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Prologue I

From: The United States and the Protectorate War. Baen Historical Press. 2070.

It cannot be denied that the United States of the early thirties was a deeply divided society, in a world that was increasingly fragmented, hostile and/or fundamentally opposed to American values. The recent election had brought many of the tensions threatening American stability into the open and the victory of President Hamlin, a well-meaning and decent but ultimately ineffectual politician unwilling or unable to confront the problems facing the United States, did nothing to calm the roiling fury under the surface. Prone to dithering, lacking any real power base, it seemed likely his first term would be his last. Indeed, even his own party was preparing to primary him rather than take the risk of letting him seek re-election.

Political deadlock in Washington owed much, it should be acknowledged, to the simple fact the United States was not in any physical danger. Chaos along the Mexican border and turmoil in the Caribbean did not post any significant threat, certainly not one that threatened the political or bureaucratic elite in Washington. Simmering tensions in both the Ukraine and the South China Sea – and, of course, the Middle East – might draw attention briefly, only to be dismissed as the United States returned to contemplating its internal problems. Talk of civil war, never far from the surface, seemed to ebb and flow with the tides. The paralysis in Washington seemed to ebb and flow with the tides.

It was the worst possible time for the United States to face an Outside Context problem, an invasion from another world. But there was no choice.

The Protectorate knew nothing of America’s problems when they transposed their assault force into our dimension. Through sheer luck, the Protectorate Expeditionary Force arrived right on top of a small town in Texas – Flint – and rapidly secured the area, while probing the surrounding region and hacking the internet to download as much data as possible. They had assumed theirs was the only timeline that had enjoyed an industrial revolution and it was a surprise to discover that our world was a technological civilisation, if one nearly a century behind their own. Their commander – Captain-General James Montrose – had no intention of retreating, let alone opening peaceful contact and developing diplomatic relationships. He had come to make his name through conquest and determined to do so. His brief attempts at diplomatic outreach were nothing more than a bid to buy time.

President Hamlin dithered, as was his wont. Flint was surrounded and sealed off by the United States Army, but there was no attempt to demand access to the occupied town or seek confirmation of the tale the diplomats had been told. Unsure of what he was dealing with, Hamlin ignored the advice of his Vice President – Felix Hernandez – and his military officials, refusing to countenance either a more aggressive approach or a pre-emptive strike. It was not until a refugee fleeing the town accidentally started a brief engagement that rapidly spiralled out of control that the military was permitted to take a harder line, too late. The PEF attacked with a fury and technological edge the defenders couldn’t match, rapidly overrunning the army positions and expanding into Texas. A combination of computer hacks and cruise missiles strikes further weakened the United States, making it difficult to coordinate any response.

On paper, the PEF was greatly outnumbered. In practice, their advanced technology and cold-blooded ruthlessness allowed them to crush resistance, eventually seizing Austin and threatening nearby states before America learnt how to fight them. The sheer force of their attack weakened both the United States and its global allies, while their diplomatic contacts with hostile states – and covert operations within America – raised the promise of reinforcements and even American surrender. Their ability to land almost anywhere – showing off their power by attacking New York – cowed Hamlin. Believing the war to be lost, with the arrival of a second invasion force in the Middle East, he made overtures to Montrose.

This was too much for Felix Hernandez and his growing cabal. They started making urgent preparations to remove President Hamlin from power, preparations that were ironically detected by the PEF and used to justify a strike into Washington itself. With only limited understanding of how the American government worked, the PEF moved to seize the White House and the President, intending to use him as a puppet. The plan misfired. The assault force found itself trapped in Washington, and the relief force was forced to fight its way through the city in a desperate and ultimately futile bid to save it. Casualties were heavy on both sides, including Hamlin himself, but the PAF suffered its first real defeat.

As Felix Hernandez took the Oath of Office, and James Montrose secured his position by scapegoating another officer, they both knew the war was far from over.

Prologue II: Timeline A (Protectorate Homeworld)

It was deeply frustrating, Protector Julianne Rigby reflected, that they couldn’t know what was happening on the far side of the dimensional wall.

The Triumvirs of the Protectorate had been reluctant to concede that they had to trust the men commanding the crosstime expeditionary forces. It put a great deal of power in the hands of men who were incredibly ambitious, who had been chosen for their ambition and determination, and there was always a risk of one or more commanders going rogue. There was no way around it – the researchers had yet to develop any sort of crosstime communications device that didn’t require a gate – and yet it was deeply frustrating. London had been able to direct operations around the globe and beyond, from the moment radio had been invented, and to find themselves out of touch with their commanders was galling. There was just no way to know what was going on.

Her lips thinned as she studied the image on her display. Captain-General James Montrose was tall, dark and handsome, handsome enough to make any woman feel a draw even if she was old enough to know better. He was a brilliant commanding officer, driven by a compulsive thirst for victory – and the rewards that came with it. Granting him command of a crosstime invasion force had always been a gamble, although there were limits on just how much power he could claim for himself before reinforcements arrived. The Protectorate was the only timeline that had mastered steam, let alone coal and oil and nuclear power. There was little he could do to build a power base for himself in a world where the most advanced device known to exist was a waterwheel …

Or so they had thought. Castle Treathwick had been rotated into Timeline F and a sizable chunk of the timeline had been rotated back into the Prime Timeline, including pieces of a town and a large number of inhabitants. They had been rounded up very quickly and interrogated – of course – and the town remnants had been hastily searched for anything useful, from books to maps and charts. They’d expected little, but they’d hit the motherlode. The town didn’t just have a public library, a rarity outside the Prime Timeline; it had computer databases and records and a great many other things that proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Timeline F was a technological society. Their advancement appeared to have come in fits and starts – the sociologists were already producing theories to explain how the widespread degeneracy had retarded technological development – but there was no denying the Protectorate Expeditionary Force faced a foe far more capable than any before. Montrose’s orders for such a contingency had been vague, if only because no one had really thought it would ever happen, and he’d clearly taken full advantage of the latitude he’d been granted to launch a war. Julianne wasn’t surprised. A man as ambitious as Montrose wouldn’t back down unless he was confronted by an equal or greater force, and that was clearly lacking. Indeed, the second set of kidnapped locals – rotated into the Prime Timeline as the second invasion force was dispatched – had confirmed it. The war appeared to be going well.

Julianne felt her mood darken as she studied the political map. It looked absurd, putting the lie to the theory that technological advance would bring about planetary unity, but there was no denying it was real. Hundreds of nations, some with nuclear weapons; their world divided so completely it would be laughably easy to turn them against one another. The combination of superior military force and advanced technology would be quite enough, turning local nations into allies that would be discarded or subjected the moment they were no longer useful. And yet …

Her intercom bleeped. It was time.

Julianne keyed her console, then sat back in her chair as the other two Triumvirs flickered into existence in front of her. The holograms looked faintly wrong, as always, something that had always made her smile even though she understood the reasoning behind it. The Protectorate had more than enough computing power to fake almost any communication, with minibrains playing the role to near-perfection, and a transmission  that looked too good to be true would be regarded with extreme suspicion until it was checked and cleared. The council had the finest experts in the known multiverse working for them, yet as technology advanced the technology to fool it advanced too. Julianne would have preferred to hold the meeting in person, but that wasn’t an option. The degenerates of Timeline F were a technological civilisation. The gap between them and their masters was wide, but not wide enough. Given time, they would develop their own crosstime capabilities. They already knew it was possible.

“Parliament is pleased,” Protector Horace Jarvis said, curtly. “That doesn’t bode well.”

“No,” Protector John Hotham said. “But is that a bad thing?”

Julianne shrugged. Jarvis had openly admitted he didn’t trust Montrose, while Hotham argued Montrose could be trusted to serve the Protectorate as well as himself. Julianne had been the deciding vote and it had been impossible to avoid acknowledging that Montrose was very much a two-edged sword. He could cut their enemies, but he could also turn on his masters. It had been a calculated risk, one that – in hindsight – might have been a mistake. Given control of a civilisation that could actually support his forces, Montrose could go rogue. He was certainly charismatic enough to convince many of his subordinates to follow him.

“The prize is worth some risks,” she mused. “If we gain control and open permanent gates …”

The vision unfolded in front of them. The Protectorate ruled four timelines, three populated by primitives and one apparently untouched by intelligent life. It was difficult to uplift the locals of the first three timelines, leaving them fit only for brute labour that could be carried out far more efficiently by machines. A population that actually understood science, and didn’t think aircraft were the chariots of the gods, was a population that could actually achieve something. All they needed was proper guidance, something the Protectorate was happy to provide. An influx of labour from Timeline F could turn the earlier timelines into genuinely productive parts of the empire. It would happen without them, of course, but not in her time.

“If,” Jarvis pointed out.

Hotham snorted. “They’re a hundred years behind us, at least! They pose no threat.”

“Montrose does not have unlimited manpower. Or industry.” Julianne knew why. “They could trade a hundred of their tanks for every one of his and still come out ahead.”

“And if Montrose wins, will he turn on us?” Jarvis leaned forward. “He’s already popular. He could declare himself a warlord, declare independence, if he secures the timeline before we can open permanent gates.”

Julianne kept her face expressionless as Hotham started to splutter. The hell of it was that Jarvis had a point. Montrose’s exploits had been widely reported and even though the reports were incomplete – they could hardly be otherwise – they had made him a hero. The media was already telling the world about his glorious victories, no matter that there was no independent verification of anything they’d learnt from the second set of prisoners. Parliament had passed a vote of thanks, while ambitious politicians were lining up to praise Montrose and demand the government work faster to save Timeline F from itself. The reports of widespread degeneracy had shocked Parliament, not without reason. The analysts had recovered enough pornographic material from the captured computers to shock even hardened spooks. She shuddered to think what such exposure was going to their children.

“He’s not going to be happy working his way up the ladder, not after conquering a world,” Jarvis said. “Why would he step down?”

“He’s too loyal to go rogue,” Hotham insisted. “Julianne?”

“There are two problems,” Julianne said. “The first is that the war is not yet won. It is unlikely in the extreme that the United States of America” – an absurd concept, to one born in the Prime Timeline – “has surrendered. Montrose cannot have won. Not yet. We owe it to him to provide as much support as possible, even if we don’t entirely trust him.”

Hotham glowered. “And the second?”

Julianne braced herself. “Montrose could lose.”

“What?”

Julianne honestly couldn’t tell which of the men had spoken. Perhaps it had been both. The Protectorate hadn’t lost a battle in nearly a hundred years. There were few primal states capable of putting up even the slightest resistance, if the Protectorate decided to squash them, and none of the timelines they’d discovered earlier had enjoyed even the slightest concept of modern technology. The Protectorate had grown too used to its tradition of victory, to regarding war as a game and expansion as their natural right. The war games were as realistic as possible, pitting different units against their peers, but there were limits. It was difficult to imagine what it might be like to face a society that not only understood technology, yet could also mass-produce their own weapons and work to duplicate the Protectorate’s. It had never happened before.

And we don’t know how long it will take them to devise their own plasma cannons or antigravity systems, she thought. The researchers hadn’t been able to offer any sort of reassurance. There were too many unanswered questions for them to be sure of anything. How long will it take them to duplicate the Crosstime Transpositioner and reach our world?

“There is no way they can defeat us,” Hotham snapped. “Montrose can hold his position indefinitely.”

“We dare not assume so,” Julianne said, tartly. “The enemy has nukes. And ballistic missiles.”

“The Castles are capable of withstanding a nuke,” Hotham said.

“The degenerates only need to get lucky once,” Julianne said, keeping her voice calm. “We are committed to war now. We have no choice. We must support Montrose.”

“We’re already preparing the third invasion force,” Jarvis said. “The commander can be given orders to relieve Montrose.”

“For what?” Hotham’s face darkened. “What crime has he committed?”

“He arguably exceeded his orders,” Jarvis snapped.

“Arguably,” Hotham repeated. “Parliament will not agree.”

Julianne suspected he was right. Montrose had orders to be diplomatic – or to blow up Castle Treathwick – if he encountered an equal or superior civilisation. A primitive civilisation would pose no challenge, beyond a minor logistics headache. But one advanced enough to be useful without being advanced enough to be dangerous … Montrose had either been very brave or very stupid and no one would know for sure, not until the war was over. He might have done the right thing.

“We can convince Parliament,” Jarvis said.

“We cannot convince his supporters,” Hotham countered. “They’ll revolt.”

“And the last thing we need is a struggle for command authority in the middle of a war,” Julianne agreed. It wasn’t just Montrose. By long custom, a Captain-General had the right to nominate his subordinates, promising them a share in the new timeline in exchange for their service and support. Montrose hadn’t secured all of his choices, but he’d managed to get enough in place to ensure relieving him would be very tricky indeed. “If the enemy takes advantage of it …”

She let her voice trail off, suggestively. No previous opponent had been able to take advantage of command disunity. They’d lacked the insight to know when it was happening, or the ability to influence their betters. This group of degenerates might be … well, degenerates, yet that didn’t make them stupid. They might be as cunning as any primal, with the technology to make themselves really dangerous. The hell of it, she reflected, was that they’d probably been committed to war from the moment Castle Treathwick was rotated into the new timeline. The Protectorate needed neither competition nor subversion. And it would get both, if they failed to bring the new timeline under control.

The argument went on for hours, but the outcome was inevitable. The war would go on.

But in truth, Julianne reflected as the meeting finally came to an end, the matter was out of their hands. And had been so for months now.

Chapter One: Jubal, Texas, Timeline F (OTL)

This isn’t right, Sergeant Callam Boone thought, as he surveyed the deserted ruins of a once-proud town. This isn’t America.

He kept himself low, eyes sweeping the street as the small team lurked in the shadows. Jubal had been a prosperous town once, with a factory and a thriving population and everything they needed to support themselves, from a school to simple and affordable housing. It would have made an ideal retirement town, if the factory hadn’t shut down and plunged the town into a nightmare from which it had never recovered. The majority of the inhabitants had moved out, leaving a few stragglers mired in hopelessness and despair. It had been galling to watch the collapse of so many communities, to see people struggling with alcohol and drugs because they had little hope of ever bettering themselves; harder still to hear the lectures from snooty university lecturers, reporters, politicians and other rich and privileged men north of Richmond who had no idea what it was like to grow up in such a community and cared less. It was easy to see why so many of the remaining inhabitants had joined the enemy work gangs, even though it was technically treason. What had the United States done for them?

Callam spat as he leaned forward, bracing himself. It was dawn, the air light enough to see clearly without NVGs. The street was a wreck, a handful of burned-out cars and houses a grim reminder that the United States was in the grip of a military invasion from another world. The Protectorate – the Puritans, as they had come to be known – had swept through Jubal, blasting aside anyone who got in their way, and then abandoned the town after rounding up the population and moving them south. They had made all sorts of promises about cleaning up the local environment, but they’d done nothing to collect the garbage on the streets or repair the homes for human occupation. Callam felt a hint of shame as the wind picked up briefly, stirring the garbage on the streets. He’d seen such sights in Iraq during the war, but it felt wrong to see them in America. But it was just another sign of hopelessness. It ate people alive.

He glanced back at the rest of the team, then motioned them forward. The four men behind him looked like raiders rather than soldiers, carrying weapons that were surprisingly primitive compared to the high-tech array they’d deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they had no choice. The Protectorate was good at tracking radio signals and any other sort of betraying emission, their visual sensors were better than anything America could deploy. He glanced up into the lightening sky, wondering if there was a drone up there watching them. It was difficult to spot an American UAV with the naked eye, even one large enough to pass for a manned aircraft, and the Protectorate drones were smaller and stealthier. He’d been told the techs were working on ways to detect them, but he’d believe it when he saw it. There was no guarantee they’d crack the puzzle in time to matter.

They advanced forward, skirting the houses and crossing a wrecked schoolhouse that could have passed for Springfield Elementary. A body lay on the ground in front of the gates, so badly decayed it was impossible to tell what had killed it. Callam gave the corpse a quick glance and moved on, wishing there was time to give the dead man a proper burial. Someone had painted a note on a faded sign – SCHOOL’S OUT FOREVER – and left it there, exposed to the elements. Callam felt a twinge of something he didn’t want to look at too closely. If the Protectorate won the war, school really would be out forever. Defeat meant the end of the world.

