A Quick View of The Lazaretto (An Excerpt from Book One of The Lazaretto Trilogy)

The Lazaretto is a sci-fi noir novel set on a quarantine moon.  The novel consists of multiple story lines:

Gregor Lepov is a private investigator who arrives in the Lazaretto to search for a woman’s missing son and quickly meets the enigmatic Lilly Stewart, an antiquities dealer, a remarkable woman who may be friend or foe.

Lieutenant Ed MacNally, a homicide detective, along with his partner Arturo Fenelli, begin investigating a string of brutal murders that are similar in their violence but otherwise seem unrelated.

Maria Duvalls, a volunteer nurse in a world where the sick are left untreated, cares for a dying crime boss with a mysterious illness, even as a disturbing young man follows her throughout the city.

The Collector—an unseen yet prominent figure in the city obsessed with contagions and power—wields a dangerous influence through his ruthless Agent.

Helen Segal, a secretary at the Interplanetary Health Service, become embroiled in an internal affairs investigation in which she and her best friend try to decide if the cold, calculating German Doctor Haupt is merely conducting a simple audit or something deeper that will ultimately threaten more than just their jobs.

  In the following excerpt, Helen Segal has been reassigned to work for the newly arrived auditor from Earth.

  Helen Segal hesitated in front of a plain office door.  If she hadn’t been so unsettled at the coming encounter she would have laughed at herself.  Of what was she afraid?  If anything, she told herself, she ought to look forward to this.  It was a chance to break away from the boredom of her daily routine.

  A chill ran through her.  If only the German had not been so cold. 

  She knocked.

  “Come.”  The command carried easily through the door.

  Helen obeyed.  She stepped into the office and closed the door with a precision she rarely used.  She even felt she was standing more erect than usual.  The German’s disciplined demeanor was contagious.

  The small room had only a desk and chair. 

  “You are a few minutes late,” Dr. Haupt stated.  “That is acceptable.  I only ask that it not become a habit.  Follow me.”

  Turning on his heel, he disappeared through a second doorway.  Helen followed.

  “Sit down.”

  She did.  This room was only slightly bigger.  He took a seat behind a desk, looked up at Helen, and spoke without preamble.

  “I have been sent here to conduct a review of IHS in the Lazaretto.  I requested that you be assigned to assist me in this review.  I will not allow this review to become entangled in politics.  Nor will I allow personal feelings to become a factor.  This investigation is about the ability of the IHS to fulfill its purpose here at the Lazaretto.  If it is efficiently doing so, then I will report as much and leave as quickly as possible.  If it is not, then I will report as much, give my recommendations to Earth, and await further instructions.  Do you understand?”

  Helen understood too well.  The German was not there to cut anyone slack.  And she was now caught in the middle.  How had this happened?

  “Yes,” she nodded.  She’d fought the urge to add yes sir.

 “Excellent.  We will begin immediately.  I have already listed the documentation that I require.  You will find the list here.”  He pulled a data tag from his breast pocket and handed it to her.  “Forward this to the appropriate departments.  See that I have the required system passes so that I can view all documentation at their original electronic storage sites, as well as any required passes necessary to print out hard copies.”

  Helen took the data tag and left the room.  Outside his office, she sat at what was now her desk.  Spartan as the room was, the desk contained everything she would need.  At least all the components were installed.  It was even more outdated than normal.

  The deskscreen actually had a keypad for data input.  She spoke a few simple commands and confirmed what she had suspected: the system had no vocal input.  Even the data tag was not picked up by a proximity reader.  She had to set it in a data port before the desk could read it.

  This office was no accident.  Dr. Fisher had assigned this office to the German to obstruct the review.  If they had given Dr. Haupt an obsolete office system to hinder him, what did that say about her role as his assistant?  It clarified her situation.  She had been baffled that she had been asked to help in the review.  She was, after all, only a secretary.  Now she understood.  She was also an outdated secretary that was expected to slow things down.

