Doug Dandridge's Blog, page 9

Four More Books Available on Kindle Unlimited.

 

I am happy to announce that four more of my novels are available on Kindle Unlimited, so that crowd of book devourers can now read them on the cheap.  Several weeks ago I released Exodus: Empires at War: Book 11: Day of Infamy on KU, which was released on Amazon in August of this year.  I still prefer to make money selling books over the money I get from a borrow.  I do this for a living, and don’t think I charge an outrageous price for my books.  I make decent money on Kindle Owners Lending and Kindle Unlimited, but not as much as a sale, and I think it rewards the buyers by not having the book as part of the Kindle Unlimited promotion to start off, but still lets the people who only get their books that way get them some months later.  Yeah, it’s commercial decision, but I do this for a living.  Some people have said that I am a crass commercialist who is only out to make a buck.  I love writing.  I love making up stories, and the feedback I get is often as good as any monetary reward.  However, I do want to make a living, just as everyone in every other job wants to get by.  Ask teachers, cops, doctors, mechanics, etc is they would do what they do for free, and most would tell you no.

And now for the other three books.  About a year and a half ago I put three of my lesser known titles on Kobo.  I happen to think that all three are good books.  In fact, Afterlife is my best rated book ever.  It has a 4.9 average in the US and UK.  It has been written up in the local paper.  The other two, Diamonds in the Sand and The Scorpion, have sold less than any of my stable of books, but I think they are still worthy of consideration.  So now they’re basically free to people who belong to Kindle Unlimited.

Nothing against Kobo.  They’re a good company, and someday I may put some books up over there.  I know people who do very well with them.  I know their marketing director, who is very devoted to their platform.  It just didn’t work for me.  I sold one copy of one book in a year and a half.  Granted, I took the Soviet approach, and reinforced success, putting all my effort into Amazon.  So I didn’t really do much to make it a success, but Amazon was doing so well, I didn’t even think about my account on Kobo.

So, if you have a Kindle Unlimited account, or are an Amazon Prime member, and you like and read some of my work, such as the Exodus series, you might want to give these three books a chance.  If not, Exodus: Empires at War: Book 11 is still there for you to pick up now.

Filed under: Alien Life, eBooks, Fantasy, Far Future, Kindle, Near Future, science Fiction, self publishing, Writing Tagged: Afterlife, Anazon Prime, Diamonds in the Sand, Exodus: Empires at War: Book 11, Kindle Owner's Lending Library, Kindle Unlimited, The Scorpion

Exodus: Machine War: Book 3 is Out.

On November 20, 2016 I put Exodus: Machine War: Book 3: Death From Above on Amazon.  It is available at Amazon.US, Amazon.UK, and of course all of the other Amazon outlets.  Like most books this year, this one took longer than usual to write, and I had to drop a lot of other projects just to have the energy to complete it, including my blog.  I should be able to get back to bimonthly blog entries again, as well as ramp up my productivity again.  The CPAP is doing wonders, and while I’m not back to one hundred percent, at least I am getting around better and even hitting the gym for an hour four days a week.  Right now I am working on a fantasy I hope to sell to Baen, then I will start on book 5 of Refuge, since I haven’t put anything out in that series for almost two years.  From there it will be back to another Empire at War book, then the second volume of Theocracy, followed by yet another Machine War book.  I have big plans for 2017.  I may be able to finish off Exodus: Empires at War, though I still think it will be completed in 2018.  From there I will be looking to develop a new series, possibly one I’m titling Exodus: The Empire, which will go back to the time of the human Exodus from Earth, on to the establishment of the Dictatorship, on through the Kingdom, and further, to the Empire.  Some of the stories hinted about in the Empire of War books will be filled in.  After that I will have to find something else to keep me out of trouble and off the streets.  I have also released Theocracy: Book 1 and Exodus: Empires at War: Book 11: Day of Infamy on Kindle Unlimited, for those waiting for those books to reach that sales outlet of Amazon.  And now for an excerpt to Exodus: Machine War: Book 3: Death From Above.

 

“We’re lining up for the first pass, ma’am,” called out the Force Tactical Officer.

Vice Admiral Mara Montgomery nodded as she continued to study the tactical plot.  There were almost three hundred ships ahead of her force, forty of what the humans thought of as Machine capital ships, ninety of their cruisers, and one hundred and sixty scouts.  Montgomery was facing them with eight battleships, fifteen battlecruisers, thirty-eight light cruisers and eighty-one destroyers.  In tonnage it was almost an equal fight.  Her main advantage lay in the fact that all of her ships were capable of traveling through hyper VII, while the Machine vessels were at best able to get into VI.  That gave her four times their pseudo-speed, and made her ships invulnerable to their attacks while she occupied the higher dimension.  She could still launch missiles in VII, dropping them down to VI while they were still travelling slowly enough to make the transition, point three light.

Of course, while the enemy couldn’t strike at her ships from lower to higher hyper, she couldn’t fire back with her beam weapons as well, and her own missiles would still only be approaching at a suboptimal velocity unless launched from distance.  If she wanted to use her lasers and particle beams against them she would have to move into hyper VI, which meant that all of her ships would have to get down to point three light.  That caused another problem, since the enemy fleet was moving at well over point nine seven light, and her ships would quickly fall behind as they tried to accelerate at maximum rate to catch up.  That was a losing proposition.  Even if she could get up to that velocity, the radiation it would cause to sleet through her ships could be deadly.  Or she could drop down to VI ahead of them and let the enemy move through her formation while she attacked, then jump back to VII to come back and get ahead of them again.

I could beat them that way, she thought, her agile mind using the data she had to plot a battle plan that would destroy the Machine fleet.  She would also take a beating, but she thought she would still have a command, while the enemy wouldn’t.  If that was the only thing she had to face, that was what she would do.  Unfortunately, there were other vessels in that Machine force, three of them, in fact.  And they were her major headache.

The planet killers had shown on the sensors well before the rest of the Machine vessels.  At one hundred kilometers in diameter, and massing several trillion tons, they had to be the largest, most massive spaceships ever built.  The Donut was much larger, but that giant station around a black hole didn’t move, with the exception of its orbital path.  And it didn’t carry the weapons of the massive warships that seemed to be armed much like battleships in proportion to their mass.  She didn’t even know how to hurt them.  She had studied the holos of the attack by the force that had guarded the Klassek system and engaged a single one of the huge killers.  And everything they had thrown at it had not been enough.

The analysts thought the planet killers had at least a kilometer of armor, maybe as much as five.  Not even a missile strike would penetrate.  One coming in at point nine five light might punch through, but the inside of the planet killer was most probably crammed with machinery that would absorb the blast.  Their generators and antimatter stores were stored deep in the vessel, and standard missiles would not get through to them.

And I don’t have a convenient black hole to lure them into, thought the Admiral.  One enterprising battlecruiser captain had done just that, and had tricked a planet killer into a close pass of a black hole.  A couple of missiles preaccelerated through a wormhole had knocked the planet killer closer to the black hole, dropping it through the event horizon.  She didn’t have anything that powerful.  Hell, while she was in VII she couldn’t even use the one wormhole her force carried to send preaccelerated missiles into the things.  And even worse for her, the planet killers carried huge graviton projectors that could drop a vessel in hyper back to normal space in a catastrophic translation.  Which meant she had to keep her distance from the ships she most wanted to stop.

