Nightfall in Avalon

By Martin Dougherty

Tal Peters is a wild-talent telepath and conman; Jandro Dalden is a part-time barfighter. Their combined skillset is ideal for petty thievery and pointless troublemaking. Saving interstellar civilisation... not so much.

Major Sarah Caide is a hard-charging mercenary commander who gets things done. Not always the way her superiors would like, but the best part of making an omelette is breaking the eggs.

When contact with the Home Worlds is cut off, the Far Avalon region begins to slide into chaos. Warlords battle for control over First Landing Starport whilst the Colonial District Authority struggles to find a place in the new order.

After accidentally triggering a revolution, Tal and Jandro find themselves nervously allied with Caide in a bid to save a civilisation they never knew they cared about. Tal must confront his past and Jandro his future, whilst Caide leads the fight against the neobarbarian hordes.

With most of First Landing on fire or in ruins, an invasion fleet in orbit and gunmen running wild in the streets, night is falling on Far Avalon. Yet somehow, in the trail of larceny and mayhem left behind them, Tal and Jandro may have sown the seeds of salvation.

It may not be too late to prevent nightfall in Avalon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Antimony Sun
• Release date: Oct 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370572205

Martin Dougherty

Martin J Dougherty has been at times an engineer, a teacher, a sports coach, a games designer, a defence analyst and, of course, a writer. His published works range from strategic reports for the arms trade to a self-defence manual and a handbook for teachers.Martin currently works as Line Editor for a games company, and is heavily involved in the creation of Roleplaying Games and supplements. He also pursues a career in the arms trade as a freelance analyst, where he specialises in high-technology weapon systems and asymmetric warfare.Martin’s interests include military history and malt scotch. He also trains regularly in the martial arts and is coach to the University of Sunderland fencing team. He lives in the northeast of England with his wife Helen and three unruly cats.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Tal Peters stopped halfway across the packet boat’s cramped dining area, subconsciously shifting his posture to conceal the bottle of wine he had just filched from the cooler. His nonchalant, confident expression never flickered – at least, not in ways that most people would spot – as he glanced in the direction of his travelling companion.

Jandro Dalden was not much to look at. Indeed, Tal preferred not to look at him whenever there was something more pleasant around; which was pretty much all of the time. However, at that instant his full attention was on his companion, regardless of the three-day old dinner still strewn across his threadbare tunic front, or even the fact that he had something unpleasant stuck to his uneven teeth. Jandro looked up from the vast mound of reconstituted meat and potato-like objects that he had been busily and noisily despatching; understanding passed between them.

Only one of them was a telepath – and it was certainly not Jandro. All the same, he knew what Tal was thinking. Something was about to happen. Something out of the ordinary. Given that they were aboard a packet boat hurtling through a translight conduit, at speeds that would upset respectable physicists, out of the ordinary translated to bad.

Really, really bad.

The other passengers and the surly, bored steward were oblivious, which was a good thing to some extent. They had failed to notice the theft of a wallet, and a rather nice brooch, that Tal had just pulled off. The wine was just a bonus really, another unnecessary risk that Tal’s borderline kleptomania required from time-to-time. They were also failing to notice whatever it was that Tal was feeling.

Tal himself was not quite sure how it happened but sometimes he got a strange premonition that something bad was about to occur. Maybe it was a side effect from the wayward and unpredictable telepathy he sometimes exhibited; what mattered was that it had saved him more than a few times. He forced himself to start walking in an unhurried manner towards the aft companionway. It led towards the cabin, which lack of funds dictated he must share with his excessively muscled, smelly and generally objectionable companion… but more importantly it also led towards the passengers’ escape pods.

Jandro stood up, shoving his plate away. Brownish-grey gravy slopped on the table. One of the other passengers, a nicely-dressed young man, who talked a lot about his vital role in the company’s sales department, looked at Dalden reproachfully.

‘If you’re such a big shot, why are they sending you to the arse end of the universe?’ Jandro asked conversationally. He wiped one grimy hand through the grey stubble on his head, leaving a streak of gravy behind one ear, ‘I’m just asking…’. With that, Jandro turned and ambled after his companion, slowly enough that the sales executive could follow if he wanted. That way Jandro got to claim the other guy started it.