  “I’m not only going to be caught in the middle of a bureaucratic battle,” she murmured, “but I’m going to be used as a shield as well.  Tough luck, old girl.”

  Of course, she might be reading too much into her situation.  It was possible that Dr. Fisher had merely assigned this particular office because there were no others available.  And hadn’t Dr. Haupt requested her?  Didn’t that negate her theory that she had been assigned for nefarious reasons?

  “Stop fussing,” she ordered herself.

The list from the data tag displayed on her deskscreen and Helen scanned its contents for anything out of the ordinary.

  Archived Annual Reports and Audits were near the top of the list.  She had expected those.  The same went for his request of daily reports, fiscal reviews and many other documents that would present him with an overall view of the IHS facility.  All of those were administrative records that would require little authorization.

  As she had also expected, he requested lab data relating to the numbers of healthy travelers and contaminated travelers.  Such numbers were not as straightforward as they might seem.  Few records were kept on healthy travelers.  Assumptions were made on the number of travelers leaving the planet as opposed to those same travelers arriving.  This was an educated guess that suggested travelers who entered the Lazaretto and left it were predominantly healthy and in no way contaminated.  According to one study from many years ago, it was determined that ten to fifteen per cent of these travelers had in fact arrived with some sort of contaminant that had run its course during the forty-day quarantine.  She would have to explain that if he were not already aware of the fact.

  The list also contained requests for more specific lab data: types of contaminants, treatments, outbreaks and containments.  She also saw documentation requests from areas with which she was unfamiliar.  She would have to get someone to help on determining what authorizations she would need for those.

  Helen was surprised to realize she had personally seen many of these reports over the last year.  Working for Dr. Fisher, she received and annotated all types of reports and reviews she then passed on to Dr. Fisher as the IHS Administrator.  Was that why Dr. Haupt had requested her?  How could that be to his advantage?  Surely he wanted someone who had no personal involvement in the life cycle of these documents.  An opportunity to interfere—to protect herself and those she knew—would be too tempting, at least from Dr. Haupt’s point of view.  It was hard to imagine he would not realize this.  Why take the risk?

  She was fussing again.  She decided she didn’t want to know what the German was thinking.  She knew she had better tread carefully.

For more information on The Lazaretto, got to Rocket Fire Books, where you can order a signed print copy.  You may also purchase a print or eBook copy below:

And watch for book two of the Lazaretto Trilogy: Lady in the Lazaretto.

The Saint Christopher Lights

For those of you who were unaware of it, this story is available online at Rocket Fire Journal.  The Saint Christopher Lights tells the story of a society in the future who has found a way to rid their world of the dead.  Eli, a young man with a curiosity about the dead that friends and family collectively condemn, discovers that regardless of society's attempts to banish the dead from their world, the dead are harder to cast out than expected.

The Saint Christopher Lights,
a short story by Jason Phillip Reeser

A Pre-View of The Lazaretto

  My new novel, The Lazaretto, will soon be available in print.  In anticipation of this, I am posting an excerpt from the book.  The book is a science fiction story set on a quarantine planet in an Earth colony solar system, set in an undefined future.  This quarantine planet, a lazaretto, is the central hub of travel, where any person wishing to travel between planets must spend forty days in quarantine.  The real hitch is the fact that if you are found to be infected with a disease, you may not leave the lazaretto, ever.  It is a dark world where people shun physical contact and live in constant fear for their health.

  Into this rather paranoid world comes Gregor Lepov, a private detective who has been hired to find a woman's missing son.  A simple missing person's case turns into something far more disturbing as the police begin tracking a violent killer in the city.   

  The print version will soon be available at Amazon, though right now, advance copies can be found at the link to the left.  The Kindle edition will be ready by the first of July.  This is the first book of a trilogy.  The second book (The Lady in the Lazaretto) will come out next year.  I hope you give it a try.  I've been working on this now for about three years, and I hope you enjoy it.  Until you have the full book, enjoy the following excerpt.

