Tuesday's Short - The Sevarine Sidestep

This week’s short story takes us from a fantasy setting where dragons rule the air and ancient artefacts are tightly controlled to a science-fiction world where one colonist's plans are derailed by family politics and big corporation enslavement. Welcome to The Sevarine Sidestep.

What do you do when your brother betrays you, and you end up on another world, in the employ of a company whose recruiting methods leave a lot to be desired? Well, I guess you keep your head down, while you try to figure out a way to get back home.

And I sure miss home, right now.

The Sevarine Sidestep (Extract)

The dogs were magnificent, with chestnut coats and fine, brushy tails that waved like pennants behind them. They raced ahead of the skimmers, matching the machines for speed, and outdoing them in nimbleness. They were everything a scharfhond should be. I’d have felt better taking the fliss, rather than the skimmers, but Joel said the raptors were out and we couldn’t afford to lose any.

Fliss were what mankind might have imagined an oversized eohippus to be, if that creature had been an armour-plated mammal standing five-feet at the shoulder. Okay, only partially armour-plated. Fliss hide was thick, with chitinous plates overlapping the shoulder, chest and flank. They were shaped like horses, as intelligent, but more solid in build, and sturdier of temperament.

If you let a firecracker off near a fliss, the creature was more likely to back up and watch it dance, than bolt into traffic. They were swift and quiet, but the raptors found them irresistible, and the fliss had very few defences against them. One of the reasons fliss were so fast, I guess.

Joel had spent the first half hour of the day explaining why we weren’t taking them out—the terrain, the weather, the weight of the saddles, us, the dogs. All would put our mounts at a disadvantage when it came to a raptor attack—and the raptors were out in force.

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The Sevarine Sidestep is available as a stand-alone short story at the following links: books2read.com/u/bw8BKZ.

You can also find Kristine Kathryn Rusch's latest free short story over on her blog: kriswrites.com. Why don't you go and check it out?