Up ahead, Tal was coming back out of their cabin with, what he called, his getaway kit. It was a small holdall containing the few decent items they had managed to filch during the voyage from Bora Rina plus a change of clothes and some items he considered essential. Those included stuff for taking care of his long, wavy brown hair, mechanical and electronic lockpicks, his gun and a small data recorder. The tools of his trade. He had his sword, still in its sheath, in his other hand.

‘Grab your kit, Jandro,’ Tal said to the much older man. Fate had decreed he must be his companion and partner in crime but he was still not anything that could be considered a friend. ‘We’re baling out.’

‘Uh, Tal,’ Jandro grunted as Tal buckled his sword belt around his slim waist. ‘We’re still in the conduit. And there’s no planets at Lubeck.’

‘Stay, then,’ Tal said absently, moving towards the escape pods. Something had him rattled which, in reality, was not saying much. Tal Peters was not a man of great courage even under the most favourable of circumstances. Right now he was shaking a bit as he worked on the escape pod’s supposedly unbreakable safety lock. It took him nearly 30 seconds to get it open.

Jandro grunted again and ducked into their cabin, emerging with a messy armload of random items, some of it yanked out of its fittings. He lumbered towards the pod as the sales executive emerged from the dining area. He eyed Tal and Jandro suspiciously.

‘Escape pod inspection, it’s routine,’ lied Tal. Talking his way out of trouble came easily, even when he was scared. Especially when he was scared. ‘We’re contractors for the ISI.’

‘ISI?’

Tal had to pause for a spilt second, trying to come up with a name to fit the acronym he had just made up. ‘Interstellar Standards Institute,’ he announced, not quite triumphantly. ‘We’ve got some serious non-compliance issues here, Inspector Dalden… the pods aren’t properly secured for a start.’

‘And this stuff just rips right off the wall,’ replied Dalden with a grin, tossing his armful of gear into the pod.

Tal gave his companion a ‘shut-the-heck-up’ look but his heart was not really in it. The floor had begun to vibrate and his sense of foreboding was becoming clearer. He was getting a sense of worry… no, increasingly intense fear… from aft. The packet boat’s control and drive areas were both at the back of the ship, so maybe there was something wrong in one or the other….

Nope. Both.

A wave of someone else’s terror rolled over Tal, followed by one of his own. He squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath, trying not to vomit. The salesman was wittering on about something or other on the edge of his consciousness but Tal could not hear him properly over the roaring fear in his mind. The salesman went on self-importantly for a while, until Jandro took care of the nuisance with an immense open-handed whack across the side of the head.

‘Glass jaw… well, glass head…’ chided Jandro as he dropped the executive’s unconscious body to the floor. That shook Tal into action. He crossed the corridor and picked the electronic lock on the opposite escape pod, even less expertly this time. ‘Tal, what you doing? We got a pod.’ Jandro demanded.

‘I don’t want this guy in ours with us,’ Tal responded, opening the pod hatch. ‘Help me with him, will you?’

‘He can’t get in the pod, he’s out cold,’ Jandro pointed out before Tal gave him a look – Jandro sighed. He half picked up the executive’s dead weight and more or less threw him into the escape pod. ‘There. Helped,’ Jandro declared.

Tal ducked into the escape pod and began strapping himself in. He gazed wistfully down at his soft leather boots, his pseudo leather trousers and his crimson silk shirt. They were new, and probably about to get ruined. That was assuming their wearer survived whatever was happening to the ship; Tal supposed he should be happy to get away with something as trivial as an immense tailor’s bill.

Jandro slammed the hatch and flopped into the seat opposite. There were four seats in each pod, facing inward around a central information-and-instructions console. It was dark until the hatch snapped shut, then lit up with cartoon instructions explaining how to sit in a seat and fasten a belt. After a moment it got around to explaining how to close the hatch that activated the instruction sequence. Tal smiled faintly at that.

‘So?’ Jandro demanded.

‘So…’ Tal replied.

