All posts by ka1spriggs

Kal Spriggs is a science fiction and fantasy author. His website is kalspriggs.com He is an avid reader of books, enjoys gaming, and lives in Colorado.
Reading

Hell Train Snippet 2

Leave a comment

Snippet 2 of Hell Train:

“That shouldn’t have happened,” Hector Chavez growled as the group walked forward along the train cars. They were all more than a little deaf from the noise and the rushing of the wind, but with Hector’s prior hearing loss, Jack was pretty sure anyone in the general vicinity could overhear him. “I checked the lid on their latrine, it was latched open. Someone left it open!”

“I know,” Jack shouted back. The train had picked up speed again and he focused a lot more on his balance as the train cars swayed and the wind buffeted them. He ran a hand across his shaven scalp, still wet from being hosed down. He and his team had stood in the car while the cleanup guys had hosed it out. He wasn’t remotely clean, but at least his clothes were just wet, and not soaked in blood. Jack’s lean face went grim, “Odds are, whoever did it is dead too.”

“Stupid,” Hector snapped. “Not just stupid, lazy! It’s one of the first things we tell people, check to make sure the cover is latched down. Anyone who left it up doesn’t deserve to live!”

Jack couldn’t really argue with the man. Over the past six months, he’d seen all kinds of stupidity and death, often as a shared experience. He’d seen people try to reason with the undead and seen people fail to take even simple precautions that got them killed… He’d seen death on a scale that his mind shied away from.

This wasn’t a plague, it wasn’t a pestilence. It was death that led to more death, it was magic, it was supernatural… and Jack suspected that many of the “stupid” people just wanted to die, to be free of this living nightmare.

He didn’t say that, though, as he came off car one and dropped onto the back deck of Engine Two. It and Engine One provided the main propulsion for the train. They also had Engine Three hooked onto the back end of the train, but that one they only used when they had no other choice, most often to back out of a really bad situation like back in Cincinnati. He shuddered a bit as he remembered that. “Put everyone down to alert status,” Jack shouted up to Josh Wachope.

He stepped into the whisper cab and it was as if he’d stepped into another world. The crew compartment wasn’t big and he suspected he would have thought of it as loud before, but the sound-proofing reduced the constant roar of the engines to a distant rumble.

“How are we looking?” Robert Brockman looked up from the maps spread across the narrow table. He and Tim Kennedy shared the tight space and with the addition of Jack and his armor and weapons, it was suddenly much tighter.

“We lost fifteen adults, two kids,” Jack said as he took off his helmet. The latter number was the only part that really mattered to any of them. People came and went. Jack had seen men and women fall between the railroad cars, dragged down by possessed, and quite a few suicides. Death was a matter of life in their world. Kids though… Kids shouldn’t have to pay for the mistakes of adults.

“Shit, man, sorry,” Tim said. His face was serious, but Jack saw relief there, too. Tim and Robert’s families were both in car one. And if Jack had any family left, they’d be there, too. It was the best defended car besides the hospital car, which was car number two. There were perks to having essential skills to the survival of their group. Car three held the orphans, many of them babies, children found along the way who had no family to care for them. In dangerous times, Jack stationed his best people to protect those three train cars and the engines.

“How about our route?” Jack changed the subject. 

Tim, a former logistician, shifted the map around so Jack could see it, “We heard back from Team Three and Four,” Tim said. He pointed out red x-marks on the map. Jack recognized the two towns that they’d hoped to find crossings at. “The bridge at Hannibal is just gone, explosives or flood, no idea but the tracks just end in open air, they said.” He pointed at the town of Louisiana, Missouri, “The bridge there is some kind of turnstile thing, to allow barge traffic. But somebody left it swinging open. There’s no way across.”

“Power?” Jack asked.

Robert shook his head, “Um, no. There’s no lights on as far as they can see. All of Missouri is dark. Richard Cartwright volunteered to swim across, but Tom told him not to try it.”

Jack nodded at that. Rivers were dangerous. It wasn’t just that the undead didn’t need to breathe, so they’d drag swimmers down. No, there was other stuff in the rivers, too. That was how they’d lost so many people in Cincinnati. They’d moved some across in boats since they hadn’t trusted their makeshift repairs to the bridge.