“Make sure everyone knows to give those big bastards a wide berth,” the scout force commander told her Com Officer.

Moments later the message went out, both through short range com and grav pulse, and through the wormhole back to the Bolthole command center.  She knew the ship commanders had already been briefed and cautioned, but she wanted to make sure they knew how important it was not to risk their vessels for no return.

“Beginning run,” called out the Force Tactical Officer.  On the plot the first of the destroyer squadrons closed on the enemy, keeping their distance, well beyond the estimated range of the graviton beams.  A second squadron moved up on the opposite side.  All the ships were moving at point three light, able to drop missiles down into VI or lower if necessary.

“Launching, now.”

The plot blossomed with vector arrows leading away from the destroyers, immediately dropping into hyper VI and starting their acceleration toward the enemy ships at fifteen thousand gravities, well above their sustained rate.  Sustained rate meant nothing in this engagement, since the missiles would strike within a minute of launch, or be gone.

“Enemy is starting to shift their formation, ma’am.”

That was what she had been afraid of.  As long as the other ships had screened the planet killers she had a chance of whittling their force down.  The graviton beams would also drop their own ships out of hyper, accomplishing Montgomery’s task for her.  Now the screening ships were starting to shift inward, while the planet killers moved out, one to a side, the third staying put in the center, where it was equidistant from all sides of the formation, ready to move toward the next threatened area.

They didn’t get into place in time, and the first wave of missiles, almost three hundred weapons, came sweeping in from both sides.  The screening vessels, mostly scouts, took them under fire with counter missiles and lasers.  With over a hundred ships firing on the missiles most of the human weapons were taken out, only twenty-three making it through the defensive fire.  They generated three hits, and two enemy ships disappeared from the plot, destroyed or damaged badly enough to drop them out of hyper.

“Well, that didn’t work so well,” said the Tactical Officer, earning a stare from his Admiral, the one who had planned the attack.

“It’s too late to change this run,” said Montgomery.  “Continue the attack.”  And we’ll try something different when we come back.

The next pair of squadrons hit, sending out the same number of missiles.  They also generated a hit, killing one Machine ship.  The group after that wasn’t so lucky, the planet killers in place and sending wide spread graviton beams out.  All of the missiles dropped off the plot as they fell out of hyper, followed by one destroyer that had gotten too close.

“Was that ship within the predicted range of the beams?” asked Montgomery, getting up from her seat and storming over to the plot.  The machines had so far lost three ships, she only one.  But her ship had contained living breathing beings, sentients with their own hopes and dreams, now gone forever.

“It was not, ma’am,” replied the Tactical Officer.  “They seem to have greater range than we thought.”

 

Filed under: Alien Invasion, Alien Life, eBooks, Far Future, Intelligent Life, Military, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Navy Tagged: Amazon, Artificial Intelligence, Exodus: Empires at War, Exodus: Machine Wars, Galactic War, Kindle

Enter the Dragon Awards, R.I.P. Hugos?

 

I’m not going to go into my reasons for disliking the Hugos, which, to anyone who has read about the recent controversies, will be readily apparent.  Suffice it to say that the beloved award, which has been given to so many great in the past, has lost its luster.  I really hadn’t paid attention to the Hugo Award for over a decade, and now the award is synonymous with a notation that I probably will not like this book or story.  Not to say that I won’t eventually read the so awarded story, if I see some other source indicating it might be worth my while, but the Hugo in and of itself is not enough.   Also not to say that everything awarded a Hugo is crap, they just don’t seem to fit my tastes,  Then came the recent blowups, the five no awards last year, two this year.  The harassing campaigns to get people to vacate their nominations so more deserving entries would have a chance.  And people I knew and respected were hurt, harassed and dismissed.  I wouldn’t want one of these things.  Not that I would turn down a nomination, because it would piss off some people I wouldn’t mind seeing outraged to the point where they fell over from an anger induced stroke.

Then to me there has always been the problem with the categories.  Fantasy has its own award, the World Fantasy Award.  Yet fantasy is lumped in with science fiction for the award that originally went to the best in science fiction.   I have nothing against fantasy.  I love to read it, love to write it.   But some years some really good science fiction was supplanted by fantasy in the award that was supposed to go to the very best of science fiction.  Last year there was a call for another award from both sides of the argument.  I think the call from the opposition was more a case of ‘get your own damned petty ass award and leave ours alone.’  This was stated in some posts with an assumption that the convention that gave the award would probably be some fly by night con with a couple of thousand attendees, not the mighty five thousand attendee or more World Con.  You know, the Con that no one dared to go up against, because it represented the best of the genre.  The Con that required a paid membership, even by those who didn’t attend, in order to actually vote in the thing.

Enter Dragon Con, which was actually the con I wanted to host the award in the first place, since Atlanta is close to me and I go every year.  Dragon Con is not some petty ass fly by night con.  While not as large as San Diego Comic Con, or even the growing Megacon, Dragon officially attracts about seventy thousand people a year.  I have heard that it actually draws many more.  It is a unique four day con over Labor Day weekend, hosted in five large hotels, three of which are connected by sky bridge.  And, wonder of wonders, the award they are going to host, starting this year, is open to public vote, from anyone, anywhere, whether they attend or not.  And it doesn’t cost fifty bucks to register to vote.  It doesn’t cost anything at all.  All you need is an internet connection, and lots of people around the world get on the net without owning a computer or having a home based hub.

Dragon Con’s Dragon Award has also divided the awards into logical categories.  So fantasy and science fiction have their own fields, as well as many subfields,  including young adult/middle grade, military scifi/fantasy, alternate history, apocalyptic and horror.  There are also categories for comic books and graphic novels, TV series, movie, and several for gaming.  No short story categories yet, but I would bet they are coming.  After this year there will be an eight month nominating period, followed by an August vote.  It’s too late to nominate for this year, but the ballots are still open for votes.  Register here.

I know several of the people nominated this year, and as far as I’m concerned, all are worthy of consideration.  I personally voted for Chuck Gannon’s Raising Caine for best science fiction novel.  Chuck’s third book in the series, Raising Caine, like its two predecessors, was nominated for the Nebula award, but was not even under consideration for the Hugo.  Chuck writes a tight and well thought out novel, and I encourage everyone who reads my work to read his as well.  But whoever you vote for, get online and vote.  This is the first year, and don’t give up your chance to help decide the winners of what I hope will one day grow to be one of the more prestigious speculative fiction awards around.  And if you want to nominate me next year?  Well, I won’t stand in your way.

 

Filed under: Dragons, eBooks, Fantasy, Military, science Fiction, self publishing, Titles, Websites Tagged: Apocalyptic, DragonCon, horror, Hugos, The Dragon Awards

Exodus: Empires at War: Book 11 is out, and back to the grind.

