Dead Men Rise Up Never

By Jilly Paddock

A man is killed on the streets of Prosperity City, stabbed through the heart by a unicorn. In the cold light of dawn, the glamour fled, the creature is just a shaggy pony with a tin-plate horn.

Detective-Inspector A. Afton Lamont and her not-quite human partner, Jerome, are handed the case and follow the trail to Avalon, a private estate owned by the last son of one of their colony world’s founding families. It’s also home to a strange community of bohemian artists, plus a controlling AI who can inhabit a variety of bodies.

In a tale of deception and illusion, of an idyllic rural paradise underpinned by technology, of dreams made flesh, can Afton and Jerome discover the murderer in a tangle of lies, secrets and outright magic?

From Author Jilly Paddock (To Die A Stranger) comes Dead Men Rise Up Never, featuring tales of mystery, magic, technology, and intrigue. Also included is a short tale revealing what these intrepid detectives do after solving a high-profile murder case, which is of course get drunk in a local bar with their colleagues from Forensics.

Excitement, danger, and more await in Jilly Paddock’s Dead Men Rise Up Never. From Pro Se Productions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pro Se Press
• Release date: Aug 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310442179

Book preview

DEAD MEN RISE UP NEVER

by Jilly Paddock

Published by Pro Se Press

This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters in this publication are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. No part or whole of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing of the publisher.

Copyright © 2015 Jilly Paddock

All rights reserved.

Contents

Introduction

by Dave Brzeski

DEAD MEN RISE UP NEVER

Chapter 1

In the Morgue

Chapter 2

Serpent Crown

Chapter 3

My Fair Lady

Chapter 4

An Ordinary Girl

Chapter 5

Too Much Love of Living

Chapter 6

Some Velvet Morning

Chapter 7

Catch My Soul

Chapter 8

The Whole Lousy Messiah Kick

Chapter 9

I Should Be So Lucky

Chapter 10

Doesn’t Add Up

Chapter 11

Pleasant and Delightful

Chapter 12

Darkness and Gullibility

Chapter 13

Turn to Stone

Chapter 14

The Treebone Clan

Chapter 15

Water and Light

Chapter 16

Truth and Beauty

Five of Humours; one of Melancholy; one of Honey

About the Author

Introduction

by

Dave Brzeski

—

A Brief History Lesson

Jilly Paddock’s universe grew from a situation all too familiar to all of us. The Earth was spiralling into ecological disaster and the various nations of the world failed miserably to reach any sort of agreement over how to tackle the problem. It was too late in any case.

Several centuries prior to the time of Afton and Jerome, mankind had just begun to explore beyond the atmosphere of the Earth. The Moon had been visited, studied and found to be of little significant interest, other than as a base from which to aim missiles at rival nations. Mars, however, had potential. Domed bases had been established and families lived and worked there. (See The Third Worst Thing That Can Happen on Mars)1

Then, between 2050 and 2070, came the massive collapse that would come to be known colloquially as, The Dark. A series of wars, plagues, famines and tremendous ecological catastrophes threw the planet into chaos. People died by the millions. Not everything was lost, but for the most part, technology was set back centuries. By 2100, the time of Mountains of Ice,2 recovery was well under way. Advances in space travel and colonisation of planets throughout the galaxy averted any repeat of the population explosion that had, in part, been the root cause of The Dark.

The Known Universe

Over the next few centuries, the old domed bases on Mars became great cities. Humanity expanded its influence throughout the Universe. Several alien cultures were encountered. They include the Vrauthi, of which little has been revealed as yet, other than there was a brief war with Earth in 2312, a couple of centuries prior to the time of Afton and Jerome. Shortly after the altercation with the Vrauthi, contact was made with the Arachnoids of Gemmdis.

At the time of Dead Men Rise Up Never, which is set in 2558, Earth still has a great deal of influence over the dozen core worlds and all of the colonies. Some worlds are rich, cultured and very high-tech, some are centres of mining and industry, and others are rural and unspoilt. Some groups of colonists limit or have outright bans on technology on their home planets, choosing to live in simple agricultural societies, while others have used biotech to adapt to their new habitats. FTL travel is commonplace, with journey times measured in days or weeks.

