Salvagia by Tim Chawaga (EXCERPT)

Hello, readers! Today we have an excerpt from a thrilling work of speculative fiction that falls under the cli(mate change)-fi heading, as a near-future scavenger finds herself embroiled in the murder of a powerful corporate figure.

Triss Mackey is flying just under the radar, exploiting a government loophole that lets her live quietly aboard her rented, sentient CabanaBoat, the Floating Ghost. To make ends meet, she dives for recycling recovered from the flooded areas of formerly-coastal cities known as the yoreshore. If she happens to find some salvagia — nostalgic salvage, valued artifacts from the past — well, that’s just between her and the highest bidder.

But when the federal government begins withdrawing from Florida entirely, Triss must buy the Ghost outright or lose her loophole. The corporate mafias, meanwhile, are poised to seize power. Triss needs a score big enough to keep her free from both the feds and corporations, before the Ghost is sent to a watery, insurance-scamming grave.

It’s while in pursuit of such a score that she stumbles upon the chained up, drowned corpse of Edgar Ortiz, the legendary owner of the Astro America luxury hotel and head of the corporate mafia known as Mourning in Miami. The last thing she wants is to get even more involved with anything to do with his death, but Ortiz’s hotshot spaceracing son Riley makes her an offer she can’t refuse. Partnering up with Riley to solve the mystery of his father’s murder could lead them to a valuable piece of salvagia – and with it, the hope of a sustainable, free way of Florida living.