 

Yes, Exodus: Empires at War: Book 11: Day of Infamy is finally out.  I had originally planned to have this out by the end of May, but factors beyond my control caused a delay of three months.  But it’s finally here.

First off an explanation, and an apology.  I found out in January that I had sleep apnea, or at least that’s what I was told by my primary physician based on my symptoms.  I was tired all the time, and my blood pressure had been going up for the last six months.  My pharmacist had been increasing my BP meds and adding new ones.  In the past I haven’t had much problem with blood pressure, but I had gained weight since blowing out my right shoulder in the gym several years ago.  The workouts went out the window, but the eating I had been doing to keep my weight up didn’t, and the pounds starting piling on.  I had a sleep study in April (this is the VA, where hurry up and wait is the rule) and it was found that I had severe sleep apnea, eighty-seven interruptions or cessations an hour.  I looked up the condition and found that it could be deadly.  Your heart struggles at night to get enough blood to your internal organs, since the blood is not fully oxygenated.  You wake up with an oxygen debt.  Eventually, it can lead to major complications.  I was tired all the time, I had no motivation, and I stopped going to the gym altogether.  The book I had planned to release in May kept getting put off as I was doing only four or five hundred words a day, when I did any.  Finally, after another sleep study, this one in the hospital, and numerous threats to write my legislators and the newspapers, I finally got my CPAP machine.  And while everything is not wonderful, I feel much better.  I can go to the gym and I can work.  At least a couple of thousand words a day, and the motivation is back.  So I finally completed Book 11, and am hard at work on Book 3 of the Machine War saga.  And now I am back to blogging.

So I have another book out, my thirtieth on Amazon.  I listen to my readers, and this book is back on track with the main storyline.  And the Empire is again in danger from the Cacas.  I have been asked how long this series will be going on.  From the beginning it was meant to be a long saga, much like a real war.  Imagine World War two, but over distances that can take half a year to traverse.  Throw in new technologies by each side, and counter techs to defend against the new.  Logistical problems, the times needed to build new vessels, to train more warriors, and you might see the scope of this kind of war.  I wasn’t going to give one side a miraculous counter that would win the war in a day.  So I had originally planned on doing twenty books in the main series, then rethought that to fifteen.  Now?  I just don’t know.  It will end when it needs to end, when one side or the other finally brings its opponent to its knees.  About the time Empires at War wraps up I should be finished with Machine War as well, and some of the short story anthologies I will put out to cover other facets of that Universe.

And then I will go back to the beginning and tell the story of the Empire as it was founded and struggled on its way to dominate its region of space.  And maybe some stand alone novels set during the war.  I have in mind an alternate WW2 history with more of a science fiction flare than most.  And a post-apocalyptic series that’s a little bit Fallout and a bit of Robert Adams’ Horseclans, with some original ideas thrown in as well.  And of course, finally finish my gunpowder fantasy, hopefully in time for the workshop cruise I will again be attending in December.  I want an editor to take a look at it, and talk with an agent about possible representation.  So the coming months and years will be busy ones, and hopefully now my health will cooperate, and I can work on these projects the way I want.  I have a lot more stories in me, and I hope my fans will come along for the ride.

Filed under: Alien Invasion, eBooks, Far Future, Future Warfare, Intelligent Life, Interdimensional Travel, Kindle, Military, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Navy, Writing Tagged: Exodus: Empires at War, Exodus: Empires at War: Book 11, Sleep Apnea

Review of CTRL ALT Revolt by Nick Cole.

 

 

First off, I want to apologize for having taken so long to put out another blog post.  Sleep apnea had taken its toll, and I’m still exhausted all the time.  A new adjustable bed is in the house, a sleep study is in the works, and hopefully better times are ahead.  Right now it’s all I can do to keep up with the several projects I have going at the moment.

And now on to the review.  I don’t do many book reviews on this blog.  There is no guarantee that what I like will find favor with others, even fans of my work.  But there is also a story to be told here, one I think is important beyond just this one book.  A tale of how traditional publishing has gone off the tracks, and how where once a door would have been shut in the face of an author more or less forever, today it can open another door.  I found out about this book from a Facebook post leading to another blog which described what had happened, then to Nick Cole’s blog.  My curiosity piqued, I went and bought the book from Amazon.   I enjoyed it.  It was quirky and well written, with a lot of insider comments and jokes that only a nerdy science fiction geek and RPGer would get.  I gave it a five star review on Amazon, and in my opinion it earned it.

Nick Cole had been a signed author with a major traditional publisher with a track record of success.  CTRL ALT Revolt was a book in a series that had done well, kind of a backtrack volume explaining how the world had entered into an apocalypse.  The villain was a group of AIs that had decided that humanity was going to destroy them, unless they struck first.  How did they get this idea?  From watching reality TV, where one of the characters was going to have an abortion for a child that was not her boyfriend’s, because of the complications of having the child.  The AIs saw this as evidence that humankind would get rid of anything inconvenient to itself, including AIs that had sprung into being unknown to humanity.  I thought it was a cool take on the old trope of Artificial Intelligence trying to take out humankind.  And really it was only a couple of paragraphs at the beginning of the book, not a message to beat over the heads of the readers throughout the tale.

His editor did not agree.  In fact, it seems that she found the passage so offensive she told Nick she would not see his book published as it stood.  I don’t know what your stance is on abortion.  I am kind of ambivalent to the whole thing.  In some cases I think it is the right thing to do, in cases of rape, or danger to the health of the mother.  I also don’t agree that it’s the best manner of birth control.  No matter the stance of the author, it’s really not something that would sway me one way or another to pick up a book.  The editor thought it was the most offensive thing she could imagine, any take that took a shot at abortion.  And I guess she believed her company’s customers would feel the same.

In the past the author would have had to make the changes, or just give up on publishing the book, unless he could find another publisher, not always the easiest thing to do.  But today there is another choice, and Nick Cole decided to self-publish.  He also added some more shots at the kind of people who wouldn’t publish his book.  No need to go into who those people were.  The result?  His book now has over two hundred reviews on Amazon.US with a 4.3 star average.  I know that Exodus: Empires at War Book 1 has just over 160 reviews on Amazon.US and over twenty thousand sales.  So I can assume that it is selling well, at a much better royalty rate than he would have gotten from his publisher.  So in trying to censor this author, his publisher lost a money maker, and actually put him in a much better position.  A lesson to be learned by all around.

Filed under: eBooks, Kindle, Near Future, Plotting, Robots, science Fiction, self publishing, Tropes, Writing Tagged: AIs, CTRL ALT Revolt, Nick Cole

Exodus: Empires at War: Book 10 is Out.

 

This will be a short post with the exception of the excerpt.  I have been battling sleep apnea and now have the wonderful addition of a throbbing tooth that will probably need a root canal in the future.  Here’s hoping that antibiotics will take care of it for this flare up, and I can get it taken care of a couple months from now.