They reached their planned ambush point and slowed, sweeping the surrounding area for possible threats. There were none, the rotting homes seemingly abandoned. He glanced into one and scowled as he saw the handful of faded pictures on the walls, left behind years before the invasion had begun. A young boy growing from a toddler to a child to a teenager to a young adult … he wondered, suddenly, what had happened to the kid and his parents. They’d left their home and then … what? Why had they left in such a hurry?

He checked his watch, then unslung his rucksack and removed the electromagnetic trap. The device looked crude and cumbersome, as if it had been assembled by someone who didn’t quite know what he was doing, but he’d been assured it should work. Corporal Bulgier took the other half of the device out of his bag and emplaced it on the far side of the street, half-hidden by a garbage can. Callam tensed as he triggered the lasers, linking the two halves of the device together. He’d been told the system was undetectable, but it was hard to be sure. The Protectorate had surprised the defenders before and no doubt it would do so again.

“Get into place,” he hissed, just loudly enough to be heard. The ambush site wasn’t perfect, but what was in this day and age? He disliked having to rely on a plan with too many moving parts and he was painfully aware of just how much could go wrong, yet … he’d just have to hope for the best. “Keep your heads down as much as possible.”

“Yes, Granddad,” Corporal Bulgier hissed back.

Callam gave him a sharp look as he found a place to hide. He’d thought himself retired from war, when he’d left the Marine Corps to become the Sheriff of Flint, and if the Protectorate hadn’t invaded he knew it was unlikely he would ever see war again. He certainly hadn’t thought there would be a civil war, even though he’d seen the spreading hopelessness and despair and outright hatred of the federal government. The population was too beaten down to consider revolt, or working on building its own self-supporting networks and having as little to do with the government as possible. And then …

Guilt gnawed at his heart. It had been sheer luck he’d been far enough from Flint to escape, when the Protectorate arrived. Cold logic told him he’d done the right thing in running, in taking everything he’d seen to higher authority, but he didn’t believe it. He felt like a coward, running from danger even as darkness swept over the town that had elected him Sheriff. The folk back home were under the yoke now, a yoke that was oddly light in some ways and very harsh in others. Or so he’d been told. Reports from the occupied zone were vague and often contradictory. He suspected some were little more than enemy propaganda. The Protectorate had had no trouble finding allies, people willing to sell out their country for money, power, or even something as simple as medical care and enough food to fill their bellies. If they had come into the world blind, they knew what they were dealing with now.

And no matter how many times I fight now, he thought, it will never be enough.

His watch vibrated, once. Callam tensed. It was time. He peered forward, half-expecting to see a handful of enemy hovertanks rocketing towards him. The Protectorate could move with terrifying speed and it was certainly possible they’d want to nip any trouble in the bud, although it was unlikely they’d pegged his team as a major threat. Or indeed any kind of threat. Seventy miles to the east, a USMC formation was risking their lives to mount a diversionary attack, to draw the enemy’s attention away from him. The guilt grew stronger, a mocking reminder of his failure. He wouldn’t fail again.

A faint whining noise echoed on the air, sending unpleasant feelings through his body. He wasn’t entirely unaware of sonic weapons, but it was one thing to read about them and another to experience the effect in person. It was disconcerting, even worrying. The sound grew louder as he gritted his teeth, reminding himself he’d been through worse. And yet it made him want to be afraid.

It isn’t real, he told himself, sharply. It isn’t real!

The sound grew more unpleasant as the drone came into view, a tiny flying saucer about twice the size of a garbage can lid. It reminded him of a drone he’d seen during his last deployment, except it was smaller and radiated strobe lights that made it hard to see clearly. He’d thought the drone would be an easy target – he was a very good shot and his team included shooters who were even better – but the combination of lights and vibration made it hard to pick out the actual drone from the blurry haze. His head twanged painfully as a strobe light pulsed against his eyeballs, a grim reminder of just what longer exposure could do to him. If half the tales were true, a protest march in Austin had ended with the protestors comatose, vomiting, or otherwise incapable of offering resistance – or even running – before it was too late.

He looked down, watching as the drone came closer. It was hard to tell if it was being controlled remotely by a distant pilot or operating on some kind of AI, although he supposed it hardly mattered. The Protectorate used the drones to patrol the edge of its sphere of influence, making it clear that anyone who tried to cross no-man’s land did so at severe risk of their lives. Callam ground his teeth in silent frustration, bracing himself as the last few seconds ticked away …

A deafening shriek, almost human, split the air as the trap was sprung. The drone stopped dead, vibrating so violently Callam half-expected it to tear itself apart as it threw sparks in all directions, then crashed to the ground. He ducked down quickly, fearing the drone would carry a self-destruct charge, although he was already too close to be safe. The Protectorate didn’t have lawyers impeding military operations and while they didn’t set out to cause civilian casualties they didn’t let the fear of killing innocents get in their way either. They certainly wouldn’t let it stop them from fitting a self-destruct into their drones.

It hit the ground. Callam let out a breath as the whining sound and crazy lighting died away. He hadn’t felt so disconcerted since his first combat patrol, despite the best training the USMC could provide, but the effect was fading rapidly now. He forced himself to stand and hurry towards the drone, feeling an odd sense of unreality nagging at his mind. It felt like gazing upon a scorpion or a spider, an uneasy sense there was something fundamentally wrong about the thing in front of him. Up close, the drone was smaller than he’d thought, the disc studded with sensor arrays and devices that had no obvious function. They didn’t look like weapons. The damage was difficult to assess. A number of tiny arrays looked broken, but he didn’t know enough to tell if there was any internal damage.

Score one for the techs, he thought. They didn’t know how the drone flew – up close, there were no propellers or tiny jet intakes – but they had been sure they could bring the flying saucer crashing down. Whatever they did, it worked.

“Get the body bag,” he snapped. “Hurry!”

“Here,” Corporal Hastings said. The lone woman in the group, she moved with practiced ease to open the black bag and hold it ready. “Hurry!”

Callam nodded. It was oddly hard to touch the drone – it felt like reaching out to pick up a spider, the sensation refusing to abate even as his fingers touched cooling metal – but he forced himself to lift the drone and shove it into the bag. The techs had assured him that the material was designed to block everything from radio to a handful of electromagnetic radiations he’d never even heard of, ensuring the Protectorate couldn’t track their missing drone and throw a missile at it from a safe distance, yet it was impossible to be sure. Six months ago, alternate timelines had been nothing more than bad science-fiction, with evil goatee-wearing counterparts tormenting the main characters before being booted back to their own dimension. Now …

His lips twitched. Do I have a counterpart in their world? One with a goatee?

Callam shoved his empty rucksack to Corporal Hastings, then slung the body bag over his shoulders and stood. He’d expected the drone to be heavier, but it was only lightly more weighty than the dustbin lid it so resembled. He supposed it wasn’t really a surprise. The Marine Corps had been working hard to lighten everything for easier deployment, in hopes of ensuring a major force could get halfway around the world before some local tyrant decided to cause too much trouble, and the Protectorate clearly felt the same way. The rest of the team was already bugging out, as planned. It felt wrong – the Corps did not leave men behind – but there was no choice. The enemy might already be on the way.

He unhooked a grenade from his belt and held it at the ready as he walked away, then removed the pin and tossed it at the crash site. It was unlikely any investigators would believe the drone destroyed beyond all hope of recognition, not if they sifted through the crash site, but it was just possible any distant observers would think the drone had exploded. It might buy a few seconds more as they picked up speed, hurrying towards the extraction point. They didn’t dare risk bringing vehicles too close to the region, not when they’d make easy targets for enemy air power. They had to put some distance between themselves and the enemy before it was too late.

This is America, he thought, with a hot flash of anger. It isn’t right!

Corporal Hastings slowed as the sound of distant gunfire echoed through the air. Callam motioned for her to pick up the pace, even though the air was growing warmer by the second. They were too far from the diversionary attack to hear anything – he thought – but it was impossible to be sure of that too. The shooting could be anything from a local offensive to resistance insurgents or drug or people smugglers taking advantage of the chaos to ply their deadly trade. Or men who thought they were the last free Americans in the world. The army had stumbled across a half-hidden ranch of people who thought the Protectorate had overrun the entire country, if not the entire world. It had been surprisingly hard to convince them that the world had not ended. Not yet.

He cursed under his breath as he heard a distant whine, his ears twitching unpleasantly as he picked up speed.  The enemy might have been diverted or they might not … it didn’t matter. He forced himself to keep going, heading towards the extraction point as the rest of the team hurried elsewhere. They would probably be ignored, he told himself, as he felt sweat prickling down his back. Better they got clear before it was too late.

“Crap,” Corporal Hastings muttered.

Callam glanced back. Two more drones were gliding towards them, moving with terrifying speed. They could have blasted both Americans if they’d wanted … that meant the drones, or their controllers, wanted to take prisoners. Callam wasn’t reassured. The Protectorate was more civilised than many of America’s other foes, but no one had any doubt that any captives would be interrogated and they would be forced to talk. There was certainly no reason to think the Protectorate was be any different. They probably had some super-advanced lie detectors and truth drugs to ensure that whatever they were told was actually true.

He gritted his teeth. “Run!”

The whining grew louder as they ran, the drones getting alarmingly close. He had no idea what they had to capture prisoners – his imagination suggested everything from netting to phasers on stun – but they were running out of time. The noise was making his ears ache, reaching into his brain and making it hard to think … he nearly stumbled, his sense of balance suddenly twisting to the point he almost fell. His muscles jittered painfully, threatening to cramp … it was hard to keep going. He hadn’t felt so sore since his first weeks at Camp Pendleton. He’d thought himself in good shape and yet …

He heard a shout and threw himself to the ground as the RPG team fired, nearly at point-blank range. The RPGs were primitive compared to Javelins and other modern antitank missiles, but that wasn’t a disadvantage against an enemy capable of countering and neutralising most modern weapons. The warheads were touchy too, detonating near the drones even if they didn’t score direct hits. He turned his head just in time to see the drones crashing to the ground.

“Got them, Sarge,” Private Singh snapped.

“Set the charges, then get moving,” Callam ordered. He’d hoped the RPG team would be able to avoid contact and withdraw without being noticed, let alone engaged. They had taken a calculated risk in leading the drones to the team … he told himself, sharply, that they’d done what they had to in order to secure their prize. The drone they’d captured might prove the key to defeating the Protectorate. Might. “We don’t have much time.”

He glanced south, feeling cold despite the heat. Everything looked normal and yet, only a few miles away, American territory was in the iron grip of a crosstime invasion. Six months ago, it would have been unthinkable. The idea was absurd. He snorted as they set the charges and hurried off, leaving them to detonate. The idea of a military invasion of the United States had been inconceivable, after the Civil War.

But a great deal had changed since then.

Mary Beth Wilkins knows she made a mistake the moment she sees her beloved library burn.

She also knows what she must do next to protect herself and her secret. And although she failed to save this library, she has a more important purpose to fulfill—a magical purpose.

If she acts fast.

“The Midbury Lake Incident” is available for one week on this site. The ebook is also available on all retail stores, as well as here.

 

The Midbury Lake Incident By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

 

Mary Beth Wilkins had the most perfect library, until one day, in the middle of June, the library burned down.

She arrived at the two-hundred-year-old structure to find the roof collapsed, the walls blackened, and the books…well, let’s just say the books were gone, floating away in the clouds of smoke that darkened the early morning sky.

No one had called her, even though she had always thought of the Midbury Lake Public Library as her library. She was the only librarian, and even though she didn’t own the building—the Town of Midbury Lake did—she treated it like her own, defended it like a precious child, and managed to find funding, even in the dark years of dwindling government support.

She sat in her ancient Subaru, too shocked to move, not just because the firefighters were still poking out of the smoking building as if they were posing for the cover of next year’s Fire Fighters Calendar, but because of all of the emotions that rose within her.

Grief wasn’t one of them. Grief would come, she knew. Grief always came, whether you wanted it or not. She had learned that in her previous life—a much more adventurous life, a life lived, her mother would say (and why, why was she thinking of her mother? Mary Beth had banned thoughts of her mother for nearly ten years). No one could avoid grief, but grief came in its own sweet time.

No, the dominant emotion she was feeling was fury. Fury that no one had called her. Fury that the library—her sanctuary—was gone. Fury that her day—her life—had been utterly destroyed.

She gripped the leather cover she had placed on the Subaru’s steering wheel, so that her hands would never touch metal or hard plastic, and she made herself take a deep breath.

Her routines were shattered. Every morning she arrived before six, made coffee, put out the fresh-baked donuts whose tantalizing aroma was, even now, wafting out of the back seat.

Her assistant, Lynda Sue, would arrive shortly, and then Mary Beth would have to comfort her, since Lynda Sue was prone to dramatics—she had been a theatah majah once, you knoow, deah—and then it would become all about Lynda Sue and the Patrons and the Library and the Funding, and oh, dear, Mary Beth would find herself in the middle of a mainstream maelstrom.

Too many emotions, including her own.

She had made a serious mistake, because her morning routine hadn’t been in her control. That meditative hour, before anyone arrived, would happen at the library, in what everyone called the Great Room, which was—had been—a wall of windows overlooking Midbury Lake and the hills beyond.

Midbury Lake changed with the seasons and sometimes, Mary Beth thought, with her moods. This morning, the lake itself seemed to be ablaze, the reds and oranges reflecting on the rippling water.

Then she realized that the colors were coming from the sunrise, not from the fire at the library, and she bowed her head.

When she opened the car door, a new phase of her life would begin, and she would have to make choices.

It had been so nice not to make choices any more.

It had been wonderful to be Mary Beth Wilkins, small town librarian.

She would miss Mary Beth.

She could never rebuild Mary Beth.

She would have to become someone new, and becoming someone new always took way too much work.

***

She drove back to her apartment, and parked near the secluded wooded area near the two-story block-long building. She often parked there—at least she had kept up that old habit—and knew all the ways to the building’s back entrance that couldn’t be seen from the street.

Then she glanced over the back seat of the car. The donuts. That little incompetent clerk at the local donut shop probably wouldn’t remember her, and as usual, Mary Beth had paid cash. She hoped if anyone saw her, they would think they’d seen her earlier than they had or maybe they would confuse the days.

She hoped. Because she had stopped thinking defensively three years ago. Somehow, she had thought Midbury Lake was too remote, too obscure, too off-the-beaten path for anyone to find her.

Better yet, she had thought no one remembered her. She had done everything she could to scour herself from the records, and she hadn’t used magic in what seemed like forever, so she wouldn’t leave a trail.

The donut aroma was too much for her, or maybe she had just become one of those middle-aged women who ate whenever they were stressed. She didn’t care. She reached into the back seat, nudged up the top of the donut box, and took a donut, covering her fingers with granules of sugar.

She couldn’t fix the library, not without someone noticing.

She bit into the donut, savoring the mix of sugar and grease and soft, perfect cake. She would miss these donuts. They were special.

At least she had already picked a new name. She needed to adopt it. Not Mary Beth Wilkins any longer. Now, Victoria Dowspot. Her identification for the new identity was in the apartment. She should have been carrying it. Yet another mistake.

She also should have been practicing the name in her own mind. She hadn’t done that either. Victoria. Victoria Marie Dowspot.

Another librarian. The kind of single middle-aged woman no one noticed, even, apparently, when her library burned.

She swallowed the fury. That was Mary Beth’s fury, not Victoria’s. She needed to keep that in mind.

Victoria finished the donut, wiped the sugar off her mouth, then sighed. The donuts, comfortable in their box, were just one symbol of all she had to do, how lax she had become.

She stepped out of the Subaru, then pulled out the donut box, and put it in the trunk. No one would accidentally see them there. And there was nothing else in the car that would directly tie it to her, at least from the perspective of someone who didn’t know her.

She had learned, three identities ago, to be as cautious about strange little details as possible. Too bad she had gotten so relaxed here in Midbury Lake. She had already made half a dozen mistakes.

She hoped they weren’t fatal.

She snuck up the back stairs, stepping around the creaks and groans, and quietly turned the key in her apartment door’s deadbolt. She pushed the door open and slipped inside. Magoo greeted her, concern on his feline face. He was a big orange male, battered when she found him, or, rather, when he found her.

He had lived through two different identity changes, the only consistent part of her life. She always thanked the universe that librarians and cats went together like hands and gloves. No one thought anything of a librarian who had cat.