      The driver talked nonstop until Lepov paid him and stepped in front of Ethan Layne’s building.  There was nothing about it that made it stand out from any other building on that street.  Only the worn black numbers on the battered door told him he was at the right place.  He climbed the steps of the covered entrance testing his knee on each step.  He was pleasantly surprised to discover the pain had gone.

       The small foyer and first level hallway were dimly lit.  There was enough light for him to see this place looked worse than his dormitory.  One look at the elevator was enough to make him seek out the stairwell.  Even if the old lift did work, he wasn’t about to trust it with his life.  It looked rotten, as if a river had run down that elevator shaft over the years and soaked all the wood until it was warped and soft to the touch.

       Lepov grabbed hold of the stairwell’s handrail and pulled himself up the first step.  He did not hurry.  He rested two separate times before he reached the eighth floor where Layne’s door stood opposite the stairwell.

       Lepov knocked in case someone was actually there.  He expected no one and grabbed the door knob.  To his surprise, someone inside pulled the door open a few inches.

       “What do you want?”  A young woman stared at him with steely eyes from within a shadow.

       “I’m looking for Ethan Layne.  Do I have the wrong door?”

       “It’s the right door.  Ethan is not here.  What do you want?”

       “I’m here on behalf of—a friend of Ethan’s.  May I come in?”  Lepov caught the smell of cigarette smoke and although there were days he couldn’t stand to smell it anymore, this day it smelled good.

       “Just a moment,” the woman said, and quickly closed the door.

      The hallway had only one working light in it, and that was thirty feet down to his right.  Pale light from a window at one end of the hall was the only other illumination.  Lepov began to wonder if he’d been a fool to allow the door to close on him.  No one should have been at Ethan’s apartment.  His mother had said nothing about a roommate.

      More than likely, he thought, the mother was unaware that her son was shacked up with a woman.  That might explain everything.  He was hoping that would be the case.  He wanted to get out of the Lazaretto as soon as possible.

       “Alright,” the woman said as the door opened, “you may come in.  I was just leaving.”

       She was maybe twenty years old with brown hair cut like a little boy’s.  She was terribly thin.  Her dark brown eyes were hidden behind a worried brow.  Her small mouth looked even smaller as she chewed on her bottom lip.  She carried two packs, one slung over each shoulder.  She tried not to make eye contact as she attempted to get past Lepov.

      “Hold on a minute, Miss.”  He stood his ground and blocked her exit.  He had a good idea she was doing more than leaving.  It looked very much like she was fleeing.

      “I have to go!  I haven’t time to talk.”

      “You’d better do some talking,” Lepov put a hand on one of the packs and firmly guided her back into Layne’s apartment.  He decided not to waste time with this girl.  “In fact, you better do a lot of talking.”

       “Who are you?” she asked, jerking away from his touch.  “Who are you to touch me?  Huh?”

        Lepov stepped back as she angrily dropped onto a couch with hard black cushions.  The packs slid down her arms and she pulled one of them onto her lap.  Still angry, she rammed a hand into its main compartment and fished around in it.  Lepov didn’t wait to see why.  He swiped a big hand down and snatched the pack away from her.  She called out as if she’d been stung by a wasp.  It took Lepov a moment to realize the hand she yanked from the pack was holding a small caliber gun.  She aimed it at him.

       “Don’t.”  His tone was enough to make her hesitate.  In one easy move he tossed the pack back towards the still open door and snatched the gun from her hand.  At the same time he moved forward and pinned her to the couch with the other hand.

       “Damn you!”  She squirmed with nowhere to go.

       “Now just hold on.  I’m not the one pulling guns on strangers.”

       The woman kicked him.  It was a lucky shot.  She hit his knee.  Pain washed over him in distinct waves.  He staggered back two steps, biting back a mouthful of curses.  The woman recognized what had happened and smiled, quite pleased with herself.

       “We better start over,” Lepov tensed as another wave of pain rolled through his leg.  “I’m simply looking for Ethan Layne.”

       “Does he owe you money?  Or was he screwing your wife?”  An impish smile came out even as he could still see anger in her eyes.