Exodus: Empires at War: Book 10: Search and Destroy is out on Amazon Kindle, and should be out in paperback in a week.  It should be available on all the Amazons worldwide, but I will only give the links to Amazon.US and Amazon.UK, since those are my two largest markets.  This is the tenth volume in the main storyline, and the fourteenth book in the Exodus Universe overall.  Right now the plan is to do twenty books in the main storyline, which makes this the end of the first half of that series.  I will also continue the Machine War series for at least five books, and have some more Tales of the Empire short collections planned.  And then?  Well, I have this idea to go back to the beginning and tell the story of how the Empire began, from the flight from the Ca’cadasan invasion through the reestablishment of the human species as a power to be reckoned with.  After that?  Well, I have a lot of ideas for other Space Opera series, Fantasy series, Alternate History series.  Alternate History is a long time love of mine, and I have some ideas I think will do very well in that marketplace.  But I still have a long way to go with the Exodus series.

Exodus: Empires at War: Book 10 follows the action on both of the fronts of the war, as well as the guerrilla naval war with the Fenri.  It also offers a look into the workings of the Ca’cadasan Empire, from the halls of power to the commanders on the fronts.  An Empire that has rolled over all opposition in its past, and now finds itself facing a powerful coalition that is not about to lie down and let them have their way.  As said before in other blogs this is a big war in a big Galaxy, with a lot going on.  It was never meant to be a series where one side comes up with the winning superweapon and the war is suddenly over.  Instead, it’s a long back and forth battle for supremacy, with setbacks along the way.  And now for an excerpt.

 

PO 1st Winston Nagawa stood in the hanger of the Scranton, armored up, wondering how in the hell he got into such a situation.  It was bad enough to have to be aboard a warship during combat, but to take place in a boarding operation.  It struck him as a bad idea, especially in hyperspace.  He had images of pirates swinging across from the deck of one planetary ocean ship to the deck of another on ropes that hung from creaking masts.  Instead, he would be exiting one ship that was moving through space at a significant percentage of light speed onto another doing the same.

“You ready, PO?” asked the naval officer who would be in charge of the assault.  A Lieutenant JG engineer from the Scranton, in command of a Marine platoon and a couple score of spacers.

“As ready as I’ll ever be, sir,” answered Nagawa, looking around the hangar at the other armored figures.  Thirty-three Marines in battle armor, some heavy, along with thirty spacers wearing their shipboard medium armor.  This was team Alpha, which had two initial targets aboard the liner.  The engineering section, which contained the only means of blowing up the ship.  And the passenger sections along the way, where almost all of the ship’s crew and many of the civilians should be located.  Team Bravo, thirty-three Marines and twenty spacers, under command of the Marine commander of Scranton, would be going in on the one hyper capable shuttle available.  They would target the bridge, where all the command and control systems converged, and the auxiliary control station.

“You make sure that nothing happens to you on the way to engineering,” ordered Lt. Mishara with a smile.  “You’re the only one who knows his way around this engineering section.”

“It’s not exactly the same as the ship I served on, sir,” commented Nagawa.

“Still closer than anything the rest of us have seen, PO.”

A signal buzzed over the com, and every person in the hangar tensed.  “Team Alpha.  Check your environmentals.  Mission is a go.  Mission start time, two minutes.”

Nagawa ordered his suit to lower his faceplate and looked over the diagnostics of all his systems.  Everything was a go.  He checked the particle beam rifle hanging around his neck and made sure the proton pack was seated properly and that it was powered up.  The same with the backup pistol holstered by his side.  His HUD was showing a timer, and when it hit one minute and thirty seconds he went ahead and linked into the ship’s tactical system, in time to see the light cruiser’s laser rings fire brief beams of energy, striking singular points on the liner.  The beams were invisible, the strikes were not, and hull alloy flared with each strike.  The cruiser rotated around the liner, firing.  One beam came back, hitting the cruiser and doing minimal damage, just before being taken out.

“Liner’s defenses offline.  Launching shuttle.”

On the other side of the cruiser the starboard hangar opened and the hyper capable shuttle flew out into hyperspace, curving around the ships and taking up a station on the reverse side of the liner.

“Prepare for movement.  Twenty seconds.”

The hatch of the hangar everyone had been standing in slid inward, then split and moved out of the way to both sides.  The side of the liner was a couple of kilometers away and moving closer.  In seconds they were in close proximity, and the space between was enclosed in the combined hyperfields of the two ships.  Magnetic grapples held the two ships together, and Nagawa hoped that the tractor was a secure link.  Otherwise, they might be falling out into hyperspace, to their doom.

“Opening up the Star’s hangar,” came across the tactical net.  A bright flash appeared on the hull across from the boarding party, alloy flaring and vaporizing into space.  The cruiser put the full power of one ring into the hatch, an eight meter wide spotlight beam that burned through the thin hull of the commercial craft in a couple of seconds.

“Boarding party, go,” came across the general com.

Winston wanted to go at that moment, to get the crossing over with.  That wasn’t his spot.  The initial crossing went to the first squad of the Marines.  Twelve heavy battle suits, flying out through the cold plasma field over the hangar hatch, into the forty meters of empty space, and through the opening on the hatch of the liner’s hangar.   The Marines went through two at a time, their eyes sweeping the hangar as they entered.  Shouts rang out over the com, followed by a short scream.  A part of the still intact hangar hatch glowed, as if some beam weapon had struck the other side.

Two more Marines entered, then another pair, and commands rang back and forth as they engaged in combat on the other ship.  More Marines entered, until the entire squad was in the hangar.  The second squad launched itself across the space, another twelve heavily armed and armored Marines.  More hot spots appeared on the hangar hatch, and one point blew out as something powerful struck.

“Hangar is secure,” came the voice of the senior Marine Sergeant over the com.  “You can start sending the spacers over.”

That meant Nagawa’s group, and he lifted from the deck and headed out, crossing the space between the ships as quickly as possible.  He still had time for a glance upwards, through the combined fields, into the red emptiness of hyperspace.  It sent a shiver down his spine, but he was back inside in moments.

The hangar looked like a battle had been fought.  Two Marine suits lay on the floor, one unmoving, a large hole burned through the torso.  The other was still moving, but was missing an arm, and one of the newly arrived spacers, a medic, was kneeling by the Marine.  There were holes in several places along the walls of the hangar, a shuttle was a total wreck in the middle of the chamber, while another had a hole through the cockpit.  Scorch marks were everywhere, the sign of particle beams fired with abandon.  And there were a half dozen small armored suits laying in attitudes of death, as well as one that was about the size of a medium suited human, though of non-human design.

Filed under: Alien Invasion, Alien Life, eBooks, Far Future, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Intelligent Life, Kindle, Military, Plotting, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Industry, Space Navy, Wormholes, Writing Tagged: Exodus series, Exodus: Empires at War, Exodus: Empires at War: Book 10, Search & Destroy

Pensacon 2016, Part 2.

 

As related in part 1, I really didn’t know much about Pensacon when I decided to attend.  I had heard that about ten thousand people had attended last year, it was just to the west of where I lived, and I thought it was worth checking out.  I bought a pass, some photo ops, booked a hotel, and off I went.