‘So we’re sat in an escape pod. That guy I lamped is in the opposite one. So what happens now?’

‘We escape,’ Tal said helpfully.

‘Escape! What!’ Jandro exploded, adding a curt but expressive gesture for emphasis that was not really necessary.

‘I don’t know,’ Tal said. ‘Something bad, I expect.’

Jandro Dalden was not a patient man and it was only the seat straps, which he had just finished fastening, that prevented him from lunging at his partner in crime. ‘What do you know, Tal?’ he said through gritted teeth.

‘Okay… the pilot and astrogator are really, really scared. So is the captain and the technical officer. The stewards aren’t and neither are the passengers, because they’re all in the middle of what could hilariously be described as lunch and nobody’s told them.’

‘Told them what, Tal?’

‘That we’re… that we’re off course. Which is impossible, because we’re in a conduit that only runs between Lubeck and Bora Rina. In one end, spat out the other 14 days later. Regular as clockwork, more or less. Thing is, the pilot is convinced we’re about to emerge into real space even though we’ve only been in the conduit for 11 and a bit days and the captain isn’t sure whether or not to believe him or the chief technical officer, who says that the drives are running wild and might explode any second, and…’

‘You’re babbling, Tal.’

‘I’m feeding you what I’m getting from the crew. They’re babbling in my mind, it’s different.’

‘Not from where I’m… woah!’ Jandro exclaimed as the ship lurched violently. Sounds of tearing metal came from somewhere, and the pod… no, the whole ship… began to tumble. After a few anxious seconds the ship righted itself but began to shudder with increasing intensity.

‘Feels like we’re hitting atmosphere!’ Tal said. ‘Which means we’re off course. That’s probably good.’

‘Huh?’ Dalden said, confused.

‘Well, there are no planets in the Lubeck system, just a star and a few comets, plus Lubeck Station itself. When the captain orders abandon ship, we’ll automatically land on the nearest planetary surface instead of floating around in deep space.’

‘Uh, Tal,’ Jandro said like he was talking to an idiot. ‘Lubeck is a fleet base. Half the navy would come out to rescue us if we abandoned ship in the Lubeck system. Instead we might come down on some rockball. Or somewhere with a poisonous atmosphere. Or a hell world.’

‘Didn’t think of that,’ Tal admitted. ‘We could be in trouble, Jandro.’

‘You think?’ Jandro replied. ‘You hear that? That’s us entering atmosphere in a ship that wasn’t designed for it. We’ve got the glide characteristics of a brick with a couple of beer cans taped to the sides. We’ll come apart if we don’t burn up first.’

The emergency klaxon began to howl, ordering passengers and crew to the escape pods. Dalden rolled his eyes in the direction of the speakers as Tal yelled at them, ‘So, you’ve finally decided to tell us we’re all going to die? Why don’t you jettison the passenger and cargo compartments and save yourselves, you selfish…’ he fell silent as the ship rocked and the pod began to tumble again, this time more quickly.

‘Tal… they jettisoned the cargo and passenger compartments like you said,’ Jandro grated out with incredible calm, given the circumstances. ‘How about you stop screaming suggestions for how to make things worse?’

Tal calmed himself and gripped his seat arms as Jandro reached forward and yanked the escape pod release handle. For a long, long moment nothing happened, other than the instruction panel displaying a cartoon woman repeatedly sitting down in her seat and fastening the belt. Then the pod blasted free from the passenger compartment, spinning several times as its automatic systems tried to stabilise it. Tal started screaming again and after a moment Jandro joined him. There was nothing more useful for either of them to do.

The pod gradually oriented itself, and there was a heart-stopping lurch as the heat shield deployed. A dull roaring came from outside and a louder one from Jandro as he repeatedly yelled at Tal to shut up. Finally he did, mainly from exhaustion, and for a while they watched the cartoon display of an escape pod falling through the upper atmosphere of an Earth-like planet. It did not tip, spin or lurch anything like as much as the one Tal and Jandro rode and the contented cartoon people inside seemed to be much more hopeful about their chances of survival, too.

