Cameron Cooper's Blog, page 17

Two Weeks to the Last Book In the Iron Hammer Series (and excerpt!)

Two Weeks to the Last Book In the Iron Hammer Series (and excerpt!)

I’ll have a lot more to say about this book and the writing of it on release day.  For today, let me just say that I’m seriously glad the series has ended, from a marathon writing perspective.  And I just know I’m going to go into withdrawal, soon.  Danny and her friends have been around for a long while, now.

As we’re two weeks out from the release date, it’s time for the first chapter, as always.

READER ADVISORY:
If you’re new to the list, or if you’ve not been reading the series and haven’t yet read Federal Force, then don’t read this first chapter.  There are massive spoilers for the last book. 

Maybe bookmark the page on my site, or save the email for reading when you’ve completed Federal Force.

Warning done.  Now, let’s get on with the good stuff.

 

Excerpt

EXCERPT FROM REDLINE REBELS
COPYRIGHT © CAMERON COOPER 2021
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

—1—

It wasn’t like waking from normal sleep.

When I wake from sleep, I have a sense of time passing. Of dreams and stirring. This time, though, there was nothing. Blankness lay behind me and I couldn’t couple up going to bed with this moment of waking.

Something not-good had happened. That was my first, panic-tinged thought.

“Danny, it’s okay. You can open your eyes. It’s safe.”

I knew the voice. Low contralto. Pleasant. A hand picked up mine. Squeezed a little. A second hand rested over the top of mine, warm and alive.

I opened my eyes and instantly shut them again, hissing at the pain. I’d seen nothing with that quick blink but glaring light.

“Lower the lights to ten percent,” Elizabeth Crnčević murmured. Then, “Try again, Danny.”

I cautiously opened one eye by the slightest amount, until I saw light between my lashes. It didn’t hurt, this time. The light was a deep orange, almost brown. Cautiously, I opened both eyes.

Elizabeth stood beside the table, her eyes grave, but warm. Behind her was a room that looked like every therapy unit I’d ever seen—what I could see of it, at least. It was mostly in deep shadow.

I was on my back. I guessed I was on a therapy table because of the room and because Elizabeth wasn’t bending to reach me. It was her hands holding mine. A cover laid over me, hiding everything but my arms, sterile and clean.

Elizabeth wore spacer clothes, not her usual business gown. She gave me a small smile. “Welcome back.” She looked like she wasn’t getting enough sleep, but that was standard for her.

I tried to speak and felt an odd resistance to moving my mouth and jaw. “Back to where?” It came out slushy and ill-formed, which gave me another big clue. “I died?”

Lyth Andela stepped up next to Elizabeth. Black eyes, black hair, pale flesh. He’d lost all the grey in his hair that I remembered from the last time I’d seen him. He looked young again. His smile was as brief as Elizabeth’s had been. “What do you remember last?”

“Lyth…hi.” I was already tired, just from speaking a few words. “I’m on the Lyrhys?”

“You are,” Elizabeth said.

“Didn’t know it had a transfer facility.” I wanted to roll over and go right back to sleep.

“We built a unit,” Lyth said. “Just for you. Although Elizabeth wants to keep it, for others caught in Union space.”

Too much information. Too many big holes in my understanding to make sense of it. “I died?” I repeated. “I don’t remember…”

“What do you remember?” Elizabeth asked. “What is the last thing you recall?”

I reached back. The Glory. Battles. Too many to distinguish any of them right now. Terrans. War. Motherships. The Senate…facing the Senate. No, a Senate committee hearing. Judging me.

Going back to the Glory, dogged by a small man with too many muscles and a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Shit…” I whispered. “What’s his name…the Senate watchdog.”

Lyth let out a breath. “There you go.”

“I shot him,” I added. My jaw and throat and tongue were aching, now. They’d never been used before and weren’t used to working. “And Rayhel shot me!”

A throat cleared. Rayhel Melissa stepped closer to the bed, so I could see him. “No offence, Danny.”

I tried to sit up and was mildly astonished to find that I could move my hands, but I didn’t have the strength to sit up, yet. That would come, though. I’d seen too many other people through their first days after transferring to a new clone body and knew how it worked. I fell back, as the table moved to prop me up.

Rayhel wasn’t smiling. But, for a man who had technically murdered me, he didn’t look worried, either.

“You fucking killed me!” I railed at him.

“A fervent, long held-dream of mine,” Rayhel replied.

I gawped at him.

He rolled his eyes. “It was the only option that would let us explain Barath’s death and have the Senate accept it.”

“And they did accept it,” Lyth added. “Especially once Jai produced old Imperial Shield records revealing Barath’s true character and why he was drummed out of the Shield. It made his attempt to extort you into paying him for his silence look natural.” Lyth’s smile appeared and evaporated. “The Senate apologized.”

I raised my hand. It worked properly enough to rub the corner of my eye. “Bet they’ve got another watchdog lined up, though. Is that why I’m on the Lyrhys?”

“You’ve remembered everything now, then,” Elizabeth said, sounding pleased.

“Yeah.” I looked at the back of my hand. No raised veins, no scars, nothing but smooth, pale and young flesh. “What am I, sixteen?”

“We had to bring your clone online before it was fully matured,” Lyth said. “It’s around twenty standard human years in development.”

“Fabulous,” I said. I preferred to look like I knew what I was doing. No twenty-year-old I’d ever met had a proper grip on the way life worked, which didn’t inspire others to follow their orders. “Wait. You had to bring it out of development early? I’ve had a clone waiting in the wings for years.” I looked at Lyth. “Spill it. What’s going on?”

All three of them looked at each other. That didn’t inspire confidence, either.

Elizabeth said, “The best way to explain this is to start by telling you that Barath’s shooting happened fourteen months ago.”

A whole year, plus. I drew in a slow, deep breath, absorbing that. “Something happened to my waiting clone?” It would explain why they’d rushed a new one into service.

“No,” Lyth said. “It’s fine.” He hesitated. “In fact, we transferred you to that clone the day after the shooting.”

I could feel my thoughts slowing down. I picked out the implications, trying to put it together, but there wasn’t enough information there, yet. “Better spill the rest.” My voice was hoarse and not just because I hadn’t used it much.

Lyth spread his long fingers and smoothed out the sheet lying over the edge of the table, concentrating on it. “You’ve been commanding the Glory and the Marine Force for thirteen months.”

I stared at him. “You mean there are two of me? What the hell? What the fucking hell?” I tried to sit up again, and pummeled my thigh in frustration. It didn’t hurt much, because I had no strength. “That’s against every tenet and rule and fucking law the Laxman Institute codified, right in the very beginning, when you first opened up transfers to the public!”

Lyth nodded. His gaze flickered to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth was watching me carefully, which warned me to rein in my fury. Okay, so it was fear, most of it, but I got mouthy when I was scared. Too bad. “What have you done?” I demanded of Lyth. “And why?”

Rayhel crossed his arms. “It’s simple. The other you, the one on the Glory, can’t do a damn thing that isn’t monitored by the Senate, who don’t know, who can’t know what we’re doing here in the Terran Union. She has a new watchdog. One chosen with Marine approval and massive background checks, but a guard is a guard.” He shrugged.

“We’ve been working without you, for a year,” Lyth said. “But we’re not progressing, because you weren’t here. The agents in the field want you. They won’t report in if it’s not to you. It makes them uneasy that you’re stuck on the Glory and aren’t covering their backs.”

Elizabeth added, “Every Carinad and every Terran we’ve turned, all our agents in the Union, need to know we’re working just as hard as them. It will give them the courage to continue. It became imperative that we bring you in.”

“Which we couldn’t do, not without telling the Senate and all their sub-committees what we’re doing here,” Lyth added.

“All their sub-committees and whatever spies are reporting back to the Terrans,” I breathed. I was calming down. “I’m illegal. A copy.”

Lyth nodded. “But you’re an essential copy. When we do go back to Federation space, you’ll have to lie low, but we’re spending more and more time in the Union now, so that won’t happen very often.”

“When you’re stronger, we’ll give you your memories from the last year,” Elizabeth said. “You’ll need them, and it will let you catch up quickly.”

“Does she get mine, too?” I asked.

“We think it best that she does. It will help her plan the war effort, if she’s in on everything,” Lyth said.

“So we’re both going to suffer through migraines every time I arrive back in Federation space,” I muttered. “I hope she thinks it’s worth it. I presume this was her idea?”

Rayhel smiled one of his nasty smiles. “She left you a message. We set up a secure message board where the two of you can coordinate.”

“Great,” I muttered. “Not only do I have my conscience yapping at me, but now I’ll have her, too.” I sighed, and put a hand to my belly, which was flat, taut, and very empty. “What do I have to do to get a steak, around here?”

Danny and the Carinad worlds fight for survival.

The underdog Carinad forces face an enemy who knows nothing but war, whose culture is built upon the glory of battle.  As the Slavers fall upon the vulnerable Carinad worlds, Danny and her allies work to find a way out of the no-win scenario they face…

Redline Rebels is the eighth and final book in the Iron Hammer space opera science fiction series by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper. The Iron Hammer series is a spin off from the acclaimed Imperial Hammer series, and features many of the characters and situations from that series.