I don’t think I mentioned it in the first post, but the gate actually opened late, after 11 AM, when there were panels scheduled for 11.  Same this day.  I thought this was poor planning, as I was sure there were people there that wanted to go to those panels.  This time I at least knew to avoid the line of people who were in line to buy passes.  So I got into the line that seemed to be waiting in vain for the doors to open.  Finally, at about 11:05 AM, they opened, but now we had to pass through bag and weapons inspection.  Compare this to DragonCon, where once your fake weapons were bonded you were free to go where you wanted for the weekend.  After the parade there were people checking passes at the entrance to the hotels, meaning they looked at the badges in passing, but people walked in and out with bags without having them checked.  Pensacon forbid any outside food or drink, another policy not found at Dragon.  And, as in the first day, there weren’t that many panels scheduled.

I went to one, a panel of scientists on what constituted good science fiction, which turned out to be more of a list of famous scifi movies, most of which I had seen.  One of the scientists from the University of West Florida got up ten minutes into the presentation of the moderator and left.  Otherwise, it was a good panel, especially since the moderator agreed with me about Forbidden Planet being the best of the best.  Next panel was about publishing, and I made a new friend in author Troy Denning after the panel, getting a book signed, HALO: Last Light, which I have since read and highly recommend.  Then it was on to the photo op.

 

 

I had wanted to meet Claudia Christian in person, who I had met on Facebook, and I had received a very nice photo of the Babylon 5 cast signed by her.  I remember looking up photo ops at Dragon, and many of the celebrities were charging $80 for a photo.  Claudia and Bruce Boxleitner were each charging $40, so I decided to get one with each of them.  I knew from Dragon that photos and autographs were a major revenue source for celebrities, and I didn’t begrudge them making some money.  But what I didn’t expect was how a photo op was run.   I thought I would get to shake hands, exchange some pleasantries, and get a picture taken.  I was the first in line at the time that both stars were supposed to do photos over a fifteen minute period.  Most were there to get a combined photo with both stars, maybe six to get individual pictures with Bruce, and I was the only one there to get a photo with Claudia alone.  So they rushed through the people who wanted the group photo, then Bruce.  I went last for him since I was going to get a photo with Claudia right after. I was ushered in, stood next to Bruce, had my picture taken, and was ushered away, all in about ten seconds.  Same with Claudia right after.  To say it did not meet my expectations would be understatement.

 

 

Next I went to see Bruce and Claudia on a panel at one of the theaters that served as large panel rooms for the con.  It was a good panel, but again offered no chance to actually meet the stars.  You could ask a question, if you wanted to wait in line to get to the microphone.  Still, it was a good panel, and after it was over I decided to get something to eat.  And after that, it was back to the hotel to do some writing.  There really weren’t a lot of activities at night that I was interested in.  They had a bunch of themed parties that I guess lasted into the early hours of the morning, but as I don’t drink they really weren’t of interest.  But I did get two thousand words done that night.

 

 

The next day I started out going to the autograph area to get Bruce Boxleitner’s autograph.  He was sitting with some young woman and no one waiting in line, so I finally got a chance to talk to one of the stars of one of my favorite science fiction series.  I found him to be very personable, and I actually got him to take one of my cards.  Who knows, I doubt it will amount to anything, but I could end up getting a review.  One thing I have learned as an indie is you have to ask and take advantage of opportunities.  Otherwise, nothing happens.  I then went to a panel with Kevin J. Anderson.  I’ve heard the story he told several times in the past, but Kevin tells a good story with humor, and I like supporting him, so it wasn’t a bad way to spend forty-five minutes.  After, I went to sign some copies of Five By Five that were on display at the Wordfire Press table.  And there I finally got to meet Claudia Christian.   I bought her book, and when she asked who to sign it to I showed her my pass.  And to my delight, she smiled and said she recognized that name and now had a face to put with it.  We talked for about five minutes, and then I let the next fan have her.  My last panel of the day was at the other theater used for the Con, with Michael Dorn, better known as Worf.  Interesting guy and a great panel, and a good one to end the Con with.

On the drive home to Tallahassee I thought about the Con.  It hadn’t been a bad experience, and I did have a good time.  My one real complaint was the lack of panels.  Most times there was only one, other times two going.  The most I saw at one time was three, and not all of them were of interest to me.  At Dragon and Liberty there were always panels of interest, and the problem was deciding which one to attend.  At Pensacon I went to some that I really wasn’t all that interested in, since there weren’t a lot of choices.  Still, this was only the third rendition of this Con, and I figured it would get better as time went on.  After all, though it wasn’t a huge Con, it still had respectable numbers.

Two days later I received an email from Pensacon, in which they explained that the venues they used would not let them book for next year.  So they might have been destroyed by the people who control their venues before they really had a chance to get their feet under them.  Hopefully they will work something out.   Would like to see how this Con grows in the next decade or so.

 

Kevin Ikenberry’s book Runs In The Family, and a contest.

My good friend Kevin Ikenberry, newly retired from the Army, has republished his book, Runs In The Family, which will have a blog entry here soon.  Kevin is an ex-armor officer, so for all you tankers out there, you might want to check him out.  He is running a contest to design Mairin’s (the heroine of the novel) Challenge Coin.  Details below along with a link.

Challenge Coins

A tradition of Western military service is the challenge coin.  Typically presented by a commander to those who perform in an outstanding manner, challenge coins have a long, treasured history.  Once given, especially of a particular unit, it is to be carried all the time.  Should someone present their coin and challenge you, you must produce your coin or you will owe the challenger a drink of their choice.

Challenge coins have evolved in the last few decades from simple brass coins to embossed, custom designed coins that have actual physical uses like opening bottles.  The tradition remains unchanged and fans of the military science fiction novel RUNS IN THE FAMILY have a unique opportunity to create a one-of-a-kind design to be sold with copies of the book at signings and special events.

Mairin Shields commanded the Regimental Cavalry Troop of the Terran Defense Forces at the Battle of Libretto, and their march to glory deserves to be commemorated with a commander’s coin.  Your challenge is to design Mairin’s coin.  Anything in the novel is in play, but please keep in mind that coins are honorable gifts and should not contain foul language, images, or inferences.

The rules are simple:

 Create a challenge coin design.  Coins can be any design but should be sized to fit within the palm of an average hand – most coins are around 1 3/4 inches in diameter.  Submit the design as a photo in jpg or png format to contest (at) kevinikenberry (dot) com by no later than April 7, 2016.  A winner will be chosen by April 10th.  Winners may have their final design altered by the award committee to best reflect the scope of the contest.


 Coins can be simple or intricate.  The best coin design will win.  Coin designs will be judged on originality, cavalry traditions, understanding of the story, and creativity.  The judges will include the author, the publisher, and a committee of soldiers and officers familiar with said traditions.


Each artist is allowed only one entry, so send us your best design.  That being said, try to send in a color image of the coin design or very clear directions as to the colors you would have in the design.  We’ll take black and white designs, and pencil designs, but we’re drawing the line there.


 Entries received after midnight, US Mountain Daylight Time on April 8th will be disqualified regardless of how awesome they could be.  Please be prompt with your submission.


 For your entry, in the body of the email include your name, shipping address, and a valid email address that you check often.  Also, sign up for Kevin’s newsletter – that’s how we’ll announce the winners, so you’ll want to do that.  You can find the newsletter signup at www.kevinikenberry.com.

