do that. Wright ordered me on the mission, not you.”

“I’ll say you’re sick and I’m taking your place.”

“I haven’t been to sick bay. If he checks out your story and finds out we both lied, I’ll be in a world of trouble.”

“I’ll tell him…as soon as you woke, you threw up. Or something. C’mon, do this for me. How often do we go to the surface these days? This might be the last chance I get.”

“You don’t even know where we’re going.”

“I know we were above Europe.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. We’re aboard a freaking starship. The rescue could be anywhere.”

While they argued, the marines who had received the summons had dressed and run out of the cabin. Abacha looked toward the open door. “Tay, the briefing’s in five minutes. I have to be there.”

“C’mon!” she urged. “When do I ever ask you for a favor?”

“Well, there was that time you made me help you get the cook drunk so you could shave off his eyebrows.”

“Okay. But he deserved payback for the slop he serves up.”

“And I distracted that warrant officer for you while you hid her helmet in the freezer.”

“She’s a tool, and you know it.”

“And let’s not forget you persuading me to help you smuggle Boots aboard.”

Boots was the ship’s cat—a stray Taylan had rescued from the battle zone at their last engagement.

“Give me a break!” she protested. “Boots is the best thing that ever happened to this ship.”

Abacha shot her a skeptical look. He might have been thinking about the cat’s resistance to all attempts to house train him.

“You have to admit,” Taylan went on, “he keeps the cockroaches down.”

Abacha gently prised her fingers from his wrist. “I have to go.”

She slumped against the bulkhead. “See ya later.”

He put on his uniform in record time, and then strode quickly across the cabin, last to leave. Taylan felt bad. He would be reprimanded for being late. When he reached the doorway, however, he stopped and turned.

She’d been watching him, resigning herself to the fact she wouldn’t be going to the surface. When Abacha halted, she sat up.

“How do you do it?” he asked.

“Do what?”

“Be so annoying yet so pitiful at the same time?”

She jumped to her feet. “You’re gonna let me take your place?”

In answer, he swept his arm through the doorway, as if inviting her to go out.

She leapt up and yelled, “Yeah!”

A pillow thrown by a disgruntled marine hit her square in the middle, but she barely registered it. She was already running toward the door. On her way, she snatched her uniform from her rack with one hand and with her other she grabbed her boots. When she reached Abacha, she leapt up and grabbed him in a quick hug. “I owe you,” she said, before racing out.

But as she reached the junction at the end of the passageway, she remembered something and pulled up abruptly. Abacha had remained in the doorway, watching her, his arms folded across his sizable chest.

She called out, “Which briefing room?”

“Two.”

“Shit.”

She ran back the way she’d come. As she reached her friend, he held up a hand for a high five. Taylan slapped his palm as she passed him.

She was going to Earth, perhaps even to the Britannic Isles, and who knew what she might find out while she was there?

I hope you enjoyed this week’s Saturday Snippet. Check back next week for part three.