The roar of the engines increased drastically, telling Benny that they were blowing their little hearts out, cancelling the weight of the dropship, cushioning it as it settled on its legs. And then, with a cavalier flick of a switch, Vyshinsky killed most of the power.Second paragraph of third chapter of "The Ship of Painted Shadows", by Marc Platt:
'Just keep your nose out of other people's business,' she heard her father say in his familiar, controlled, yet exasperated tone. It was a lesson she had wilfully ignored ever since.Second paragraph of third chapter of "The Soul's Prism", by Pete Kempshall:
It was obvious now why Simon had discounted Caroline Dadd from the list of suspects. There was no way in the galaxy that the skinny cow could have thrown Ivo as far as the killer had, not without serious bionic enhancement. Benny could see no evidence of that on Dadd's trim physique. She should probably ask Jason to double check - he was sure to have looked more closely than Benny had. Then again, knowing her ex-husband's current stand on cybernetic adaptation, if he had spotted anything of that kind on the captain he probably wouldn't be flirting with her quite so keenly.Another collection of Bernice Summerfield novellas, this time a linked narrative by three different authors, involving a figure (half-human, half-lemur) from Benny's pre-Doctor past emerging to cause difficulty by dying unexpectedly. I thought this was a particularly good effort, Marc Platt scoring particularly for atmospherics in his flashback story of Young Benny, but Clements and Kempshall doing a good job of setup and resolution. Not particularly penetrable for those who are not already Benny fans - the unresolved Jason relationship is a big part of the story. Get it here.
Next up: The Two Jasons, by Dave Stone.
