TideBreakers: Death On Foils

By Duncan Stockwell

A self-contained short story in the TideBreakers universe: Neil Ramsgate is set to review a sub for DiveWings magazine, but circumstances beyond his control mean that his morning goes from bad to worse. Before long, Neil finds himself unwittingly embroiled in the aftermath of one of the most bizarre crimes to have occurred in The Marino Bowl; an attack by the dancing vigilante 'The Lindy-Hopper'.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Duncan Stockwell
• Release date: Aug 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311971005

Duncan Stockwell

When I was very little, I used to wear three or four hats at the same time; I couldn’t decide which was best, so I just wore all of my favourites. As soon as I could hold a pen and a plectrum, I was exactly the same with telling stories. I completed two degrees in creative and professional writing, but even then a project was never just one thing; I’d write it, draw it, sometimes even compose soundtrack-music for it as if it was a film. For me, it was just a natural extension of the story-creation process.My TideBreakers project started as a world I could tell stories in. Very soon it became a world that I wanted to give to people so they could make their own awesome stories in as well. Having already worked on artwork and graphics, a TideBreakers card game was an easy step to make and the story series and card-game have been inter-connected almost from the project’s first inception.I started TideBreakers when I was about fourteen, and there have been challenges and changes since then, but the project has held firm in my imagination. I’ve kept writing, I’ve kept drawing and I’ve kept composing music. The TideBreakers world is as strong as it ever was and I want to share my story and let other people play the game to tell their own. If you'd like more information about the game, you can download the rules and free samples at tidebreakers.com/game. If you'd like to start a crew and embark on your own TideBreakers adventure, you can support me on Patreon.com/tidebreakers for access to exclusive card game components.It'd be great if you'd like to join me on this adventure and hopefully many more story adventures in the future. Rest assured that I will never stop creating, in one form or another!I also still wear hats, though nowadays it’s one at a time.Usually.

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TideBreakers Prologue Story:

Death on Foils

By Duncan Stockwell

Copyright 2015 Duncan Stockwell

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TideBreakers Prologue Story:

Death on Foils

By Duncan Stockwell

Quick-Navigation:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

End Notes

-1-

The Pelletier Hotel was a Marino city native. Built early in the previous century, it was one of the first buildings in the Catham Coast to use a steel-frame construction. At twenty-four storeys high, its sandstone walls and deco-styled facades had been a noble fixture of the skyline and even now the hotel's name was displayed proudly upon the original rooftop scaffold in ten-foot tall letters.

The ocean was now at the building's seventeenth floor.

Two vast concrete platforms protruded away from the building three storeys above the water's surface. Supported on a lattice-work of steel, they were half-built on the rooftops of the hotel's east and west wings and half on towering legs secured in the remnants of the city street far below the waves.

Like the rest of the flooded city around them, both of the Old Pelletier's platforms were a hive of frenetic activity: their surfaces were divided into the neatly organised rows of rectangular docking-stages. A towering gantry crane trundled along the edge of the wharves, carrying a Zaratan racer from its berth to the service-shed shutters cut into the wall of the hotel's central building. Cargofours drove along their yellow path-lines carrying loads of powercores or tanks of coating-fluid. Fluorescent-jacketed dock-workers loaded trucks, consulted reports on holo-hinges or operated lift-panels.

There was an excited throng of people crowded around the double-doors labeled 'To The Pylon Club'. Questions were being shouted in a loud chaotic confusion; on a tangle of outstretched arms there were cameras clicking and handphones were thrust palms-upwards to record anything and everything possible. A few of the dock-workers looked up from their tasks to cast uninterested glances at the demanding masses, before tutting once and returning to their work with a shake of the head.

The Old Pelletier Dock's control-tower, an inverted cone of plate glass, surveyed the surrounding waters from the northern corner of the west-wing platform. A banner spanned its full height, boldly proclaiming Welcome to Marino Bowl, the home of Series Alpha-Plus Sub Racing! as it rippled in the breeze.

Even though the majority of Marino was now under seventeen storeys of water, the city's vibrancy lived on. The buildings that still had upper sections above the waterline all had expansive verandas suspended from their sides, the open-air bars and restaurants bustling with grinning people that drank wine with their breakfasts. Huge pier-like structures were built from the tops of the now-submerged buildings, linking up in several places to form gigantic connected boardwalks with shining pavilions and boutiques. Distant music spilled from the building tops and the blast of engines echoed around the walls as glistening sports-subs skated along the avenues between the city blocks on hydrofoils. Everything about Marino spoke of wealth and frivolity.

Neil maneuvered his sub far below the surface of Marino. It was