Victoria was just glad she hadn’t brought him to the library of late. That had actually been his idea. He hadn’t liked one of the new patrons, a middle-aged man with an overloaded face—big forehead, small piggy eyes, heavy cheekbones.

She hadn’t like him either, but unlike Magoo, she couldn’t bail on her job.

Until today, that is. And she would bail because they would think her dead in that fire.

She just had to do a few things first.

She had a go-bag in the van she kept in the apartment’s parking area. She paid for the extra space, telling the management the van belonged to her cousin, whom she’d pretended to be more than once. She would use that disguise again today, after she grabbed some food and water for Magoo. Everything else would stay here.

She wouldn’t mind leaving this apartment. It was dark, especially in the winter, but it was heavily soundproofed and, unlike the library, made of stone.

Magoo looked at her, his tail drooping. He knew. He hated what was going to come next, but at least he didn’t run away from her.

She scooped him under one arm and put him in the special cat carrier she had made. It was solid on the inside, but on the outside, it looked like a canvas carryall. And she had spelled it so no one could see a cat inside.

Magoo made one soft sound of protest, but he went in willingly enough. She put one bag of his dry food in her real carryall, along with two extra cans of his wet food. Then she grabbed two of his toys, the ones he played with the most, and packed them as well.

Her eyes filled with tears as she looked at the remaining cat toys, scattered on the hard wood floor. The toys were battered and well loved, and she had to leave them behind.

Funny, how the emotion rose over Magoo’s things, and not her own. She had worked on staying unattached for so long that she didn’t mind leaving her possessions behind. She minded leaving his.

She stood. She had hoped she could stay in Midbury Lake. After so many years, she had thought she could. But she should have known that disaster would follow her.

It always did.

She made herself take a deep breath, then ran a hand over her forehead. She went into the bedroom, smoothed the coverlet on the bed because she didn’t want anyone to think she was a slob, not that it mattered. It wasn’t her after all; it was Mary Beth.

Then she peered out the bedroom window, with its view of the parking lot. She couldn’t see the Subaru, but the van looked just fine.

No one else stood in the lot either. So, it was now or never.

She clenched a fist and focused her ears on the Subaru. Then she slid her right fingernails along her thumb, mimicking the slow opening of a trunk lid. She heard it unlock, and squeal open.

For the first time, she was happy she had never used rust remover. Sometimes it was the little things that allowed success.

Always, it was the little things.

Then she scooped her left hand downward. She could feel the donut box, even though it was far away. She levitated it, seeing it in her mind’s eye, and waited until it was over the trees before igniting it. Then she sent it to the library, as fast as the breeze could take it.

If anyone saw the burning box, they’d think it sparks or debris from the library fire, or a figment of their imaginations.

The box arrived, and she lowered it into one of the still burning sections, careful to keep it away from firefighters.

Then she closed the trunk lid, and leaned on the windowsill.

Her heart was pounding as if she had run five miles. She had trouble catching her breath. Sweat dripped from her forehead.

She was out of practice on everything, and that wasn’t good. She really had become complacent.

And she still had some magic to go before she could quit.

She wiped off her forehead with the back of her hand, then crouched beside the bed. She removed a locked box with her many identities and two dental models of her mouth.

Her hand was shaking as she removed one of the dental models. This was the tricky spell, and she was tired from the easy one. She had to make real human teeth out of one of the models. Then she had to send it to the library, and lower it into one of the still burning sections. If there were still-burning sections.

She had been moving awfully slowly.

She grabbed the glass of water beside her bed. The glass was smudged. Magoo had probably stuck his little face in it, just so he could touch the water with his tongue.

Even so, she needed the refreshment, so she drank. The water was warm and stale, and she thought she could taste cat saliva. Probably her overactive imagination.

She drank the entire glass, then set it down, and squared her shoulders. She held the dental model, squinched her eyes closed, and imagined it as bone, yellowed with age and tarnished with plaque.

She opened her eyes. She was now holding a mandible instead of a model. It actually looked like someone had ripped teeth from her mouth.

She shuddered just a little, opened the window six inches and stuck her hand—and the teeth—outside. Then she sent them to the burning library.

Her mind’s eye showed her that one section still burned. She lowered the teeth there, snapped the mandible in half, and let it fall. It didn’t matter if it hit someone. They wouldn’t know what it was. They would think it was just debris.

She shut off her mind’s eye for the second time, leaned back, and felt her legs wobble.

If only she could sit for twenty minutes. But she couldn’t. She had to get out of here before someone remembered her, before someone decided to check up on her.

That fury rose a third time—no one was thinking of her at all—and then she remembered that it played to her advantage.

She wiped a shaking hand over her forehead, and turned around.

That hideous man with the overloaded face was standing in the doorway, holding Magoo with one hand. If anything, the man looked even more menacing than he had in the library.

And Magoo seemed remarkably calm. He hated being held without having someone support his back feet.

And he hated this man.

She held her position, as if she were frozen in fear. Her heart was pounding too hard. She hated it when someone snuck up on her, but that was her fault. She hadn’t retuned her ears.

Even when she was trying not to be careless, she was being very careless indeed.

“Making your escape?” the man asked. “You’re a little slow this time, Darcy, aren’t you? Complacent. It trips up escapees every single time.”

Her heart pounded harder. He used her real name. She stared at Magoo, whose ears were flat.

Then she made herself swallow against a dry throat.

“Put him down,” she said, careful not to use Magoo’s name. She didn’t even have to work at making her voice quaver. “He didn’t do anything.”

“True enough,” the man said. “He isn’t even a real familiar. And even though he’s lived in close proximity to you for—what? a year?—your magic hasn’t rubbed off on him.”

The caveman’s numbers were wrong. She wasn’t sure if that was deliberate. She wasn’t sure if he had said that to get her to correct him. She wasn’t going to correct him.

Because Magoo was a familiar, but she had cloaked him long ago. And he had clearly practiced his itty bitty magic more than she had. He had made a doppelganger, and that doppelganger was at least a year old. How often had Magoo used that doppelganger with her, so that he could do whatever it was he did when he didn’t want her to catch him? Enough so that this doppelganger had some heft and a tiny bit of catlike life.

Good for Magoo, sending the doppelganger out when he heard the caveman come through the door.

Or was the creature that the man held actually Magoo?

Her heart rate spiked.

She was going to have to use her mind’s eye to check, which meant magic, which meant even more doors opening, more people coming for her. Those tears pricked her eyes again.

“What do you want?” she asked the man, even though she knew.

“We need you back in Alexandria,” he said.

How many times had she heard that answer in her nightmares? And for how many years? Ever since she had inherited the library. The real library and all of its knowledge, once thought lost.

Her stomach twisted. “And if I don’t go?”

He raised Magoo—or the Magoo doppelganger—and shook him slightly. The cat made a mew of protest. Unless the man had magicked Magoo, that really was the doppelganger. The actual Magoo would’ve bitten the man’s fingers off.

“Do you really want to test it?” the man asked.

She clenched her fists. No, she didn’t want to test it. And no, she didn’t want to deal with the man either, because that would mean fire, and if she somehow set this place on fire, and the library was already burning, then that would draw attention to Mary Beth Wilkins, and Darcy (no, Victoria. She had to think of herself as Victoria) didn’t want any attention ever falling on Mary Beth.

“What do you get paid if you bring me to Alexandria?” she asked, not willing to say, Bring me back, because that would imply that she had left, and in actuality, she had never been to Alexandria. The library had. The library was born there, and parts of the library died there. Her ancestors managed to save some of it—much of it—during the four different times it burned.

But they had learned to never, ever put the books back on the shelves, because doing so brought out men like this one. And sometimes started fires.

She took a deep silent breath, then flashed her mind’s eye for a half second, looking past the man, seeing what his powers were, and seeing if that creature he held was the real Magoo.

The man had less power than he thought he did, and the creature wasn’t Magoo. Magoo was crouching motionlessly in his carryall.

She retracted her mind’s eye, but the man had noticed.

So she stood taller, and let her power thread up. Without planning it, she extended one hand and sent a ball of flame to the man so quickly that he didn’t have time to scream before it engulfed him.

His mouth opened, then his face melted as his entire body incinerated.

She stopped the fire before it destroyed him completely. The stench of burning meat and grease filled the air.

Magoo sneezed.

The man’s body had toppled to the hardwood floor, and the flames had left a serious scorch mark. She walked over to the body, and poked it with her foot.

She had needed a body. Actually having one would be so much better than those stupid teeth had been.

She bent over him, and separated the top of the skull from the jawbone. She left the top of the skull to float just above the body. Then she removed some small bones from the feet and the hands, not enough to show that the hands were bigger than hers, but enough to show that the hands were human. She took a small portion of a rib as well.

She compiled them into a little ball, covered them with a cloak, and sent them, still steaming, through the still-open window. She monitored them as she sent them to the library, and let them tumble into the section where she had sent the teeth.

Then she uncloaked them. Their steam mixed with the smoke of the still-smoldering section.

She shut off her mind’s eye and took a shuddering breath, then wished she hadn’t. It tasted foul, like rotting meat. She licked her lips.

Her neighbors would notice that odor.

She used the last of her energy to cremate the remains into little bits of nothing, careful to contain the fire. Then she put it all out, staggered into her kitchen, and took out a broom and dustpan. She swept up the ash, and dumped it into the toilet in small sections, flushing several times so that it wouldn’t clog up the system.

By the time she was done, she was woozy with exhaustion. She hadn’t used that much magical power in years and years. And using it had opened the door to more interlopers like the man who had just died.

She ran a hand through her hair and looked in the mirror. Shadows under her eyes, and a face smudged with ash. She washed off her skin, then staggered into the kitchen and drank an ancient bottle of Ice Blue Gatorade. It helped, a little.

In the living room, Magoo mewed. It was probably a get-me-out-of-here mew, but she took it as a move-your-ass mew. Because she had to.

She really had been careless. Not just here, but at the Midbury Lake Public Library.

That fire. It had to be her fault. Not because she set it, but because she hadn’t monitored the books. With all the interest in the history of the ancient world these days, particularly the history of religion as it pertained to modern times, someone had probably ordered a book through interlibrary loan that she hadn’t seen.

A paper book, one that shouldn’t be on the shelf of a library where she worked. A paper book about paganism or magic spells or showing ancient scrolls. The kind of book that had actually been in the Library of Alexandria in its heyday or in the Serapeum just before it was destroyed.

The kind of book stored inside her memory, in a locked area, where she couldn’t touch it. Like the women before her, all of them, from the same family. She likened that locked area to a computer chip. It contained knowledge and power, but only tapped that knowledge and power when something demanded them.

She had put herself in a position where nothing would tap the knowledge, or she thought she had. But she hadn’t done enough. She should have kept an active inventory on the books that her family guarded. She hadn’t, and it had caused this.

Because, whenever one of the old books hit a shelf, or a facsimile of one of the old books hit a shelf near a library repositorian (like her), the ancient spells revived, the ones that had actually destroyed the library. If the books from the Library of Alexandria reappeared on shelves, those shelves were supposed to burn.

Her family, one of the 16 ancient families that guarded the library’s knowledge, had never been able to counter those spells. Her grandmother had died trying, so her mother simply avoided libraries, bookstores, and any other place where books gathered.

Darcy had embraced libraries, but she had been cautious.

Not cautious enough though, since that horrid man had found her. And she had destroyed her favorite little library by not monitoring what crossed its shelves.

She went back into the living room. The carryall was inching its way across the floor. Apparently Magoo had had enough.

She crouched beside him and put her hand on his back through the soft side of the carryall.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “We still have to go.”

Before someone caught her again. Before someone took her back to Alexandria. Before someone tried to take that chip of library knowledge out of her brain, and destroy it entirely. Or, worse in her opinion, tried to revive it all at once, and use it for the wrong purpose—whatever that purpose might be.

She put on the wig and hoodie that marked her as Mary Beth’s cousin, then grabbed both carryalls and walked to the door. The apartment still smelled faintly of greasy meat, and there was a lingering bit of smoke.

That was on her. It was always on her.

The magic inside her wasn’t her own. It wasn’t even the library’s. It was an ancient evil spell, designed to destroy the very things she loved.

Books.

Maybe the next time she stopped somewhere, she wouldn’t become a librarian. Maybe she would run a movie theater or open a donut shop. Or maybe she would spend her days in genteel poverty, sitting in a coffee shop and watching the world go by.

She had a lot of time to think about it, and a long way to drive. Where to, she didn’t know. She would wait until she deemed herself as far from this place as possible, in a location that seemed as far from Alexandria as possible.

Then she let herself out and walked down the stairs, quietly, so as not to disturb the neighbors, who were already gathering around the front of the building. She could hear the conversation: they thought the stench was coming from the burning library.

Let them.

People always misunderstood why libraries burned. They blamed old paper or faulty wiring. They never blamed the ignorant, who deemed some knowledge worthy and some too frightening to know.

She wished she could defend that knowledge, but all she could do was protect it, and hold it, until someone else came up with a solution. And when the time came, she would pass that little kernel on to some other member of her family, who would adopt the burden and treasure it.

Like she had adopted Magoo.

“Come on, kiddo,” she said to him as they headed to the van. “Adventures await.”

And she hoped those adventures would be of the gentle, placid kind. Like summer mornings staring at a still Midbury Lake.

One could always hope. Because hope was what kept the bits of the library alive. Hope that one day the spells would lift, one day the library would be reunited, and one day the books would return to the shelves.

And she would never ever have to grieve again.

 

____________________________________________

“The Midbury Lake Incident” is available for one week on this site. The ebook is also available on all retail stores, as well as here.

The Midbury Lake Incident

Copyright © 2015 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and layout copyright © 2015 by WMG Publishing
Cover design by WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Dimdimich/Dreamstime
Uncollected Anthology logo art © Tanya Borozenets/Dreamstime
Uncollected Anthology logo design © Stephanie Writt

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

 

I built the coziest keyboard ever.

You might remember that earlier I was looking for a better keyboard. Whenever I searched for a keyboard, I always ended up with the gaming keyboards. HyperX. Razer. Black, lots of RGB, that type of thing. I’ve tried ergonomic keyboards, I’ve tried unorthodox keyboards, I’ve tried a lot of things.

Then, as I was browsing Instagram, I stumbled on to a video showcasing “the coziest keycaps ever.”

Computer keyboards consist of 3 main parts:

• The keyboard case and the electronic guts inside it
• The switches, which are small chunks of electronic in a plastic housing with a couple of contacts sticking out and a spring. When you press the keyboard key, that’s what you actually feel.
• The keycaps, the little pieces of plastic that your fingers make contact with when you are typing

The keycaps are supposed to be removable but I’ve never messed with them. However, it occurred to me that I would like the cute keycaps. And these weren’t just cute, they were cozy.

There is an entire genre of games, like Stardew Valley, that specializes in creating a cozy, comforting feel. These games are usually farm-based, but sometimes you make potions or run a magical bakery.

These keycaps were objectively cozy. I googled “changing keycaps” and promptly fell down the rabbit hole.

Modern keyboards are modable. Meaning, you can mix and match keyboard base, switches, and keycaps. You can add or remove foam to change the sound. And if the keyboard is marked as hot-swappable, the switches just pop right in. No soldering required.

The volume of information about modding keyboards is staggering. I was aware of different switches before. Red switches were tactile, meaning they had a little bump when you press them, and they were loud. Brown switches were linear and quiet. Or was it the other way around? Blue switches were ….. something eh? What the hell is a holy panda switch? What is a creamy switch? What does thocky mean?

I have watched a ridiculous amount of instructional videos, and I’ve learned that it’s all about preference. Some people love silent keyboards; others want ASMR sound. Some want tactile switches with a bump; others want smooth linears. Some people want specific features like volume knobs or certain features like weightier keyboards. Some want full layout with the number pad, other like TKL without it, or 75 or 65 keyboards. The whole point of this exercise is to customize your typing experience.

I decided that I like keyboards that made comforting sounds, loud, but not too loud, and not that clacky. The jury was still out on switches at that point. I also wanted a volume control and at least 75 layout. I consulted with Gordon, who pointed out that keyboards are our primary work tool so I might as well get the keyboard I want. Thus emboldened, I bought all the things.

I started with the keycaps. But I also needed to put those keycaps into something. My first keyboard purchase was a Keychron, which is kind of a good starting point to learn about modable keyboards. It is a decent keyboard, no amazing, but it felt a lot better than my previous keyboards. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have bought it, but it gave me a baseline.