For just a moment, Jack wasn’t in the engine cab. He was perched on top of a stopped train car, covered in blood and listening to the screams of the children in the car below him as he hacked possessed down. Behind him, men screamed as something dragged them over the sides and into the cold black water below.

The moment passed and Jack wiped a hand across his shaved head. “Okay, so that’s not an option, further north?” That was the problem, Jack knew. He’d looked their maps over just as much as Tim and Robert. The junctions that went through Hannibal and Louisiana didn’t join up with any northern tracks after they crossed the Illinois River, not until after they crossed the Mississippi.

Tim shook his head, “Team Five couldn’t find a way across the Illinois River, not south of Chicago.”

Jack rubbed his face tiredly as he considered that. No one in their right mind wanted to go near any big city. The more people who’d died there, the more undead there would be. Worse, cities seemed to be focal points of whatever weird shit had happened. Things that shouldn’t have happened, like stories of monsters and blood raining from the sky.

Cincinnati, had a population of a few hundred thousand and it had been a nightmare. Chicago had a population in the millions. Jack was in charge, he knew that if he told them to go to Chicago, that his people would do it. And they’d all die if he gave that order… and then whoever survived would still have to cross the Mississippi.

“Okay,” Jack said after a long moment. “Alton or St Louis proper, then?”

“Yeah,” Tim cleared his throat. “Look, I know it’s the least bad of our options, but I can’t say I’m crazy about us going there.”

Jack gave him a level look, “You’re the one who pretty much told me we had no other options.

“Yeah,” Tim nodded. He looked down at the charts. “Yeah, I know. I just wonder if…”

He didn’t need to go on. There were plenty of people on the train who had, at one point or another, expressed a desire to stop, to settle down, fortify, maybe to start anew.

Jack didn’t look at Tim, he looked at Brockman, “How many people in St Louis, Robert?”

The former architect didn’t have to boot up his laptop, they’d already gone over it. “Around three million in the city proper.” They’d pulled every bit of census data, every bit of information they could get their hands on. His laptop and the other backups held that data, five terabytes of maps, encyclopedias, and detailed manuals on everything from sewing to blacksmithing.

“And in Chicago?” Jack asked.

“About ten million,” Robert said.

Jack gave Tim a nod, “There’s a few hundred thousand back in Springfield, I’d guess. We just went through a town, I dunno, twenty thousand I’d guess. That’s how many used to be alive, of course. There’s also the ones crawling out of the graves.”

That was something of an exaggeration. Most of those bodies were too decomposed to rise. But Tim blanched anyway as he thought about it. The undead were drawn to sound and light. Any place they holed up would have to be a fortress… and more and more of the undead would gather every day. They would pile themselves in to fill a moat, they’d pile bodies on top of one another until they scaled a wall. They’d beat on doors and windows until their bones shattered or the barriers did… and then they would kill every living thing they came across.

“We can’t stop here, Tim,” Jack said softly. “There’s too many of them. We’re headed to the only safety we’ll be able to find.”

“That’s assuming the Free States transmission isn’t a hoax or some nut,” Tim growled.

“Yeah,” Jack nodded, “But they’ve had a few other people on, so if they are nuts, there’s at least a few of them together.” The shortwave transmission came on in the evening, and the Free Western States claimed to be survivors who had banded together, a number of enclaves across Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, and Idaho. They said that they held out, that any who came in peace were welcome.

Almost everyone had heard those transmissions and they were how Jack had been able to make the train work. Most survivors they’d come across were only too eager to join them on their journey. Not all, Jack thought as he remembered more than a few holdouts who’d sneered at the very idea. But the ones who had stayed in touch after the train had left, their transmissions had been ones of dwindling supplies, of growing desperation, reports of increasing numbers of undead… and most ended in silence.

Short-wave transmissions from across the east had been going quiet. A big enclave up in Maine had been holding out for months, but they’d gone silent only a few days ago. Jack pointed up at the map of the United States taped to the back wall of the cab. “We hear anything from Chattanooga?”