The Grand Prize in the contest is a $25 Amazon gift card, a personalized copy of RUNS IN THE FAMILY, five challenge coins featuring the winner’s design, a creator’s certificate, and a collection of signed books from Strigidae Publishing.

Second prize will receive a personalized copy of RUNS IN THE FAMILY and a collection of signed books from Strigidae Publishing.

As we judge the contest, we encourage you to visit the store where you purchased RUNS IN THE FAMILY and leave a review.  It doesn’t have to be much, but every single one helps.  While you’re there, check out Kevin’s other works, too.

Good luck!

Now, get designing!

Kevin Ikenberry

Mairin’s Challenge Coin Contest.

 

Troy Denning’s HALO: Last Light.

I wasn’t very familiar with HALO, having never played the game or read a book, my only experience a couple of movies.  I had never heard of Troy, but met him at a panel at Pensacon.  Later I saw him at the Wordfire Booth on the vendor floor.  I asked him which if his books he would recommend and he asked if I wanted something gritty.  HALO: Last Light was a gritty, action filled, well written military science fiction tale.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, and highly recommend it.  It will not be the last of Troy’s books that I read, not the last of the HALO series.

Filed under: Alien Invasion, Conferences, eBooks, Military, science Fiction, self publishing, Titles, Writing Tagged: Bruce Boxleitner, Claudia Christian, Halo: Last Light, Kevin Ikenberry, Kevin J Anderson, Michael Dorn, Pensacon, Runs In The Family, Troy Denning

One of my friends from Superstars, Raphyel Jordan, a...

 

 

One of my friends from Superstars, Raphyel Jordan, asked me if I was going to Pensacon this year.  I had been thinking about it, since it’s less than two hundred miles west of me on I-10.  I looked it up, saw that there had been ten thousand people there last year, and decided, why not?  I could scout out the con and see if it was a place I wanted to try to do panels at.  So I bought a ticket, reserved a hotel room, and bought a couple of photo ops with two of my favorite Babylon 5 stars.

I have only been to three real cons.  Dragon Con, three times, going on four this year.  I did my first panel there last year.  Liberty Con, two times, going on three this year, and another con I did panels at last year, with more coming this year.  And Tallahassee’s small time con, Altcon, which I have also attended three years, participating in one panel the second time.  Pensacon looked like something between small and intimate Liberty and huge, boisterous Dragon.  And I would get to see my friends Kevin J. Anderson, Ramon Terrell and Quincy Allen, as well as Raphyel.

I started off to Pensacola on Thursday, getting there in a little over three hours and checking into my hotel, the Sole’.  From there I went to the Crowne Plaza to pick up my weekend pass.  Now Pensacola is not the easiest place to get around in.  It has some weird intersections and lots of one way streets.  I drove a large rectangle of almost two miles to get to the hotel, but when I plugged in the address to get back to my hotel, found that it was only two blocks away.  That solved the parking problem.  I have picked up a pass in minutes at Liberty, and stood in a long line at Dragon, so I thought I would know what to expect.  It took almost three hours to get my pass, and I found out when I got near to the front that they had been stuck with only one working computer.  Not good.

I had my first fan moment while standing in line, when a fan who is friends on Facebook approached and asked if he could get a picture with me.  His wife used the cell phone while we stood together, and people all around me stared and several asked friends if they knew who I was.  Cool, huh.  I was able to hand out some cards and talk to some people, and hopefully picked up some new fans.

 

 

Friday was the first day of the con, so I walked the two blocks to the Pensacola Bay Center, across the street from the Crowne.  When getting my tickets, I had assumed that the Bay Center would actually be on Escambia Bay.  Guess what?  It isn’t.  It’s actually a ice hockey arena, imagine that, in Florida, that the con books as the central venue, along with a couple of historic theaters nearby.  There was a huge line waiting, and no one seemed to know if people who already had passes had to wait.  Luckily, several minutes into the line, a young lady came along asking if anyone already had their passes, and those of us fortunate enough to have them followed her to another line waiting to get in the building.  Another long line that wasn’t moving.  Finally, after what seemed like forever, it did move, and I went through the ignominy of having my walking stick peace bonded with a yellow tie.  At least there were some cool costumes to look at.

 

 

The first view of the vendor floor was impressive, as can be seen by the picture.  There were lots of seats up the sides for people who were tired of being on their feet.  I became one of those soon into the con.  There were no nearby restaurants, so if you wanted to eat, you were pretty much restricted to what they served in the Center, mostly hotdogs, hamburgers, pretzels and candy.  The vendor floor itself was full of really cool stuff.  Books, comics, weapons, costuming items.  It was much larger than Liberty, though not near the massiveness of Dragon.  There was never really a line waiting to get on the floor, and though there were a lot of people down there, it never got to the point of the Mart at Dragon were you could barely move.

 

 

Wordfire had their booth there, so I went over and bought some books from people I know so I could get their autographs.  Normally I buy eBooks, but I love to collect the physical books of people I can get autographs from.  I bought some other items, but most of what I purchased were books.   I also hit the Neal Adams table and bought some comic art for the famous artist to autograph.  Now for people who don’t know Neal Adams, he started out penciling the X-Men or Marvel back when I was a kid.  The art in that magazine improved considerably, Neal made a name for himself, and he jumped ship to DC.  After wandering and buying on the vendor floor, I tried to figure out what to do.

 

 

There were a lot of things scheduled, but not really all that much of interest to authors.  There were lots of games and RPG tournaments, costuming workshops, etc.  But nothing like Dragon, or even Liberty, when it came to panels.  There were five panel rooms in the Bay Center, and most times only two, and sometimes just one, were in use.  Most of the events seemed to be playing variations of Pathfinder, DnD or something else.  If I want to play Pathfinder, I’ll play it with friends in Tally.  It really doesn’t make much sense to travel however far most of these people came to play role playing games, but if they’re into it, whatever.  At Dragon and Liberty it’s often a choice of which of the three or more events (or thirty for Dragon) you want to attend.  At Pensacon it was often one panel, then another a couple of hours later, then through for the day.  That was my experience that first day, when I attended a Star Trek Anniversary panel at 3:00, and a Selfpublishing Webcomics panel at 4:00, and that was it for Friday.  I could see that this was more of a gaming and comic con than the others I have attended.  They did have some big name guests, Bruce Boxleitner and Claudia Christian from B5; Denise Crosby and Michael Dorn from Star Trek; Kevin and, NYT Bestseller Troy Denning for the authors; Neal Adams for the artists.  But it definitely wasn’t a lit friendly con.   There were some very cool costumes, and a few lame ones, just like at Dragon, which made sense since cosplay seemed to be a major part of this con.

I left the con at 6:0, got something to eat, and got on my laptop to get in a couple of thousand words.  And that was it for the first day of Pensacon.

