Hello and welcome to this Behind the Scene post with author Michael Mammay, who’s here today to talk about his new novel Darkside – which is out on the 24th September from Harper Voyager. Book four in the Planetside series, albeit also readable as a standalone story, Darkside sounds ideal for anyone who enjoys both pacy, action-packed military SF and high-stakes, thrilling investigations. Michael has kindly contributed an excerpt from the novel alongside commentary on some of the challenges of writing this book!
Before we get into the excerpt and Michael’s commentary, here’s the publisher’s synopsis to give you a sense of what to expect:
Colonel Butler has paid his dues and just wants to enjoy his retirement on a remote planet. But the galaxy has had other plans. He has been roped into searching for a politician’s missing son and an industry magnate’s missing daughter. He has been kidnapped, violated numerous laws, and caused the destruction of colonial facilities. He’s famous—or infamous, depending on who you ask—praised and reviled in equal measure across the galaxy for his exploits.
And he is determined to never let the government drag him into another investigation.
But when a runaway twelve-year-old girl whose father has gone missing asks him for help, well…it’s a lot harder to say no.
The girl’s father, Jorge Ramiro, was supposed to have been on Taug, a moon orbiting the gas giant Ridia 5, working on a dig with a famous archaeologist. But now there’s no sign of him and no record of him being there. Mining operations on the moon are run by two different consortiums, Caliber and Omicron—both of which have tried to kill Butler in the past. Butler doesn’t believe in coincidence.
Landing on Taug with his right-hand man Mac, computer genius Ganos, and an elite security squad, Butler soon finds that they’ve charged back into the crosshairs—because Ramiro is not the only who has disappeared, and the perpetual darkside of this moon is hiding more than the truth about a missing archaeologist…
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Michael Mammay: A little setup. Darkside is the fourth book in the Planetside series – a series that follows the exploits of (now retired) Colonel Carl Butler, a man who regularly finds himself involved in mysteries, usually of the missing person variety. In this scene from the first chapter, he’s with his best friend and bodyguard, Mac, having drinks at their favorite local watering hole, Moop’s (“Dumb name, good beer”).
Excerpt from Darkside by Michael Mammay
Mac’s voice trailed off, and his eyes went to the door. Sure, he gave me crap about never dating, but he was good at his job. I didn’t bother to turn around. He’d let me know if we had an issue. “Who’s that kid?” He said it more to himself than to me, but it got my interest, and I turned to look. There was a girl with light brown skin in jeans and a dark green sweatshirt standing in the door, silhouetted by the outside light. She looked like she was maybe twelve or thirteen, but that was a guess. I’m not very experienced with kids, and those are awkward years.
“Never seen her before.”
She’d definitely seen me, because when our eyes met, her face lit up and she headed our way. Mac didn’t stand, but he slid closer to the outside of the booth. Apparently a young girl didn’t rate the full treatment in his mind. Not yet.
She stopped a few steps short of us and eyed Mac warily before turning to me. She stood maybe one and a half meters tall with short brown hair cut in a bob, all pointy knees and elbows. I reaffirmed my age estimation. “You’re Colonel Butler.” I couldn’t read her tone – there was no awe or hero worship in it. More flat and even. Matter-of-fact. She wasn’t asking.
“I am,” I said.
“Move along, kid. Pick somebody else to do your research assignment on.” Mac saw it as his job to keep curious people away as well as dangerous. That worked for me. His take on the girl was a fair assessment. She wouldn’t be the first kid who wanted to interview me for a school project, and every so often a reporter would come around wanting to talk. And once, a reporter had tried to use a kid. I almost had to give that interview just for the ingenuity. Mac put the kibosh on it, said it would encourage others. As usual, he was right.
Confusion crossed her face. “I’m not doing research. I came from New Gaston because I need Colonel Butler to find somebody.”
New Gaston? That was . . . far. I don’t know how far. Far enough where you don’t think about how far it is because it’s too far to worry about. The other side of the planet. Nine, maybe ten thousand kilometers. I said I’m not experienced with kids, and I’m not, but a twelve-year-old that far from home on her own triggered even my protective instincts. “What’s your name?”
“Eliza. Eliza Ramiro.”
“Do your parents know you’re here, Eliza?” I tried to keep my tone from sounding condescending, but I’m not sure how you do that with that question.
“My father is the one who is missing. I stay with my aunt.”