The town in Tennessee had been a bastion. The combination of mountains and good organization had kept the town in a good state. Many survivors on the eastern coast had headed there and Jack had originally planned to head his train that way… but too many train tracks were out in the Appalachian Mountains. Their scouts hadn’t been able to find a route south through Kentucky, not short of backtracking all the way to Virginia at the least… which had meant he’d had to turn the train north and go through Cincinnati.

Tim looked away, “Nothing.”

“They said they were having some issues with their generator…” Robert started to say.

“That was a week ago. If they haven’t got a replacement and checked in by now…” Jack shrugged. “It doesn’t look good, does it?”

Their policy with their own scouts was that they gave them three days to check in. Anything after a week and they just assumed that they were dead. It didn’t pay to send people to search for them. The scouts had rail cars or trucks with rail wheels that could transit quickly, that should be able to outrun anything that they couldn’t fight.

A city didn’t have that.

“We keep moving,” Jack said. He pointed at the map, “So, tell me about St Louis.”

“Alton is north of the city,” Tim spoke. “Team Two said the bridge is still up, but it’s not a rail bridge, so we’d have to unload the train, move across, and try to find alternate transportation.”

Jack nodded. It wasn’t the best option, it would either leave them entirely on foot in close proximity to millions of undead, or if they got lucky they could put together some kind of convoy on the other side of the river.

“What else?”

“Merchant’s Bridge is up and so is MacArthur,” Robert said, pointing at the two railroad bridges they’d circled on the map. Both of them were at the center of town. “But Team One didn’t get close enough to look at them, not before…”

“Before they died,” Jack finished for him. Sam Robb had led Team One. He’d volunteered to lead his team into St Louis. He and his team had reported clear tracks and seeing both rail bridges still standing. They’d also reported growing numbers of undead… and then a last, panicked call from Sam had ended in screaming.

The train could bull through a few hundred bodies, but Jack didn’t know if it could push through thousands or tens of thousands. If enough bodies clogged the tracks, could they derail the train?

Three million undead, he thought to himself. Yet those three million possessed would come at the sound of the train, anyway. If they had to stop, to move the survivors on foot across the Alton Bridge…

“We need more information,” Jack said. He glanced at Tim, “Call Team Three and Four, have them head back this way. Is Team Two headed back?”

“Yeah,” Robert nodded.

“Have them see if they can get a better picture of things down there. We’re not going to push in, not yet, but we’re going to have to send someone back into St Louis.” Jack frowned and pointed at an antenna symbol drawn on the south side of St Louis, “There’s some survivors there?” He didn’t remember any transmissions from St Louis.

“Some nutjob,” Tim snorted, “Nadal Malik; he calls himself the Lord Regent. He claims he has an army of hundreds and he’ll protect anyone who recognizes his divine stature.”

“Raider?” Jack asked.

“I don’t think so,” Tim frowned. “Sounds more like the strictly delusional type. We’ve never heard anyone else on his radio and he’s pretty sporadic.”

“Doesn’t take much more than a high powered rifle to take someone down. Team One didn’t have time to tell us what went wrong…” Jack thought out loud. “He transmit anything around the time we lost Sam?”

“No,” Tim shook his head.

“Well, keep an ear out. If it was normal survivors, I’d be willing to see if we could get people over there, but…” Jack shrugged. He wasn’t about to risk fighting people they’d need to try to get to someone who sounded crazy and might be dangerous.

Though if I could get him to make some kind of disturbance on the right part of town, Jack thought to himself, and that would sure be convenient… At this point, it didn’t bother him to think of using someone else as a diversion for the undead, especially not when that person was probably already unhinged.

“Okay,” Jack nodded at the others, “I’ve got to go spread the news.” He turned to step out of the cab, but then froze as he saw the small chalk board on the door. The numbers 953 were written on it. He smudged out the last two numbers and corrected it: 936.

As he stepped outside, he told himself that the tears were from the wind stinging his eyes.

