In the coming months, I will be re-releasing all of my old novels, starting with my Sci-Fi adventure, Hard as Roxx. All of them have been revised. Roxx, like the others, have had their prose tightened, with the opening retooled substantially. Unlike the other older books, Roxx’s story is slightly longer, rather than shorter, as I added elements I deemed needed for world-building. Plus, there is even more ass kicking than before. Here is an excerpt from the new, improved Chapter 1, “Up There, Somewhere.”
05 May 2137—6:57 a.m. Central Africasian time.
The desert is a damned desolate place for a woman on a motorcycle and a baby in the sidecar. It suited Roxx. She’d read somewhere that the Sahara used to be hard dirt and scrub brush, but by the time she and her daughters reached it, humans had already sucked the life from it like a thirsty cat at the throat of a limp rat. Gone were the pockets of drying grass, low trees, and brush that fed the indigenous wildlife. In their place were fluffy sheets of dirty dust, covering a hundred years’ worth of desert flotsam. She’d been riding in dark silence for hours, in part to let the girls sleep and part because there was no way to be sure the area was as abandoned as it appeared. The thing about predators is that you never see the good ones. Maybe you’ll catch a whiff if you’re lucky enough to be downwind of their attack or skilled enough to recognize the setup.
I best be skilled. My luck is shite.
She’d stumbled across a trio of them two days prior when her group was emerging from the tattered remnants of the Congolese jungle. Roxx had gotten careless, and the men came out of nowhere, cutting Roxx off with their battered pick-up truck and ancient rifles. They made the mistake of aiming a gun and sexual remarks at Jazz, her ten-year-old daughter. She still wore their blood on her boots as a reminder to be more vigilant. Jazz made her abandon their heads to the scavengers, but Roxx would have remembered the lesson better had she kept them.
For endless miles, the Sahara’s low hills scraped along the indigo night, rising and falling beside her like silent, subterranean giants beneath an endless ocean of sand. Jazz called them sand whales—smooth, silent, and deadly. It was all very lovely unless you kept in mind something dangerous could be lurking behind each dune. There were no street lights, but Roxx’s day/night glasses picked up enough residual starlight to allow her to keep the bikes dark. Their pattern of movements would have been the perfect symphony of hushed obscurity except for one thing: Roxx never was any damn good at being discrete. A six-hour ride through the mind-bending boredom of the desert night had become more than she could bear in silence. With silence came memories, and with memories came the realization that she and her daughters might never live long enough to reach any place even approaching safety.
So, fighting sleep and tedium, she called upon one of her demigods, the Lord thy Pavarotti, and at a sacred seven seconds past the seventh hour of the seventh day since their escape, she flipped the switch on her Indian’s dual speaker array and lit the crimson hell out of the quiet morning air. She rode there for a time, sailing through her desert dawn with her god singing “Nessun Dorma.” Hers was a gentle deity and never minded when she sang with him each dawn—always translated into English—Puccini’s words, directed to her baby.
None shall sleep! None shall sleep! Even you, O Princess, in your cold bedroom, watch the stars that tremble with love and with hope!
As could have been predicted—were she the sort to bother making predictions—within seconds a single point of light emerged from a dune behind her with the wind whispering the sounds of a gruff engine’s growl above her bike’s operatic roar. The light was a half-mile back and closing fast. Roxx accelerated. Beside her, the two companion bikes matched her movements. Her trio of vehicles and the pursuers continued racing through the dunes for a full minute. Without slowing, she reached forward, pulled her rifle from its vertical holster next to the front wheel, turned, and squeezed off a single shot. The warm air carried the sound of breaking glass as the desert returned to darkness. Seconds later, the din of the engine behind her stopped. The winds carried the faint smells of food-derived organic fuel mixed in with human sweat.
Roxx pulled her scarf down, freeing her nose and mouth, her nose and waited.
Stay stopped, mate. You only get the one warning. Over her pounding heart, Pavarotti sang, and she with him, this time, singing aloud, “Set, stars! At dawn, I will win! I will win! I will win!” She wondered how long she’d been crying.
It’s never bloody dawn in Africa.
Lit by starlight, Roxx could just make out the dim figures of two men pushing a motorcycle up and over a sand dune. She doubted they’d be back. Roxx restarted her bike, and the two clones hummed into action with her. The long road ahead took a gentle slope upward, twisting and rising above a high dune. Roxx followed it upward, accelerating her bike to north of eighty miles per hour. She powered over the rise, going airborne for no other reason than because she could, and she was Roxx. Even before the bike touched down, she was breathless, exhilarated for a second before remembering the baby was with her. Shit. Beside her, safely ensconced in her covered sidecar, Jessi slept on as though she’d been floating on clouds.
It’s not like she can fall out. Besides, you can’t be safe all the time.
- Writer’s note: It turns out that Puccini’s words fit the story excellently
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ENGLISH
None shall sleep! None shall sleep! Even you, O Princess,
in your cold bedroom,
watch the stars
that tremble with love and with hope!
But my secret is hidden within me;
none will know my name!
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