After a while, Tal realised that his throat was sore from screaming. There was a solution to that ready at hand; the wine he had filched. A moment’s struggles with the screw cap gave him access to some kind of cheap fermented-fruit beverage. He took a big gulp, then another. It soothed his throat but it was not wine, not like Tal knew anyway. ‘Ugh,’ he said, passing the bottle to Jandro.

‘The in-flight movie is crap,’ Jandro said with just a little too much bravado, gesturing at the happy cartoon escapees on the screen in front of him.

‘Drinks service is appalling,’ Tal agreed shakily.

‘We’re not gonna die, Tal.’

‘I know,’ Tal said. ‘You think I’d be seen dead in your company?’

Jandro laughed like that was actually funny. Then he took a breath. ‘You think anyone else got out?’

‘Sales guy did,’ Tal replied. ‘Well, he was in a pod anyway.’

‘Unconscious.’ Jandro passed the wine bottle back, a bit reluctantly.

‘Well, there is that. But as soon as the klaxon went off the rest of the passengers will have headed for the pods. That one was open, so they’d board it first,’ Tal rationalised. ‘And he’d be saved!’

‘Great logic, Tal. I’d have dumped him out to make room for someone else if I had to. The other passengers might do that.’

‘Not everyone is like you, Jandro.’

‘You’re not. I don’t know about anyone else.’

‘Yes, well,’ Tal said. ‘Point is, they blasted the engine and control unit free; the crew might have got back into orbit. And chances are good that at least some of the passengers will have reached the pods in time.’

‘Damn,’ said Jandro. That drew a curious look from Tal, so he went on, ‘So there are people out there who know we split instead of warning them.’

‘That’s an interesting perspective, Jandro. Horrific, but interesting…’

Whatever Jandro might have said next was lost in the sound of rockets, air brakes and Tal wailing hysterically. After a long few seconds of intense noise there was silence, punctuated only by Tal’s nervous and incoherent chattering, followed by more noise. This time it ended with a crunching impact followed by the world tipping up violently, then a strange lack of movement.

After a while Tal released the death-grip he had maintained on the wine bottle and downed the last of the contents. The pod was down… somewhere. There was no way to tell where; the instruction panel had gone blank. Tal did not miss the happy cartoon people but some instructions about what to do next would have been useful. He released his seat straps, struggled awkwardly to his feet and began fiddling with the instrument panel.

‘Anything?’ Jandro asked.

‘Nope. Well, I hope not. The blank screen here could be actually showing an external feed. Which would mean we’re at the bottom of a big hole, or a lake or something.’

‘Okay,’ Jandro said and stepped over to the door release handle. He yanked it before Tal could stop him. The hatch popped open a little and no vast black tide poured in. Nor did the air rush out. ‘So, we’re not in a lake then. And there’s an atmosphere that hasn’t killed us yet.’

Tal spluttered something as Jandro yanked the hatch wide open and stepped outside. Swearing and a thud suggested he had found something to trip over. Tal followed him, rather more cautiously. It was dark outside; the sky cloudy with a few unfamiliar stars visible here and there. Tal stepped to where his companion was struggling to his feet.

‘Air smells funny,’ Tal said.

‘No, it doesn’t…’ Jandro said thoughtfully. That got Tal’s attention; Jandro was rarely thoughtful. Before he could prod for more information, Jandro had ducked back inside the pod and begun rummaging through the survival stores.

Tal listened to Jandro swearing and smashing his way into the emergency lockers, and decided to stay out of the way. Instead he watched the sky beginning to brighten, far away in the distance. So they had not come down on a dark world somewhere; they appeared to be on a hillside amid rugged badlands, with sharp-edged mountains in the distance and at least one active volcano on the horizon. Tal decided that was the source of the odd smell in the air; volcanic dust. Jandro would not be able to detect it, not over the stench of his shirt. That must have been what he had meant when he said the air did not smell strange.

Tal turned as his companion emerged from the pod. He was carrying an array of loot pillaged from the escape pod; a puny survival rifle that would not even pass for a decent club, a mean-looking hatchet, an emergency camping set, some bars of compressed wood pulp that claimed to be food and a big water bottle. He tossed Tal’s bag to him but only after removing Tal’s gun and stuffing it in his waistband.