The Iron Hammer series:
1.0: Galactic Thunder
2.0: Stellar Storm
3.0: Planetary Parlay
4.0: Waxing War
5.0: Ruled Out
6.0: Stranger Stars
7.0: Federal Force
8.0: Redline Rebels

Space Opera Science Fiction Novel

Redline Rebels is available for pre-order everywhere.  And don’t forget that if you preorder direct from me (on the Stories Rule Press site), then you get your copy of the book a week earlier.  That is, next Thursday.

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Enjoy!

Elephants in Science Fiction — and a new release

Elephants in Science Fiction — and a new release

Today is World Elephant Day, and I wanted to acknowledge the majestic beasts, but try as I might, I can’t figure out a tie-in to the release of my book.

So, instead, I’ll put it baldly.  It’s World Elephant Day.  Many celebrities have spoken out about the urgency of elephant protection, including Leonardo DiCaprio, William Shatner, Prince William, Jorja Fox, Alec Baldwin, Ashley Judd, Jada Pinkett Smith, and politicians such as Barack Obama, and Hillary and Chelsea Clinton.

So there’s my tie-in to science fiction, at least — William Shatner has spoken out on behalf of elephants.  But as far as I know, the Star Trek franchise has not done a movie about them.  Just whales.

Anyway.

I’ve had some early feedback on Federal Force, all of it strongly positive.  We’re ramping up to the end of the series–for this is the second last of eight books.

Federal Force came out today, at all book retailers including Stories Rule Press.

Danny and the Carinad worlds prepare for war.

Faced with an unavoidable war with the Slavers, Danny and her allies wield their poor resources to prepare their people for the ravages the Slavers will deliver.

Danny knows that something must change, if the Carinads are to survive a war the Terrans appear to want to last forever.  It is up to her to figure out what that is, while keeping the Terrans at bay, and placating a Federal Senate which is growing more demanding by the month…

Federal Force is the seventh book in the Iron Hammer space opera science fiction series by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper. The Iron Hammer series is a spin off from the acclaimed Imperial Hammer series, and features many of the characters and situations from that series.

The Iron Hammer series:
1.0: Galactic Thunder
2.0: Stellar Storm
3.0: Planetary Parlay
4.0: Waxing War
5.0: Ruled Out
6.0: Stranger Stars
7.0: Federal Force
8.0: Redline Rebels

Space Opera Science Fiction Novel

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Enjoy!

SRP’s monthly 20% Discount sale starts today

Stories Rule Press’ monthly four-day 20% off discount sale started this morning.  It’s 20% off everything in the store, including boxed sets and stuff already on sale.

It also includes all my stories, including those available on pre-order.

The coupon you need to use at the checkout to apply the 20% discount is:

REUG4SSU

Copy and paste this into the coupon box on the checkout page.

To start browsing the books, click here.  Here, you can sort and filter the books by categories, best sellers, etc., and browse titles that interest you.

All the SRP books are delivered by BookFunnel, so if you know how to load BookFunnel books onto your reader, you can buy from SRP and you won’t have any technical issues…or if you do, BookFunnel are great at sorting things out.

Stock up on your reading for the weekend ahead.

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Have fun.

Cam.

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The Entire First Chapter of Federal Force

The Entire First Chapter of Federal Force

Now that the heat is easing here in Alberta, I’m back into top gear on the last book of the Iron Hammer series.

It’s been a very tough slog this summer, getting through the series so quickly.  COVID vaccinations and the easing of restrictions has added challenges to my calendar, too.

It’s possible that once this series is finished, I may take a short break.  An actual vacation.  Something I haven’t done in too many years.  I’ll let you know about that if/when it goes ahead.  There shouldn’t be too many gaps in releases, though.  I’m still to work that out.

But for sure, the Iron Hammer series will be finished first, and will be released as advertised.

In the meantime, the second last book in the series, Federal Force, is due to be released in two week’s time.

So today, you get the full first chapter.

Excerpt

EXCERPT FROM FEDERAL FORCE
COPYRIGHT © CAMERON COOPER 2021
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

—1—

General Andela’s Flagship, CMS Glory, Over Katriona Ring City.
Y33 – 2.5 Years after Formation of Carinad Federation.

I looked around the council table, in my stateroom aboard the CMS Glory. Eleven council members, all of them wearing the Carinad Marine officer’s uniform, except Eliot Byrne, all of them superbly trained, each a deep well of experience, wisdom and leadership. Yet these council meetings had become predictable. I could tell exactly what everyone would say, almost before they said it.

Their responses all came down to “more”.

More guns, more ships, more Marines. More training. More ammunition.

Bigger ships, more powerful weapons.

Better defenses. Better early warning systems.

If the Terran military might was summed together—all their motherships, their blocky shuttles and their one-man fighters—if that was all added up, and all their people thrown into the calculation, we would arrive at a figure that represented overall Terran military power.

What emerged from around the table was a dozen different editions of “we need a bigger bottom line than the Terrans to win this war.”

Yet I knew damned well that more muscle wouldn’t earn us anything but annihilation.

Colonel Marlee Colton was reporting on her training and administration portfolio. She was attending via avatar, as she was sited on Katriona Base, which was currently ten kilometers away, on the Glory’s starboard flank. “The intake of Marines has slowed. Only five thousand in the last two weeks. But the numbers of civilian militia units has increased, since Keeler was taken.”

“Everyone wants to know how to defend their own,” Marlow said. “Keeler brought it home to them that no one can be complacent.” Colonel Anderson Marlow was responsible for martial law and regulations, and was also my Analysis director on the bridge of the Glory. He’d been a head mechanic in another phase of his life and was usually half-a-step beyond the rest of us when it came to figuring out why people reacted as they did.

“They are more interested in defending their own,” Colton said in agreement with Marlow’s observation. “All the militia units are earnest but independent, and barely interested in the war effort beyond how it affects their home state. I’m glad I don’t have to organize them once they’ve completed their orientation. They’re resistant to direction.”

I glanced at Juliyana, who developed and directed all infantry and ground armored forces. “You’ll have a wave of militia units to coordinate, soon.”

“We can use ‘em,” Juliyana replied grimly.

“Is the clean up completed on Keeler?” I asked.

I could track the impact of my reminder around the table. The micro-slump of shoulders, gazes shifting to the tabletop. Tiny furrows between brows.

No one liked to be reminded about Keeler. It had once been a lovely star-city, home to just over five thousand people, nearly all of them famous or notorious, or public figures of some sort, for Keeler had catered to their twin desires of utter privacy and complete luxury.

Keeler had not been considered a border state. For the Terrans to reach it, they would have had to take two leaps to get there, for Keeler was deep in the heart of Federation territory, and beyond the range of their motherships’ Maass drives.

Yet the Terran motherships had arrived over Keeler with no long-range warnings, giving the city barely ten minutes to react. The Terrans had broached the city walls—they’d got good at that—and poured into the domes in their armored suits.

By the time our Marine forces reached the city in response to its frantic scream for help, the Terrans had departed once more. They took with them a good portion of the Keeler residents. The only people spared the Terran slave lariats were those who had hidden well enough to avoid their scanners, which was damn few.

“The domes have been repaired, atmosphere restored, and a full census taken,” Juliyana told everyone at the table, in response to my demand for a status on Keeler.

“And the finally tally of taken?” I asked.

Juliyana hesitated. She glanced at her pad. Unlike Marlee Colton, Juliyana was physically present, for she and her primary ground troop were quartered on the Glory. “Two thousand, eight hundred and eighty.”

I caught the winces from the corner of my eye.

Juliyana looked up. “It’s a better number than we’d expected, given how empty the city was when we started the clean up. Most people ran deep and hid. The police cadre urged them to find a dark hole and stay there.”

“That’s a message the police need to give out more often, Marlee,” I told Colton.

Marlee nodded. “I’ll talk to my police training director about passing it along.”

“Wait a minute,” Mace said, frowning. “The average Terran slave shuttle holds twenty-four people. And the average mothership can carry twelve shuttles…” I could see him trying to do the math in his head.

“That’s two hundred and eighty-eight slaves per full load,” Colton, the former computer and base mind, supplied.

“Ten ships…” Sauli breathed. He was here as an avatar, too, and his thin cheeks looked even thinner than usual as he tasted that fact. “Ten of them. They were there purely to pick up slaves.” Disgust warped his mouth.

Dalton bent to look at Juliyana, further along the table. “We weren’t lucky to have saved so many,” he said flatly. “The Terrans got a full load. They couldn’t stuff a single more Carinad onto their ships. That’s why so many were left in the city.”

Everyone’s expressions said what they would not speak aloud. I read the dismay in their eyes.

“How did the Terran motherships elude the early warning scanners?” I asked, shifting their attention away from the human factor. “Dalton, what did you learn?”

Dalton shook his head. “Nothing good. I don’t have any explanation at all. Keeler traffic control insists that they appeared out of nowhere. One minute, a clear backyard. Next, an armada of motherships bearing down on them. The ion path tracers didn’t so much as twitch. Not once.”