***

Preorder now: https://amzn.to/3SS3DJQ

Writing

Hell Train Snippet One

Leave a comment

Chapter One

The possessed didn’t move out of the way as two thousand, nine hundred and fifty tons of steel rolled into them. The train didn’t lurch, it didn’t shudder, it didn’t even really slow as it crushed dozens of the rotting corpses and rolled right on through. The train snow plow on the front mostly sent the mindless undead tumbling out of the way, shattering their bones and leaving those it struck limp and motionless. Jack couldn’t even hear the sound of crunching bone and tearing flesh over the sound of the train’s wheels on the tracks and the grumble of the diesel-electric locomotives.

A few would sometimes find their way under the wheels or would catch a grip on one of the sides of the cars in passing. That was why the train riders went to full defensive status as they passed through towns. In towns, the train had to slow down for curves and track switches. As Jack watched, hundreds more possessed shambled out of the otherwise dark and deserted town, drawn by the noise of the train. Most of them were too slow to reach the train in time, but a handful were either fresher or simply more energetic, and those managed a stumbling run.

Most of those grasped blindly for the train and many of them lacked the dexterity necessary to accomplish anything beyond falling beneath the wheels and being ground into a red paste. Survivors fended off the handful that caught hold, using improvised spears. This situation wasn’t severe enough to warrant the use of ammunition.

“Watch for clingers,” Jack shouted over his radio. “Report your status by car!” Captain Jack Zamora waited patiently, his body armor, weapons, and helmet a familiar weight. The gray-eyed former Army officer kept a confident expression on his lean face, even as he felt worry eat at his gut.

“Car forty-nine, all clear,” Chris Peck reported. The former construction project manager from Cincinnati had a proper attention to detail, which was why Jack had chosen him for the trail car. “No clingers and we’re clear of the town.”

The other cars reported in, one by one, and as the train began to pick up speed again, Jack gave a silent prayer of thanks. It looked like they’d made it.

“This is car twelve!” A panicked voice shouted over the radio, “Taylor is down, there’s a possessed, oh god, they’re killing us!”

Jack didn’t take the time to swear. He waved at the response team and started running back along the line of cars. Twelve cars, he did the math as he ran, trying not to think about how many women and children were in the car twelve, fifty-five and a half feet per car, that’s six hundred and sixty-six feet.

Jack didn’t even notice the gaps between cars as he jumped them, shotgun clutched in his hands. A single possessed wasn’t too bad of a hazard, not by itself, not normally. They’ll be alright, he tried to tell himself. Yet he knew just how close they were to Indianapolis. He knew that bodies rose quicker the closer they were to the dead cities. One possessed would kill one person and the corpse would rise. Two would kill two more…

As he rushed forward, he saw car twelve. Children clustered on the top, center part of the car, passed up by their parents to safety. As he watched, a screaming woman tried to pull herself up on the side, clutching at the ropes that the survivors had run across the top for just that purpose.

Reaching arms caught her and pulled her back. She let out a shrill scream as they dragged her down and Jack knew the look on her face, he’d seen it far too often over the past six months. It was terror, but it was also disbelief. She didn’t understand — couldn’t understand — why this was happening to her. Before Jack could raise his shotgun, he felt that scream cut off with brutal finality and even over the noise of the train he heard the grinding crunch as she fell beneath the rail wheels.

Jack knew that there probably weren’t any other survivors in the car, but he didn’t hesitate. He ran forward, caught a side rope, and swung into the open car door feet first.

His boots slammed into a cluster of undead and the possessed tumbled back from the impact. Jack found his footing and brought up his shotgun. He recognized Taylor’s gray and bloodless face, the former Marine’s throat ripped out. He fired the Remington 870 Express and blood and bits of brain matter splattered his face and eye protection. As the headless possessed stumbled back, Jack pivoted, racked the slide, and picked his next target.

This was an older possessed, its flesh gray and its face sunken. It came at Jack with a jagged shard of bone sticking out of its arm where its hand should have been. Jack fired into the thing’s center of mass. As the possessed stumbled back, Jack moved forward, clearing the area.