Tal accepted that. Jandro was – fairly – unlikely to shoot Tal out of hand under any given set of circumstances and they had been in worse situations than this without that sort of incident. Yet they were not friends and probably never would be; just two petty larcenists thrown together by fate. They had travelled together to escape from their last misadventure on Bora Rina, purely because the packet boat to Lubeck was the first ship available and they would have been caught if they waited for something better.

It was not that Jandro might turn his gun on its owner but all the same Tal objected to him having it. It was a navy model gauss pistol – top of the line – and contrary to popular belief it actually was Tal’s. One small token of a life that might have been; one of the few remaining. Jandro would not take proper care of it. He would bash it on things and it would come back sticky with old food. Tal made a face at the thought.

Tal unconsciously patted the sword at his side. It was a court sword, long and straight with a needle point but no sharp edge, of the sort presented to ambassadors and senior officials in the Colonial District Authority. As indeed it had been, before Tal had ‘borrowed’ it. A sword was a bit of an affectation in an age of gauss guns but Tal found it useful as part of his ‘costume’ when he posed as a member of the elite for some scam and, occasionally, he had to use it for less subtle purposes.

That might happen again in the near future, Tal realised as some large animal made a noise in the distance. It was an odd coughing, snarling, howling sound, which affected Jandro rather strangely. Dropping his armload of loot he scrambled up a nearby rock and from there jumped onto the upper surface of the escape pod. Tal winced as he heard his pistol barrel scrape on the metal.

‘Jandro? What is it? Tal demanded, putting his back to the pod. Then he noticed that Jandro was not seeking safety; he was standing as high as he could on the sloping pod and gazing out over the plains below, squinting into the sunrise. Tal could not see much; maybe a distant city to the south and a body of water beyond that.

‘Sabrewolf,’ Jandro replied cryptically.

‘A what?’

‘The sound you heard. Sabrewolf. They hunt in packs, very dangerous, especially in the high country.’

‘Are we in trouble, Jandro?’ Tal asked.

‘Oh yeah,’ Jandro asserted as he slid down the side of the escape pod and crashed to the ground beside his companion. ‘Rescue craft coming up from the south. Probably homed in on the pod beacon.’

‘Err, so are we in trouble or not?’

‘Well, yeah!’ Jandro said as if that were obvious. ‘You’re worried about the sabrewolves? Nah, not a problem. We’ll probably be picked up in a few minutes and we could just hide in the pod until the rescue ship arrives. I’m more worried about who might be manning the rescue craft.’

‘That’s pretty cynical, even for you Jandro.’

Jandro just laughed bitterly and waved a hand at the vista unfolding around them as the dim red sun rose. ‘The star is called Bashan. This is the innermost planet. There’s a rockball, two iceball worlds further out and three asteroid belts.’

‘That’s a lot of information to just… have, Jandro.’

‘Yeah, well how’s this? We’re on Far Avalon, Tal. It’s five lightyears from where we should be, which is Lubeck. It was never a particularly nice place but it was habitable and close to the Lubeck conduit, so it became the hub for local colonisation. Then the place was pretty much wrecked by the Devastation; a whole lot of volcanic eruptions all at once about 400 years back. Crippled the local economy and by the time we’d recovered, we were a backwater.’

‘You said, ‘we’, Jandro…’

‘Yup. That down there is First Landing City, spaceport and site of the earliest settlement on Far Avalon. These days it’s a hell-hole, falling into ruins while rival gangs kill one another over who owns the wreckage. So I’m a bit concerned about who might be sending out the rescue party, yeah.’

‘This is your homeworld?’

‘Yup. I was born and raised in First Landing City, right up until I had to leave. Did some things that upset some people.’

Tal pondered that and decided not to ask, given what he had already seen his companion to be capable of. ‘And now you’ve come home,’ he said.

‘Yup.’

Tal eyed his companion. Short but powerfully built, ugly and scarred, his ill-fitting clothing stained with old food and drink, Jandro Dalden was a product of the city they were headed for. He sucked his teeth. ‘You know, Jandro?’ said Tal at length.