“We’ve spent months building and installing the damn things in every state on the Terran side of Triga,” Jai Van Veen said. “And now they’re not working?”

“They are working,” Marlow said. The ion scanners installation project was of interest to him because he was directing scanning and analysis on the bridge of the Glory. The responsibility really fell into Lyth Andela’s lap, though Lyth wasn’t part of the council. He coordinated with Eliot Byrne for different reasons. Marlow was in the best position to answer this one. “All the ion path scanners have been tested, especially the one on Keeler. They all pop green across the board. There is nothing wrong with them.”

“Then how the hell are the motherships getting around them?” I demanded. “Those Maass drives of theirs can’t not produce an ion path.”

“We don’t know,” Eliot Byrne said quietly. “We’re working on that.”

“Let’s move on,” Jai said, his tone firm. “The deconstruction of the Keeler raid is for sub-council sessions and this meeting has already run for far too long.”

And most of the meeting had been the discussion of variations on the theme of “Gimme more!” Everyone was scrabbling for resources. Everyone wanted a bigger bottom line.

“Let’s turn instead to the last item for discussion,” Jai continued. “Our raid upon Yrtu. Colonel Mullins and Colonel Andela?”

Sauli’s avatar straightened up a bit. So did Juliyana.

Sauli didn’t smile. “You all know by now it was a qualified success. We destroyed the base and we freed slaves from the training facility on Yrtu—and some of them were Carinads.”

“The others are being put through orientation and rehabilitation,” Fiori Bannister slid in. She was the medical director and Elizabeth Crnčević, a civilian psychologist with extraordinary experience treating bio-humans, digital humans and Terrans (who I tended to think of as an entirely separate third category), reported to Fiori. Elizabeth would be controlling the rehabilitation efforts, most likely on New Phoenicia, which had become a default refugee center. The full medical clinic there had experience helping Terrans adjust to life in the Federation.

“What was the end tally regarding the base?” Jai asked Juliyana. It was technically his meeting. I didn’t have to be here, but as this was my stateroom, I sat in and listened, anyway.

Juliyana looked down at her pad once more and read off a list of targets taken out. Ship building facilities, ships, shuttles, estimated Terran casualties. Prisoners—and damn few of those.

The list went on.

Yoan, who was my engineering master because Sauli, his father, better served me as a military leader than an engineer right now, scratched his head. “That doesn’t sound like near enough of anything. Three motherships? We’ve estimated there’s thousands of them, scattered among the Terran worlds. A base the size of Yrtu should have had dozens of them.”

“They had three. We accounted for every ship sitting on a landing pad,” Juliyana told him, with a snap in her voice.

“He’s not challenging your ground troops’ efficiency,” I said.

Juliyana nodded stiffly.

“No, I’m not,” Yoan affirmed quickly.

“Did the base look empty?” Dalton asked Juliyana.

She grimaced. “Hollow and echoing,” she admitted.

Dalton sat back. “They cleared out the base before we got there.” He met my gaze. “They knew we were coming.”

I sat up. “I’m getting damn sick of this raging torrent of information the Terrans are sucking up. They know everything we’re about to do! We can’t win a war if we’re being constantly put in check.” My voice rose. “Marlow, I put you in charge of interrogating everyone on the Glory. Tell me you have some clue, even one, about who is sending the Terrans our plans? And how they’re doing it.”

Marlow blinked. “The interviews are proceeding, General.”

“It’s been six damn months! Why aren’t you finished, yet?”

Marlow grew very still. So did Jai.

“With all due respect, General,” Marlow said, his tone devoid of emotion, “there are fifteen hundred permanent crew, and one thousand of Juliyana’s ground troops assigned to the Glory. The crew rotates frequently, and so do the ground troops. Those who have rotated off the ship must also be interviewed and if they’re posted dirtside, that requires travelling to their location. And that doesn’t include Marines who have died and are waiting to be transferred into a clone.”

“There’s a backlog?” Dalton asked, his tone sharp. He had recently been transferred, himself. The memory was fresh for him. He had only lost a few days between dying and awaking in his new body, though.

“We’re trying to triage the cloning,” Fiori said, her tone apologetic. “Arnold Laxman’s people can’t keep up with the current mortality rate. If he had more staff and more vats…” She trailed off, with a grimace.

More, more, more.

I glared at Marlow. “Skip the people who are waiting for bodies,” I told him. “Clearly, they weren’t in a position to pass along our Yrtu offensive. I need that leak found, Colonel.”

“Yes, General,” Marlow said, his tone stiff.

I got to my feet.

“And we’re done for now,” Jai said, also standing. “Thank you, everyone.”

The officers attending the meeting via avatars melted away, the nanobots sliding down to the well beneath the floor. Everyone else nodded politely at me as they picked up their pads and coffee cups and left.

I ignored the tension in a few jaws, the flicker of frustration in eyes.

“Thanks, Brigadier General,” I told Jai. “I think another council in a few days would be wise. We need to come up with a new offensive.”

“Let’s sleep on it, General,” Jai suggested, picking up his own multiple pads. His jaw was flexing, too. Marlow was his spouse, after all.

“Yes, thank you.” I turned and headed for the stairs up to the mezzanine level, which was where my personal space was housed. When I heard the outer stateroom door close, I lifted my voice. “Gloria, seal me in, please.”

“Yes, captain,” the ship’s AI replied. “Activating the cage now.”

I paused. Captain? Where had she got that from? Although it was technically correct. I was the top dog on this ship, which made me the captain.

Dalton climbed up the stairs behind me. “These Council meetings are growing tiresome.” He let himself drop onto the bed and stretched hard.

I stripped the dress uniform off and turned to my very small closet of civilian garments. “My bus leaves at nine,” I told him. “I’ve barely got time to get to Katriona.” I got dressed quickly.

“You know the shuttle pilots will put the jets on for you,” Dalton said complacently.

“I can’t give that order looking like this.”

Dalton sat up and examined the dress—which even I thought was pretty—and the long coat and boots I was donning. They felt strange, every time I wore them. I was too accustomated to trousers and the weight of a shriver on my hip.

“You look fetching,” Dalton told me.

I rolled my eyes at him, then loosened my hair and brushed it out. “It’s a disguise,” I reminded him.

“There’s few civilians using busses anymore,” Dalton pointed out. “You’d be better off wearing a private’s uniform if you want to go unnoticed.”

“Then I’d have to take some damned officer’s orders.”

His eyes danced. “I can think of a few orders I’d like to give you.”

If I’d had a few minutes to spare, I might have tried to find out what those orders were. Instead I kissed his chin, then his lips, murmured a promise, and hurried for the Glory’s landing bay and the shuttle to Katriona Ring City.

I had another meeting to get to, this one critical.

Danny and the Carinad worlds prepare for war.

Faced with an unavoidable war with the Slavers, Danny and her allies wield their poor resources to prepare their people for the ravages the Slavers will deliver.

Danny knows that something must change, if the Carinads are to survive a war the Terrans appear to want to last forever.  It is up to her to figure out what that is, while keeping the Terrans at bay, and placating a Federal Senate which is growing more demanding by the month…

Federal Force is the seventh book in the Iron Hammer space opera science fiction series by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper. The Iron Hammer series is a spin off from the acclaimed Imperial Hammer series, and features many of the characters and situations from that series.

The Iron Hammer series:
1.0: Galactic Thunder
2.0: Stellar Storm
3.0: Planetary Parlay
4.0: Waxing War
5.0: Ruled Out
6.0: Stranger Stars
7.0: Federal Force
8.0: Redline Rebels

Space Opera Science Fiction Novel

Federal Force releases on August 12th.  If you pre-order the book directly from me (via Stories Rule Press), then you will get your copy a week early — next week!

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Enjoy!

Guess Who’s Got A Social Life Once More?

Guess Who’s Got A Social Life Once More?

I’ve suddenly acquired a social life after nearly two years without one, and it is seriously impacting my writing. 

I’ve lost the knack of writing in little chinks of time–30 minutes here, an hour there–which is how I used to write a lot, even while working a day job.

I don’t have the day job anymore, and haven’t for over five years.  I thought I’d turned into a  recluse, writing all day, but until the lockdown, I hadn’t realized how much I actually left the house, had visitors, and ran around the city doing things.

Now the lockdown conditions have been very nearly all lifted from my city, our household is abruptly busy once more.  Visitors, family, Canada Day celebrations.  Heat waves didn’t help, either.

And today, arborists are coming over to our house to rip out three massively overgrown trees which have completely taken over our front yard.  There’ll be noise, woodchips, sawdust, and the excitement of seeing the street and neighborhood from our front windows once more.

So much is happening, I’m having to relearn how to write in chunks and mini chunks all over again.

And today, too, Stranger Stars was released on all the retail sites.

A new hope for the Carinad worlds emerges…

Danny Andela and her Carinad allies make a desperate bid to recruit a new ally to their cause, one who could change their fortunes in the war with the Slavers.

Stranger Stars is the sixth book in the Iron Hammer space opera science fiction series by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper. The Iron Hammer series is a spin off from the acclaimed Imperial Hammer series, and features many of the characters and situations from that series.