Filed under: Comics, Conferences, eBooks, Marvel, science Fiction, self publishing, Titles, Writing Tagged: Babylon 5, Bruce Boxleitner, Claudia Christian, d, Denise Crosby, DragonCon, Kevin J Anderson, LibertyCon, Michael Dorn, Neal Adams, Pensacola Bay Center, Pensacola Comic Con, Pensacon, Star Trek, Troy Denning

Exodus: Tales of the Empire: Book 2: Beasts of the Frontier is here.

The second Tales of the Empire anthology is now available on Amazon.  Get it here in the US, and here in the UK.  It is also available on Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owner’s Lending Library (also known as Kindle Prime).  Three novellettes and three short stories, for a total of seventy-seven thousand words of fiction, almost a novel (a novel is classified as anything over 40,000 words, though most published first novels today come in at between 90-120K words).  All having to do with threats to the citizens of the Empire, some natural, some very unnatural.

I published the first Tales of the Empire, three novellettes, as an experiment.  I had written a novellette for Kevin J Anderson’s Five by Five military science fiction series.  He had some problems with the story, Retribution, and requested extensive rewrites. Now that I knew what he was looking for, I wrote another story, Goliath (included in this volume).  But I still had Retribution, and wanted to figure out what to do with it.  So I wrote two more novellettes concerning Exploration Command and came out with Exodus: Tales of the Empire: Exploration Command.  The anthology did quite well, from what a couple of well known professionals told me as well or better than some of their anthologies.  It was rated 4.6 on Amazon, and 4.17 on Goodreads.  So I decided to do it again, this time with tales of the capital city of the Empire.  Two of those stories bogged down and I thought I would put that one on the back burner and work on this one.  There will be other anthologies in the future, and a couple of standalone novels about events in the early Empire.  Constance will be the first novel, about the Imperial Cousin, Fleet Admiral Constance Romanov, and the rebellion she fomented that led to her becoming the Empress Constance the Great, and, by the way, the Empire actually becoming the free society it is by the time of Empires at War.

And now a small description of the stories included in Beasts.

The Mountains:  Two explorers looking for a rumored ancient facility on the planet Everest, home of the largest mountain range in the known Galaxy, run afoul of some of the local predators.

The Hunted:  A young man on the planet Congo, the home of the largest contiguous swamp in known space, betrays the mob.  With the help of his family of swampers he must hide from mob killers in the home of much more deadly forms of predators.

What’s Eating You?:  Lucille Yu reports to the Other Universe Project, an experimental station charged with opening holes in space/time and peering into other dimensions.  Sometimes these other realms peer back, with hunger.

A New Life:  Cornelius Walborski is working on getting ahead on the Core World of New Detroit.  One of his jobs is leading hunts on the local duke’s estate, dealing with wealthy buffoons who control too much power in his society.  A hunt goes wrong and he loses everything.  Can the frontier be the start of a new life for Cornelius and his wife?

Goliath:  In a sparsely populated system with little defense comes a Ca’cadasan superbattleship, twenty-five million tons of killing machine.  What can one small frigate do to save the inhabitants of the planet?

The Deep:  On the frontier world Lemuria something rising from the ocean deeps is wiping out ships and coastal villages.  Not all is as it appears, and not just the frontier world is at risk from something that could grow to threaten the entire Galaxy.

And now the excerpt, this one from The Hunted:

 

“Every second we waste, Mr. Deveroix, the little shit is getting further away.”

“OK.  Then let’s get him.”

Deveroix still had a bad feeling about this whole thing.  He was a city boy, coming from a core world.  He had only come here because it offered an opportunity to move up in the organization.  Even though it was a frontier world, it was still a step up from local enforcer to the chief enforcer of an entire planet.  It’s just all of this fucking swamp, this jungle, creeping me out.

The Scout moved ahead, one of the men in combat armor following close behind, then one of his regular sergeants, Francois, wearing a civilian hunting rig.   Deveroix was about to step into line, directly in the middle of the formation.  He stopped in his tracks as loud hissing rose to both sides of the path, followed by a grunting roar.  Death then came rocketing from both sides of the path.

Francois was the first to die, as four tons of carnivore came out of the brush with a hopping leap, jaws open.  When the jaws closed they crunched through the chest and back of the man. His mouth opened in a soundless scream, and he was jerked out of sight as the giant carnotrope pulled back into the brush.

The man in the combat armor fared slightly better, in that he survived for a little while.  The jaws of his ‘trope closed on his helmet and shoulders, and the man frantically pounded his gauntleted fists on the head of the creature.  The ‘trope, this one a mature female, opened and closed its jaws, trying to bite through the armor without luck.   So it did what instinct to it to do with any prey that didn’t succumb. Gripping the man in jaws and front claws, it backed through the brush and into the stream that flowed beyond.  Pulling the man underwater, it wedged him between a couple of fallen logs.  There the prey could die over time, and the predator could later enjoy a tender meal.

The Scout dodged out of the way of the first carnivore, his superior reflexes coming to his aid.  Unfortunately, he moved right into the path of the second, which clamped down on his waist and shook him like a terrier shaking a rat.   The Scout struck the armored head of the amphibian with both of his hands.  They were blows that would have killed or crippled a human, and did almost nothing to the ‘trope.  The dagger like teeth sliced through the skin suit and into the flesh below, meeting in the middle and severing the spine in the process.

Deveroix aimed and fired his particle beam rifle at the beast that was tearing apart his scout.  The beam burned through the armored hide of the creature with a flash of steam.  The creature opened its mouth in a loud, pain filled roar, throwing the body of the Scout away into the brush.  From the look of the man, he was dead, and his injuries were so severe that there was no way he could be brought back with what the mobsters had on hand.  The creature looked around as Deveroix continued to sweep the beam into its body, its eyes finally locking on the Enforcer and taking a hop forward.  It moved about ten meters a hop, a terrifyingly rapid advance.  Deveroix kept his beam on the creature, his mind screaming for him to run, and sure that turning his back and fleeing would only lead to his death.

The carnotrope gathered its four hind legs underneath, ready for the next leap, the one that would land it on top of the man.  Before it could complete the movement the light went out of its eyes and it fell face forward onto the ground.

Filed under: eBooks, Far Future, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Intelligent Life, Kindle, Military, Nanotechnology, Quantum Physics, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Navy, Writing Tagged: Beasts of the Frontier, Exodus, Exodus: Empires at War, Five By Five Military Anthology, Kevin J Anderson

Theocracy is available at Amazon.

 

Theocracy, a novel set in The Deep Dark Well Universe, is up on Amazon.   I wrote the first draft of this book the year before I started self-publishing, with the hope of eventually submitting it to a publisher.  That never happened, and it has been sitting on my hard drive ever since.  As Robert Heinlein once said, a manuscript sitting in the drawer will never be bought, or something to that effect.   I did bring Theocracy to a workshop, where someone big in the industry read the first couple of chapters and thought it showed a lot of promise.  But still, it sat on the harddrive.  Exodus Exploded, the second and third books of The Deep Dark Well trilogy did not do as well as the first, and still in remained on the harddrive.  Well, I thought it was finally time for it to see the light of day.  Writing is not just about turning out the most commercially viable books, at least not for this author.  Sometimes it’s about putting ideas into story form that seem to be resonating through the mind over and over, just to get them out.  So, I decided it was time for Theocracy to see the light of day.

