I am writing to let you know that “REMBRANDT’S STATION” has been selected by our Indie editors to be included in the upcoming February 15th issue of Kirkus Reviews. Less than 10% of Indie authors are selected for this.

Kim leaned back. “So. The rules are different, therefore I can be as unethical as I like?”

“That’s not what I’m saying and you know it.”

“Do I?”

Marianne crossed her arms again.

“I’m serious,” he said. “Just exactly how are you not saying that it’s okay for me to commit a crime?”

She shrugged. “Not really, but it had to be done. You?”

“I have no idea. I don’t feel much, except when I do.”

“I’m sorry I contributed to that this morning.” She stuck out a hand. “Pax?”

He eyed the hand and crossed his arms. “Opportunist.”

She lowered her hand, but kept it extended, palm up.

“Pax,” he said.

Aerav took another pull on his flask. “After the battle, I was frozen in myself, as you are now. But sometimes there would come a sound, a look, a word, a movement. I would rage at the next mere annoyance, and then freeze again. Back and forth. I needed time alone to begin to feel my own heart once more, to stop reliving the sensation of flesh under my needles.”

Bertie nodded. That sounded uncomfortably familiar. The crunch of bone replayed itself in his memory, and he flinched.

Softly, Aerav said, “A sound. A look. A word. A movement. You belong to the guard caste, Bertie. We help each other. However long it takes.”

Some stationmaster he’d turned out to be. Seven years of faultless work, and all it took was one slip to bring serious trouble to the planet he loved. Too careless to be an effective administrator had been the assessment of his erstwhile father the Duke when trying to find a placement for him within Rembrandt Pharmaceuticals. The old man had been right. Blast it all.

He gazed up at the stars above Monralar and gripped the railing of the balcony outside his quarters so hard his hands ached. As stationmaster, he’d let the Johnson brothers slip through. He’d let Aunt Olivia down as well, if it allowed a Johnson victory, and he could find no way to reframe the failure as due to anything other than rank incompetence. Bertie sighed and massaged one aching hand with the other. He was thirty-nine. What did he have to show for it?

A shooting star streaked across the sky, as if bidding him to look up for the answer. He firmed his jaw. He’d done a lot. Three Firsts at University, in economics, finance, and laws. Substantial wealth gained in alien territories, never an easy task. Tolar’s orbital trade station. He’d done the latter two after the Duke had expelled him from the family, accomplished them without Rembrandt resources or connections. That was something, whether His Nibs admitted it or not—which he didn’t. Bertie had thought at the time that surely building a trade station for a newly opened world would get the Duke’s attention. Instead, he’d called it that Tolari nonsense. God. There had to be something he could do to convince the old man that disowning his youngest son had been a mistake.

Unfortunately, Bertie was all out of ideas on how to do that.

Bertie frowned to himself as he laid in another slight adjustment in their trajectory, then put the shuttle on full manual control for the landing. Even if the Monral insisted the roof had been adequately reinforced long since, Bertie still didn’t trust it. As skids touched stone with barely a whisper or a scrape, two figures in robes of Monralar lavender appeared from the stairwell—their escorts. Bertie knew one of them from the stronghold guards. The other must have rotated in from the city.

He popped the hatch to let the “diplomats” out, surreptitiously waving through the forward ports at the familiar guard. The guard made a gesture intended to look random but meaning, Welcome home.

Welcome home. Yes. He grabbed his frock coat from the co-pilot’s seat and shrugged into it, taking a deep breath of salt sea air as he stepped into the equatorial summer heat, still working the coat’s buttons. The guards led him and Monralar’s guests down to the cool of the stronghold’s main floor and into the audience room, where the Monral stood on a low dais, wearing his authority like a cloak. He was, like all Tolari, dark-skinned and raven-haired, though his eyes were an almost glowing amber rather than the medium to dark brown typical of his people. His height was unremarkable, neither short nor tall, but his powerful build showed even through the robe—loose, in the style of the equatorial provinces, and lavender, the color of Monralar, worn by both its ruling and guard castes. The Monral’s robe uniquely bore bright white embroidery from collar to waist, in curvilinear patterns that apparently told the story of Monralar’s founding.