The Iron Hammer series:
1.0: Galactic Thunder
2.0: Stellar Storm
3.0: Planetary Parlay
4.0: Waxing War
5.0: Ruled Out
6.0: Stranger Stars
7.0: Federal Force
8.0: Redline Rebels

Space Opera Science Fiction Novel

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I hope you’re all staying cool, safe and well.

First chapter of STRANGER STARS!

First chapter of STRANGER STARS!

We’re only two weeks away from the release of Stranger Stars, book 6 of the Iron Hammer series, which means preview time.

The complete first chapter is below.

 

Excerpt

EXCERPT FROM STRANGER STARS
COPYRIGHT © CAMERON COOPER 2021
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

—1—

Temar Mountain Offensive. General Andela’s Flagship, CMS Glory, One Light Year out from Beauramis III, Terran Union.
Y32 – Two Years after Formation of Carinad Federation.

I watched Brigadier General Jai Van Veen cross his arms and tilt his head as he stared at the tank display in the center of the bridge. The tank holo was a perfect sphere with a diameter of three meters. Inside the ball of blue light was arrayed a representation of the command fleet that hovered all around the Glory.

I waited for Jai’s opinion on the array of the fleet. We were in a rare moment of pause, when I could afford to take a breath and not do three other things at the same time.

Jai reached out and swiped sideways with his hand near the edge of the ball. It obligingly turned, showing the far side of the arrayed fleet.

“You know you could just spin on one heel and look out the windows, right?” I said. It was an old argument.

“I like the simplicity of a facsimile,” Jai replied absently. His typical response.

Instead, I looked out the windows. I never got tired of looking through them. The windows on the Glory’s bridge were floor to ceiling, which was four meters overhead, and wrapped from the starboard, around the near-semi-circular nose of the ship, to the port side. They were vastly different from the old Lythion’s narrow apertures.

Only, today, there wasn’t a lot to see through them. The blue sun to our starboard was a tiny disk on the black starfield. The fleet was spread out across a thousand kilometers. The farthest ship, Dalton’s Dominant, the fortified destroyer which had delivered Juliyana’s ground troops onto Beauramis, was too far away to even twinkle in the sun’s light.

“Looks good,” Jai Van Veen declared.

“We should have brought more,” I replied.

“There were no more to be spared.”

“Which reminds me.” I turned and looked toward the command chair, up on the higher deck at the back of the bridge. Slate stood at the station beside the chair. “Slate, we need an updated production schedule from the shipyards.”

“Which shipyards, General?” Slate asked, his hand already moving over the dash.

“All of them, of course.” Jai rolled his eyes.

Slate had the sense to not slump even though I’d just handed him several hours worth of work. At last count, thirty-seven Federation polities had retooled part or all of their facilities to build military vessels, or components of military vessels, to match the blueprints and standards available to anyone who cared to help with the war effort. There were never enough ships, even though the Marine Force bought every completed and certified ship.

There were never enough guns or railguns, cannons, small arms, armor, suits, ammunition, bolt boxes, hand-scanners and…well, it was a long list of what we were constantly short of, despite most of the Carinad worlds supplying us.

In times of war, resources got used up, destroyed, or became inoperable through constant use and lack of maintenance. That included ships and people, alas. We had just passed the second anniversary of the start of the war with the Terran Union…we were right on schedule for supply issues to become a real problem.

I turned toward the weapons wing. “Commander Chowdhury, what is the status on that grenade launcher you were developing?”

Calpurnia grimaced. “About where it was last time, General. Maybe after this offensive…”

I nodded, easily reading what she had not said. We’d all been too busy fighting the Terrans to spend time on development and research. Calpurnia was the director and coordinator of the weapons pit on the bridge, and I couldn’t spare her for the development work she was also responsible for. But that was also a fact of war. “Pick one of your officers with the skills to take over the work and assign the project to them,” I told Calpurnia.

“Yes, sir,” she said, without a hint of resentment. We’d all had to delegate the more interesting aspect of our portfolios, these days, and had become accustomed to giving up pet projects.

As Calpurnia replied, something exploded over by the analysis wing on the port side of the bridge. Steam vented in a loud snarling hiss, and someone cried out.

We all turned to check.

Yoan—Major Saillins—stood with his arms crossed just beyond the edge of the steam venting from the wall. “I told you to keep the wrench on it until it was sealed.” He was speaking to the three noncoms sweating and working at the guts of the wall, which was stuffed with a spaghetti snarl of leads, wires, tubes and more. One of them was on his rear, shaking his hand.

Yoan looked at me. “Sorry, General. We’ll be done in five minutes.”

That was what he had said ten minutes ago. “Major Rosalie needs her scanners sooner rather than later,” I pointed out. Gratia Rosalie, who looked far better in the dark blue Marine uniform than I had suspected she might, with her very long figure, was sitting with her hips propped upon the engineering dashboards at the back of the bridge, a patient expression on her face while Yoan’s crew worked on her dashboard and the bank of scanner displays she monitored at all times—when they were working.

The dashboard she leaned upon was Lyssa’s. Lyssa stood behind it, looking amused. She was the captain in charge of engines and ship’s performance, and three of her team stood at the tall screens behind her. As we were hung in space, far beyond any gravity wells, Lyssa and her team had little to do right now but watch Yoan direct the other bridge engineering team.

“Major Rosalie will have her scanners in five,” Yoan told me. His voice was not quite harsh. “General,” he added.

It wasn’t just supplies and resources we were running short of, these days. It was Yoan’s responsibility to keep the Glory running and able to defend itself, while also directing engineering operations across the Marine Force and on all current theaters of war. He was feeling the stress, the same as everyone.

I glared back at him.

“Sorry, sir,” Yoan said.

I nodded. “Have Lyssa call for more people, if you need it. They won’t be in the way for a while.”

Access to the bridge was tightly controlled by the Personnel AI. I’d arranged it that way not just for security reasons, but also because people standing in the wrong place cluttered up the bridge. In the middle of a battle, tripping over unexpected feet or cannoning into someone could delay an order or action by a crucial few seconds.

Anyone who wasn’t certified bridge personnel couldn’t enter. They weren’t just forbidden from entering but were physically repelled by forcefields at the entrance to the bridge. The forcefields were controlled by the AI, who could only be overridden by me, Jai or another full Brigadier General. The only other Brigadier General on the Glory right now was Fiori and she always stayed on the medical level. Hell, she lived in the medical level.

Lieutenant Ragno, standing at the Defensive Weapons station, called out. “I have ion paths tracing into local space, General!” Her voice was projected next to my ear by the active acoustics systems, so I didn’t have to strain to hear her.

“How many?” I replied.

She stared at her dashboard, her face stiff and emotionless, then looked up at me. “Too many to count.”

“Jai,” I snapped.

Jai turned the ball once more, so that it was oriented to show the Glory and the fleet surrounding us from our current perspective. “Throw the traces up here, Lieutenant,” he told Ragno.

“Marlow, status on the ground troops,” I called, and headed back to the chair and the dashboards. Slate reached over the chair as I approached it, and tapped on my dashboard, switching it from navigational reporting to tactical.

Anderson Marlow—Colonel Marlow—was listening on a dedicated, armored communications stream, which was tightly focused between him and Juliyana, who was leading the ground assault on Temar Mountain.

Marlow’s analysis team, working with Eliot Byrne’s intelligence unit, had determined that Temar Mountain was the location of a massive Terran military base and supply depot, while a shipyard hung in space directly over the mountain.

The shipyard was my target, which was why I had brought with me the bulk of the command fleet. But I wouldn’t attack the shipyards until Juliyana’s troops had reached their target and begun their offensive. As Juliyana’s people had to slog twenty kilometers in armored suits, from the drop zone to the mountain, we lingered here, a few wormhole-seconds away from Beaumaris and well out of range of the longest and most sensitive Terran scanners known to us.

The Terrans couldn’t possibly know we were here. The operation had been planned and executed with the tightest security because the Terrans had got so good at anticipating us.

I looked at Marlow as I settled in the chair.

He shook his head. “All green,” he said shortly.

Juliyana was reporting no problems—and green meant she wasn’t yet engaged. Blue was for when they had attacked and were committed to the offensive. I could halt her where she was right now, if I felt it was necessary.

But I hadn’t spent two months working on this just to pull her out because I was suddenly feeling antsy.

I drummed the flat arm of my chair, with its multiple coffee mug rings. “Warn her we have ion paths coming at us, but tell her to move on at best speed,” I told Marlow.

He nodded and spoke quietly, relaying my directions.

“Warn the fleet,” I added, to Slate. Slate was my communications specialist as well as my personal aide. It was a role that he was naturally suited for. He had once been a translator android for the Terrans. Now he had a human body, and was dedicated, body and spirit, to the Carinad Federation.

“Already done,” Slate told me.

“General!” Jai pointed at the blue ball in the center of the bridge.

I rose to my feet again, staring at the tank. The display had scaled up, reducing the fleet to a smallish blue dot inside the sphere. My heart skipped a beat and my stomach clenched as I watched dozens of yellow dotted lines trace the ion paths of the Terran ships coming at us. There was a possibility they would move straight through this section of space and not even notice us, but I wasn’t betting my fleet on that.