Keychron V3 Max TKL

Finny thing – I do not recall making this purchase. I was online late at night and although I must’ve bought it, I have zero recollection of it. This is a TKL layout, meaning everything except for the number pad, which I do not use. It is programmable, it has a bit of rgb, and the volume knob – which I really love – and it came with Gateron Jupiter banana switches. These are tactile switches that give you a little bump to let you know the key has been pressed.

Here the sound of Keychron in action as I’m writing this post. Not super amazing. The sound on all of the videos is up. The keyboard and all others are not quite that loud.

But I ordered my cozy keycaps and I wanted a proper keyboard for it. Also I didn’t want to spend a butt ton of money on it because this adventure can get expensive fast. I started looking around at “budget” modable keyboards and came across this one from Akko.

It is wood. It is very elegant, too, but I didn’t care about the elegance. I was all about the cuteness.

Not only this wood go beautifully with my keycaps, but I suspected that it would also match my sound preferences. The entire point of modding a keyboard is to make it exactly the way you like it and sound is a big part of that. I like a little bit more resistance in my switches and I wanted a pleasant typing sound. Keychron wasn’t doing it.

As an aside, people get super-serious about this. Keyboards can sound clicky, or creamy, or thockky, or clacky. Some switches have longer travel distance, some shorter. Some have to be pressed harder. Some are silent. I will have some links for you down below.

Anyway, I ordered the Akko.

Here it is on my desk.

It is a lovely keyboard. It is solid, and heavy, and I love everything about it. It came with rosewood switches, which have a deeper typing sound. I listened to them and promptly yanked them out to try all the other stuff I ordered. There was a slight learning curve, but after some trial and error, success was achieved. I swap switches like a champ now.

I tried Asura switches. I tried Akko creamy blue and lavender. I tried Gateron Bananas. I tried a lot of things. So far the best switch I’ve tried is HMX Butter. It is surprisingly a linear switch and I seem to prefer tactile because I type with some force, but it is just a very nice switch. It is smooth, and it feels very nice to type on.

Full disclosure: I have more switches coming. There is no hope for me. The Pandora’s box has been opened. I have also modded a keyboard for Kid 2.

And then, yesterday, my keycaps arrived. They arrived in a beautiful box with a handy keycap removal tool, so switching them was a breeze.

Behold, the coziest keyboard known to man.

Click to enlarge Froggie left Froggie right

I love it, I love it, I love it!

But what does it sound like? Please keep in mind that half of it is still rosewood switches and half HMX butter. I’m still deciding. (Link for email readers.)

I want this!

I’ve got you:

• Link to the Youtube channel where I got my education: Hipyo Tech and in particular this video is good to start: 50 keyboards
• Akko wood keyboard available from Amazon.
• KiiBOOM Cozydiaries Rainy Froggy Day Keycap set

Now, please excuse me. I have some typing to do.

The post The Coziest Keyboard Ever first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

 Yep.

 

 

 About:

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The Federation is finally ticking along as things start to come together. The Tauren war is over in the west, the Federation is growing steadily, and the economy is bright. There are dark clouds on the horizon however. The Spirits have returned with dire warnings of an ancient evil alliance brewing in the northern sectors.

Admiral Irons has his hands full with politics and the pirate war in Sigma Sector. They finally have a lead on the pirate capital, the battle moon known as Atlas XIV or El Dorado. Fleets and the Cadre are on the move to Sigma in preparation of the final assault there.

Pirate Empress Catherine the Great has been scheming and readying her titanic ship to flee to a new hiding spot. It is now a race to see if she can get away before the fleet finds her. But Admiral Irons is first and foremost an engineer. Engineers have a motto, when in doubt, use a bigger hammer. Well, Admiral Irons is the premier engineer and if he is good at anything it is that he is an expert on Lowering the Hammer.

Amazon:  Amazon

B&N: B&N 

 

P.S.: BOOK 90!!!!

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Chapter 4

 

Antigua

 

Admiral Irons replacement search for a new secretary of industry was off to a rocky start. Sandra’kall had recently resigned to join her family at the Nuevo B colony and be a member of the ruling cabinet there. He still thought she would have done better for her people in her previous position; however, she wanted to be closer to her people and her family so he couldn’t fault that decision. It was just unusual for a usually logical Centaurian to choose emotion over cold hard logic.

Of course, there might be something else involved he was not aware of. Not that it was any of his business apparently. He glanced at the candidates. Sprite had two dozen files from the literal thousands that had been initially generated. Even more had applied for the position once it had come out that the Centaurian was resigning.

He’d thought they’d be able to fill her post before her departure, but apparently, that hadn’t been the case. The first three candidates had not passed the vetting process and the fourth runner-up had some issues that had come out during the committee hearing with congress. It had been embarrassing enough for the candidate to withdraw.

Of course certain parties on the hill had gloated over that. He wasn’t certain why; it meant the post was vacant and the star nation as a whole had a problem. Not that they saw it that way of course. They saw it as scoring off of him and his administration. Reining him in.

Petty politics in other words.

<<V>>

Antigua

 

Jethro continued to deal with the pain of loss of Lil Red. Shanti continued to blame herself. Both had been to a therapist but it helped to talk to each other. “I was supposed to keep her safe,” she said.

Jethro shook his head. She sounded so … broken. Like it was her fault. It wasn’t; they both knew that. She hadn’t been home; it had been a freak crash during an air show that had killed their adopted daughter.

“You can’t be blamed for a freak accident! Murphy maybe, but not you love. It happened. We can’t wrap them in cotton and keep them safe forever.”

“You’d think she’d be safe at home! I should have insisted she stay with you.”

“It happened,” Jethro sighed. “It is something that … the rest of us will have to live with. I love you,” he said softly.

“I love you too,” she murmured back, kissing her fingertips and then holding them out to him. He smiled tenderly to her holographic image.

A blinking LED caught his attention. He knew it was time up. He reached out for a phantom caress of her cheek. She smiled tenderly and closed her eyes and seemed to rub into it.

“I won’t tell you to stay safe. I know you too well,” he said.

She chuffed.

“But watch your six and kick ass.”

“Yeah,” she said huskily. “We have to go.” She dashed a tear and then straightened up and nodded. “Kick some pirate ass. I love you.”

“I know and I will. And I love you too,” he said. “Thanks, Captain,” Jethro said as he looked up.

“You’re welcome, Chief. Terminating virtual chat,” Commander Enki replied.

<<V>>

Jethro prepped for work quietly. “Was that mom?” Baghera asked sleepily. He was the black panther male of the quartet. All four had a ways to go in the maturity department. A bit of that was because he hadn’t been around to be a father. He was trying to make up for lost time but it wasn’t easy this late in the game.

“Yeah, she had to go; sorry, you lot were asleep.”

“Was she here?” Bagheera asked, looking around in confusion. He sniffed the air, his brows knit still in confusion. “Wait, I don’t smell her.”

“No, it was a holo call. Brief,” Jethro explained patiently as he cleaned up the kitchen.

Bagheera blinked in confusion. “Oh,” he said.

“Red is …”

“They cremated her body and will ship it back as a diamond,” Jethro said quietly.

 Bagheera blinked again and then yawned. “Damn,” he muttered. “It is … is she really gone?” he asked and then ran a finger under his nose as he snuffled.

“I’m afraid so,” Jethro sighed softly. Some of the family were still struggling with the loss. Red had been their adopted daughter and an older sister/aunt/sitter to each of the litters. They were each dealing with the grief in their own way. The FBI as well as the Cadre had each offered a grief counselor to the family. So far he wasn’t aware of anyone taking them up on it.

The first litter were buried in their work. They were more mature and knew intellectually such things were bound to happen eventually. The sudden reaction was what caught them off guard.

“Mom should have left her here to be safe with us,” Bagheera muttered bitterly.

“Red was an adult; she wanted to be with your mom to help her out and so she wouldn’t feel so alone.” Jethro shook his head.

“Yeah? And it cost her her life!” Bagheera flared.

A corner of his father’s mind recognized anger as one of the stages of grief so he kept to reason. He didn’t want to provoke the fragile truce with his son or make the irrational anger turn towards him.

No, it wasn’t irrational, the anger was real. It was just adrift without a target as they all were, he reminded himself before he spoke.

“No, a freak accident did. She was at home safe. It could have happened here as easily as their or anywhere,” Jethro said, trying to keep his tone even. Bagheera glowered at him. “When fate chooses to snip your thread, it's a part of the circle of life.”

“Oh gah, not that shit again,” the smaller black panther said voice rich with disgust. He snorted harshly.

“It is what it is,” Jethro said with an ear flick of a shrug as he felt his fur stiffen. Bast shook her head on his HUD. He took it to indicate a lost cause. “Some things are just out of our control. It sucks. Trust me, I’ve felt it. I still feel it.”

He reached out to touch his son but his son turned away and headed into the bathroom. The door clicked shut with a sound of finality to the argument.

Jethro escaped to his commute to work while he could.

<<V>>

Jethro saw motion in the hallway near the floor as he walked through the new section of the base. His attention flickered from thinking about the list of things he had to do to prepare for the movement to curiosity. Bast rolled her eyes on his HUD and highlighted a familiar feline figure crouching in the shadows.

He chuffed softly in amusement and pretended to ignore her in passing. Ember had figured out how to cloak in order to try to sneak out of the crèche again. She was good, but she had been tagged with an IFF tag and her cloak was only good if she didn’t move. She didn’t have implants or an AI to manage her cloaks so everything ran on instinct.

He turned suddenly and swooped in to catch her and swing her off her feet. She growled in surprise as he held her with one arm under her armpits and the other under her bottom as he leaned over her and gave his invisible prey a cheek rub.

She mock growled and her ears went flat but he chuffed and purred. After a moment, she started to purr in response.

A tech saw him cheek rubbing something and holding it but whatever it was it was invisible. The human stopped and stared until Jethro tickled his prey. Ember growled and lost focus and faded into place in his arms giggling and squirming. “Stop!” she said in a high pitch giggly voice.

Jethro churred and laughed at her and hugged her tightly. The observer then blinked and puckered his lips and looked away. After a moment, he shook his head and walked off.

“So, what are you doing out and about, young lady?” Jethro teased. “Aren’t you supposed to be with your friends?”

“No nap,” she growled as he slung her up to his shoulder. She began to play with his ear in retaliation.

“Really? You don’t like to nap?”

“No,” she pouted as he walked to the crèche.

“Uh huh,” he said. “Do they know you are gone?” he asked in a light voice. She suddenly looked shy.

Bast rolled her virtual eyes and sent a text out to the crèche as well as Zuhura.

Just as she did a security alert came over the 1MC to look for a lost black kitten.

“I think they know you are missing. Your mommy is going to be upset,” Jethro warned.

Ember looked a little contrite but then flicked her ears.

Find out supposed to be in crèche. Snuck away in naptime.

Zuhura arrived outside the crèche. She was clearly exasperated with her wayward charge.

Jethro play fought to hand her over, eventually relenting with a mock pout. Ember giggled. The byplay lightened the mood.

“You aren’t supposed to leave the crèche without an adult, young lady,” Zuhura scolded.

“She’s getting good at being sneaky,” Jethro said. “She almost got past me,” he said. He shrewdly tickled her. “Almost,” he teased as she shrunk back and giggled and then growled and play swatted at him.

She might be playing but her eyes flashed, her ears went back and she started in with her trademark head cock that said she was ready to get feisty.

“Uh oh,” Zuhura laughed. “Now you’ve done it,” she chuffed. She pretended to hold her charge away from Jethro as Jethro pretended to box with her and then hold his arms out on either side and then move in to strike. She couldn’t look in both directions and growled ears flat.

Zuhura chuffed as her father used one hand to distract and the other to strike. The head cock came out again.

“I think they need to learn to wear this little lady out a bit more before naptime,” Jethro observed.

“No nap!” a certain kitten said, crossing her arms and instantly pouting.

“Yeah,” Zuhura said with a snort as she took the kitten into the crèche. “Thanks, dad.”

“Anytime,” he said with a wave to the kitten.

<<V>>

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Chapter 3

 

Tortuga, Omicron sector

 

The being known as the Wraith Queen reached out through her communication centers in the vast ship and tested them. She worked out new protocols to control the ships around her. But she knew she was lacking in abilities. She resented having to rely on the alliance. It ran against her core programming in some ways. Not all ways thankfully, as her organic partner had pointed out; their creators had left room for them to use and exploit other beings in accordance with completing their mission.

She was still looking forward to the day that she could renounce the partnership in fire and end the Necrons once and for all.

Until then she had to rely on them to fill the gaps in her abilities.

At least, for the time being.

<<V>>

Edessa

 

One of the cruisers dispatched south to hold the border to Pi sector returned to the nearest ansible location with news that two ships had been stopped but one other had been spotted but was now missing. The leadership of the Necrons was concerned. They passed the news on to their partners in Tortuga as they went over the data.

<<V>>

Tortuga

 

Hazel Irons was not surprised that her Queen reacted badly to the news when it came in through the ansible. The AI was not happy at all with the events and seethed about it. Hazel did her best to try to soothe her.

She was one of the oldest clone changelings in existence. Her line had been so reliable; it had been used until it had become too recognizable by the enemy. In fact, to date they had not found any other changelings.

By luck or circumstance, the changeling and her AI partner had been dumped into a stasis pod and left adrift in Pi sector. They had been found and salvaged by pirates who had been fleeing the growing Federation presence in the area. The duo had accidentally been awoken, and they had decided to first take over the ship and then move on from there.

It was an interesting partnership. Hazel had no illusions as to who was the dominant of them. She was a kingmaker, the power behind the throne, the voice of sweet reason and the spark of creativity that her partner lacked.

She also knew she was ultimately disposable. She believed she was still of use for her partner and the cause though, so she did her best to remain useful.

Her partner had grown to the point where she had been forced out and into a new body in the form of the massive flagship under construction. However delays had kept the ship in dock and hampered by problems that plagued their ability to fully function as planned for some time. It did not help the AI’s mood at all.

“If the ship did escape, and we don’t know if it did, it would have to survive the jump back to Pi sector, which is over a year. It has an unknown amount of supplies available and fuel,” Hazel mused.

“I see what you are doing. You are trying to convince me that the risk of exposure is small. Small enough to be ignored,” the Wraith seethed.

“No, I am working the problem by defining the variables in it,” her clone partner explained gently. It hurt to argue with her partner. They were made to work together after all. They were an incredible team, just look at what they had achieved so far! Other changelings would have doggedly stuck to their mission or given up! They had instead taken over a ship and then others and then forged an unlikely alliance with Necrons to take over the sector!

They still had some work to do but their progress was breathtaking. And it was happening faster than either of them expected. Well, faster than she had expected.

“I cannot in good conscience state that the risk is negligible given that the missing ship is a Federation ship,” Hazel said slowly.

“And?”

“I believe that means we have to generate some plans and modify existing ones,” the clone stated slowly.

“Such as?” the Wraith prompted. Her clone and former host was the spark of ingenuity in their partnership. She was cunning and clever to a degree, but the human was the true mastermind of some of their achievements.

“Two paths are obvious to me,” the clone said as she came up with the plan. “First, we send a task force to defend the jump line in Pi with an ansible link to keep us alerted to any further events there.”

“A bit late,” the Wraith said scathingly.

“Only in attempting to stop the single ship. There may be others,” her human partner warned.

“Agreed,” the AI hissed.

“And there may be new traffic coming from Pi. In fact, that is inevitable given how the Federation is expanding. Eventually they will send ships, if only to find out what happened to the first explorers they sent.”

“Agreed,” the AI stated. “What else?”

“I suggest we send a small task force, possibly just a couple of cruisers to Pi to run the fleeing ship down. If they can get ahead of the ship, they can lay in wait and ambush the ship and thus prevent it from reporting back. At the least, they could report on events in Pi sector and possibly even interdict shipping in that sector before it even comes to us.”

The Wraith queen took some time to respond. Hazel glanced around and then checked the status board of the star system in a bid to keep busy.

“You would want to send an ansible there too I suppose?” the AI finally asked after running a number of simulations. “The risk of exposure is high.”

“It is if they enter a star system. If they remain outside it as observers, it is less of a risk. If they engage, yes, the risks grow.”

“Especially if the ship escapes them further.”

