Firstly, sorry once again. This is entirely my fault, I hold my hands up - I'm crap at this Social Media thing. Utterly pants. If you like, you could think of me as the anti-Trump, although me not posting something is hardly news (my day will come...).

Anyway. It turns out that I've not updated my blog in about five months or so. Whilst I very much doubt that you're all there on the point of expiring due to temporary lack of exhalation, you guys were all kind enough to like my page, so I guess I owe you an update - albeit a quick one.

THINGS HAPPENED.

Just nothing particularly blog-worthy. I got a permanent job, which is good, and even has writing friendly hours. But, being human, and messy, I have loads of projects on the go, and not enough time to get them all finished.
Pompeii got some re-writes and about fifteen-hundred more words, and I'm really hoping to be able to get it out in the world by the end of May
The sequel to Pompeii has a structure, and the start of a plot, and I've got some ideas about where I want various characters to end up as the series moves forwards.
Some of you may have gathered that I practise Martial Arts (well done for paying attention). It's a style of Ju Jitsu, called Junsui Ryu. I'm tentatively working on a book about the style (basics and principles) with the assistance of the guy who created it - my Sensei, proof-reader, landlord, drinking buddy and all round mate, Paul Lemar. I'm not 100% certain that it's going to happen, but here's hoping. In the meantime, click Here for more information about the style.

I didn't win, but I did enter a writing competition recently. So. As an apology for being rubbish at Social Media, I've decided to pop this on here... What follows is my entry into the 2017 Sci Fi London 48 Hour Flash Fiction Challenge (note the capitals... if writing fantasy and science fiction doesn't work out, maybe I could go and work for Buzzfeed... oh, wait...). All entrants were given a title, a line of dialogue that had to appear, and an optional scientific theme. I freely admit that my use of the title is a bit dubious, but I'm reasonably pleased with the way I managed to get the dialogue in. I wrote it in under 48 hours (clue's in the name of the contest), and apart from a very quick once over and dust, I present it as I submitted it.

Those of a nervous or sensitive disposition should be aware that the story contains bad language. Try not to let it worry you, although by the same token feel free to complain if it does - as always, get in touch via the facebook page, otherwise, I hope you enjoy the story...

Title: Whipped Up

Dialogue: Spray this enzyme around and leave... they won't remember you were even here

Science: Everything we touch gets our DNA, litter is now traceable to the owner

Word count: 1879 including title

Whipped Up

The crowd outside are baying for my blood. I can hear them. Understandable, I guess. The Tree of Liberty doesn't differentiate between tyrants or patriots, and neither does the mob. And you want to know why I did what I did? Simple - I did it because I could, and because I have more balls than you.

It was the target of a lifetime, and a chance to get even.

I was in and out in the blink of an eye - objectively.

Subjectively, it was more like thirty minutes. Much more than that on a black market rig, and the autoreturn kicks in, sends you bouncing back to your starting position. That's what screwed me. The only reason I left that brass behind was the damned rig. The only reason you got my DNA, or any proof at all. I had to get back to my jumping-in point, or risk losing vital body parts when my rig flipped the switch. I can't believe someone kept a goddamn cartridge casing for two hundred years.

Whoever picked the nest did a good job. I took my time lining up the shot. Downwards angle, moving target. Three rounds with a cold, unfamiliar weapon. Some Italian thing with a funny calibre. Fucking antique, didn't even have caseless rounds, which is obviously what screwed me. I learned my trade in the Corps, so the shooting itself was pretty easy, really, even with the wobble in my system. Black market time rigs tend to screw you up, make for one hell of a rough ride. Nothing like the milspec stuff I trained on.

Worth it, though.

The other problem with black market kit - you can't take anything through with you. There's an old movie, from the century before last - you can find it floating around on the web if you go deep enough. Don't bother trying to follow the plot, the soundtrack hasn't survived. Anyway, it's something to do with time-travel, has guys popping out of mid air in a big ball of lightning. Totally over-dramatic, but you know, pretty close. Anyway, point is, they're naked at the other end. No non-organics, except the rig. But we had that covered.

Anyway, so my buddy Sirhan and I, we put the time in. Did the recon the way they taught us to against the Sovs, during the last interstellar bust up. We were specialists, damned good at what we did. The Corps had a phrase for it.

Prime Target Elimination.

Fuck that. Sirhan and I were assassins. Regime change was the speciality of our team, one planet at a time. Apart from minor differences in the details, it's pretty straightforward. Taking down a planet, or a system is the same as taking down a man. You stalk in from a safe distance. Look at the locality, see what stands out, what doesn't. Scope out the local colour palette, make sure you match. Find the flow and move with it. Go in with the minimum, get what you need on the ground. Weapons acquisition in a non-permissive environment is what the Corps call it. Scrounge and survive. Kill the leaders, but keep it surgical. No massacres unless psyops think it'll be beneficial. Install the friendlies, and move on.

It's the same principle with the past.

Ok, so there's the Tannen Laws banning non-governmental time travel, but like any heap of manure there's ways around them. Restrictions on time travel are hard to enforce, and most of the idiots who get caught are just that. We were Corps infiltration and wetwork trained. And besides, we had a lot of help. Some of them had been back there for years, subjectively.

