DEADLY ENTERPRISE IS RELEASED

The link to the novel’s page on Double Dragon Publishing is http://www.double-dragon-ebooks.com/single.php?ISBN=1-55404-466-9

The cover shows the protagonist firing at an enemy off-scene – a striking action that should attract the attention of browsers. I wrote a new blurb for the back cover and the web page and will paste it here.

Gisel Matah is the Iskanders’ top agent, but often her commanders' chief pain in the neck. Sometimes passionate, sometimes tough, sometimes acerbic, she's clever and always ready to twist their intentions to meet circumstances as she sees them.

Escorting young Yohan Felger across a haunt of outlaws to an enemy city was already a daunting task, but when her commanders changed her mission to include sounding out the leaders to switch sides it became a Deadly Enterprise.

On Gaia, an alternate Earth, the crew of the lost starship Iskander find themselves working for and against the inhabitants of a different 17th Century Europe. Building themselves a place in this world by promoting social change and an Industrial Revolution, they become enemies of the Trigons – also marooned star travelers, who now rule the Empire. But an enemy can be defeated with humanity when the person in charge is a rebel at heart.

And now on to the second half of the oilpatch story I posted last week.

Continuation of night drive to Gialo.

The oilfield warehouse was silent and in darkness when we arrived. No idiots here driving around the desert in the dead of night. It consisted of large hangar-like sheds, metal warehouse buildings, and a trailer park of sleeping quarters. We banged on doors until we woke up enough people that one could tell us where our guy was.

"He's not here. The plane landed at the Amoseas strip and they left him there."

Great. The Amoseas strip was closer to our camp, but in the other direction.

Our informant hadn't finished. "We'll divert our plane there in the morning and ferry him over to you."

How fortunate. They couldn't ferry us and the Powerwagon at the same time? Not possible. PM pronounced the verdict. "We'll have to drive back in time for work in the morning. Can't have them wasting any time wondering where we are."

Hell no. Wouldn't want to waste anyone's time.

I made sure I drove, not wanting to tangle with those oases again in the dark. It should be possible to make a wide swing around to the east and north so I could miss them entirely. No tracks to follow. We carried no map, other than the vague one in my head. And since I could only guess where we were in the darkness, I'd need a sixth sense.

Not to worry, the desert between Gicherra and camp had water closer to the surface and was quite distinctive with clumps of bush and the occasional palm trees. The desert I was intending to travel on was nothing but a bare gravel plain. If I could make a wide circle to get into the vegetated area we should be able to see the lights on the top of our camp radio antenna – set there to guide travelers at night.

First I drove northeast along a firm gravel ridge, bowling along at a good 80kph – great going for the desert. After driving for a while we could see the occasional house light from the oasis to our left – our western horizon if it had been morning and we could see one. Fine – exactly on course. Keep going like this for another half an hour.

When PM thought he'd like to take a turn at driving we'd left these lights far behind. We stopped to change places and looked about us. Nothing – pitch black in every direction. PM didn't like it – nothing like the city – but that was exactly what I'd intended. There were a good display of lights above – I pointed out the Pole Star and said we should follow it for half an hour.

We motored away, following the star, shy of a third to make us wise men, while I tried to plot dead reckoning maps in my head. The tricky part was to judge when we were clear of Gicherra and could turn west. We were just getting close to my guess for that point when PM spotted another light to the north of us.

A few rolling hills were next, and from the top of one I saw the new light as well. It wasn't in the sky – it was a camp light on the top of a radio antenna.


PM was jubilant. All his suspicions that I was a jackass who had got us both lost in the trackless wastes of the Libyan Desert evaporated. "There's our camp. You hit it right on the nose!"

It was nice of him to be so kind after all the night's bickering, but the more I saw of the light the more certain I was it couldn't be our camp. Not unless it had come loose of the ground a drifted tens of miles to the east in the night. But there was no way I could shake PM's pursuit of the beckoning light once he had it in his eyes. He wouldn't listen to any more of my navigating.

"Even if it's not our camp," he said after more of my argument. "They'll be able to tell us where we are."

Yeah – in the wrong place.

The terrain changed under our wheels again. We had left the firm gravel behind and this was getting more and more sandy, harder going that meant we had to grind along in third gear. The smooth gravel plain gave way to successions of rolling hills where we swooped up and down from one to the next.

I sat there puzzling where these rolling hills could be. I'd never seen this area before. Every time we swooped down into a valley PM lost sight of his light, and worried about it until he found it from the top of the next crest.

"I don't think we're getting any closer," I said at one of these summits. We could have spotted that camp light from a hundred miles away in the clear desert air.

In one wider valley we lost sight of PM's light for several miles. He speeded up as much as he could in the softer sand – maybe to catch it before it could wink out. Then our headlights – those insignificant glimmers before halogen lights – picked out a huge ghostly wall before us. The slip face of a sand dune about a hundred feet high. PM swung left to try to go around it and we dived off a smaller dune in the darkness. PM was not about to stop – he circled around inside a ring of sand dunes like a bug running in a tin plate. Every time he tried to turn north another dune thwarted him.

This could get dangerous. Flying off the side of a dune in the dark was not my idea of a ride, but the more frustrated PM got, the faster he drove.

"Hold it! Hold it!" I finally shouted loud enough for him to listen. "We don't need to reach that camp to find out where we are. We're in the Sand Sea of Calascano – it stretches all the way to Egypt – and if we have an accident here they'll never find us. We are too far off route."

The last got to him and he stopped. "What should we do?"

"We have to stay put until daylight. No way we can find a way out in the dark."

"Can you find a way out?"


"Sure. When I'm sure I'm not going to pitch off the side of a dune upside down"

So we hunkered down in the cab – tired enough we both slept until first light. In the growing daylight we found we were between two great chains of sand dunes stretching north and south around us. The camp whose light we had chased for miles was most likely outside the Sand Sea to the north. I took over driving and headed back south. After a few miles I found a gap between two dunes to our west that I could drive through and escape.

I continued going west, the countryside becoming flatter and rockier with the occasional palm tree and clump of brush. By dawn I found the road out of Gicherra stretched across in front of us and turned to follow it.

We arrived at camp just after the crew'd finished breakfast. The mechanics had just loaded up their Powerwagon to come and look for us.

It's always a blow to the pride if you get lost, and the natural reaction is to get angrier and go faster. But the rescue party will have a hell of a job if you're off the route they expect you to follow. Best to stop, and stay with your vehicle if you don't know which way to go. It's a lot bigger and easier to spot from the air than you are on foot.