One of the less explored areas is the Cluster, a densely-packed area of the galaxy, difficult to navigate due to dust clouds and gravity anomalies. It holds many mysterious planets populated by a variety of almost-human and humanoid races, many of a somewhat barbaric nature.

Siobhos

Afton and Jerome are based on an Earth-like planet. They work for the Police Department in Prosperity City. Fans of pulp crime stories will be very comfortable in Afton and Jerome’s world. The technology level of Siobhos is, for the most part, not too far away from 21st Century Earth. In fact, in some ways it’s closer to 20th Century, if not earlier. Siobhos was a frontier world. The early human settlers built towns of log cabins, some of which still survive in Afton and Jerome’s time. They have trams and cars, although they’re not quite the same as we may be used to. They run on clean fuel for one thing. Electricity, in the case of the trams, and engines run on hydrogen or alcohol produced from biofuels for the cars. Higher tech certainly exists; the police department employ constructs, as well as real people amongst its officers. Constructs are usually fairly simple computer processors in lab-grown bodies. Other than that, most of the really high-end technology tends to belong to the rich and privileged in their huge gated estates.

Afton and Jerome

Not much has been revealed about the enigma known as A. Afton Lamont as yet. We know she’s fairly ordinary-looking. She’s in her late 30s, around 5’7" tall, with short brown hair and muddy green-grey eyes. She’s not completely unattractive, as is revealed in this book, but she’s all about the practical. She prefers to dress plainly and simply, in trousers, shirts and a classic trenchcoat. In the first Afton and Jerome story, The Spook and the Spirit in the Stone,3 she’s described as looking soft, and unfit. This is far from the truth, as she’s quite accomplished in several martial arts. She also has a reputation for being extremely hard to work with.

Jerome hails from a world in the heart of the Cluster, D’zuluch, the Closed World, home of the Dragonmen. Rescued from an untenable situation on his homeworld, Jerome is studied and reconstructed by a team of Earth scientists led by Dr. Harbinger, who used extensive surgery and genetic manipulation to allow him to pass as human. He’s not much under 7' tall, with dark reddish-brown skin. He wears his dark hair long, in thin plaits or cornrows, nipped into a ponytail for work, and has dark brown eyes. He appears to be in his mid 20s. Much as Afton isn’t the typical hot babe heroine of pulp fiction, Jerome isn’t the typical tough guy hero. He was born on a high G world, but he’s strong, not bulky. His physique is more like that of a basketball player. He is popular with people of both sexes, as he comes across as non-threatening, simply a nice guy.

When Jerome’s partner, Jake, retires, due to ill-health, Captain Adam Vincenzo has the brilliant idea of putting him together with his other misfit—A. Afton Lamont.

Magic and the Supernatural

Jilly Paddock is a genre-bender! Her universe is equal parts science fiction, fantasy, horror and pulp adventure. Supernatural elements tend to crop up in most of her stories—except that they might not. There’s a very strong element of magic being simply science that we do not understand yet. Agent-pairs look like magical beings to many of the people they encounter. Who’s to say what some people would think of Jerome, if he flashed his forked tongue at them? There are still unknown powers in the universe, vastly older than mankind. Call them gods, demons, or whatever you will.

In the short, bonus piece that rounds out this volume, ‘Five of Humours; one of Melancholy; one of Honey’, we get to eavesdrop on a late night drinking session where Afton, Jerome and several of their friends and colleagues share their theories on that very subject. A story told from the point of view of a very drunk Jerome is an interesting and somewhat surreal experience.

Connections

Most of Jilly Paddock’s stories are connected.

The Arachnoids of Gemmdis are first encountered in Warbird.4 It tells the story of a starship, the Vienna, which uses a new means of traversing the vast distances between stars within a practical time-frame. The book is set a couple of centuries prior to Afton and Jerome’s time. The Vienna was also the ship that first discovered Siobhos. Afton and Jerome will encounter the Gemmdians (pronounced with a hard G) in a book yet to be written.