At least we could detect the ion spore the Terran motherships created. Not so long ago, we couldn’t.

The war against the Terran Union had divided itself into two phases, so far. The first phase had me and the Marine Force on the back foot. We responded to Terran attacks, defended vulnerable cities and scrambled every time someone raised the alarm. There was nothing else we could do but play the defensive game. No one knew where the Terrans would strike next, except that it would be somewhere on the edge of Carinad space facing the Terran territories.

But the Terrans were building bigger and better ships all the time, increasing the range of their Gibson-Maass Spacial Compression Drive. Soon, more than just the border worlds were exposed to Terran raids.

The constant scramble-and-defend mode changed when Lyth Andela’s science teams, working with Calpurnia’s weapons people, had developed a way to trace the ion path that preceded and trailed a Terran ship traversing compressed space.

Compressing space was the Terran version of our crescent ships, which folded space and used wormholes to reach the other side of that fold. Terrans compressed space in front of their ships, with their Maass Drives, and let it expand back to normal behind the ship. It let the ship move at super-FTL speeds.

We couldn’t see the ships when they were using their drives, but we could see where they had come from and where they were heading, and we could see that path from far away, if the scanner was big enough.

Lyth had built a satellite-sized scanner in the ruins of Blinni city station. Blinni had been one of our first casualties. Its former mayor, Arati Georgeson, died in the final defense of the city and when he woke in his new, cloned body, several weeks later, he did two things. The first was to give the remains of the city to Lyth to build his scanner, and encourage the survivors of Blinni to provide the labor Lyth needed to build the scanner. The second thing Georgeson had done was sign up as a Marine. He was on Dalton’s ship, now, and was a captain, tapped for swift promotion.

The scanners we had on the Marine ships were far smaller than Blinni’s—they had to be, if they were to fit on the ship at all and leave room for humans. That meant we couldn’t see a Terran ship approaching inside compressed space until they were very nearly upon us.

The scanner Lyth built on Blinni, though, could reach Terran space and detect ion paths heading our way, then extrapolate a destination. That changed the war. Now we could anticipate where and when the Terrans would attack and be there in time to not just defend, but to pounce upon them the moment they emerged.

We could attack them, for once.

The ion path scanners had been developed only eight months ago. This offensive upon Temar Mountain was our first major operation bringing the war to the Terrans.

We couldn’t afford to fail, this time. The Temar Mountain base was huge, one of the Terran’s biggest military command centers. Shutting it down would seriously crimp the Terran war effort. It would also be a morale booster for the Federation. The Carinad people were as bruised as my Marines and could use the lift.

“Gone to Blue!” Colonel Marlow called.

Shit. Juliyana was committed. The attack on the base beneath Temar Mountain was launched. That changed things.

I moved closer to the ball, where the yellow dots were streaking toward us. “Dalton!” I called.

“General?” Dalton’s voice issued from a dozen different speakers around the bridge, which had the effect of centralizing his voice, as if it was coming from the tank.

“Peel off and drop carriers over Beauramis, ready to land and pick up the troops. Go fast.”

“Going,” Dalton replied.

I looked at Jai. “Battle plan, Brigadier?”

Jai nodded, staring at the ball and the yellow lines. “Command Fleet captains, listen up. We engage with sequence three-seven-five, then roll into four-two-two. I’ll call after that. Acknowledge.”

Low-volume affirmations sounded, on top of each other, creating an elongated note of agreement.

Jai glanced at Slate.

“All acknowledged, sir,” Slate told him, staring at his dashboard.

I lifted my chin. “Gloria, sequence three-seven-five, go!”

“Yes, General,” the ship’s primary AI acknowledged.

Beneath my feet, the floor vibrated as the massive reaction engines fired up. Stars shifted their positions to the right as the Glory turned to meet the Terrans.

“Battle stations!” Jai yelled.

Everyone who wasn’t already at their station scurried back to it. Yoan’s engineering crew scrambled to pick up their equipment and tools and put the fascia board back on the wall, while Major Rosalie shoved them aside with her hip, trying to reach her scanner tables.

I moved back to the command chair, my heart thudding heavily, distracting me. How could the Terrans be here?

How did they know we were here?

The tank chimed. The dotted yellow lines turned to solid red lines, each with a little dot at the front end. A mothership.

“How many motherships?” I asked. Someone had to have counted the lines by now.

“Thirty-six, sir!” came the call. Ragno, I think.

We were picking up speed, preparing to attack. The team in the pit were working swiftly, preparing weapons, shields, and defense measures. Calpurnia stood behind them, her feet spread, providing soft directions, asking for statuses. The Glory was never part of the frontline offensive, but we’d had to fight our way out of trouble many times. Bringing the ship to attack status was simple common sense.

I left Calpurnia alone. She knew how to do her job.

Most of the ships in the fleet were heading to a location that, once the fleet was assembled, would form a loose spherical cap around the emerged motherships, keeping them contained. Another, smaller wall, composed of the balance of the ships, would herd the Terran motherships into the net.

But no plan survives contact with the enemy, which was why Jai had only called out two sequences.

The starfield beyond the windows shifted as our speed increased. But apart from stars sliding across the windows, there was still nothing else to see. The motherships were too far away to pick out with the naked eye. I abandoned the windows and turned to the tank. The red heads at the tip of the lines were slowing. They’d seen us.

“Watch for aperture glow!” Jai shouted.

We couldn’t see the ships from here, but we could see and detect on the scanners the super-heated maws of their fireball launchers as they fired.

Sergeant Cooney, in the weapons pit, would by now have the ship’s shields up and at full draw. I glanced to the left, where Captain Seong Ogawa stood with Major Rosalie. Seong stared at the table display next to Rosalie’s heads-up charts, his eyes narrowed. His primary role was to interpret the data the scanners provided and give me coherent information I could use to make decisions, but at times like this, he could supplement the weapons pit’s warning systems.

“Fireballs!” he called.

I glanced at the window. Pinpricks of light, far away, announcing the launch of the fire-encased balls which could pass right through every level and bulkhead of a ship, exposing its interior to vacuum from two sides. The balls looked quaint, but were deadly.

I pulled my gaze back to the tank. After a first volley, the Terrans always split and separated the targets they presented, while attacking us from as many angles as possible. That was why we used a net to try to scoop them back into a condensed area where we could deal with them.

And they were separating and running, today. Jai studied the red dots as they parted. “Sequence four-two-two, now!” he called.

The Glory’s rail guns and cannon launchers all spoke at the same time, making the ship shudder. The rail guns traced green lines across black space, crossing and mingling with over a hundred others, seeking out their targets.

A mothership lit up with a quickly-extinguished explosion.

So did one of ours.

The sides of the Marine net surged forward. We were attempting to pull the net in around the Terran ships.

The next few minutes were busy and noisy. Busy, because we all had our assigned tasks, depending upon what the current sequence was. We listened to Jai call the numbers and responded accordingly.

It was noisy because we talked over the top of each other. Everyone on the bridge but me gave status updates or drew attention to anomalies. If a status changed for the worse, I gave directions. I told individual crew what to do with new data.

None of us shouted. The acoustics system made that unnecessary. Jai was the only exception. He raised the volume of his calls to draw our attention to the swift river of new battle sequences to set up and execute. Not just the Glory heard Jai. Every officer captaining every ship in the fleet—which included colonels and commanders—was connected to the Glory and could hear Jai’s calls. Slate made sure of that.

We took fire more than once, but the shields repelled nearly everything. We were jolted and rocked, and my dashboard reported breeches on several decks, but molecular barriers were holding, and fire crews were in attendance.

I made myself focus, so I didn’t hear the rattle of voices around me. “Marlow, ground troop status?” I looked directly at him where he stood by the analysis wing, with Rosalie and Seong beside him.

He met my gaze. “Red, General.”

They were taking fire. The status didn’t tell me how much fire they were taking, though.

My belly tightened. The troops had expected to be fired upon. You can’t sneak fifty armed men into a base. But the Terrans engaging us here in nowhere-space told me Juliyana had walked into a similarly-rigged situation. It wasn’t a few sentries and the odd uniformed personnel they were facing.

I nodded in response to Marlow’s update. “Tell them to pull out. All troops, disengage and retreat at double-time. Dalton, are you hearing this?”

“Got it,” Dalton replied. “All carriers directed to land as close as possible. Extraction underway.”

A thought occurred to me. “Are you taking fire yourself?”

“Yes.” His voice was calm. “Fighters are out.”

Two dozen one-man fighters and a lone destroyer. Granted, the Dominant was heavily armed. My throat tightened, anyway. “Jai, I want three destroyers to jump to the Dominant, reinforce its position and guard the personnel carriers while the ground troops are extracted.”

Jai nodded, even though he had his back to me as he studied the tank in front of him.

“We stay engaged until Dalton is out of there,” I added to Jai. Then I made myself forget about that part of the operation.

“General!” Slate cried. Loudly.

I spun on the wide seat of the chair to look at him.

He shook his head. “I don’t know how, but the Terrans have spliced into our data stream. They’re…calling us.”

The bridge fell silent.