‘What?’ said Jandro over the sound of approaching contragrav craft.

‘We might be in more trouble than we thought.’

Chapter 2

Tal sucked his teeth as the early morning breeze stirred his long hair. It was pretty cold up on the hillside but he could not decide whether he hoped the rescue craft would arrive soon or not at all. Jandro was bundling up their few belongings, plus a lot of stuff from the escape pod which, strictly speaking, did not belong to them. He occasionally patted the hatchet at the back of his waistband and Tal’s gun at the front. The survival rifle on his shoulder did not merit any attention.

Tal watched the distant specks of rescue craft suddenly veer sharply and dive, heading towards something on the ground. Another pod, maybe? At least they were landing next to it and not shooting it up from the air. Although that probably just meant that the rescue craft did not have any mounted heavy weapons.

‘You coming, Tal?’ Jandro’s voice said from somewhere behind him. Tal turned to find his companion nowhere in sight. He had a moment of panic, looking around wildly, before a series of ripping thuds came from inside the escape pod. Jandro emerged a moment later, stuffing the hatchet back into his belt. He threw a collection of electronic wreckage on the ground and set off at a quick walk in the vague direction of the sunrise.

‘Pretty decent chopper,’ Jandro announced as Tal scurried up beside him. He tapped the hatchet for emphasis.

‘What did you do?’ Tal asked nervously.

‘I busted the emergency radio beacon. Well, everything that looked like it might be a radio beacon. Got some nice sparks.’

‘Okay,’ Tal replied. There was no real need to ask why; Jandro had obviously decided to evade rescue, which was why they were currently stumbling down a hillside in the semi-darkness. Smashing the radio might delay attempts to find the pod, which would give them more time to lose themselves in the wilderness. Speaking of which… ‘Uh, Jandro?’

‘Yup?’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Down.’

‘Down. Okay. Down where?’

Jandro shrugged. ‘Down the hill.’

‘I mean, what’s our destination? Are we headed for the city? If so, we’re going the wrong way.’

‘If we wanted to go to First Landing, we’d let ourselves get rescued,’ Jandro replied. ‘Nope, we’re going to Not First Landing City.’

‘What do you mean, not First Landing City?’

‘I mean we’re going to any place that’s not First Landing City.’ Jandro asserted. ‘There used to be some farming towns and stuff round here. Maybe we can get transport there, head for one of the other city-states. If we’re lucky the rescue party will give up and leave us for dead.’

That was a pretty odd definition of lucky, Tal thought, but Jandro was a local and he was not; if Jandro thought they were better off in the wilderness with no supplies, not even a coat, then that said a lot about First Landing City. He walked on in silence for a while, mentally cursing every sharp or uneven stone for what it might do to his boots.

Finally, curiosity got the better of Tal. ‘Other city-states, you said,’ he prompted.

‘Yup,’ Jandro replied. ‘Said that.’

‘You’re just being annoying for the sake of it, aren’t you?’ Tal said. He had a suspicion that Jandro was scared, which was an alarming thought. As usual, his telepathy failed to provide any enlightenment – Jandro seemed to be one of those people that telepathy just failed to work on – but his companion’s behaviour was unusual. Most days he would have been sending up signals to attract rescue and plotting how best to bushwhack anyone who responded. Jandro Dalden rarely ran away unless he could see he was totally outmatched and not always then.

‘There’s a whole lot of city-states on Far Avalon,’ Jandro said at last. ‘They’re all independent, athough some have long-standing alliances. The biggest alliance is also the most stable. Kilimanjaro, Grand Valley and Thermopolis; they’re the big players in world politics thanks to their Tripartite Alliance. They built Tripartite Starport to replace First Landing.’

‘So, there’s a decent port that’s not at First Landing City?’ Tal said thoughtfully.

‘Yup. Tripartite Starport is new and it’s got good facilities. Pretty much all the big freighters and regular ships go through there. Only little ships and folks that want to stay off the radar use First Landing, unless they have business with someone who’s in dispute