The rest of his response team came through the open door behind him. There was no finesse to what they did. As they joined him, Jack dropped his shotgun, letting the friction strap swing it back against his chest, even as he drew his crash ax. The short, ax-like blade was designed purely for chopping and Jack swung it as the next possessed came forward. His heavy blade split the possessed’s skull and as the undead child stumbled, Jack tried not to think, tried not to see, tried to turn off his mind as he split skulls, separated shoulders, and kicked moaning undead out the open side of the train-car.

Clearing the car took less than thirty seconds. He’d become so disconnected that it took a panicked shout “No, no, stop!” for him to halt, mid swing, about to brain a survivor who stood behind a makeshift barricade.

Jack lowered the ax, the blade covered in blood and hair, with bits of skin stuck to it. He tried not to think about the crusty, sticky nature of his stained uniform. The man that he’d nearly killed stared at him with a mixture of fear and shock, but with a level of hero worship that made Jack want to vomit. He turned away. “Status?” Jack barked. He answered his own question in the same way he had drilled his team. “One up.”

“Two up,” Joshua Wachope reported. The tall, bearded, lanky Special Forces man gave him a thumbs up. Josh was solid and there wasn’t anyone that Jack trusted more than him in a fight. I wish he was in charge of this shit, Jack thought, not for the first time.

“Three up,” Johnny Woodard said as he wiped down his ax. The tall, dark, former combat medic looked care-free, as if dismembering people was an everyday occurrence. Come to think of it, Jack thought, it very nearly is…

“Four up,” Hector Chavez snapped. The stocky, perpetually angry man glowered at the survivors of the train car. “How the hell did this happen?!”

“A possessed came in through the latrine hole,” a woman said, her voice distant. “It crawled up and it stabbed Taylor with its arm. Just like that and then he attacked Sophie and…” Her voice trailed off into a confused babble.

“How many survivors?” Jack asked as he turned back to face the men clustered behind the barricade. They’d flipped up a couple of the bunk beds and chairs, he saw. Quick thinking, Jack thought. Though he wished they’d been quicker. One man with a weapon could have stopped all this before it got out of hand.

“Uh…” the two men looked around, both of them clearly shell-shocked.

Jack restrained a sigh. “All of you, come out. We need to check you for injuries and infection.” He shouldn’t blame them, it wasn’t their fault that they didn’t know what to do, how to function. The cars at the center of the train were for those survivors who didn’t understand, who couldn’t defend themselves. They’re weak… a voice spoke in the back of his mind, but he squashed that voice. His people would train them, they would become useful members of his group… one way or another.

“Are they…” a woman gasped, “… are they contagious? I saw Frank, he got bit!” She pointed an accusatory finger at one of the men on the barricade.

The group surged away from the man and Jack just shook his head. “No. No they’re not contagious.” Well, he admitted to himself, only in the sense that they’re dead and they can make you dead, too. “But if you’re injured, then your wounds could turn septic and you could die.” And then you’d rise from the dead and try to kill us all. “We’ve got a medic, he’ll check you out.”

In theory, all the people on the train should know that… but they’d just picked up a few dozen survivors two days ago. Train car twelve was one of the places they put those survivors.

The latrines have covers that should have been latched until we got the all clear, Jack thought to himself. It wouldn’t surprise him if one of the newbies had left that cover open. That meant someone in the car had effectively killed Taylor and all the others. Jack just hoped that whoever it was had paid with their life.

If not, he thought grimly, I’ll kill whoever was responsible.

***

Preorder now: https://amzn.to/3SS3DJQ

Reading

Preorder Now: Hell Train

Leave a comment

Hey everyone, I am happy to announce that I have a book available with Cannon Publishing, Hell Train, coming 7 September and now available for preorder: https://amzn.to/3SS3DJQ

A single train carries what might be the last vestige of civilization through a hellish nightmare.

A few hundred alive out of millions, lights going out all across what was once America as the possessed arise from the dead and murder the living. A few hundred survivors travel across the country in an armored train, seeking some place to shelter in a fallen world. All that remains is a dystopian nightmare marked by rains of blood, impossible horrors, and portals to Hell opening in the skies.