I got to my feet and faced Slate properly. “Calling the Glory?”

Slate swallowed. “You, General. They are requesting to speak to you.”

I held still for two heartbeats, sorting out implications, threats, the risk factor. But there were too many factors thrown up by this development that would require thought and research. That was for later.

I glanced over my shoulder. “Jai, keep the pressure on them.”

“Yep.” His voice was soft.

“Slate, allow the connection.” I pointed at the metal decking in front of the command chair. It was the only clear space on the bridge that wasn’t a traffic path and I would be damned if I let the functioning of the bridge be compromised. “Dark surroundings,” I added.

Like many other technologies, person-to-person connections had developed enormously since the war had begun. War had a way of accelerating not just promotions, but improvements to just about anything that impacted on the war effort. Communications was part of that.

The dark surrounds was for whoever was about to appear on that patch of metal. I didn’t want them to see anything of the bridge but me. But we would all be able to see them just fine.

My heart pounded in unpleasant anticipation as the nanobot pool beneath the deck siphoned up through the vent and formed itself into a human-shaped lump, which swiftly took on details.

I knew the face, when it formed, but barely recognized it. Kore Odile had greatly changed in the last two years. The man was two meters tall and he had lost any trace of youth that had once showed in his clear jaw and eyes and smooth flesh. Now he looked far older than he really was. His temples showed grey.

If I had passed him as a stranger in a street, I would have barely noticed him, except for one thing. He looked…ordinary. Brown hair, tanned face. He was not overweight or underweight. He did not have an excess of muscles. He was not wearing a Terran uniform, either. He was the Secretary of the Terran Assembly, not a general, but the real flow of power in the Terran Union meant that the distinction made no difference. He controlled the Muradar navy, and he was a slippery, ruthless leader.

The one exception to his unremarkable appearance was a red scar which ran across his right cheek and over the eye socket. It looked as though he had been lucky to not lose the eye—or perhaps he had and this was a fake I was looking at. Terran organ replacement was far behind what we could do. The scar was dramatic, and to me looked to be the single facet of his appearance that hinted at his personality.

Odile spread his feet and crossed his arms. He did not look directly at me, but at a screen that must have been right in front of him and at head-height. The Terrans knew of our use of nanobots, but they had not adopted the technology themselves. We were still figuring out why that was so, for it would tell us a lot about them.

His jaw rippled as he looked at his screen. It meant his gaze was a touch off kilter, but I didn’t interpret that as reticence, the way I might have when avatars were first introduced across the Federation.

“What do you want, Kore Odile?” I demanded. “I’m a bit busy.”

“I know. I’m watching it through my window as we speak,” Odile replied. He spoke Carinad Common as if he was born to it.

Cold fingers walked up my spine. He was here, right in the thick of the battle.

I sat on my chair and casually rested my hand on the flat arm, then tapped out a message to Jai. Find Odile’s ship! I let my fingers keep tapping as if I was impatient. “If you’re trying to delay me or distract me, you’re wasting your time.”

“I wanted to look at you,” Odile replied. “In all the time we have been opposing each other, I’ve never seen you for myself. Photographs never convey all the information, I find.”

“Still waiting,” I said shortly. “Ten seconds.” I raised my other hand and let it hover over the controls that were clearly visible on the arm of the chair. None of them would disconnect the call, but Slate was near-prescient when it came to anticipating my intentions.

Odile’s jaw rippled once more. His scowl, distorted by the rigid scar tissue running up the side of his face, was ferocious. “I wanted to tell you in person that your attempt to destroy my base on Beauramis has failed. Did you think we would let you just walk in the door and take out your weapons? You have made a mistake, General Andela. You have underestimated us, and it will be your undoing.”

“Noted. Is that it?” I lifted my hand over the arm once more.

I watched the muscles in his face jump and squeeze. He didn’t like my attitude. Oh dear, what a shame. His voice was a snarl as he spoke. “You killed my sister.”

He was talking about his cousin, not his sister, but perhaps they counted family relationships differently in their Union. As he went on about my lack of understanding of the forms of warfare, that I had not given Modesta an opportunity to surrender before blowing her ship and the mothership it sat in into very small pieces, a screen formed in the air behind Kore Odile.

A block of text appeared, aligned to one edge so I wouldn’t miss a word.

DISCONNECT!

THEY’RE USING

THE LINK

TO HACK OUR

NETWORKS.

“Slate!” I cried.

Odile froze in mid-word, his mouth open. The color ran out of him, then the silvered nanobots splashed onto the floor in a large puddle that quickly drained back into the well beneath the floor.

“Jai! Give them everything you’ve got!” I added, my voice even louder. “They’ll come at us hard, now!”

Jai rapped out sequence numbers. The Glory lurched as Gloria jumped to follow the tailored directions built into the sequences.

A new hope for the Carinad worlds emerges…

Danny Andela and her Carinad allies make a desperate bid to recruit a new ally to their cause, one who could change their fortunes in the war with the Slavers.

Stranger Stars is the sixth book in the Iron Hammer space opera science fiction series by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper. The Iron Hammer series is a spin off from the acclaimed Imperial Hammer series, and features many of the characters and situations from that series.

The Iron Hammer series:
1.0: Galactic Thunder
2.0: Stellar Storm
3.0: Planetary Parlay
4.0: Waxing War
5.0: Ruled Out
6.0: Stranger Stars
7.0: Federal Force
8.0: Redline Rebels

Space Opera Science Fiction Novel

Don’t forget that if you pre-order the book directly from me (here), you will get your copy a week earlier than everyone else.  That’s next week.

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SRP’s monthly 20% Discount sale starts today

Stories Rule Press’ monthly four-day 20% off discount sale started this morning.  It’s 20% off everything in the store, including boxed sets and stuff already on sale.

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Hammering out a series

Hammering out a series

Here in my household, we’re all in that stressful period between the first COVID vaccine shot and the second that locks in the near-immunity of the vaccines.  A friend of mine’s son died from COVID-19 ten days after receiving their first shot, so we are super-wary of stepping out and mingling, at the moment.

That means I’m getting a lot of writing done and most of it is the Iron Hammer series. I wanted to really double-down and get this series out quickly.  A few readers weren’t thrilled about how long they had to wait for the last books in the Indigo Report series, so I’ve tried to make sure there isn’t a long lag between the first and last books in a series.

But this series, written at the rate of a book a month, has been a challenge.  I’ve never written a series back-to-back like this.  I’ve always had other books slide in between each book of a single series.

On the other hand, writing back-to-back means I don’t need time to re-acquaint myself with all the minutiae of the series each time I start a new book.  I’m deeply immersed in the story world and I think that makes a difference.

Anyway, Ruled Out was released this morning and is now available everywhere.  If you pre-ordered, you should have your copy by now.

 

Danny and her people face a galaxy-spanning dilemma.

Danny Andela, known as the Iron Hammer, and her allies are forced by the warlike Slavers to find a way to lead the Carina worlds to war.  Both war and universal leadership are abhorred by the scarred and abused Carina people, yet Danny needs a central authority upon which to build the military force they need to defeat the enemy.

Danny realizes that she must find a way to protect the Carinad worlds on her own, but the work is not easy, for everyone thinks she is crazy and power-mad, including those people she considered friends and family…

 Ruled Out is the fifth book in the Iron Hammer space opera science fiction series by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper. The Iron Hammer series is a spin off from the acclaimed Imperial Hammer series, and features many of the characters and situations from that series.

The Iron Hammer series:
1.0: Galactic Thunder
2.0: Stellar Storm
3.0: Planetary Parlay
4.0: Waxing War
5.0: Ruled Out
6.0: Stranger Stars
7.0: Federal Force
8.0: Redline Rebels

Space Opera Science Fiction Novel

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Do You Like Hardcover Books? Want Some Of Mine?

Do You Like Hardcover Books? Want Some Of Mine?

I have an opportunity to make case hardcover editions of my books available.  Which sounds fantastic…if you like hardcovers!

There’s an image of a case hardcover book, above.  They’re the hardcovers that have the cover image printed right onto them, instead of onto a loose cover wrap (and I *hate* those!).

Of course, the hardcovers are slightly more expensive than the trade paperbacks I currently publish.

(And if you didn’t know I publish print editions, you can find links to each print edition at the bottom of the buy buttons on every book’s page on my site–or on Amazon.)

There’s also a cost for me to set the hardcovers up, so I thought I would ask you:

Would you be interested in acquiring hardcover copies of my books?

Which books or series would you buy first?

Hit reply and let me know your preferences.  I’ll collate your responses and figure out which books and series I should put into hardcover first.  Or none at all!

First chapter of Ruled Out!

First chapter of Ruled Out!

We’re two weeks away from the release of Ruled Out, so as usual, I’m providing the first chapter of the book, whole and complete.

Excerpt

EXCERPT FROM RULED OUT
COPYRIGHT © CAMERON COOPER 2021
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

—1—

Pre-Inauguration Planning Sessions, Spo Park Convention Center, Spo Park District, Triga. Y28 (174 T.D.)