Other denizens of the Cluster Worlds turn up periodically in Jilly’s stories. Anna-Marie Delany has to deal with one in To Die a Stranger.5 In her collection, The Dragon, Fly and other flights of fancy,⁶ there are two stories involving The Sisterhood of Grace, a cult of assassin nuns, who will cause problems on separate occasions for both Afton and Jerome, and Anna-Marie Delany.

In the first Afton and Jerome adventure, The Spook and the Spirit in the Stone, they have to work with a Spook—an agent-pair in the employ of The Eye, or Earth Intelligence. Since the Afton and Jerome stories are all told in first person, present tense, from the point of view of Jerome, all we find out about this character is what Jerome knows. This means The Spook and the Spirit in the Stone can be read in two ways. You can read it first, and experience your first encounter with an agent-pair in exactly the same way as Jerome does, or you can read To Die a Stranger first and give yourself the advantage of understanding so much more about what is going on. I’ve now read it both ways and loved it both times.

In the second Anna-Marie Delany novel, With Amber Tears,7 there is a minor character, who, chronologically later in his career, has a major part to play in No Earthly Shore.⁸ You have to look carefully for that one, though, as it’s not immediately obvious.

In Five of Humours; one of Melancholy; one of Honey, reference is made to several prior events. One to the main story, one extremely vague reference to the dastardly methods of a character from another book, and several which refer to cases that have yet to be written up. These may appear in future volumes, or maybe, in the manner of the Sherlock Holmes tales of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, they may remain untold. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Pretty much every major character in Jilly Paddock’s books has had readers and reviewers demanding more. When The Third Worst Thing That Can Happen on Mars saw print, the editor, Lee Houston Jr., added a question mark after The End, as a less than subtle hint to the author. For me, part of the wonder of Jilly Paddock’s writing is that the various stories allow us mere glimpses of this huge vast universe, often separated by centuries. We can draw connections between these glimpses and speculate, but we will likely never see all the questions answered.

—

¹ The Third Worst Thing That Can Happen on Mars can be found in Pro Se Presents #19

² Mountains of Ice can be found in Blood Type: Vampire SF on the Cutting Edge, a charity anthology from Nightscape Press.

³ The Spook and the Spirit in the Stone (Afton and Jerome, Book 1) is currently available in ebook, but a new edition, with a bonus short story, will be published in paperback and ebook by Pro Se Press in the near future.

⁴ Warbird will be published by 18thWall Productions in two volumes.

⁵ To Die a Stranger (Zenith Alpha 4013, Book 1) is currently available in paperback and ebook from Pro Se Press.

⁶ The Dragon, Fly and other flights of fancy is currently available in ebook.

⁷ With Amber Tears (Zenith Alpha 4013, Book 2) will be forthcoming from Pro Se Press later this year.

⁸ No Earthly Shore is currently available in ebook. No Earthly Shore and The Dragon, Fly and other flights of fancy, along with a couple of additional stories will eventually be collected into one, or two paperback volumes, to be published by Nightscape Press in 2016.

DEAD MEN RISE UP NEVER

Chapter 1

In the Morgue

There’s a weight on my chest, a crushing weight, and there’s a buzzing in my ears and an awful, cramping pain in my left arm—

Christ, I’m having a heart attack!

Wait a minute—can’t be. My ancestry makes me immune to such ills, as that particular design fault was bred out of our gene-pool ten generations ago, so either I got really unlucky or—

I’m having a nightmare.

I surface a bit, but the heaviness is still there, and the noise. I wake up a little more and squint into a furry feline face—it’s my great idiot of a ginger cat, Gresham, curled up on my chest, purring up a storm. Minus its circulation, my arm’s gone to sleep—

There’s a woman sitting on the end of my bed. No succubus or night-hag this, no ordinary nocturnal visitation, but a vision shaped in shadow and dark fire. Must still be dreaming. Why else would Rebbeka Cazzandra McGee pay me a visit in the middle of the night?