US Army Captain Jack Zamora is responsible for their safety, a self-imposed burden that wears on him every day. Fighting off living corpses protecting the survivors, keeping the train running and supplied as his team desperately plans their next moves. Ahead looms the city of St. Louis, the only remaining crossing point of the Mississippi, with three million possessed corpses, a well-armed group of fanatics, and their leader, a religious madman who wants to offer humanity’s survivors up as sacrifices to his new god.

It gets worse, because the ancient gods have sent their emissaries, horrific beings of myth and legend that walk the Earth. Things that can drain a man’s very life essence or even that of an entire city. Jack and his companions can’t go over and they can’t go around, all that leaves is to drive their train straight through Hell and right out the other side.

An intense new post – apocalyptic series from Kal Spriggs and Cannon Publishing

Preorder link: https://amzn.to/3SS3DJQ

The second book of the series will be out soon as well!

Reading

Kal’s August 2024 Update

2 Comments

Hey everyone, it’s August already!

I’m happy to announce I will soon have a novel coming out with Cannon Publishing. Hell Train, the first book of its series, is coming 7 September. I’ll have snippets for it over the next few weeks. It’s a dystopian, post-apocalyptic nightmare of a world filled with possessed undead and worse, with the survivors using blades, bullets, and high explosives to protect themselves and their train as they work their way through the horrors towards safety.

It’s a hell of a ride.

Anyway, that’s coming out soon and the sequel is almost done, I’m hoping to finish it in the next few days, so that will be out soon as well.

I published The Star Engine back in July. While the feedback has been good, I would love to see more reviews. So if you’ve read it, please leave a review on Amazon, it helps us authors tremendously.

I’ve outlined 8th Shadow Space Chronicles book and my plan is to start work on that this month. After that it is back to the Children of Valor and Forsaken Valor series.

I’ve also got 2 other books I’ve been working on, a short story in one anothology, and some other projects that I can’t quite announce yet. Keep checking in for news, book trailers, and snippets!

Thanks for reading!

Writing

Now available: The Star Engine

Leave a comment

The Star Engine, Book 7 of the Shadow Space Chronicles, is now available! https://amzn.to/3V9blRc

There is a gun pointed at all of human space and it is in the hands of a madman.

The ancient Star Engine, a colossal construct of unknown power, is in the hands of a manipulating schemer. He has already used it once to strike at his enemies, wiping out two entire fleets without giving them the opportunity to fight back.

To make matters worse, he has hundreds of thousands of hostages: men and women he has kidnapped, so that he can mentally program them to do his bidding.

The United Colonies Fleet has to stop him. Emperor Lucius Giovanni has a plan. He has an ally, too. His sister, Lieutenant Alanis Giovanni, is on the surface of the Star Engine, and she plans to take the construct and free the prisoners. If she can do that, then Lucius might have a chance in seizing the system without losing entire fleets.

First, though, Lucius has to deal with the treacherous Centauri Confederation, which seems bent upon destroying the new nation he has built, deal with unknown aliens who kill without explanation or remorse, and protect the worlds of the United Colonies.

The fate of human space and possibly far more rests upon who controls the Star Engine.

Reading

Liberty Con 2024 AAR

Leave a comment

Hey everyone! LibertyCon 2024 is here and gone, a weird mix of too fast and too slow.

The hotel and convention center both had some challenges this year, though the Convention Staff, with their fearless leader Brandi managed it all brilliantly. The staff here all care and love the convention which makes all the difference, especially when there are hiccups with everything else.

I saw and met some great people, which is always the highlight of any convention. There are the greats like David Weber, John Ringo, Sarah Hoyt, and others. There are also some wonderful people that I have seen every year for a decade, like Terry Maggert, Mark Wandry, JF Holmes, LawDog, and Chris Kennedy. Others are those I have known online but only now met in person or only now met.

LibertyCon is like a family gathering, where it takes 30 minutes to get anywhere because you end up stopping to talk with everyone along the way.

I could wax eloquent about the awesome panels, the variety of conversations, the incredible dealer room, and the phenomenal consuite. The truth is, all of that pales in comparison to the awesome people I meet here every year.