“Correct. But if we do nothing, that risk is there anyway. Attempting to stop them may correct the problem.”

“Or make it worse,” the Wraith replied. “But I see your point.” The AI paused. “I will give the order.”

“Good.”

<<V>>

 Sitrep: So, Rea got the manuscript back to me early. So, I went through the usual stuff and shot it off to Goodlife. Shelley just said that they'd have it back to me by the weekend or in a week.

So, snippet 2:

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Chapter 2

 

Atlas XIV

 

“So, where are we on things?” Catherine asked once the Admiralty had assembled. Among the senior leadership was her lover, Rear Admiral Elvira Varbossa. The assembled officers came to attention politely as protocol dictated.

Catherine glanced at the seat to the right of her that Captain Su was standing in front of. He wasn’t bad but she keenly missed Countess Newberry from time to time, specifically this time.

“We have the latest intel dump in, ma’am. It isn’t good,” the captain stated.

“Oh?” Catherine said as she took her seat at the head of the table. The standing officers took their seats quickly.

Going around the table were Vice Admiral Aden McRaven of Operations; Captain Sherman Su. head of ONI and Imperial Intelligence; Vice Admiral Hyman Preece, head of BuShips; Vice Admiral Latisha Nuert, head of BuPers; Vice Admiral Hsong Chen, head of Logistics; Vice Admiral Jennifer Post, head of Schools; Captain Lorna Justice, head of Medicine, and then Elvira as head of special engineering operations aka the battle moon itself.

Many of the officers around the table held double positions in the civilian cabinet.

Everyone felt the pressure of their position. But the cutthroat attitude was missing. Catherine was known to be ruthless but she had put an emphasis on quality and on civility. She was pushing professionalism and turning over a new leaf. After over a decade as Empress, she was starting to make some headway.

Well, I had been making progress until the damn Fed spy had gotten on board and broadcast our location to the galaxy and wrecked a lot of stuff, she thought sourly. May you rot in hell you son of a …. she cut the errant thought off.

“We have the latest news intercepts. The war in Tau sector has more or less ended several months ago,” Captain Su reported.

“Which?” Admiral Chen asked.

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Is it more or less?” Admiral Chen asked.

“Ended as in they are in a truce and have been undergoing extended peace treaty talks,” Captain Su explained.

“Oh.”

Catherine grimaced. She had read the précis and wasn’t happy with the news.

“There has been a catastrophic change in leadership with the Taurens after the battle of New Tau Metropolis. Once their fleet was run down and destroyed, their government fell and a new one was elected to replace them. They sued for peace.”

“Darn,” Catherine said mildly. The distraction was one reason they’d been able to continue to operate. Clearly, that was coming to an end. That meant the Federation would be returning its attention to them soon enough.

Not good, she reminded herself.

“The Secretary of State Moira Sema is traveling to the sector now to finalize the peace treaty,” Captain Su reported.

“How did the Federation win?” Admiral Preece asked. “I thought they were in trouble given the distance and weight of metal against them?”

“Well, they managed to fight a rearguard action to delay the enemy, primarily around their carrier forces. The Taurens left themselves vulnerable to fighter and bomber strikes repeatedly. That delay allowed the Feds to get their wormhole open,” Captain Su explained. He used his implants to control the view screen nearby to show a series of still images and even a short video clip. “They sent two fleets over which took the Taurens with Fifth Fleet.”

“Oh,” Admiral Preece said. He looked thoughtful.

Looks were exchanged around the table.

“That leads to the second bit of really bad news,” Captain Su stated. The room grew tense. “The Federation has activated the gate here in this sector. They now have a straight shot from Rho to here.”

“Two fleets,” Catherine murmured. All eyes turned to her slowly. The admirals were not happy about the last news. Her eyes flicked back and forth. She’d read it but it hadn’t sunken in until that moment that the Federation was continuing to expand and grow. Meanwhile, her people were struggling to make good on what they had.

It just drove the point home that they were pirates. They had no business standing toe to toe with the Federation anymore.

“We need to accelerate the repairs and get the hell out of here,” Admiral Chen said firmly. That earned a few nods around the table.

“I’d love to but we are still making good on the repairs from the recent sabotage,” Catherine said with a nod to Elvira.

All eyes shifted to the raven haired admiral. “Yes, well, we have made good on most of the physical damage. But we do have some issues there. The software is still an ongoing trial to sort out and fix. The spy was fiendishly clever in putting viruses everywhere,” Elvira reported.

A few people grimaced.

“Stop making excuses. Can you get us out of here or not?” Admiral Post asked testily. It was a sign of the stress that she was under that he spoke to the Empress’ lover in public.

“I’m not making excuses, I am explaining the situation,” Elvira said before anyone said or did anything. Her eyes cut to Catherine briefly to quell Catherine stepping in. She could and would fight her own battles.

“At the moment, our risk assessment puts us at a 20 percent chance of success if we jump now.”

“Twenty?” Admiral Post asked. She didn’t look like that she liked that number at all.

Elvira nodded grimly and pulled the latest sim up on the main screen. “That is correct. The sabotage also slowed our forward progress. We are now getting back on track there.”

“Can we accelerate it if we raid for parts? The Feds make good stuff I believe,” Admiral Chen stated.

There were hopeful and even a few mischievous expressions around the table at that idea.

“That is very true, but …,” Elvira looked to the captain.

“The risks aren’t worth the exposure I’m afraid,” the captain said with a shake of his head.

“Without risk there is no reward,” Admiral Chen said doggedly.

“You’d think that, but in doing the risk assessment, we noted a few things. First, the components we need are no longer easily accessible here. The only two places we can source them are in the gate system and in the system capital. Both of which are heavily guarded by Second Fleet task forces.”

“And potentially another fleet by now,” Aden said quietly.

“Another problem is their built-in security and safeguards. Any hardware we catch will come with those problems that could set us back even further,” Admiral Preece warned.

A few people winced.

“Correct. We have become aware of some logistic nodes, but they are no doubt honey traps arranged for us to send a raiding force to,” the captain stated.

A few more people winced.

“I’d rather not lead them back here or have another raid go bad,” Admiral Post said dryly.

More than one person around the table winced again. Rear Admiral Paul Race, the former second-in-command of operations, had led a raiding force to take on a convoy of grav emitters destined for the gate system several years prior. Somewhere along the way, his task force had been spotted and ambushed. The Federation had done an excellent job turning the tables on the raiders.

A few ships had made it back; the admiral’s flagship had not been among them.

Catherine missed him for a brief moment. He had been a good fleet commander, solid and dependable. Pity he’d walked into a trap and gotten his fleet torn apart. She missed those crews and ships too.

“So, those are out obviously,” Admiral Chen said sourly.

“Correct. The only other known source is the factories which are located in Rho and thus out of our reach,” the captain stated.

“Damn,” Admiral Chen muttered.

The captain nodded. “My sentiments exactly.”

“There has been a recent uptick in scouting along the western flank. It is … concerning,” the captain stated with an eye to the head of operations.

Admiral McRaven nodded grimly.

“Can we wake some of the sleepers? See if they could help? I don’t know, isolate them like before?” Admiral Post asked. She looked over to Latisha and then back to the captain.

Catherine puckered her lips. She didn’t like the idea and the security risks involved.

“The problem is that they know something is off over time. Keeping them distracted with work and with sex helps, but eventually, they start to wonder. Like why there are only humans around them. That is a big one.”

“They are ticking time bombs,” Admiral Preece muttered. “Not worth the risk.”

“Well, I’d hate to wake a damn bear,” Admiral Post growled.

“We can’t. We don’t have any,” Latisha stated as she glanced down at her tablet. Admiral Post turned to her in surprise. “All of the aliens and Neos were turned over to the gladiator pits or to R&D or um … others. We actually have two hundred thousand humans and light chimera left in stasis.”

“I thought it was less?”

“We did another inventory after the recent incident and lockdown. There was an original crew of civilians and a skeleton crew of naval personnel of one hundred thousand people. Of those, roughly fifteen thousand were human form. We kept those obviously. Over time we added to the collection with people that were found in stasis pods that were brought in from abroad. Some we brought from the homeworld,” Latisha explained.

“Oh.”

Catherine nodded slightly. There had been some rancor about her including them in the evacuation. She didn’t regret the decision, though she didn’t trust the sleepers to help any more. The last bout of sabotage from a sleeper had cost them additional time and resources to set to right.

That and seeing the military personnel melt into puddles of goo when they activated their suicide nanites was … horrifying. It also did some damage to people and equipment around them.

“Well, what about the civilians? Can’t they help?” Admiral Chen demanded.

Captain Su shook his head.

“Why not?”

“They don’t have the requisite keys and tech,” Latisha interjected as the captain opened his mouth to reply. He paused, closed his mouth and then nodded with a glance to the head of BuPers.

“Damn it!” Admiral Chen growled as he clenched his fists.

“We’ve flipped a few of the civilians but oh so few. None have what we currently need. They have the general idea but not the specific knowledge that is required,” Captain Su stated. “Most were either low level techs or middle management.”

Admiral Chen turned to Elvira. “Wait, why only 20 percent? I know engineers; you are all conservative and like to think of yourselves as miracle numbers. What is the real number?” he demanded.

Eyes shifted to Elvira again. Some were amused, a few accusing.

The raven haired flag officer squared her shoulders slightly. “Twenty percent is the average from this week’s simulations,” Elvira stated firmly. She flipped her hands slightly in an indication of a shrug and something out of her hands.

“It was higher before,” Admiral Post pointed out.

“Before the sabotage you mean?” Aden asked mildly.

“No, I mean two weeks ago,” Admiral said, eyes still locked on Elvira.

“We had a node fail an inspection. It is currently being swapped out and then we have to tune the replacement and those around it,” Elvira explained. She hit a button on her tablet and then swiped the report to the main screen. A window opened and a node blinked. The cluster then blinked a different color around it.

All eyes turned to the report.

“Oh. Damn.”

“We’ll naturally rebuild the node and use it somewhere else that is less critical. But the components are scarce. It will be less … reliable. Scabbing in civilian and military grade components that were not designed for the purpose is … sketchy. Which is why we have a lot of variables to consider.”

There was a soft rustle, almost like a sigh of frustration from the assembly.

“Right. As to being conservative, you are correct. Engineers tend to be conservative because we do not want to create a situation of disappointment and we do not want to have a piece of equipment fail under load. Such things depend on a lot of variables that is outside of engineering too, however. The status of the helm team for one. The status of real world conditions, the engineering hardware as I mentioned, software, and so on.”

“Real world?” Admiral Post asked with a puzzled frown.

“If we are under attack or not. If we are rushed or taking damage, the odds of survival drop to single digits rather quickly,” Elvira stated flatly.

“Oh.” Admiral Post scowled. “Shit,” she finally said as she sat back in disgust.

Elvira nodded. “My sentiments indeed,” she murmured as she looked around the table.

“I hate to even suggest this, but what if we pull apart one or more of our capital warships? The biggest ones we have are super dreadnoughts. We have thirty-five of them, right? And we do have those three monitors but they are in mothballs.”

There was an instant look of hope from the assembly. Admiral McRaven didn’t look happy at sacrificing a ship or two under his command, but he was curious. The looks didn’t last long, however.

Admiral Preece shook his head in unison with Elvira. Admiral Chen looked from one to the other and then sat back in disgust. “No? Why not?”

“It is a matter of scale. The nodes we need are nearly the size of a dreadnought,” Admiral Preece explained patiently.

Admiral Chen blinked and then his lips puckered. “Damn.”

“Yeah.”

Faces fell around the table.

“Yeah, it is a matter of scale, which is a bit off,” Admiral Preece said dryly.

That’s what she said echoed perversely in Catherine’s mind but was left unsaid. She didn’t want to antagonize anyone. They needed to focus and work together to solve the problem.

“We can strip a few ships to make one node. It will have half the power of an all-up node,” Elvira said. She frowned as she tapped at her tablet until she found the relevant file and then loaded it and then swept up to push it to the main screen.

They looked at the bastardization of a bunch of nodes from a capital ship clustered into a hole on the hull of the battle moon. “We actually have done that on a few points on the hull. But they are notoriously hard to tune and stay tuned. It is also a pain in the ass to modify the mounts and it all sorted out.”

“Damn it!” Admiral Chen snarled. “Spirits, damn it!” he snarled.

“Let’s not tempt infernal retribution any more than we need,” Admiral Preece said dryly.

“I honestly think it is a good idea. We’ve already pulled all of the nodes from the monitor and other material in the boneyard,” Elvira stated slowly with a look to Admiral Preece. He nodded. “We’re at the point where we have too few options and manufacturing replacements is clearly out. So, we may need to give it a shot. If we keep the node clusters together, we would hopefully have an easier time tuning them. But it would only get us so far. A few extra nodes, maybe parts to rebuild two of the existing nodes to get them operational again.”

“But …,” Aden frowned. “What about the crews?”

“We pull them and distribute them to the other ships that have holes in their ship companies until we can find replacement parts of course,” Latisha said. “This would actually help us a bit,” she said with a look to Catherine.

Catherine cocked her head thoughtfully. Most of the ship companies were at 70 percent strength. The capital ships drew the most manpower. Since they were more or less anchored in place, there was no real call to have them fully manned at all times.

“I suggest we also shut down all construction programs. Finish anything we have left of course but then focus the yards on repairs and getting the ship online. We can’t hide here forever,” Admiral Preece offered.

Catherine looked to the chief engineer in surprise. He shrugged and flapped his hand.

“It’s not like the ships we can produce now can stand a snowball’s chance in Hades against the Fed ships at the moment anyway,” Admiral Preece said sourly.

Catherine’s gaze shifted to the head of operations. Aden had recently been pushing to swap out the old hulls for new. She had thought he was right; the old hulls were just that, old. No matter how many times they had been rebuilt they’d never stand up to a modern warship and definitely not to the Fed ships.

Besides, she had recently passed a resolution, backed by the assembly of pirate lords, to not fight stand-up battles with the Feds anymore. The pirate adage of “fight to runaway” was in full force.

“Very well. Stop production of new hulls but finish those you can. Mothball the rest. You can work on individual ships as resources dictate. Focus everything on Atlas.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Admiral Preece said with a note of relief in his voice.

“As to the proposal, pick one super dreadnought with good nodes. One that we can use easily. Pull her nodes for the ship and then pull components for the other ships. Transfer the crew where you see fit,” the empress said with a nod to the head of BuPers. Latisha nodded back.

“The officers won’t like it,” Aden observed.

“We’ll find a posting for them,” Latisha stated.

“They aren’t paid to like it. They are paid to do their duty and serve,” Catherine said firmly. That ended the growing dissent. “Get it done. If it works, we’ll look into an additional ship.”

“Shouldn’t we go with ships with the lowest efficiency levels? That way we’re not sacrificing our best?” Aden asked hopefully.

Catherine recognized the ploy and she empathized with it. She even agreed, but she knew there had to be a reason for wanting the best hardware. She turned to Elvira.

“It doesn’t do us any good if the hardware is subpar,” Elvira pointed out. “For this to work, we need good hardware—solid, dependable, and reliable.”

Catherine nodded. “Figure it out and have the final proposal on my desk in two days.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Moving on,” Catherine said. She looked to Captain Su. “I talking with Latisha and we are frocking you to Commodore, Sherman.”

The captain sat up straight.

“If you continue to do well, we will make the promotion permanent,” the empress stated.

“Thank you, ma’am. I’ll try my best.”

“Good. We will hold the ceremony in a few days. I’ll let the staff handle the details. Now … next on the agenda …”

 Sitrep: so, I'm still working on figuring out our housing situation. Not fun.

Anyway, I started Shelby 9, Peacekeepers and I also sent Lowering the Hammer to Rea.

 

 

On to the snippet!

 

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Chapter 1

In Hyperspace, Sigma Sector

 

Scamp looked from one to another crew member. Everyone was awake despite the boredom of their journey. They were all excited, the prowler was headed back to their contact point with the Federation.

They were traveling with news of the location of El Dorado. He was nervous, he didn't want to blow it. No one did. It was probably the single most important thing that Batmobile and her crew of SEALs had ever done. As Chief Thompson put it, it might be the single most important thing that they could ever do. Definitely historic... if it played out.

He listened quietly as they talked at the evening meal. "Do we even know if the ship is still there?"