Ugh? I say, because that’s the sum total of what I can manage.

Shit, Jerome, do you always wake up that slow? she asks, in disgust.

H… how did you get in here? That sounds much more coherent than I feel.

You gave me a key so I could feed the cat, remember?

Didn’t you give it back? I shove Greshie off and make a valiant attempt at propping myself up on one elbow, the one that isn’t numb.

I had a copy made. I don’t recall ever seeing Beka smirk before—it’s cute and just a little bit scary. Thought it might come in useful.

So you could sneak in here and embarrass me in bed?

Stop being such a prude and get your carcass out of there! There’s something down at the station you’ve got to see.

Couldn’t you have called me?

No.

Something in the way she says that makes me look at her—really look at her—for the first time. Her face is rock-steady, calm, impassive, but I know the girl well enough to see that underneath she’s shaken, scared even. That brings me fully awake. What’s happened?

We took in two cold ones at the morgue tonight. One of them you’ve got to look at. Get dressed.

She drives—I can’t, so I just worry that her aged purple runabout will die before it gets us across town. We sneak in, side door and back stairs, down to the basement.

Beka runs the lights up to full brilliance and only then do we venture into the silent space of the morgue. It’s cold, far colder than can be explained by the spill of air from the refrigeration units—you could step out of a heatwave in the street and still feel chilled in this place. Psychological cold. I try to take shallow breaths but the sour disinfectant smell of the place still bites in the back of my throat. One of the slabs has an occupant, discreetly swathed in green drapes. Even under the fabric I can tell that the corpse isn’t even remotely human.

Beka?

She puts a finger to her lips, tip-toes across the tiled floor and gingerly pulls back the sheet. The pale shape comes together in my head and my guts turn to ice.

A dead unicorn.

Cover it up! I say quickly, but even when the green sheet is replaced I can still see it, as if its awful loveliness has burned the image into my brain. Limbs so thin that you feel you could snap them, coat as white as ice, mane as delicate as a froth of sea-foam, and its horn, like pearl, like steel…

Make you some coffee? Beka says, through clenched teeth.

We sit in her office, little more than a cubby-hole, sipping at the bitter stuff, lacing it with rather too much cheap brandy—drinking glorias as the world passes away. If I close my eyes I can still see the dead creature, fragile neck arched back in an exquisite pose of agony, narrow head frozen into a grimace of hate and eyes nailed open, as hard and black as the pit.

Which suburb of hell did that come from?

Downtown, on the corner of Villeneuve and Alchemy, on the south side of the Park. It killed a man and one of our patrols shot it. Took six slugs before they stopped it. The lieutenant in charge had to be tranked and ferried off to hospital after the event. He thought he was dead meat.

Who shot it? I shake my head. Who could?

A construct.

That figures. Beka, what is it?

I don’t know. All this little biologist is prepared to say is mammalian, quadruped and covered in white hair. I did a full skeletal scan—it isn’t a horse and it isn’t a deer, but it falls somewhere in between. Beka shivers. Ask me what it is when we’ve typed its DNA—if we can, that is.

I finish my spiked coffee. Take me home.

When we get back she parks the runabout rather than just pulling alongside the kerb and peers sideways at me, through ebony lashes. I hold my breath, mind fluttering with possibilities, afraid of what she might ask. Uh, Jerome, I don’t like to push this friendship thing we have too far, but can I claim a favour and sleep on your couch? After what we’ve seen tonight—well, I’m forecasting nightmares and I don’t want to be alone when they hit.

I don’t have the heart to turn her down—what imbecile could?—so I give her the best quilt, the softest pillows and one of my clean T-shirts as a nightgown. Just when I’m almost asleep, with Greshie warm and settled in the small of my back, I hear the bedroom door squeak open.

Jerome?

It’s a whisper out of the darkness, the tremulous voice of a scared little girl. I never imagined that