The theatrette Jai and Marlow had rented with some of the last of their cash reserves featured sound-absorbing walls with green and brown coloring meant to be relaxing, but which I found uninspiring. It had an expensive sound system, mid-level lighting in a filtered green spectrum for its attention preserving properties, and plush ergonomic chairs designed for long-distance sitting, enough for four hundred people. The panel of officials seated behind the table on the low stage used mobile versions of the endurance-seating and pickups which made speaking above a normal volume unnecessary.

The theatrette even came with an observation balcony, with a row of more plebian chairs designed to discourage lingering. You were, presumably, supposed to observe for a short while then either join the proceedings, or leave.

The theatrette was full of features which weren’t ideal for this particular event, but then, what building short of a purpose-built center of government would be?

It was also discouraging that more people perched upon the uncomfortable chairs in the observation gallery than participated in the proceedings below. I had not counted the heads I could see in the gallery because I didn’t want to confirm the numbers. There were too many empty red chairs down there.

The “heads of state” sitting in the audience were scattered in the front two-thirds of the rows and one of them on the far right raised his hand to be recognized.

Kristiana, one of the four people behind the table on the stage, turned her head toward the raised arm. “Premier O’Hanegan?”

Madhava O’Hanegan lowered his arm. He was the leader of The City on Uqup Pedrottle. His spare rangy appearance reminded me sharply of Eliot Byrne, who was also a Pedrottle. He spoke with the same accent as Byrne. “Perhaps you can clear something up for me. One of you said earlier—Colonel Van Veen, I think—about this being a temporary measure.”

Jai Van Veen leaned forward. “Absolutely. Most of us don’t want a central authority. We’ve all survived for nearly half a century without one. We’ve all got along on our own and now we’re doing things our own way. An assembly of representatives of polities across the Carinad worlds would be purely temporary, an expediency to help us combat the Terran war we face. We can’t call a meeting like this and drag you all from your homes every time we need to agree upon a military strategy.”

“Ah, yes, the Terrans,” O’Hanegan said. He got to his feet. “The video you played yesterday, that Terran thing, about ash…”

“Athanasia, the Terrans are calling it, Premier,” Kristiana supplied. “It’s a very old word, but it refers to all our longevity treatments, and the new cloning process developed by the Laxman Institute, collectively.”

“Right,” O’Hanegan said heavily. “You say the Terrans’ raids upon Carinad worlds have been to grab that information, and now they have it. There hasn’t been a Terran raid in months. What makes you think they’ll be back at all? They’ve got what they want. Why won’t they just leave us alone now?”

My gut tightened. It sounded like O’Hanegan was asking a brand-new question, but while he was using new words and homing in on a different point, he was basically asking the same question everyone in the audience had asked for the last four hours, in one way or another.

Why are we talking about a central government, even a temporary one? The Terrans won’t be back.

To me, it felt like every Carinad who had not been part of the mission to Terra had fallen asleep on us, and now we were dealing with the weight of their combined unconsciousness. They didn’t want to know about the Terrans. They had problems of their own to deal with.

This inertia had been in place since we’d returned from Terra. I’d hoped the news of the Terrans’ violent theft of our longevity data would wake everyone up. And twenty-three leaders, directors, mayors and other heads of state had travelled to Triga to hear what we had to say.

Four hours of “who cares?” had disabused me of my silly hope, though. Jai and Kristiana, Marlow and Peter Kole, the four people sitting at the long table trying to convince this theatre full of leaders that we needed to formally unite to defend ourselves from the Terran menace, were wasting their time.

Jai didn’t show a flicker of impatience as he pulled together an answer for Madhava O’Hanegan. “We can’t rule out that the Terrans have given up and gone away to leave us alone forever, Premier, but we have been analyzing the Terran culture for several years, and our efforts have stepped up in just the last year since the beacons came online and gave us fresh, live Terran news. We think the possibility they will leave us alone now is extremely low.”

“But it’s still a possibility,” O’Hanegan shot back. “These dire measures you’re proposing—a central assembly, a federalized military, a war council…taxes, for stars’ sake!”

“We have to pay for a united military somehow, Premier.” Jai’s tone was polite.

“Aye and taxes is the only way to do it,” O’Hanegan replied. His tone was snippy. “It costs a lot of money to build a fighting force, Colonel. I worked in the Imperial Ranger administration as a civilian for near thirty years, some time back, so I have an idea how much money you’re talking about. And I gotta say that I’m reluctant to start handing over near half the budget of my city based upon a hunch that the Terrans will be back.”

“You’re rather wait until they roll up to your front door and blow it in, Premier?” Anderson Marlow asked, his tone as polite as Jai’s.

O’Hanegan looked offended.

Kristiana said quickly, her tone smooth, “The Terrans were raiding our worlds and snatching our people long before they learned of our longevity therapies, Premier. Everything we’ve learned about their society says that they must have a war. Their economy is built to support a Terran war machine and when it is not servicing a war, the economy suffers runaway inflation, unemployment is rife, and spending stagnates. So does their internal trade. War is oxygen to their culture.”

“So they’re paying more for their bread than they used to,” someone called from the other side of the theatre. “So what?” I didn’t recognize the voice.

Peter Kole raised her hand to draw the speaker’s attention. “Actually, they’re not paying more for their bread than they used to, governor. Not anymore. I’ve seen the crunched data. The Terrans have ended their costly civil war and the great families are now working together. The trade routes are busy and their economy is booming, which makes us suspect they are preparing for war.”

“Or they’re cooperating to figure out how to use the longevity therapies, Administrator!” O’Hanegan shot back.

Peter sat back. She had no answer for the premier, because she was not part of the tiny group of people who knew the data the Terrans had stolen was encrypted. Even if the Terrans broke the encryption, the data had small omissions which would stymy any efforts they made to reproduce our techniques.

That wasn’t something we were about to announce publicly because the Terran who had the data wasn’t telling his people he’d screwed up. Kore Odile undoubtedly wanted the encryption key. The analysts at the Bunker, who spent their days assessing Terran news and data, figured the Odile was holding back a full-scale launch, because he thought there was still a chance he might acquire that key. We were willing to go along with Kore Odile’s bluff while his Terran motherships stayed in their section of the galaxy.

The bluff couldn’t hold up for long, though. All it gave us was a pocket of time to prepare. Yet no one wanted to prepare.

A second person got to her feet. It was Gratia Rosalie, the extremely tall Mayor of Zillah’s World. She crossed her arms. “Unlike everyone else on this side of your table, I have no doubt the Terrans will be back,” she said. “I was there on Terra. I agree with the data analysis. They have to have a war. Their culture is centered around warfare.”

I wanted to cheer.

“But the thing I keep coming back to,” she continued, and my need to cheer evaporated, “Is the enormous effort and cost involved to build a federal governing body, house it, and then build a military force which will actually stand a chance against the Terrans. They’ve trained all their lives for combat. Their standing navy is embedded into their worlds.” She shook her head. “I’m not saying we don’t try. Of course we must do this. But I don’t think you can just throw together a temporary governing body the way you set up that table you’re sitting at, then fold it back down once you’re done. An undertaking of this enormity doesn’t go away when you’re done with it. I think we need to talk about a permanent central government—” She raised her hands as protests sounded across the theatre, including Kristiana at the table. “I’m not saying we rebuild the Empire. I say we deliberately build a government in such a way that no single person can ever control it. Build in countermeasures that make it impossible for all the power to reside in a individual person or entity.”

“It would take years to build a system like that,” O’Hanegan pointed out.

“Then maybe we should take those years and do it properly,” Gratia Rosalie replied. “If we put a federal body into place, we can’t be surprised by a galactic coup decades down the road, because the system itself will defeat such pretensions.”

It was a useful idea, but my heart sank. We didn’t have years to design an armor-plated federal system.

But there were murmurs of agreement among the audience members. They liked Rosalie’s suggestion, too.

A hand rested on my shoulder, drawing my attention. Daniya bent down to murmur by my ear; “The wait will kill us.”

“War will be just as fatal,” I assured her.

She straightened, her pretty mouth pulling down into a grimace. Her black hair was twisted up and pinned at the top of her head, and she wore typical spacer clothes—the unrippable, unstainable, wrinkle-free garments with their many pockets and the heavy mag-capable boots. The workmanlike gear was a far cry from the formal outfits down on the floor. But we were just observers.

Rayhel Melissa, who sat next to me because I could tolerate him better than everyone else, said just as softly. “This meeting will be the death of all of us, if we must sit here listening to this idiocy for much longer.” He wore similar gear, but his looked neater and his jacket was without the bulky, junk-filled pockets.

Dalton, on my other side, spoke to Rayhel without heat. “This meeting is where the money will come from to build a military to defend against the Terran invasions. Show some tolerance.”

“I can tolerate anything but human stupidity,” Rayhel shot back.

“No wonder you were going crazy, back on Terra,” Daniya murmured.

He gave her one of his icy stares.

“Why are you still on the Lythion, remind me?” Daniya added. “You’re a free man. Why aren’t you galloping across the Carinad worlds, dominating little people and making your fortune?”

“Worlds that are about to be swallowed whole by the Terrans,” Rayhel replied. He said it matter-of-factly.