She hadn’t answered my question, but I could tell from the way she held herself when she said it that her aunt didn’t know about the trip. But it’s hard to push a girl who just told you that her father is missing. I mean, I’m an asshole, but not that much of one. But I did need to keep her talking until I got a better handle on her situation. “How did you get here from New Gaston?”
“I flew and then I took a bus to Eroka, which is as close as I could get to here. From there I hired a bot car.”
“I meant how did you pay for it?” I said. “That had to cost a lot.”
She smiled, clearly proud of herself. “I crowdfunded it.”
“Crowdfunded?”
“That’s right. I took donations for travel costs and the cost of hiring you to find my dad.”
I wanted to tell her that I didn’t actually do that kind of thing, but that wasn’t the most important issue here. I had to address her desire to hire me before moving on to what I saw as the real problem: a young girl who had run away from home. But maybe I could find a compromise. “Would you be willing to call your aunt and tell her where you are?”
“I need to tell you about my father. Something has happened to him.”
“I believe you. So I tell you what – if you’ll call your aunt and tell her where you are, and let me talk to her, then I promise that I’ll give you my full attention while you tell me about your father’s disappearance. It’s not like your aunt is going to come pick you up right away.”
She considered it for several seconds, her face scrunched up as every emotion she felt flickered across it. “Deal.”
“Good. Have you had anything to eat?”
“Not recently. I’m saving money for other expenses.”
“Okay. Have a seat. Dinner is on me.” Mac got out of his seat so that she could get in on his side, while I signaled Moop to bring Eliza a menu. Once we had that set, I gave her my device to call her aunt. After five minutes of getting the understandably agitated woman to calm down, I assured her that Eliza was safe and would remain that way, and when she didn’t believe me, I got Martha, Moop’s wife, to talk to her and also assure her of that. Eliza seemed indifferent to the conversation and was halfway through a burger and fries by the time we got around to discussing her real reason for being there.
“So. Tell me about your father.”
“My dad’s name is Jorge Ramiro. He works for Jacob Whiteman. Have you heard of him?”
“I haven’t,” I admitted.
“He’s a famous archaeologist,” she said, as if it was common knowledge. Maybe it was, and I was just behind on my Archaeology Digest subscription. “They were doing an exploratory dig on Taug.”
“That’s a moon, right? Orbiting Ridia Four?”
“Ridia Five,” she corrected.
I never could keep all the moons around the two gas giants in our solar system straight. There were like forty of them, all told. “And that’s where you think he disappeared?”
“That’s where I know he disappeared.”
“When was the last time you heard from him?”
“Eleven days ago.”
Mac looked like he wanted to say something, so I nodded to him to go for it. I had no real ideas. “I don’t mean to be a jerk here, but is there a chance he got busy and didn’t message?”
Eliza turned to him and gave him a death glare. “Not my dad. He sends me a message every day.”
“He’s never missed?” I couldn’t help but flash back to all the times I hadn’t messaged my kids when I’d been in the military. All the times I didn’t message them now.
“Three times, all when he was on a ship between locations. But he always told me that the day before it happened.”
“Do you have any idea what might have happened to him?” I asked. It seemed like the logical question, because I certainly didn’t have any clue.
“That’s what I want to hire you for.” She said it like it made perfect sense, and in the eyes of a child, maybe it did. But contrary to my reputation, I didn’t actually find people. Sure, there had been a couple of very high-profile events where I was supposed to. But both of those were military things – or at least military adjacent – and both of those people were dead. I’d killed one of them myself – I guess that counted as me finding them, though probably not the way that the people who sent me wanted. It’s a long story. Regardless, I didn’t exactly have a great track record, and I didn’t even know where to start with a civilian case.
I also didn’t know how to break it to her. She was sitting there, so earnest, so confident, sure that I could do this thing. But I couldn’t not tell her. “I’m sorry, Eliza, but I really don’t do that.”
“But you have to. I can get more money if you need it.”
I considered that, even though I didn’t care about the money. As I said, I had plenty. She hadn’t even mentioned an amount though, so her jumping to the idea that she needed more seemed flawed. But then, a photogenic kid with a missing dad would always get attention, and I wondered if we could translate that into something with the media that might help her. Because while I didn’t find people, I did have a few contacts in the press. “Have you considered taking it to the net to see if someone knows anything?”
“I thought about it,” she said. “But I didn’t, because if somebody did something to him, they might come after me, too.”