"Oh, its there," PO Sia Clarkson insisted. She had a tablet in front of her and was keeping tabs on the ship's systems.

"How do we know?" PO Chase Denvery asked.

"It's too big to go far. Even if they get their sublight drives going it will take time to get them very far. Once Fleet jumps in, they can run them down."

"Yeah, but I meant escaping in hyperspace," Chase insisted.

"How?"

"All that antimatter and stuff they stole? Not to mention all of the work they've put into the ship over the past couple of decades?" Chase said helpfully.

The tiger frowned thoughtfully. After a moment she flicked her ears. "I think if they could have moved her they would have."

"Well, they didn't have any real incentive to do so and a lot to not move before Admiral Briggs showed up and set off his here I am broadcast," PO Randy Guetta stated.

The tiger nodded and flicked her ears.

"Word is that the ship and her original crew fell out of hyper after a long jump. They were dry on fuel. We don't know what they did to try to survive. They ended up in stasis," PO Ben Sully said from his seat at the table. "In theory with all the antimatter they stole they could get her in hyper again."

"And we know this from where?" Randy asked.

"We caught a few of the crew who were being used by the pirates,"  the ship's AI Alfred stated. They all looked up to the ceiling.

"Caught them?"

"They were technically aiding and abetting the enemy in a time of war. They were duped into it. They were debriefed thoroughly and then given discharges," Alfred stated flatly.

"A bit light isn't it?"

"Not our call," the Noechimp said with a shrug. "I'd hope someone would not hold me to the letter of the law if someone played me. I'd be so pissed at myself it wouldn't be funny."

Sia nodded. So too did some of the others around the table. The tiger reached down to pet the pup and then playfully tug on a flappy ear. He pretended to snap at her. She managed to dodge the snap and then tapped his nose in response.

"The byplay was noted by Ben who leaned over to eye the pup. Scamp lowered his eyes in response.

"Anyway," Ben said as he took a sip of coffee. "Intel knows that part of the story. They were found, woken up in small groups, isolated, fed a story, and then dispatched to do odd jobs. They were carefully insulated from the real world and events. I'll say one thing about the pirates, they can do a damn good job playing people," he said gruffly.

"Practice," Randy growled.

"That and sex. They were very good at playing the sex card," Ben replied as he looked at the cup.

"Oh."

"Just humans though. Only humans were awake. The survivors said they never saw any of the crew who were neo or alien. Which..." he grimaced and looked away.

The pup looked at Sia in confusion as her fur bristled and thens lowly went back down. Her ears were flat. She didn't look happy.

He glanced at some of the others. None of them looked happy. It was a little intimidating. He knew it wasn't about him personally though. He just wasn't certain why they were bristling like that.

"Anyway," Ben said gruffly. "We know what we know from them and some other sources that the brass didn't identify."

"They didn't have a location though obviously," Chase growled. "Rather convenient," he said darkly.

"Hey, do you know our exact position? Or where we found the signal from Admiral Briggs?" Ben retorted.

Chase blinked and then after a moment shook his head.

"Yeah, thought not. The rank and file just keep their heads down and do their jobs. These people were mostly techs. Engineers. Give them a job and that is their entire world." He pointed a subtle finger to the tiger in their midst who was tapping at her tablet and looking at it intently.

Chase and Randy snorted.

Sia looked up from her tablet. "Um, something I missed?" she asked.

That sparked a chuckle from the others.

<<V>>

2 light months outside of the Sector Capital

Captain Ellie Dunn felt relief as the third week passed and the enemy hadn't noted their arrival.

Her battlecruiser command France had been sailing in on a ballistic course to her final monitoring point for a full 6 weeks. The Kurama class battlecruiser had made a painfully slow and gentle final translation from hyperspace at that point over 2 light months out. They'd given a burp of fuel to get them moving in the right direction and then went into silent running mode.

There were few ships of their scale left in the fleet. She had heard the whisper from her crew that they should run to Beta sector but had ignored it. Her family was on the battle moon after all, there was no way she was just going to abandon her 3 kids. The same for many of the senior officers, they all had family. She was pretty sure it was by design to ensure their loyalty.

Well, that and some of the privileges that they'd gotten. Better schools, larger condos, and all of that, she thought in mild amusement. Just because she knew she was being played didn't mean it wasn't working, it just meant she wanted it to happen on her terms, she noted.

Besides, she'd been warned that there was a self-destruct package embedded in the ship. If they didn't report back by a certain time period the ship would blow up. She had no idea if the threat was real but she had to take it for real. She didn't want the crew to know however.

A light cruiser would have been a better choice for the asssignment, however none were available. There were few left in the fleet. Most were out and about on assignment so France and her division mate Tormentor had been tapped for the duel mission.

And who's fault was that? She thought with a pang. They all knew that the bitch Catherine the so called Great Ramichov had been the real one to blow apart Horath and the fleet there. Some might be... reassured by her ruthlessness. They'd certainly seen it when she had reportedly killed her own family down to her siblings after all. There had been something to respect in her. She had shown empathy by helping people after the gladiator stadium masacre, she had shown her steel and cunning by eliminating her mad father and getting them out of the deathtrap that Horath had proven to be. All while under the eyes of the Federation invasion no less.

Ellie had to admit, setting off the nova bomb to cover their tracks had been a sick twisted yet brilliant act. She hadn't had many bones with it at the time because she'd managed to get her husband Henry and the kids off the planet. She did regret loosing her parents though, but not his damn mother. The in laws were no loss. That bitch could fry.

Her lips twisted slightly in an aproximation of a smirk.

After the destruction of Horath she had no problem believing there was some sort of self-destuct on her ship, none at all. Possibly in the coding, possibly in a warhead, possibly the hardware. There were too many places to go looking. It wasn't worth upsetting the crew over it.

"No change in traffic patterns," CIC reported on the tick. She glanced up and then over to the open hatch.

"Very well," she murmured. They were so far out that everything they were seeing was months old. But that was the way she liked it. She didn't want the bastards to see her and come after her. It might be tough to sus out what they were seeing with just passives, but they would make the most of it. Besides, it gave CIC and the computers something to do in combining sensor feeds and refining the results.

Over the past few weeks they had gotten good at building a profile of traffic around the star system.

She glanced at the empty helm tank. At the moment it was not manned, an enlisted sailor was holding the position and playing a video game to stay busy. The mermaid clone was asleep in the water dweller quarters. They had 3, all sisters and all experienced at their jobs. Half of her crew were down for the ship's 'night'. A quarter of the crew were in stasis to help draw out their time on station.

One year, she thought. One year and then her family was free. They could run when she returned to the battle moon.

46 weeks and 3 days remaining until they left. After that another six months to pick their way across the sector to the battle moon, and then they'd be free.

It couldn't happen soon enough. She felt a keen pang at all of the time she was missing with the kids. They were growing like weeds. Then again, the 2 eldest were teens now so maybe it was best that she didn't have to deal with adolecent hormones? Her lips twitched again. Henry was going to have his hands full, she thought in amusement.

It was funny that each of the brat pack had been concieved after a long deployment. Would this deployment cause a fourth child to be born in a few years? Each reunion was passionate and memorable. Maybe, she thought cheerfully, though she was getting a bit on in years to have kids she reminded herself firmly.

<<V>>

SG3R211-94

 

Admiral Dwight Harris stared at the plot as he worried. It was now a race, he noted. The bulk of Second Fleet was split between 3 positions, the capital where he was at, the nearby Gate star system formerly known as Tortuga Sigma, and in penny packet pickets and patrols across the sector.

But, he was working to consolidate his command even though TF 2.7 was off establishing a naval station near where they suspected the battle moon to be. He had made it clear to the admiralty and to Admiral Irons especially, he wanted in on the upcoming action. He flat out refused to be left behind and sit on the sidelines guarding the sector capital. Not when he and his people had a score to settle.  The more he'd thought about it, the more he believed that one task force would not be up for the battle. They not only needed to pin the battle moon down, they also had to run down any leakers... and eventually board the damn thing.

All with the risk of the empress blowing it up in their faces at any time of her choosing, he reminded himself tartly.

"We owe it to our dead to see this through to the finish. One way or another," he murmured to himself.

He had recently cut orders to consolidate his remaining command by replacing his deployed cruisers, carrier groups, and battle cruisers with his destroyers as well as some borrowed from Fifth Fleet. It stripped his screen bare but that was fine, he needed those larger ships back with him.

Whoever the admiralty sent to relieve him would replace those pickets. I might even steal their screen as a replacement, who knows, he thought in amusement.

Once they sent a fleet through the gate he planned to pull everyone together and meet with TF 2.7 and then move on El Dorado.

That was, if the prowler came back with a positive report.

<<V>>

 Yep, Noah's Arks has published!

About:

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  The world fell into despair when an extinction level event was confirmed. However Doctor Noah Erkin rolled up his sleeves with his team and got to work. Fascinated by the new readings his team was bringing in; they reforged mankind's understanding of physics. Noah and his team took their findings to governments and corporations however no one was interested in what had been discovered, the shock and despair was running too deep.

  But one company decided to take a chance on the new science and together they will scramble against a ticking clock to launch an escape plan for mankind. Thru trials and tribulations they'll push to build the arks to preserve as much life from Earth as possible.

Failure is not an option!

Amazon: Noah's Arks on Amazon

B&N: Noah's Arks on B&N

 Sitrep: So, I was shocked to open my email and find the manuscript there waiting from Goodlifeguide. Awesome!

So, I will publish that hopefully in the next few days. (It is getting crazy now)

On to the snippet!

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Chapter 2

 

Politicians across the world debated the news. There was no way to suppress it; too many people knew about it across the world. The media was struggling with accepting it, which gave them some traction and an opportunity to get ahead of the problem.

Most science advisers scoffed at the idea of getting ahead of the problem. Many got roaring drunk when they dug into the science and found it was real. They rapidly went through the five stages of grief. Acceptance for some was hard to come by. Many politicians were stuck in denial.

A conference was called to discuss the problem. The media covered the conference, but the scientists who presented to the conference had no good news, only bad news. The news was televised reluctantly. Talking heads on the various news channels explained the details in excruciating details. There were skeptics and deniers, but the majority of trusted scientists were in consensus. The black hole anomaly was real and coming to them. There was no stopping it.

This sent the population into a depression spiral. A despondent population stopped working as apathy set in. Religious organizations reported a sudden uptick in interest.

The end of days was plastered everywhere. Every scientist agreed that there was no way for mankind to survive. The apathy was palatable.

Riots were sparked, and a loss of control worked its way into some nations. The people on the space stations were not immune to the apathy but had tasks to keep doing in order to insure their continued survival.

“This is why the governments decided long ago to not tell people if the world was going to end,” Dutch Firecreek said in disgust as they watched the news. Dutch was a pilot for the Stellar Works Aerospace Corporation, a company that had set up shop in the space stations in orbit of Earth and the Moon. They had several space stations, a growing tug business, several gas mines on the outer gas giant planets, and interests in asteroid mining.

“Yeah, to keep order and property values up,” Jake Black, his colleague said sarcastically.

“Not just that.” Dutch gave him a dubious look. “To also give them and us a chance to find a solution. You can’t do that if you are trying to survive, right?”

“True,” Jake said grudgingly. He had been a pilot in the Air Force before he had been bitten by the space bug. The Air Force had gotten him through college but hadn’t given him the stick time he had wanted. Everything was migrating to drones.

It was a little ironic that the company also ran drones and he spent more time managing a dozen drone tugs rather than actually flying inside a craft.

“Right now the chicken littles are ruling the roost,” the news anchor said on the video screen. “What happens if this turns out to be a case of the boy who cried wolf? Like that asteroid Apophis?”

“Oh, nice one,” Jake said with a nod.

<<O>>

Two of the governments went into denial about the anomaly. North Korea was a third, followed by small countries that had no presence in space. Each country released their own version of statements that the reports were in error and that the anomaly was a vicious hoax or would miss the star system. They bent the facts that had been presented by the science community badly, irritating many there.

Anyone who denied the reports or tried to counter them was arrested and jailed. A few were shot. The crackdown did cut down on the riots and apathy over the course of a week, however.

The media stated it was one of the stages of grief. “We each go through it in a different way. Anger seems to be prevalent now. Denial is obviously in the works for others. Eventually we will all have to accept our fate.”

<<O>>

Dirk Bradly, CEO of Stellar Works, also known as SWAC, refused to accept that they were all dead men walking. He firmly believed that they could work any problem as long as they had time and the resources to do so. Besides, the governments were offering a lot of money to companies to design and launch probes. The catch was that they wanted a paper study within one week.

He had a quorum of votes from the board agreeing to push forward with the probe and any other paper studies. He was grateful for that trust. He knew many on the board were running scared.

Many companies signaled interest in the proposal. Grants were sent out within hours of a company submitting an application so it was clear that Uncle Sugar as the U.S. government and the various Space Departments in it was called was serious this time.

His company had a readymade probe from a previous project. They had been underbid but the probe design was solid and they even had some of the hardware still on the shelf. It was all proven tech. They also had a new ion drive for a tug. The tug was running fuel back from the gas mines in the atmosphere of Uranus and Saturn. Therefore, it too was proven tech. He married the two in a spec doc and shot it off to the engineers and gave them twenty-four hours to come up with an initial plan and another seventy-two hours to have a complete blueprint.

They howled and complained they wanted to design it from scratch, but he was adamant that they go with as much off-the-shelf components as possible.

They had a lot of overtime and sleepless nights but managed to meet the deadline. He had the CAD drawings rendered by public affairs and then marketing had their turn at the cover sheet and design proposal. That meant his company was the first to submit a proposal.

He was not surprised when his office began to field calls from the DOD and NASA over the probe. They didn’t just accept it and wait; they wanted to run with it even though bidding had not officially closed yet.

He had his legal team and sales work out the contract specs even as the engineers began to draw the components from inventory and then begin to do tests to make sure they would survive the rigors of space. They came back to him asking about the margin, and he flat out told them to go costs plus 5 percent profit. No higher. They were surprised but passed it on.

An hour later, the contract was approved.

A day after that they had received initial approval from NASA while his company’s engineers signaled they had completed virtual stress tests and other simulations and were ready to go. Money came in; it would come in via a series of drafts as they met each goal.

He released the funding and the engineers got back to work.

<<O>>

   Noah's Arks is a 1 off initially intended for Multiverse 8. Like a few other stories it grew and grew until I turned it into a 1 off novel.

If there is enough interest I might write a sequel some day. 

  Anyway, I sent it to Rea over the weekend and she shot it back to me Monday. I punched out the final edits and then shot it off to Goodlifeguide. Fingers crossed I'll get it back before Thanksgiving.

 On to the snippet!

 

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Chapter 1

 

Mike Drasco nervously wiped at his hands on his ripped jeans as he finished setting up the big telescope. It was a cool New Hampshire night, down below 40 and dropping in the chilly October evening. His partner was Tisha, a pretty girl who had become his lab partner in physics class.

They had to do a report on astronomy, which was right up Mike’s alley. He was keen to show off the massive telescope array he and his dad had put together, along with a lot of other things. He had an entire speech prepared. He knew the locations of famous stars to heart and had a feeling she did too.

He started with the classics, the North Star and then Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. The computer hooked up to the telescope helped to enhance detail and filter out the light pollution coming from lights from homes nearby.

The back porch was dim, the lights were out, and they just had the glow from their laptops at the moment. He hissed and waved to his little sister who moved the blackout curtains aside to look at them. He growled.

Tisha turned and giggled as his little sister stuck her tongue out at him and then scampered off. She smiled and he ducked his head and blushed.

“Okay, where were we …?”

“Ursa Minor … has the North Star,” she prompted softly. She blew into her hands and then picked up the cup for a sip of hot chocolate.

“Oh, here,” he took his jacket off and put it on over her shoulders. She smiled softly and ducked her head as she put the cocoa down and put the lid on the mug to keep it warm.

“Okay, so, some of the classics ….” He pointed out Venus and Jupiter, which made her smile. He explained that some planets could only be seen at dawn or dusk. She nodded. He mentioned timing and then went on to explain how constellations moved and even spun from season to season.

They examined the moon and picked out a few things which she sketched and took images of. She loved the live view of three of the space stations in orbit. She sucked in a breath when he managed to catch a sublight tug moving to the moon.

“That is so cool!” she breathed with a grin.