Someday, Bertie thought, he would learn to read it.

Bertie, as well as I can represent him in Guild Wars 2.

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Something in Aafreen’s tone raised the hairs on the back of his neck. He composed his face into what he hoped was a bland expression and dropped his hand. “Yes?”

“There are three humans on that ship, and they’re demanding a dock assignment.”

Humans? In Tolari space? That was deuced brazen of them. Bertie bristled. “Demanding are they? I’ve no notice of an approved diplomatic mission. Absent that, they are in violation of the interdict, and they can go whistle until a shuttle is available to ferry them over. That ship is not docking before Two-Five is here to calm the crew. There’s a shuttle due up from Suralia in a few hours. I’m for having a soothing cup of tea while they wait. It might convince me not to arrest them on sight. Coming?”

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The human who served as judge on Tolar Trade Station, the one called Bertie and stationmaster, was emitting many forms of distress as Two-Five and Four-Three exited the airlock. On reflex, Two-Five began to wave a soothing tail, noting as he did so that his First did the same. The human’s body relaxed, and he showed his teeth.

Two-Five was very glad that he and Four-Three had become accustomed to aliens showing their teeth. They did not even flinch.

“He is glad to see them, the distinguished traders,” the human said. Though he had spoken English, not Trade, he had put the proper words in the correct order. It was a pleasing effort and a delightful surprise. Two-Five nodded his pleasure, but the smell in the air indicated the station’s need was too great to spend time discussing manners.

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“Jeth,” Ull said. “Water.” He loosened the tie on the waterskin and poured a little onto his hand to show her what it was, and then took a drink.

She reached for it when he offered the skin to her, and drank greedily. After she handed the skin back, she lay back in the moss—with her back on the ground—and looked up into the sky. And jolted up onto her elbows, gasping. Ull followed her gaze. The half-moon, no longer on fire, had just risen—with a dark smudge it had never had before, like an eye along its rim. Jeth uttered a little groan, and her eyes glistened.

It has! Here’s a bit from the Kepler story:

“I surrender to you,” he said, carefully, because those little ears did not look any better than the tiny eyes did. Still, they had seen him, so they were not like the plains stalkers, which could not see a person if they did not move. He opened his eyes wide, to show respect. “I surrender to you.”

The ugly, two-legged forerunner showed him her hands with their extra fingers and said, as carefully as he had, “I surrender to you.”

Ull blinked.

Astute readers of Farryn’s War may have noticed that there seemed to be one more human on Tolar than could be accounted for.  Here is a bit of her story, which takes place in between The Marann and The Fall. The working title is… Stranded.  Tell me what you think:

Alexia groaned at the pounding in her head. I should not have drunk so much champagne at the ball. She wrapped her arms around her head and curled up on her side.

She froze. On her side? Gravity? The lifeboat. She sat up and threw her arms out as the world spun.

“Hold on,” said a woman’s voice, in English. A hand took her arm. “Take it easy.”

The room steadied, and Alexia blinked up at a woman with startling blue eyes and very long, wavy brown hair. She wore a simple blue robe with white embroidery at the collar and cuffs, and she smiled down with an amused expression on her face.

She was pretty enough. Alexia looked closer. Freckles! What sort of woman allowed herself to sprout freckles?

Not one Mamá would allow her to associate with. She jerked her arm away.

“Feeling better?” the woman asked, one eyebrow lifted.

“No.” Alexia frowned. The fierce pounding in her head put a hair trigger on a temper which, her dueña loved to remind her, was already too easy to set off. “Where am I? I was in a lifeboat–” she swallowed “–freezing to death. Who are you?”

“Oh! I’m sorry, introductions are in order. I’m Marianne Woolsey. You’re in the stronghold of the province of Suralia on the fourth planet of Beta Hydri. And you are…?”

Alexia rubbed her forehead. “Beta Hydri? We should not have been near Beta Hydri.”

“And you are…?”

“Alexia Victoria de la Cerda y Aragon.”

“Welcome to Tolar. May I call you Alexia?”