Read on for the milieu-setting excerpt!

~~~~~~~

The prize was a single shoe.

A Keds Champion Original canvas sneaker, discovered on its side thirty-five meters down, half-buried in the calcareous ooze outside the wreck that Kohl and I had come to dive. Size 8, circa early 2050s, treated with that special wear-resistant chemical that degrades slowly and so artfully in salt water, one side of the white canvas prismed into a psychedelic rainbow pattern, the other side pristine, preserved by silt, the laces calcified against the tongue like icing on a cake.

Half what it had been, half what it became. Life transitioning toward death, loss transforming into beauty. The prize was the most on-the-nose, dictionary definition of nostalgic salvage that I had ever seen. Salvagia exquisite enough to deliver me—maybe, finally—from my own transitional existence.

After a tense and endless decomp, Kohl and I surfaced and climbed back aboard the Floating Ghost, the pearl-white, luxury CabanaBoat that hitherto I could afford only to charter. Myra lounged on the deck, sipping rum on the rocks. We showed her the prize. She was thrilled to hear that it might be worth enough for me to buy the Ghost and stay in the state.

“Next year at the Inner Boca Boatel!” she exclaimed. I was a rare find for her. She hoarded peculiar Florida characters as fiercely as the salvagia market was hoarding sneakers then, and now she might just get to keep me.

My peculiarity just then was my trepidation in the face of salvation. Myra frowned at my thin, humorless smile, and watched me slip my Knuckles on. Kohl headed for the master stateroom belowdecks, probably to catch the first shower while the water was hot.

“Triss, you’re armed,” Myra said, when Kohl was gone. “Are we expecting trouble?” Her tone was conspiratorial, semi-hopeful, like she was asking if a secret celebrity was coming to dinner.

“Always,” I replied, not just because it was the kind of answer Myra liked. I was expecting trouble, though not pirates or any kind of problem my Knuckles could really solve.

SuperCane Isha had made landfall a couple weeks ago. SuperCanes were common enough, but this one had hit all the right places, deploying devastating daughter tornadoes, building up speed and power along the coast, before cutting inland just south of the Astro America and wreaking so much havoc that I’d heard the feds were abandoning the state entirely.

Isha had severely shuffled up the yoreshore, the aquatic area between where the shore used to be and where it was now. So we needed the Ghost, whose real-time hazard charting could sense a way through the new sandbars and churn up piles of ancient concrete.

But on the way down the Ghost kept shifting too close to shore, sniffing around sandbars for too long. Near Fort Myers she sped straight for a reef and got so close to it I had to run her emergency stop routine. The jolt threw Myra and Kohl from the couch in the lounge. I told them my finger had slipped. For some reason it was important to me that Kohl thought I knew what I was doing.

The truth was that I could neither sail the Floating Ghost nor speak to her, beyond telling her to stop and to go, along a pre-planned route set by Charlie, her owner. She was semi-sentient, but she spoke a dead language. The company that built her had folded many years ago, and kept its secrets.

I wanted to get back to Charlie with all haste, tell him I had the money so he wouldn’t search for other buyers. I went through the lounge and to the little cockpit and told the Ghost to go, running the routine several times, like “Go, go, go,” to communicate urgency. But she took her time pulling up her anchor, shook herself from side to side for some reason, and only then, leisurely, did she begin to putter back to the yoreshore.

I gripped my Knuckles. They’d belonged to my Gamma. I wore them when I needed to feel the illusion of control over my life, which I’d built out of tightening loopholes and fading fine print.

With luck, it would soon rely entirely on a boat I couldn’t understand and wouldn’t listen.

I wore them almost all the time.

#

The Ghost kept a good pace, up until we passed old flooded Key West, where only the cemetery remains above water.

Someone was throwing a party there. A small armada of yachts was anchored in the bight. A colony of pastel people flossed themselves among the bone-white teeth of the headstones.

“We should crash it,” said Kohl. He’d found me on the sundeck. He smelled like sweat and brine, sea industry. He hadn’t taken a shower after all.

“We don’t know who they are,” I replied. They looked too fancy to be pirates. I thought it was probably one of the corporate mafias, who controlled most things in South Florida outside of OrlanDome, which was run by the feds. They could be just as dangerous as pirates to outsiders.

“Don’t you want to see what it’s for?” said Kohl. “All the way out here?”

“They’re building something,” said Myra, pointing.

Anchored on the other side of the yoreshore, behind the cemetery, was some giant and mechanical thing, squatting in the water on huge metal legs, the shadow cast by the setting sun behind it long enough to almost touch the shore. “That’s a construction titan. I’ve never seen one on this side of the Gulf. I bet we’ll be seeing a lot more of them down here once the feds leave.”

“Do these titans make nice buildings?” Kohl asked.

Myra snorted. “No. Cheap housing, usually for people who’ve lost their homes but won’t go to the domes. They are glorified storm barriers, sandbags filled with people instead of sand. They go up fast and they go down first. But I’d love to see a titan up close.”

“Well, shoot,” said Kohl. “I think I’d like to see that, too. Get us closer, Trissy.”

I had been warming to him somewhat, perhaps as a byproduct of our profitable dive. I was even considering letting him take a turn holding the diving bag that held the prize, which he kept eyeing and which I kept clutched to my side. His unsanctioned nickname cooled me off again, and the hoarding instincts honed in childhood kept my charity in check.

“I heard a story someplace that the graves say funny things on them,” he added.

“Ooh!” squealed Myra. “Triss! Funny things! I brought my birding binoculars, maybe we can read them.”

“And toast our success,” added Kohl.

“It’s just like Inner Boca, don’t you think?”

“Inner Boca doesn’t exist,” I reminded her, but it dampened her mood not a bit.

I could feel the Ghost listing toward the bight. She wanted to check out the party, too. It would be easier to let her sniff her fill from a distance, so I went down and told her to stop. She threw her anchor but inched forward, tightening the slack. Myra went inside to get her binoculars and Kohl went with her to raid Charlie’s rum cabinet. I threw my legs over the railing and tried to relax. It was easier than I thought. The evening breeze draped peace and distant laughter over me like a warm, breathable blanket. Florida sunset, beautiful boat, stable weather, cold drinks and good friends; it was uncannily similar to Myra’s description of her fictional Inner Boca Boatel, which was just a fable, a manifestation of her theoretical Third Way of Florida living, which she hoped either to stumble upon or put into practice herself once she’d collected enough Florida characters.

And I had to admit, leaning on the deck of the Ghost, feeling the breeze, it all felt exactly the way I thought it would, in the rare moments when Myra convinced me that I really would find a way to buy the Ghost, and I forgot that I knew better, having witnessed some Third Ways myself.

At some point I set the bag with the prize down next to me. A Go-Fast boat went fast by us, too close, churning up a massive wake, stopping on a dime near the rest of the armada. The wake hit us portside and the prize pitched over the edge.

I lunged for it and missed.

I pressed the top button of the Knuckle in the palm of my left hand, extending the baton. It caught the end of the drawstring. The baton bent. The drawstring slipped.

I heard sprinting steps behind me. Kohl reached over the side and grabbed the bag.

“Close one,” he said. I looked up at him with a sheepish grin, and went to take the bag, to feel the comfort of its weight.

He didn’t let go.

~~~~~~~

From Salvagia by Tim Chawaga. Copyright © 2025 by the author and reprinted by permission.

Salvagia by Tim Chawaga was published today August 12 2025 by Diversion Books and is available from all good booksellers, including