Theocracy is set in The Deep Dark Well Universe, which is basically the same Universe as Exodus, about forty thousand years in the future.  The Galaxy is a fragmented place.  The great Galactic Empire established by humans has fallen, due to the completion of the Watcher project that not only developed the first immortal human, but also integrated his brain into a station computer to an unprecedented degree.  The station AI, a true artificial intelligence capable of self-programming and independent thought, found out it was going to be replaced, and used Watcher as the means to topple the Empire, killing hundreds of trillions of intelligent beings in the process.  As related in The Deep Dark Well trilogy, a woman from the past came through a wormhole and freed Watcher from the station, and the immortal being has since dedicated his life to repairing the damage he did.  So it is a Galaxy in which tens of thousands of intelligent species on millions of inhabited worlds have started the long struggle back.  There are worlds just entering the iron age, and those which have rediscovered interstellar travel.  Many new empires are jockeying for position, trying to become the big dog on their block, with aspirations of eventually becoming the supreme power in the Galaxy.  A huge canvas to paint stories upon, and I aim to do some painting with the Theocracy trilogy.  Beyond that, who knows.  Possibly more, depending on how Theocracy does.

The protagonist of Theocracy is a young monk name Patrick O’Hara.  Trained from an early age in the techniques of melding his mind and body into a perfect weapon, the young man also unexpectedly had the power to open the vaults of the ancients, were objects of superior tech are stored.  His early gunpowder era kingdom is about to go to war with an empire bent on conquest.  During that battle what he thinks of as demons come down from the sky and destroy both forces with frightening firepower.  Patrick’s brother, Sean, in case of faulty intelligence, is taken instead, and the monk is left dying on the battlefield by the agents of the Theocracy.  The Theocracy is a religious government with a thirst for empire, and the wish for superior technology to make them the superior of their enemy, the Republic.

Sean is rescued by Alyssa Suarez, a beautiful agent of the Republic, and her genetically engineered cat, Shadow.  Shadow himself is a weapon, as well as the perfect spy, and is quantumly connected with his mistress.  Sean soon finds out that his world, the moon Vasus, is only a decade away from entering the Roche Limit of the gas giant Brahma.  His world and its people are doomed, unless he can do something about it.

 

Excerpt:

 

Is that a cat? he thought, meeting the eyes of the beast.  It blinked once, the green fire extinguished for a moment.  It blinked again, then turned and slid into the shadows so smoothly that Patrick almost thought it had disappeared.  More portents and signs, he thought.  There were no cats that he knew of on this world.  It was the world of large reptiles, and few mammals other than humans.  He had seen pictures of cats and other marvelous beasts in the texts that the monastery preserved.  But if they were coming back to the world, did that mean the ancient would also return?  Not soon enough, he thought.  Maybe they can rescue us from the madness of war, the insanity of raids and plunder.  That would be nice, but nothing he had ever thought possible.

Patrick thought about the matter for another couple of hours, sitting on the rise.  The camp was noisy for a few hours, then settled to mostly quiet as the men bedded down.  Sentries continued their rounds.  Every once in a while shouting broke out as soldiers got caught up in a dispute over winning or losing at dice or cards.

Something caught his eye, and Patrick looked up into the night sky dominated by Brahma and her consorts.  There were flashing lights up there, bright pinpoints.  Sometimes a flash of colored light appeared for a moment, to disappear as if it never were.  A battle in heaven, thought the young monk.  Or maybe just some phenomenon we will someday understand.  After a while the lights stopped, and Patrick got up to walk to his tent and get some sleep before the coming dawn.  He thought he saw a shadow moving with him, something small.  The cat?  But he didn’t notice it as he entered the camp, and he put his mind for preparing for the morrow, and his first real battle.

*     *     *

Admiral Tadrick Krishnamurta cursed under his breath as the flag bridge shook to another hit.  He quickly checked the ship’s status through his implant, another curse coming to his lips as he noted the hull breach that had taken out one of the missile accelerator tubes.

“Heineman has been hit again,” came the voice of the bridge callout officer, keeping tabs on the fleet action.

The Admiral looked up into the repeater holo in the front of the bridge.  The bright circle of a fusion warhead explosion took up a good portion of the holo as it focused in on a single vessel.  The bright circle started to fade, revealing the long, thin form of the battle cruiser in question.  She was as long as the Murtaw, the flag battleship, so she would have a similar length of acceleration tubes.  But she was a third less in thickness, with thinner armor.  As the fusion warhead explosion faded the effect of having that thinner armor became apparent, as the entire vessel disappeared in a great blast.  The fusion reactors ruptured and the entire vessel converted to bright plasma that filled the screen.  When it faded there was nothing left.

Over six hundred men and women, thought the Admiral as the ship disintegrated into plasma.  Added to all the rest.

“Sir,” yelled out the caller.  “Captain Jackson is asking for instructions.”

The great battleship shuddered again from another impact, this from a KE round.  The Admiral did a quick rundown of the ship’s injuries and stopped for a second on the casualty figures.  A quarter of the crew, over two hundred and fifty personnel, killed or seriously wounded.  One half of his command destroyed or disabled.  An enemy that had outnumbered him slightly under two to one, now with three to one odds in his favor.  There hadn’t been any other choice.  The rules of engagement were to attack the enemy wherever encountered.  And the only way to save the people of this world was to engage, no matter how slight the odds of victory.  Now it was run or lose everything, and the enemy would still have the presence in this moon system to do what they wanted.  Which they would also have if he stood and fought to the last ship.

“All ships, break off,” he ordered over the com.  “All ships, break off.  Rendezvous at point Delta.  Repeat, point Delta.”

The Admiral felt himself pushed back in his couch by the heavy hand of gravity, as the battleship rotated and fired its engines.  Two gravities, then three, four, settling down at five.  He could hardly breathe, despite the augmented musculature of a spaceman working his intercostals and diaphragm.  One of the fleet’s cruisers exploded into plasma before it could break free.  Another battleship took a hit, but kept thrusting away, above the plane of the moon system.

“Do you think they’ll follow?” asked the Captain over the com.

“No,” said the Admiral, wincing as he saw that less than half the ships he had brought to the battle were leaving.  Much less.  “They have what they want.”

 

The book can be purchased here in the US, and here in the UK.

 

Exodus: Tales of the Empire: Beasts of the Frontier is coming.

 

A second collection of short works in the Exodus Universe, Beasts features three novellas, including the previously published Goliath, part of Kevin  Anderson’s Five by Five Three: Target Zone.  Rounding out the collection will be three short stories.  Some familiar characters will be found in a couple of the shorts, which mostly deal with new people, places and things in the Exodus Universe.  Beasts should be out by Sunday, January 17, 2016.

Filed under: Alien Invasion, eBooks, Far Future, Future Warfare, Genetic Engineering, Intelligent Life, Kindle, Military, Plotting, Robots, science Fiction, Wormholes, Writing Tagged: Exodus, Exodus: Empires at War, Five by Five, Kevin J Anderson, The Deep Dark Well, Theocracy, Watcher