It was good thinking for a kid – for anyone, really – being safe with what she put out into the galaxy on social media, but at the same time, it was a bit paranoid, and a bit illogical since she’d released it into the world via the crowdfunding. I’m as big a conspiracy theorist as the next guy – I’ve seen enough wild stuff where I pretty much have to be – but she seemed a bit out there. Despite what she said to Mac, the most likely answer was that her father had just stopped messaging. Or he’d met someone and taken off. I try not to think the worst of people I don’t know, but, well . . . they’re people. And a lot of people are shitty. Even ones with resourceful daughters. “What about a private detective? Someone who does this kind of thing professionally?”
“You don’t think I tried that first? You think the first thing I thought of was flying halfway around the planet in the hopes that a celebrity hero would find my dad for me?”
Actually, I had thought that. In my defense, I have no idea what goes on in the minds of twelve-year-olds. But her sarcasm was justified. “You couldn’t find anybody?”
“Nobody would take the case. They didn’t want to travel to the outer solar system.”
“And you think I do?”
She hesitated at that – the first time I’d seen that in her since she’d arrived. That endeared her to me even more, because it showed that she could reevaluate things when presented with new information. There are plenty of adults who can’t do that. But then resolve took over her face again, and it became clear that this girl wasn’t going to accept no for an answer. She’d also already proven that she was the kind of person who would do something drastic. You know, like fly ten thousand klicks to hunt down a man she didn’t know and try to convince him to find her missing dad. I didn’t want her to do anything else rash until we could get her back to her family, so I decided I could at least poke around. It didn’t require travel. If the guy was still alive, no matter where he was, he’d leave some kind of evidence. As it happened, I knew someone who could track that kind of thing.
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Michael Mammay: There were a couple of challenges as I went to write Darkside. The first one was that I’d taken a four-year break from the last book in the series in order to write some stand-alone books, so fans of the series from back when it came out might not remember everything that happened. Second, with any book in a series, you (and the characters) are carrying all the baggage forward from previous books. For lack of a better way of saying it, you’re stuck with your own canon.
The first one was easy to deal with. We put a recap of the first three books in Darkside’s front matter, and I worked to include a little more exposition than usual in early scenes (like this one.) So if it feels like I’m giving a bit of back-story…well…yeah. I am. It’s one of those things I’d generally try to avoid early in a book, but since it’s a book 4, most of my readers come in as fans, so I feel like I have a little more leeway in that regard. There’s a level of trust there with the reader that’s not there in a book 1 or a stand-alone, and while I don’t want to abuse that trust, I did want to use it to get everybody back up to speed.
The second was a bit more of a challenge. The Planetside series is science fiction, but is essentially a mystery series. The main character, Carl Butler, is, to be nice about it, world weary. To be less nice, he’s a crochety old asshole who has a pretty jaded view of the world. In previous books in the series, he was ordered or asked to get involved in the situations that started his involvement in the mystery. But I couldn’t go back to that well, because Butler wouldn’t. If someone official came knocking, trying to get him to take on another case, he’d have either cursed them out or shot them. Maybe both.
Enter Eliza Ramiro. Because while you’re stuck with the canon that you’ve established in previous volumes in the series, you also get to use the things you put in place in earlier books. In this case, back in the original Planetside, we learn (in backstory) that Carl Butler lost a daughter. Because of that, he’s particularly susceptible to the plight of someone else’s daughter. He could easily say no to an official inquiry, but when a young girl asks him, it’s a lot harder to turn her away. Add to the fact that she’s motivated and very confident in her relationship with her dad, and, well…Butler never had a chance.
It’s a scene that’s both representative and not representative of the rest of the book. Which doesn’t make sense, but it’s true. It’s not representative because at its heart, this is a fast-paced mystery with multiple action sequences. But Carl Butler is a thinking character, and you’re always going to get his thoughts and reasons behind why something is happening the way it is. That’s what makes him a good (yet tremendously flawed) detective.
It’s a simple scene, but it sets up the entire book. When Butler is out there and things aren’t going right – because they’re never going right – he can’t quit, because he doesn’t want to let the girl down. What’s a purer motivation than that?
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Michael Mammay is a retired army officer and a graduate of the United States Military Academy. He has a master’s degree in military history and is a veteran of more wars than he cares to remember. He lives with his wife in Georgia. He is the author of the Planetside series, The Misfit Soldier, The Weight of Command, and Generation Ship.
Find out more at Michael’s website.
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Thanks so much to Michael for sharing this excerpt and for talking us through his commentary! Darkside sounds great, and I hope this has left you keen to read more. Check out the link below to order a copy for yourself*.
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