“There are eighty-eight modern constellations. We can see thirty-six from North America. We don’t have to know all of them, just make observations on a few. Doctor Richalu will want a zinger. I think we can make his day with a couple of asteroids.”

“Oh! Wouldn’t it be cool to find one and name it?” Tisha said with a grin.

“Yeah, it would, and dad did twice,” Mike admitted.

“He did?” she asked, eyes wide.

“Yeah, one for my mom, one for my gram.”

She blinked.

“The bigger one he named for my gram. Something about she’s a big cold blooded … um …,” he stopped himself and rubbed the back of his head.

She snorted softly.

“Yeah, my dad doesn’t get on with his mother-in-law either,” she murmured.

He nodded and eagerly went back to his lecture. They moved closer to share body heat and to see the screen better. He eventually got a blanket he’d left out and wrapped it over her. She snuggled up to him.

Things were looking up, he thought. Don’t blow it, he thought as he switched to the next constellation before they switched to the asteroid hunt.

“Can we see other planets around other stars?” Tisha asked.

He didn’t laugh at that. “Unfortunately no, this scope isn’t as powerful as the big ones. Besides, they see planets by looking for wobble over several nights. See, they take the image from tonight, tomorrow, and so on, and then compare the images in software to pick out the planets.”

“Oh.”

He pointed out Alpha Centauri and then Sirius and then the Cassiopeia constellation. She smiled at that one.

When he went to find Perseus, he noted that some of the stars were missing in the constellation. He knew it was hit or miss; it was best seen in December. But something was off; the computer could only find some of the stars not all of them.

“Is there something wrong?” she asked as he ran a diagnostic.

“That’s funny,” he said clearly puzzled.

“Odd,” Tisha said. She was amused that he had goofed up.

“No, I know it is there, but …,” he frowned. But then she cleared her throat and he became distracted with other things. She kissed him.

<<O>>

In the morning, he talked to his father over breakfast. His father was an amateur astronomer and had gotten his son into the hobby as well. He’d been amused that his son had used it to get a girl. Amused but not surprised, after all it had landed him the love of his life.

When Mike showed him the images he’d taken with the camera attached to the telescope, Bob laughed and promised to look into it. “You were probably nervous and had it pointed at the wrong part of the sky,” he teased.

Mike blushed.

The following evening they sipped hot chocolate and went out to check again. They couldn’t find the constellation. “What is going on?” Bob demanded. “I’ve got the coordinates right …,” he tested the system on other constellations. They worked. “See?”

“Is there a space station overhead or something?” Mike asked.

“For this long?” Bob demanded. He frowned. “Maybe …,” he scratched at his chin and then pulled out his phone and tapped out an email.

“What are you doing?”

“Contacting a friend to see what they can see.”

<<O>>

Two other amateur astronomers reported that they too couldn’t see the constellation. They in turn called others. Word spread until it hit the professionals.

Doctor Hyu Phao Lao promised to look into it. He initially brushed the absurd idea away, but curiosity got the better of him and he dug into it.

When the twelve telescopes in the array he managed could not see anything even on the infrared, he grew concerned enough to contact his boss and a couple of other people in the community.

<<O>>

 

About:

  Nightmarish creatures looking for a new nest stumble upon an unused path into the heart of a new unsuspecting sector… Prisoners being tormented in a space prison plot an escape… Scientists begin work on the greatest project of civilization… The descendants of terraformers repair their titanic ship and make their way back to the outer Federation… these and other stories lurk within the pages here…

 

Amazon: Amazon 

B&N: B&N

 Sitrep: So, the cover to Multiverse 8 has been completed:

  There are 5 stories in it, 2 Federation, 1 PRI, and 2 new independent sci-fi stories. (one of which was recommended to be turned into a full novel/series!)

Anyway, that gives me 5 books in the hands of the Betas and Goodlifeguide. I think I'm well ahead! :)

They are:

World Builders (in the hands of Goodlife so it will be published anytime this month!)

 Noah's Arks (due in December)

Lowering the Hammer (Pirate Hunt 4)

Jethro 9 Siege

Multiverse 8

If any of the Betas want any of the books let me know. (you know who you are!)

I would also like to get 1-2 books into print. Possibly New Dawn and Jethro goes to War 1 next year. We shall see.

  For those of you wondering, (a little birdy told me) my bibliography is in the beginning of every book, and in the Federation books at the back you will find a 'Recommended Reading Order'. 

  In other news: I am poking at my Johnny 5 bust again and looking at the Delorian time machine print again too. I need to reprint a few parts that broke (or in this case were glued to parts that broke) so I can get things moving with J5 there. (upper strut mounts) I'm hoping to get somewhere with it soon.

Here is the snippet:

Backup Plan

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Edessa

 

The Guiding Intelligence finally felt like he was making some headway with the Gravemind when their people in the capital reported that the Xenos were pushing for more automation and less reliance on their kind.

It was a point of concern for them.

As a contingency plan built into their subconscious, they gathered a copy of everything they had, including nanites. They had reverse engineered the nanites so had recently begun manufacturing their own. Soon they would no longer be reliant on the Xenos for that critical resource.

Until then they had to be careful. They sent encrypted orders to the researchers to slow their research and be more thorough in their testing before providing results and conclusions. The same for the engineers.

They also dispatched two of their own ships outward. One would hide in deep space; the other would head to a neighboring sector. Both were contingencies against the possibility of their loss and destruction.

The temptation was strong to send it to the nearest one but that was Pi sector. That was occupied by the pirates and the Federation.

The Gravemind and independent leaders debated the odds of survival of a ship. If the Federation had not closed the jump lines across the sector, they could easily get a ship through. If, however, the Federation had managed to take over the sector, any ship would be detected and run down or destroyed.

Worse would be the detection. They did not need or want unwanted attention from the Federation.

Pity, they had holdings in Pi and the neighboring sectors, and some of their creators had been last sighted in those regions of space. It would have been nice to get back into contact with them and update them with their findings.

Instead, the ship was forged to run across the sector north to Xi sector. They could move in there and establish another Well of Souls and a backup of their kind somewhere in that sector.

>>><><<< 

In Hyperspace

 

Captain Charon MMXXIII was a humorless clone. It had a mission and it was programmed to complete that mission or die with his ship. The captain took the mission on with solemn dignity of his build, neither complaining nor attempting to shirk its fate.

As a clone, his mind had been drawn from the Well of Souls. He was not a draft, a fresh mind enslaved to the greater purpose in order to serve the collective. His genetic profile had been weeded and cleansed of any defects. He was wholeheartedly committed to the cause.

He did have enslaved minds on board his ship running some of the lesser functions. Their manic energy was useful when properly harnessed. The critical command positions were held by clones of course.

Charon 23 turned to look at Preserver II, his ship’s sister ship in the cause. It was a copy of his own save for two small details.

Each ship was a cruiser grade construction rather than a transport. Most weapons stripped out to house copies of the Cryptorium facility. The ships were flat black and shaped like beetles.

Preserver II differed in her mission. She had been set up to travel further since she was to go to an adjacent sector and set up its Cryptorium there. But the second difference was as in its captain.

Charon 23 was still grappling with the differences. It wasn’t certain if the initiative its clone brother had been programmed with would help or hinder the cause. Only time and the fickle winds of fate would show them which way the bones would fall.

>>><><<< 

Preserver II

As a Charon build, Captain Charon MMXXIII was known as a steady hand in a starship. Charons were transport captains who ferried the Necrons around. Normally they were selected to transport material and units between sites or, more likely and in this case, to ferry a unit out to a new location to set up a fallback cryptorium.

Charon 24, as he was known, had been grown in the same vat bath as 23. His hatching had been delayed by several months due to a temporary industrial priority shift. When they had returned to his ship, he had been hatched in order to oversee the final fitting out of the ship.

Unlike his vat brother, Charon 24 had a few extra modifications to allow for independent thought and action. He was, after all, to take his ship into unknown territory. He had a contingency order to return the ship if he could do so safely and discretely.

His clone brother had no such command. Twenty-three would most likely shut down when his function was complete and he was made redundant.

Charon had no idea what his original bio-parent’s name was nor did he care. His original bio parent might have been a volunteer or a draft; again, it didn’t matter to him. What mattered was the mission.

He was unaware if the Xenos were sending out their own ships to set up fallback bases. That was not his concern. His concern was to not alert the Xenos to his presence. The Xeno-Necron alliance was expanding rapidly through the sector like a wildfire. There were cracks starting to show in the unholy alliance though, which was why the Guiding Intelligence had triggered the backup contingency.

As Preserve vessels go, this one was better than any other in the history of the Necron cause. It was purpose built, a rarity. Normally, a Preserver was a captured ship that had been rebuilt to fulfill its programming. Occasionally, it wasn’t even fully suborned but a portion of a vessel, sometimes just a few shipping containers. When they arrived at their destination, the shipment would be “lost” at the destination and a new cryptorium would be forged somewhere.

As the best Preserver mission to be sent out to date, the ship had some beings selected from the Well of Souls to support and maintain the mission. Each had their own role to play.

The Guardian, known as Cerberus, Guardian of Tomorrow, was a Necron knight. He was a giant brute mech with the core of a cyborg. Black Gothic armor covered the mech body with spear points jutting out of the backpack. The mech tended to stomp around when he moved through the ship. Each step was powerful enough to shake the deck. It was so energy intensive and large it usually limited its movements around the interior of the ship.

He normally liked to squat in front of the chamber to the Well of Souls or to the armory.

Kha MMMXXXIII was the Cryptek Technomancer, the chief engineer of the starship. The Technomancer was quiet and went about his duties silently. His body moved swiftly and silently, seemingly floating through the ship.

Kha controlled two-thirds of the bots and lesser cyborgs that maintained the vessel at its peak efficiency. The Technomancer moved from one spot to another checking ship systems constantly.

Zramek the Harvester was the Necromancer assigned to the ship. He was a black brooding cyborg dressed in black robes who seemed bitter at the assignment but determined to follow it through. He looked like a dark Gothic priest with his pointed hat and shoulders. To the uninitiated, he would be terrifying. Most of the time a mortal only saw him once while strapped to a table being dissected and reformatted into a new form with a new purpose to serve the collective. Any mortal that had been drafted in such a way might harbor memories in their flesh and were therefore terrified and extremely deferential to the Necromancer.

Most likely because they didn’t want anything else cut off and reshaped, Charon thought moodily. Zramek was known as a harvester, but he occasionally experimented with ideas on how to “better the race.”

The Caretaker was one of his underlings. She was a cyborg Arachnes, a half human, half spider robot. She spoke with a sweet voice. The Caretaker cared for the fleshy parts of the cyborg amalgamation within the ship. She controlled some of the spiderbots in order to tend to the cyborgs who were fused to the wall or machinery in one fashion or another.

Samuel was the XO of the ship. He was another mostly silent being who went about his duties quickly and quietly.

Salem was once a small black domestic Neocat that had been a helmsman on a tramp freighter in his previous life. He was now a cyborg tied into the ships systems. He tended to roam the ship when they were not in hyperspace. He liked to sleep and would try to hide in odd spaces. The spiderbots always found him and rousted him out to attend to his duties.

There were clones of each of them on each vessel. There had been little interaction between them. Many had been programmed to not be interested in such matters. The Guardian was a humorless near automaton, rigid in his mission parameters.

The Charon could not help but debate their mission. The Necron species was in a better place than it had ever been before. Yet, still they moved with caution.

The hated Federation, which burned them from their hiding spots, was far away. They had an ally and had almost every technological resource that they needed to continue with their great crusade.

And yet they still proceeded with caution. They still acted like they could be destroyed at any time.

It made him question his mission. Of course he did it privately; it would not do to show adherent behavior. That could get the attention of the Necromancer with disastrous results for his existence and the mission.

He only had a slight care for this existence, enough to want to maintain it. He was aware that he was the best Charon of his subspecies build. A lot of that had to do with the quality of his cybernetics and his nanites.

Since his mission was so far reaching, he had been given a lot of latitude in his programming. That included initiative. He was programmed to think, to plan, and to watch out and avoid trouble.

He had temporarily toyed with his mission orders. He was supposed to go to a neighboring sector but initially the orders had been vague. South was obviously out, and they had been programmed against going into Pi sector and accidentally alerting the Federation of the Necron/Xeno alliance prematurely.

But there might be another direction. He considered headed west into deep space towards Upsilon Sector. There was a massive void between the arms of the galaxy, but if he could transition it safely, it would be a big leap for his kind.

He was uncertain of his chances though so he kept his ship in line with Preserver I until he needed to make the final decision.

>>><><<< 

 Sitrep:

So, I am almost finished the cover of Multiverse 8. Here is the snippet from the next story:

Congo City

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Purple Skies Star System, Tau Sector

 

Doctor Peter Ellington didn’t know his family well. His parents had died in a riot when the pirate plagues had killed many people. As humans they had been immune to the plagues but not to the violence from others. He had been living on the streets and had gotten pneumonia. He owed his life to a medic from a visiting hospital ship that had picked him up and brought him to the aide camp for treatment.

He had entered the foster care system there. He might have ended up as a tragic statistic but he had been determined to make a life for himself. He had proven he was gifted so he had been given more opportunities than other people in the same situation might have.

“Okay, folks, the grades will be posted by this evening. Oh, if you need adjustments, see me or Richy. We will be at the auditorium tonight trying to pitch the next expedition,” he said. He turned.

“Speaking of which, if we want to see it happen, please invite anyone interested in it to attend. We need to find a way to stop the beetles. I feel that the jungle may be the key to that threat,” he said firmly.

A few students smiled slightly at his insistence. They knew their professor’s hobby horse intimately.

“Make sure those of you who are on digs or other expeditions, check in with your team leads right away. I mean it! They might have changed the schedule, and you could get left behind,” he warned. He surveyed the students. “It has happened before,” he warned darkly.

He dismissed them and a gaggle of students immediately mobbed his assistant Richy. Richy did his best to handle the questions. Pete stood by and handled any leakers.

There were a bare twenty students so they got through that relatively quickly. Richy smiled and sat down on a stool in relief.

“Ever wish you’d gone off on the science ship?” Richy asked.

“Sometimes. Not anymore,” Pete admitted.

A science ship had come by the star system and had done an orange peel orbit around the planet to map the surface. Anomalies were highlighted and the entire data set given to the government.

The scientists had done many things during their brief time in orbit. They had taken readings, talked to people, cataloged artifacts, and tisked tisked about the lack of museums and such.

The science vessel’s crew had goaded the government into creating a college university system again. The government had done so in order to elevate their people into the future, and Pete had been one of the gifted students who had gotten through it. He had even taken a few classes with the scientists on the ship until they had departed the star system.

There had been hope that there would be additional visits. But then the war with Tau had broken out and everyone had been busy looking for escape plans in case of invasion. Now that the war with Tau was winding down, they were keen to look into the lost cities and relics of the past.

One such location was Congo city, a reputed lost city near the equatorial region. The data from the science ship and their own old maps had mapped it out. Expeditions had tried to go there, but few had returned. Those that did or those that just overflew the region reported that the entire area was overgrown with seven centuries of jungle growth. Pete was keen to know how the jungle handled the beetle menace, which was devastating plants across the planets in the region.

Traenor Industries, an offworld company, had come in when they had heard about the lost city. They were eager to go there and check it out. They had a contract with the government to get loot from the city when they opened access to it. Pete was a bit dismayed by that fact, but at least they would catalog everything and make the data available to the scientists.

He was practical enough to understand the government’s reasoning. The government wanted to get a city going and to get the lost riches to fund growth and to combat the beetle pest. With them they could have a brighter future, perhaps even grow the college into a proper university.

The government was tapped out on sending another expedition, however. There was an economic depression hammering the planet and region. The beetle pest and the quarantine to keep it from leaving the world were tying their hands badly.

Pete had convinced his college to pay half of the costs for his expedition to the jungle. He had to fit it in between semesters, however. They had six weeks to complete the expedition, but only two days to find an investor to pay the rest of the money he needed, or it was a no-go. Pete had put in as much money from his meager savings as he dared.

He needed the data from the field. But there was more to it than that.

The official reason was to chart the progress of the beetles devastating plant life on their world and on the neighboring worlds in the region. He and his assistant were also supposed to look for some natural predator or some immune plant that killed the pest.

The idea was to find something that might give them a glimmer of hope to kill the pest. He had his doubts though.