       “No and no.  I take it you wouldn’t approve of that last item, huh?”

       “I didn’t care about the other women.”  The set of her jaw said otherwise.  “He owed me money.  And he’s been gone a long time now.”

       “So you thought you’d liquidate a few of his things?”  Lepov looked around the apartment.  It was a small two-room affair.  There was a bedroom in the back.  The main room was kitchen, living and storage all wrapped up in one.  As far as he could tell, most of Layne’s things were gone.  The woman had been there before.

       “I’m taking what I can.  Do you care?  I paid for most of it over the last two years.  I can’t prove it, but what do you care?”

       Lepov admitted he didn’t care in the least.  He just wanted Layne.

       “So where is he?” Lepov removed the bullets from her gun.  When he had finished, he dropped them into the front pocket of his pants.

       “Why do you want to know?”  She brushed her hair back in a nervous gesture.  As short as it was, it was still long enough to conceal a bruise high up on her forehead.

      “I doubt that’s Ethan’s doing, unless you’ve seen him in the past couple of days.”  Lepov leaned forward and pushed the hair back more to see the extent of the damage.  “This is maybe 24 or 48 hours old.”

      “You know so much about bruises, huh?  I’m not surprised.  You probably beat your woman.”

      “I don’t have a woman, but if I did, and she was anything like you, I’d sure as hell beat her.”

      The woman looked at him, shocked at his frankness before she understood he was putting her on.  She smiled wickedly.

      “I’m Greta Becker.  I’ve been living with Ethan for two years.”  She pulled out a cigarette and lit it, blowing a cloud of smoke around her face.  “Are you a cop?” 

      “No.  My name is Lepov.  Ethan’s mother was getting worried.”  That cigarette didn’t just smell good to him, it made him think about opening the pack in his coat pocket.  He fought off the impulse though he could not take his eyes off the cigarette.

      “A Private Detective?”  She pronounced each word with extra care then shrugged off the revelation with a laugh.

       “Who did that to you?”  Lepov pointed at her injury.

       “What do you care?  I live in a rough neighborhood.”

       “That why you carry the gun?”

       “Not that it helped.  The gun is useless against bastards like you.”

       “Sometimes.”  Lepov tossed her the gun.  “Unless you know what to do with it, it only causes more trouble.   Someone’s going to start asking uncomfortable questions about your gun.  Like why are you carrying one and emptying out a missing man’s apartment.  That looks bad.”

        If she understood the implication, she didn’t let on.

       “I’m trying to say that with the police asking questions about Ethan’s disappearance, they’re bound to think it’s a little strange—you stealing all this and having a gun in your possession.”

       “They haven’t.”  She challenged Lepov with a hard stare.

       “Haven’t what?”

       “Been asking questions.  They haven’t been asking questions.”

       “I’d been told Ethan had been missing for three weeks now.”  Lepov tried to work the timing out in his head.  “When did you last see him?”

        “I’ll tell you, but it does you no good.  I hadn’t seen him in nearly two months.  I’d left him.”

        “That other woman you didn’t mind so much?”  Lepov’s question was colder than his tone.

        “Yes,” she nodded.  Some of her hard exterior began to soften.  “I came back a week ago.  When I saw he wasn’t here, I figured he got out of the Laz.  Maybe he had jumped into a closing quadrant without time to pack.  As far as I knew, he was never coming back.”

       It wasn’t her conjectures about Ethan’s disappearance that grabbed his attention.  He was still focused on what she’d said about the police.

       “Greta, you said the police aren’t asking questions?”

        “No.  I know a few of the neighbors here, and they say no one has been around looking for him.  As far as I know, you’re the first.”

       “He did work for the Lazaretto Administrative Unit, didn’t he?”  She nodded firmly.  “Wouldn’t they wonder where he was?”

        “It’s why I thought he took off.”

        “No,” Lepov shook his head while trying to puzzle out what he was hearing.  “I checked all of that out before I flew out here.  According to official records, he’s still within the Lazaretto.”