“He’s going to stay where it’s safe, right next to the future commander-in-chief of the new military,” Dalton added dryly.

“Unlike most people, I am not stupid,” Rayhel said. “As soon as Kore Odile has his casus belli, the Terrans will come.”

Daniya glanced at me, startled. “That’s why you told Eliot Byrne to stop the wildcatters from jumping over to Terran space? To avoid giving them an excuse to declare war?” She grinned and pointed at the theatre, below, and said to Rayhel, “Maybe you should explain it to them. About the cause-belly thing.”

“They won’t listen to a Terran.” Rayhel’s tone was cold.

“It’s your disdain that offends them, not your origins,” Dalton said.

“Then Danny should explain it to them,” Rayhel said. “Her impatience will win their hearts over.”

I snorted amusement at the idea of standing in front of the politicians down there. “I just want my money, so I can get on with building a military.” I nodded at the people in the red seats. “And from the sound of it, there won’t be any money for years, yet.” I pulled out my pad and smoothed it out.

Ven got to his feet. He had been sitting on Dalton’s other side and as usual, hadn’t spoken a word. These days, he was the fourth member of my crew. He was turning himself into an adequate engineering laborer, who could do basic repairs with the shipmind’s help. I’d lost my usual engineer when Sauli headed back to Darius City to run his and Kristiana’s family of five—minus Daniya, who was with me, and minus Yoan, who was on Wynchester building the Lyrhys—and supervising the family businesses while Kristiana played politician here on Triga.

At Dalton’s question, Ven’s copper-colored features shifted into a frown. “Danny intends to head back to the Lythion.”

“You guessed that from her pulling out her pad?” Daniya asked. Ven fascinated her and she was always asking probing questions which Ven answered fully and with more grace than most Carinads might have. I wondered if his tolerance for Daniya’s personal questions and Rayhel’s withering indifference was a result of him having been a Terran slave, a Drigu. Or was he naturally inclined to extreme forbearance?

Ven shifted his attention to Daniya. “Since Lyssa put the new shipmind in place to control the Lythion, Danny has gone out of her way to keep Lyam informed so they can become accustomed to her habits.”

“Which makes it easier for the shipmind to anticipate my every need,” I added, and connected with the Lythion. I kept my tone light.

“Yes, Danny?” Lyam asked. They…he or she—we still were not sure, and I don’t think Lyam was either—had a voice which might be either gender, and an always polite tone.

“We’re heading back to the ship,” I told Lyam. “Did you monitor the local newsfeeds the way I asked?”

“To assess the protestors? Yes, Danny. They returned this morning shortly after the session began. Local security suggests there are slightly over two hundred protestors, but they are extremely vocal for such a small number.”

Lyam’s stiff formality bothered me. Actually, the whole train-the-shipmind process bothered me and the only reason for my irritation that I could think of was that I was feeling personally inconvenienced. Lyssa, and Lyth before her, had made running the Lythion so easy because they knew how I thought and anticipated nearly everything, right down to having new clothes sitting folded in the printer maw when I needed them. Lyth used to greet me at the freight bay door with a cup of steaming coffee in hand. Lyssa had learned to have a scotch waiting for me when I stepped into the diner in the early evenings.

But it wasn’t just the absence of personal convenience and comfort that bothered me. I could have asked Lyssa to leave those memories behind before she had shut down and backed herself up to the Laxman Institute data servers to wait for her new human body to mature. She could have stripped the memory of its personality, and Lyam would have continued to ensure I had a scotch in front of me when I needed it. But it wouldn’t have taught them anything. It wouldn’t help them form a personality, or habitual responses. Lyth had explained this to me very carefully, and so I was putting up with a literal-minded AI while it learned.

I’d had to put up with the same thing when Lyssa had become the shipmind, but that had been decades ago, and we hadn’t been facing an interstellar threat.

That was the factor that made me grumpy. I was having to do without a dependable second brain who could anticipate battle tactics and strategies and would do what I ordered without question when I needed the ship to respond instantly. Although we’d yet to see any combat or anything that resembled an emergency since Lyssa had left, so I was merely being ornery on general principal.

I was very careful to not let my impatience show, not to anyone. I didn’t want even a hint of it to filter back to Yoan and Mace in Wynchester, for they were stressed enough building a new ship full of untested concepts and technology without Lyssa’s avatar to supervise the construction. If they thought I was also pissed about her absence, it would pile on the anxiety.

Once Modesta Odile had destroyed the nanobot pool, which had caused Lyssa to make her decision to transfer to a human body, Mace had pulled off a small miracle. Lyssa had delayed the transfer for years partly because she wanted the body which matched the avatar she, and all of us, had grown used to. Mace had researched the image she had used as inspiration for her original avatar. Lyth had been pulled into that research because some of those memories were his, too.

Then Mace had gone off in search of the person in that image. He’d not found her, for she had died of extreme old age decades ago. But he had found a daughter, and when he had explained why he’d located her, the woman had donated her DNA pattern.

Lyssa had withdrawn from the Lythion to be stored at the Institute to await the maturation of her new body, instead of staying as the shipmind until it was ready. The limitations of a shipmind’s life and the vulnerability of being housed within a structure that could be destroyed had made her unwilling to linger upon the Lythion.

“I wouldn’t serve you well while I freak out about whether the next Terran fireball will kill me or not,” Lyssa explained, her avatar’s hands squeezed together. “Now is the time to do this, while we’re waiting for the Terrans to come at us. I mean, there are better times to do it, but they’re on the other side of the ugliness that is to come. I can’t wait until then, Danny.”

“I don’t think you should wait,” I assured her. “An AI with no concept of death will serve me just as well as you can, now you’ve had a taste of death for yourself. Although, you are aware that the human body is far more vulnerable than the Lythion, right?”

Lyssa nodded. “Elizabeth Crnčević has gone through that with me. The fact is, just being able to duck and shift out of the way, to be able to fight back…that makes all the difference in the world.”

“You did fight back,” I told her. “You were the only one to tackle Modesta Odile when she tried to ram through your shipbuilding platform.”

“And these hands couldn’t contain her,” Lyssa pointed out, holding out the nanobot hands. She let them flow onto the table in front of us, to form a flesh-colored pool, then pulled them back to form hands, once more.

“Make your arrangements,” I had told her. “We’ll figure the rest out.”

That had only been a few weeks ago and I let the conversations and decisions flicker through my mind while I considered Lyam’s formal assessment of the protestors outside the conference center.

The protesters had gathered in the big open plaza in front of the conference center every day since the planning sessions had been announced and invitations to all state leaders anywhere had been issued. The protestors didn’t want a central government and they’d travelled from dozens of different worlds, cities and stations to make their opinion known.

Problem was, I couldn’t disagree with them. My heart hurried faster whenever I thought about the old days of the Empire and compared them to the peaceful coexistence the Carinad worlds enjoyed now.

But we needed a military force to defend ourselves against the Terrans. That was the only reason I could live with a temporary central authority. And while I itched at the very idea, I also couldn’t stand how long it was taking for the thing to get up and running. If I had to put up with a federal government, I wanted it in place right this instant, so I could suck in a deep breath and get on with fighting a war I didn’t want.

I hefted my pad, where Lyam was waiting for my response. “Okay, we’re heading out of the conference center now. Keep tabs on our positions via the tracers, and don’t open the ramp for anyone but us.”

It was basic stuff, but Lyam was still innocent enough to be fooled by someone waving an “authorized” credential and using an imperious tone to demand entry.

“Yes, Danny.”

I got to my feet, as did everyone else.

“Finally,” Rayhel murmured.

I ignored him.

“Stick together,” I told him, Dalton, Daniya and Ven. “The protestors are still out there.”

“After you, boss,” Dalton told me, stepping aside.

I rolled my eyes at him and strode for the drop shaft down to the front foyer. My belly rumbled. “Lunch when we get back,” I told them. “We’ll make a decision about what happens next once I’ve eaten.”

“Thank the stars for that,” Daniya murmured. “What?” she added as she hurried alongside me. “I’m not the only one who can see this meeting isn’t going to work out.”

I didn’t answer that, either. It was too depressing to answer truthfully. “Lunch first,” I said firmly and kept striding.

Danny and her allies brace themselves for war.

The bellicose Slavers are hellbent on war.  While the Slavers fight each other, Danny and the Carinad worlds work to find a way out of a seemingly inevitable conflict they are ill-equipped to face.

When a Terran falls into their hands who knows the Slavers’ plans for invading the Carinad worlds, Danny thinks she may have found the key she needs to delay war, if not halt it forever…

Waxing War is the fourth book in the Iron Hammer space opera science fiction series by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper. The Iron Hammer series is a spin off from the acclaimed Imperial Hammer series, and features many of the characters and situations from that series.

The Iron Hammer series:
1.0: Galactic Thunder
2.0: Stellar Storm
3.0: Planetary Parlay
4.0: Waxing War
5.0: Ruled Out
6.0: Stranger Stars
7.0: Federal Force
8.0: Redline Rebels

Space Opera Science Fiction Novel

Ruled Out is available for pre-order everywhere. If you pre-order your copy directly from me, then you get the book next week, a week before it is released at the other bookstores.

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