He had another more personal reason to go to the jungle though. Her name was Amy.

>>><><<< 

A Tide of Black Steel – Book One of The Age of Wrath trilogy- is published today in the US, UK, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Thanks to everyone at Orbit for making it happen. 

The winners of the signed books and bookplates giveaway have now been chosen and notified – check you spam folders to make sure you haven’t missed out on a prize. Many thanks to everyone who entered and for all the kind comments – sorry I couldn’t reply to everyone individually. 

Reviews:

‘These wonderful characters and story arc complexity matched with Ryan’s ability to build you up to–and deliver–epic moments (including an ending twist that is just chef’s kiss), wonderfully showcases the author’s skills as a fantasy storyteller.’ – Grimdark Magazine.

‘Rich world building, well-developed characters, and shocking betrayals are precisely what readers expect from Anthony Ryan as he kicks off the Age of Wrath trilogy.’ – Booklist.

‘A gripping epic… Ryan distinguishes himself with deep dives into his characters’ psyches and motivations. This is an exciting start.’ – Publishers Weekly

‘A grim, gritty, glorious Norse epic that begs to be devoured by fans of John Gwynne and Michael Hirst’s ‘Vikings’. You will come away with a taste of the salt sea and the smell of blood in the air, and characters you can’t wait to read more about. Grimdark at its finest.’ – FanFiAddict

Book description:

A NEW AGE HAS DAWNED. AN AGE OF BLOOD AND STEEL.
AN AGE OF WRATH.

The land of Ascarlia, a fabled realm of bloodied steel and epic sagas, has been ruled by the Sister Queens for centuries. No one has dared question their rule.

Until now.

Whispers speak of longships of mysterious tattooed warriors, sailing under the banners of a murderous cult of oath-breakers long thought extinct. A tide of black steel that threatens to vanquish all in its path.

Thera of the Blackspear, favoured servant of the Sister Queens, is ordered to uncover the truth. As Thera sails north, her reviled brother, Felnir, sets out on his own adventure. He hopes to find the Vault of the Altvar – the treasure room of the gods – and win the Sister Queens’ favour at his sister’s expense.

Both siblings – along with a brilliant young scribe and a prisoner with a terrifying, primal power – will play a part in the coming storm.

The Age of Wrath has begun.

A Tide of Black Steel begins a new blockbuster epic fantasy series from international bestseller Anthony Ryan, whose books have sold more than a million copies worldwide.

Buy here:

Ebook:  Amazon.com –  Amazon.co.uk –  Nook –  Kobo –  Google Play

UK Hardcover:  Amazon.co.uk –  Waterstones –  Blackwells

Special Edition Signed Hardcover: Goldsboro Books. – The Broken Binding

US Paperback:  Amazon.com –  Barnes and Noble

Audiobook:  Audible.com –  Audible.co.uk –  Barnes and Noble – Google Play

Did a little bit of signing yesterday at The Broken Binding. If you’ve ordered from them, I’m told the books should ship this week. I’m off to Goldsboro Books next week to sign their stock. 

Some people have been asking when or if this book will be published in their language / country. So far, the series has been sold to publishers in France, Germany, Czechia, and Poland. I don’t yet know the publication date for each country but will update as and when I’m told. 

 

HELL OF A WITCH
coming out Oct 1, 2024!The hotly anticipated sequel to HELL FOR HIRE...

One month ago, Bex, the demon queen, and Adrian, witch of the Blackwood, pulled off the upset victory of the century. Now, they find themselves facing the question all unexpected champions must answer: what next? They declared war on Heaven, but how do you actually bring down a divinely powerful tyrant when your army’s still in the single digits and your magical fortress is an illegally modified Winnebago?

It seems like a hopeless situation. As always, though, Adrian Blackwood has a plan, and this time, he’s going big. He’s got an idea to take down the Seattle Anchor, the giant magical fortress that houses the Anchor Market and every other bit of critical infrastructure that connects Heaven to Earth.

How the Anchors work is a closely guarded secret, and getting to the good stuff will require going deep into the heart of Gilgamesh’s power. There’s a reason even the Queen of Wrath has never attacked one directly, but now that Adrian’s on her team, Bex thinks they can do it. She’s finally got the power she needs to actually move the needle on this war, and she’s going to hit that Anchor with all the fire she’s got.

But the enemies of Heaven aren’t the only ones making plans. After the fiery return of his most persistent annoyance, Gilgamesh has ordered his princes to take care of the demon queen problem personally. It’s time to roll out the big guns and show these rebels what divine wrath really means, starting with the Hell of a Witch who made it all possible.

Coming out October 1 in ebook, Kindle Unlimited, paperback, hardback, and an absolutely incredible audio edition!Preorder Now!Boston, what are you doing? Get out from in front of the title!

*Attempts to push familiar away with broom. Broom and cat team up. The author is forced to retreat.*

Ahem... It's sequel time! Y'all made HELL FOR HIRE one of my best new launches ever, and now the second book is almost here. HELL OF A WITCH has more of everything you love, and it's coming out all formats on October 1! Hooray!

Thank you all so much for making this series such a success. I'm so grateful you're enjoying the story, because I love these misfits to death. So much that I've already written book 3, which will be coming out in early 2025! So many books! It's the best of times.

I really hope you'll give HELL OF A WITCH a try, and if you haven't cracked into my Tear Down Heaven series yet, what are you waiting for? It's awesome! The audio book in particular is *chef's kiss*. One of the best things we've ever done. Highly recommended. 

Again, thank you all so so much for being my readers and listeners. I hope you love this book as much as I do. It's just so much fun and I can't wait for you to get into it. This series is going to be a truly epic ride.

Thanks again for making my dreams come true! Yours always and forever,

Rachel AaronWitch Career Counselor Assistant to the Familiars
HELL OF A WITCH is the second book in the Tear Down Heaven series. If you're new, start from the beginning with HELL FOR HIRE. I promise you won't be sorry!

 

"Featuring a motley crew of loveable demons, a chaotic male forest witch with a sassy talking cat familiar, snarky sentient weapons, wicked warlocks, and plenty of magical mayhem, Hell for Hire is a bewitching and diabolically fun urban fantasy that is as thrilling as it is wholesome." - Before We Go Book Blog

"Rachel Aaron has never ever failed to deliver an effortlessly engaging story filled with lovable characters, and an amazing, yet accessible, worldbuilding that is uniquely hers. It came as no surprise that Hell For Hire has all her usual winning trademarks and is possibly her best first book in a series so far." - Novel Notions

"Hell for Hire is an urban fantasy tale that follows a ragtag group of demons and the outcast witch they're hired to protect. Boasting loveable characters, unique lore, and a whole lot of heart, this urban fantasy romp is an absolute delight." - Simple Reads

"Hell For Hire is an absolute blast to read as it combines action, comedy, and lots of magic for a unique story. Rachel Aaron with her eighth (or ninth) series opener showcases exactly why she has no peers in the urban fantasy genre. If you want to have lots of fun, thrills and action, look no further. Hell For Hire is available to fulfill all your needs and more." - Fantasy Book Critic

"Aaron has done it again, giving us a whole new world in which to enjoy her outstanding craft. While many of the themes will be familiar, Aaron has created something fun and wonderful that delighted me. I blazed through this book, sacrificing sleep and productivity. Loved the world building and as usual with Aaron, loved her characters and the obstacles they face, overcome, and the new crises that arise from the ashes to challenge the protagonists anew. Can’t wait for the next book! This is already a must-read." - J Graham (audiobook review)Get your copy now in ebook, print, audio, or KU!The time has finally come! I finally get to share the book that's consumed my last year with you, and I can't wait for you to read/listen to HELL FOR HIRE, which is available right now in ebook, print, audio, and Kindle Unlimited!

I know it's not the DFZ and there aren't any dragons (yet), but I still hope you'll give it a try, because this book was an absolute blast to write! I've never had so many great critic reviews right off the bat. And if you're worried about starting a new book 1, I've got you, because book 2 is already written and going through proofreads, which means it will be available later this year. This series, she is rolling!

And speaking of rolling, you should give the audio edition a try on this one, because our new narrator, Nicholas Cain, narrated the hell out of it, pun entirely intended. ;) The audiobook is also available in stores other than Audible this time! Here's a list of all places you can find it, I hope you'll give the story a listen :D

If print is more your thing, we have hardbacks, and they are sexy! I mean, just look at this.



Ah, the sight fills my book-hording heart with joy <3 

I think that's enough promo for one morning. Thank you all so, so much for coming along with me on this crazy journey! I couldn't do any of this without your support, and I hope from the bottom of my heart that you love HELL FOR HIRE as much as I do. Thanks again, and I'll see you for the next book!

Yours sincerely,
Rachel AaronProfessional Familiar Consultant, talk to me about talking cats!
HELL FOR HIRE is the first book in the new Tear Down Heaven series, which will be five books in total. The second book will be out in Fall of 2024. I hope to see you then!

 

Introducing...HELL FOR HIRE coming out June 4!The Crew
A hulked-out wrath demon who eats gamer rage and loves cats, a shapeshifting lust demon who enjoys their food a bit too much, and a void demon who doesn’t see the point of any of this. They’re not the sort of mercenaries you hire on purpose, but Bex wouldn’t trust her life to anyone else.
 
Ever since the ancient Mesopotamian king Gilgamesh decided death wasn’t for him, killed the gods, and conquered the afterlife, times have been rough for a free demon. But the denizens of the Nine Hells aren’t the quitting sort, and Bex and her team have been choking a living out of the Eternal King’s lackeys for years. It’s not honest work, but when Heaven itself declares you a non-person, you smash-and-grab what you can get.
 
This next gig looks like more of the same…until Bex meets the client.
 
The Job 
Adrian Blackwood is a witch with a problem. His family has skirted the edges of King Gilgamesh’s ire for centuries, but thanks to a decision he made as a child, Adrian is personally responsible for putting his entire coven in Heaven’s crosshairs.
 
Determined to set things right, Adrian drags his broom, caldron, and talking cat thousands of miles across the country to Seattle where he can fight the Eternal King’s warlocks without bringing the rest of his family into the fray. But witchcraft--like all crafts--takes time, and if the warlocks catch him before his spells are ready, he’s dead. So Adrian does what any professional witch would do and hires a team of mercenaries to keep the warlocks off his back. He didn’t expect to get demons, but when you’re already on the killing-edge of Heaven’s bad side, what’s a bit more fuel on the fire?
 
Sometimes you get more than you paid for.
Neither Adrian nor Bex knew what to expect when they signed their contract, but witch-plus-demon turns out to be a match made in the Hells. With this much chaos at their fingertips, even impossible dreams start to come back into reach, because Bex wasn’t always a mercenary. She used to be the Eternal King of Heaven’s biggest nightmare, and now that she’s got a witch in her corner, it’s time to put the old magics back on the field and show Adrian Blackwood just how much Hell he’s hired.
 Preorder Now!Big day in book-land! 

First up, BY A SILVER THREAD is on sale this week for $0.99, so if you haven't given my new DFZ Changeling series a try, now's a great time to pick it up for cheap!

Second (and way more excitingly), I've got a brand-new book for you to dive into! Introducing HELL FOR HIRE, the first in the Tear Down Heaven series and a return to the classic Rachel-Aaron-style of big ensemble casts full of funny characters, crazy magic, world-ending stakes, and epic swordfights. If you liked my Eli Monpress fantasy books or the original Heartstrikers series, this is going to be right up your alley. There's a new magical system, demons with weird immortality issues, witch-family drama, and terrifying heavenly princes who will murder you while looking gorgeous. It's just a ton of fun and I can't wait for you to read it!!

HELL FOR HIRE comes out June 4, 2024 in all formats, including ebook, print, KU, and audio. If any of that changes, I'll be sure to let you know. Thanks for being my readers/listeners! I couldn't do any of this without you. 

Yours always,

Rachel AaronDivine Orchestrator Professional Demon Herder

Want to see all of my books in order, read samples, and know which series are finished? Visit www.rachelaaron.net!

No Victor lasts forever.

Victor thought he won when he became the Hero. He thought he won when he took over the DFZ. He thought he’d made himself untouchable.

He’s wrong.

Lola isn’t the sad little monster she used to be. She has a plan, she has allies, she has more magic than she ever dreamed possible. Killing one blood mage should be easy with an entire fairy kingdom at her fingertips, but Victor didn't make himself a god by playing fair, and his bag of tricks is far from empty. Taking him down will require everything Lola and her friends can bring, but if there’s one thing Lola’s always been, it’s determined. No matter the cost, no matter what it takes, she will see this through.

To the bloody end.

Get your copy now in ebook, KU, print, or audio!This was an extremely satisfying book to write. I don't think I've ever enjoyed wrapping a series so much. It's epic, it's awesome, and I cannot wait for you to read it in ebook, print, or KU or listen on audio, cause they're all out today!

Thank you so much for coming with me on Lola's journey. This wasn't the sort of story I ever thought I'd write, but when the book needs to happen, it needs to happen, and I'm very glad this one did. I hope you enjoy this series as much as I do and that you'll join me for what comes next.

And speaking of what comes next...

This is going to be a very exciting year for new releases! Lola's series is done, but I've got a brand new Urban Fantasy set in a brand new world that I think you're really going to enjoy.

The first book will be called HELL FOR HIRE and it's all about a team of demon mercenaries who get hired by a witch. There's tons of action, mystery, ancient Sumerian sorcery, a loveable snarky cast, a know-it-all talking cat, magical sword fighting, and overall hijinks in modern Seattle. It's just the BEST. I'm so in love that I'm already working on the draft for book 3. It's THAT GOOD, and as soon as I have a cover, you will be seeing a lot more of my new favorite thing. This is the most fun I've had with a series since Heartstrikers, and I just know you're going to love it.

So yeah, gonna be a lot of reads coming in 2024. :) As always, mailing list gets first dibs on everything, so sign up if you're not already and keep an eye on your email box, 'cause it's going to get wild!

Thank you again so much for being my reader/listener. You are the reason these stories exist, and I hope you'll come along with me for many more novels to come. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, and please enjoy TO THE BLOODY END!

Yours always,

Rachel AaronMother of Dragons Bethesda's Unpaid Intern
TO THE BLOODY END is the third book in the DFZ Changeling trilogy. If you're new, start from the beginning with BY A SILVER THREAD. I promise you won't be sorry!

No Victor lasts forever.

Victor thought he won when he became the Hero. He thought he won when he took over the DFZ. He thought he’d made himself untouchable.

He’s wrong.

Lola isn’t the sad little monster she used to be. She has a plan, she has allies, she has more magic than she ever dreamed possible. Killing one blood mage should be easy with a fairy kingdom at her fingertips, but Victor didn't make himself a god by playing fair, and his bag of tricks is far from empty. Taking him down will take everything Lola and her friends can bring, but if there’s one thing Lola’s always been, it’s determined. No matter the cost, no matter what it takes, she will see this through.

To the bloody end.

Preorder Now!Happy 2024 everyone!

I've got a lot of good books lined up for y'all this year, but first... The end is nearly upon us! The third and final book in Lola's epic quest to punch Victor in the face comes out on February 2, 2024 in ebook, print, KU, and Audible audio book! Hooray!!

Mailing list subscribers have already seen this (not on the list yet? Sign up now! It's free, there's no spam, and you get first dibs on everything!) but here's the cover for TO THE BLOODY END featuring the art of the amazing Luisa Preissler! I love the torn up Hero poster behind her and the glowing crown on her head (which IS in the book, and it's GREAT!).

This series has been a wild ride and I'm so pumped for you to finally read the ending. It's one of the most exciting and strange final battles I've ever written. I think you're going to really like it, so if you haven't already, please preorder the book or add it to your KU to read list so you don't miss out!

This is hopefully just the first of many books I'll have for you this year. I don't want to overshadow Lola (poor little changeling has been through enough) but I've got a brand new Urban Fantasy in a brand new world involving witches launching this summer, and it is SO much fun! Mailing list people will be getting everything first, so sign up if you haven't yet, and I promise you'll hear all kinds of cool things from me soon!

Thank you again for being my fans. I couldn't do any of this without you!

Yours sincerely,

Rachel AaronMayor of the DFZ
TO THE BLOODY END is the third book in the DFZ Changeling series. If you're new, start from the beginning with BY A SILVER THREAD! I promise you won't be sorry!