        It took only a cursory glance around the room for Lepov to realize he had lost any chance of finding information in the apartment.  The woman had taken too much.  She had nearly stripped the place bare.

        “You sure did a job on this place,” Lepov shook his head.  “I don’t suppose you happened to notice anything unusual before you began to dismantle everything?”

        “I don’t think so.”  Her answer was both guarded and petulant.

        “Sorry if the question offends you, but I have to say you haven’t exactly done me a favor here.  You said it looked like he hadn’t packed, is that right?”

        “Maybe a little.  Some clothes but nothing else.”

        “Forgive the implication, but did it look as if someone else had been living with him?”

        The implication was apparently not going to be forgiven, or even acknowledged.  Greta Becker stood up and snatched up the pack on the couch.  Keeping one eye on Lepov, she moved to the door and retrieved the second pack, clutching both of them as if she were hugging a lost child who’d just been found.

       “You can’t keep me here.  And I don’t have to answer your questions.  For all I know you did something to Ethan.  I should call the cops.”

      “Right,” Lepov allowed a mocking smile on his lips.  There wasn’t a chance in hell she’d call the cops.  She didn’t realize he was now practically forced to contact them.  Once someone official did begin to look for Layne, they would quickly discover the looting of his rooms.  And once they discovered that, anyone associated with Layne would come under suspicion.  And he was sure it would eventually become known he was there for the sole purpose of tracking down Layne.  The longer he kept in the shadows the more suspicious he would look to the authorities.

        “I think it’s only fair to warn you that I’ll be calling them.”  Lepov stood at the top of the stairs and watched her descend.  “I won’t call them until tomorrow.  That gives you a day to decide what you’re gonna do, and how you’re gonna answer their questions.”

       Her sharp curse echoed up the cavernous stairwell.

For more information on The Lazaretto, got to Rocket Fire Books, where you can order a signed print copy.  You may also purchase a print or eBook copy below:

And watch for book two of the Lazaretto Trilogy: Lady in the Lazaretto.

One Reason I've Been Remiss in Writing Posts

Lately I've been remiss in getting posts up on this blog.  I have a few good reasons for this; here is one of the more pronounced reasons: 

The New Look

  I have been extremely busy editing and preparing a manuscript for publication.  My novel, Jury Rig, will soon be out, and I've been polishing it as well as working on the design of the book, including the art work.  This takes a great amount of time, since no matter how many times I seem to proofread a manuscript of 79,000 words, I can open it right back up and find a mistake without the slightest effort.  It makes me doubt my eyesight (which is certainly worse than it was ten years ago) and my brain (which should be in better shape than ten years ago solely because I'm older, and supposedly wiser.)
  One of the bigger time consumers has been a design overhaul.  The original novel had a different title, design theme and artwork.  The art department came up with a new idea just one week ago, and much time was spent bringing this idea to life.  I received fantastic help from my talented daughter Kathryn during this redesign.
  Once the print book design was done, I then had to prepare the book for Kindle, which has been an adventure since the method is new to me.  I'm getting better at it, and it should take less time the next time around.  As a bit of a perfectionist, I can now say I'm well acquainted with saving, converting, saving, uploading, rendering, saving, converting, checking, saving, searching the web for help, waiting, drinking coffee...
  Jury Rig is a comedic novel, somewhere in the neighborhood of a mystery/courtroom drama/action thriller: think Agatha Christie meets Donald Westlake.  That's not boasting, as if I've cleverly created a highly complex story that fits all of those genres.  Rather, it is an attempt to describe the odd story line that eventually develops in the book.  Hopefully, readers will find it entertaining, with plenty of chances to laugh and even a few chances to stop and think about a thing or two.  
  The Kindle edition will be available this Friday (the 27th), and the print edition is scheduled to be available on Feb. 1st.  I hope everyone who is kind enough to take the time to read it will be thoroughly satisfied.  You can visit Rocket Fire Books to learn more about it.