What? You don't think, the way this 'Cold' war has been going, that someone wouldn't think to take a pop at the first family? Shit, all you have to do is look at history. Two hundred years ago, a Sov leader called Stalin said 'Death solves all problems - no man, no problem'. I guess you could consider that a recently adopted personal philosophy of mine. Ironically, the only way to do it was the way I did it. Back then, when they were loved and revered, they were vulnerable. Now, when they're feared and reviled, they're untouchable. Or, at least they think so.

Anyway. We weren't the only ones who mustered out after doing our time with the words 'disquiet' and 'resentment' on our separation psych-screens. Hell. Most of the guys I served with felt like that. Conscription of entire planetary populations. Weapons 'testing' that leaves a hole in a solar system where a supposedly uninhabited planet used to be. Corruption. Comrades lost to proxy wars because some fucking diplomat rerouted vital supplies to line their pockets. Money spent on the arms race, the space race, the sprint to colonise. The demands of breeding enough fucking people just to hold onto what we have. It used to be that we discriminated against each other based on skin colour, or religion. At least we solved the last one, but now we resent how a person came into being, whilst at the same time being entirely reliant on the fact they exist in the first place.

And all of this with the background refrain of 'Democracy, Democracy' ringing in our ears. The constant cacophony of bullshit, telling us in strident tones how lucky we are to live in the orbit of influence of the UDP. How much better off we are to be part of the United Democratic Powers, where dreams can come true, rather than growing up in one of the grey and functional SovBloc humanfarms, where dreams, we are told, are taken as a symptom of a worrying individuality. Now, I've worked on a few more of those worlds than you have clearance for, and they ain't exactly the workers paradise the Sovs make them out to be, but they're certainly no worse than some of the shitholes my buddies and I bled to prop up. I've seen it. So have others.

Sirhan and I, we weren't alone.

It started as a joke. Me, Sirhan, a couple of others - both from our old unit, or the conversation wouldn't have happened. We were having a beer, bitching about life. I forget who suggested it. We tossed it around, got whipped up over it some, left it, moved on with the conversation. Sirhan and I came back to it later, started looking at the angles. Realised it could be done.

As I said, we put the time in. Once you get past the whole arriving naked thing, our biggest problem would be 'showing out'. We'd both been planet-hopping, blending into the local population for days or months at a time, but this would be different. This wasn't just jumping onto SovWorld X to pop a local commissar. For all the talk of differences, our tech and their tech is pretty much identical in what it does. Form may change, and how they get from here to there is usually pretty fucked up, but ultimately it works. But this wasn't just a few light years of distance. This was decades of time. Nearly two centuries. Speech, customs, tech, everything would be different. Even the language. We had to learn how to fit in.

We hit the history books, and almost immediately realised we had to split the task. It was simply too big. We began to despair. Then they found us. The resistance, I guess you'd call them. It turned out that maybe our old friends weren't just shooting the shit over beers that night, they'd been on a recruitment drive. It was flattering, I suppose. We barely paused to think before signing up.

You look at me, you think OK, sure. Ex-military. Maybe one or two like him, some pissed-off civilians and possibly a disgruntled spook or two. To be honest, I don't know how many of us there are, operational security, and all that.. Quite a few, enough to get you scared, if you're invested in the status quo. All of a sudden, a whole bunch of our problems fell away. We had a support network, including a couple of folk somewhere who could slip small packages through a Milspec time rig. No guns, but they assured us they had people the other end who could set us up. At the time, I didn't realise they meant literally.

We were still going in on the economy package. Time travel at it's best is hit and miss, and the shit-rigs we were using were hardly state of the art. But we were confident. We shook, hugged like brothers, then turned and just walked away. That was the last time I saw Sirhan, in a dusty old warehouse, naked but for the time rig. Hope he makes it.

True to form, my own equipment worked slightly less than perfectly. I popped out in the right place, but twenty minutes early. Thankfully, my contact was there, and switched on enough to deal, but the other twenty or so people in the theatre were, frankly, shocked as shit. He was up and moving within seconds, throwing me an alloy canister with an aerosol attachment.

'Spray this enzyme around and leave... they won't remember you were even here.'

Luckily, they were all clustered fairly close together, so we didn't have to chase anyone as we hosed them down. I still don't know what the stuff was, but it worked. Most of them were dozing almost as soon as the mist from the canisters touched them.

He told me his name was Jack. He was middle aged, out of shape, and had been here for years, on the fringes of the local organised crime scene. I had him figured for a military intelligence reservist, strictly a wannabe. They'd found me a nest, and a couple of weapons with suitable ammunition. The pistol he gave to me in the restrooms at the theatre, along with a set of clothes. The rifle was concealed in the shooting position, along with it's ammunition - he'd heard I like to select my rounds.

'What about attribution? Who's taking the fall for this one?'

He smiled at me. I didn't like it.

'Don't worry, Lee.' He told me.'We got that covered.'

You, and everyone else in the galaxy know the rest.

The crowd outside are getting louder. That senator, the weasel-faced fucker from New Texas, he's out there. Getting them riled up. But I saw the power supply on the way in here tonight. I've seen the lights flicker with the test cycles. No matter how much he gets the crowd whipped up, there's only one way this ends. I've done my part, and I hear a rumour that Sirhan did OK. Someone else will get the son, and then the wave will come crashing down the continuum, and none of this will matter anyway.

But that's all in the future, and I'm not headed in that direction. Commit a crime, if that what you want to call it, in the twentieth century, face twentieth century justice. Perfect deniability.

Pretty easy when you fuckers have a Milspec time rig in the basement, no?

I doubt it'll come to court, anyway.

Jack's got that covered.