LibertyCon has continued to impress and I look forward to next year, only 363 days until the next one!

Reading

The Star Engine Snippet 3

Leave a comment

Here is the third snippet of The Star Engine, coming July 12, 2024. Be sure to preorder from Amazon. https://amzn.to/3V9blRc

Sidewinder felt some regret as his decoy element died, yet they had not died in vain.  Those ships had drawn the majority of the enemy fleet out of position.  His larger force now had an uncontested approach to the planet and he’d have the opportunity to strafe their planetary facilities and then attack the enemy fleet as they came around the planet.

And it would be a victory.  The seventeen ships he’d sent in had been his oldest and slowest, crewed by those of his kind that he found most expendable.  Sidewinder’s main force consisted of over forty vessels, the largest of which would be considered cruisers by the humans he faced, though their armaments were more on par with battleships and their shielding systems would let them sustain far more damage than any purely human ship.

Close with the planet and sweep around, he sent to his ship commanders.  Do not give them time to reload their fighters.

His enemy had fought well and some part of Sidewinder appreciated that.  Rarely did he face a skilled opponent.  Sidewinder would at least give him a quick, clean death.  Besides, he didn’t want to take any casualties from a massive missile strike like that.

You fought well, he thought to himself, sensing the enemy fleet shift to meet this new threat, it is a shame I’ll have to kill you.

***

Admiral Collae watched with calm, dark eyes as the enemy fleet swept in, their swift vessels already in cover behind the planet.  He didn’t pause to wonder how they had arrived, whether they had made use of stealth systems or timed their emergence from Shadow Space to allow their other force to draw him out.

None of that mattered.  What mattered was that they were square on an approach to Force Manticore and the three freighters sat idle, drives on standby, no more a threat than any other cluster of freighters in the system.

“Activate Manticore,” Admiral Collae snapped, gauging the enemy force’s approach.

The three freighters had been massive cargo transports, designed to carry bulk goods between hungry core colony worlds.  Each of those freighters massed more than a battlecruiser, but they had none of the strengthened bulkheads, armor, or power generation.  They were slow, graceless, ugly vessels that Admiral Collae had acquired for one purpose.  His engineers had gutted the ships, ripping out cargo bays and replacing them with cheap, single-use missile launchers.

They were mobile missile attack platforms and as the enemy ships came within point-blank range, his crews triggered all of those missiles in one massive salvo.  He had no way to control that salvo, not even with all the ships in his fleet could have done so… but the facilities on the planet had far more computing power and transmission capability.

The enemy ships hesitated as that huge salvo went in, and that affirmed Admiral Collae’s theories on this foe.  They were alien, they were powerful… but they still felt surprise.

Point defense systems fired and alien ships went into evasive maneuvers, yet they could not, would not, stop all those inbound missiles.  Admiral Collae had trapped them.  No force so small could weather such an avalanche of fire.

***

Sidewinder spared a moment of appreciation for the trap, even as the missiles flashed towards him.  It was a beautiful move, he could admit.  Clever, wonderful opponent, he thought to himself.  A shame that I cannot tell him so in person.

The missiles began to detonate amidst his lead vessels and Sidewinder’s mind went to an option that none of his kind would ever have considered.  It was suicide… worse, it risked everything that his species had long worked against… yet it offered the only chance at saving his ships and returning to defeat his opponents.

Faster than any human could have given the order, much less implemented it, he brought up his force’s shadow space drives and triggered a blind jump.

***

Admiral Collae felt a spurt of surprise as three quarters of the enemy force vanished, a moment later the entirety of his missiles detonated in chain that burned far brighter than Golgotha’s tiny red star.  Balor never use an emergency jump, he thought to himself.  As far as he knew, their drives weren’t even capable of it.  For that matter, even for humans the action was akin to suicide.  There was only a thirty percent chance of any ship emerging at all from a blind jump.  Often enough, the ships that “survived” such events were little more than twisted hulks, their systems overloaded and their hulls shattered by gravitic shear forces.

“Stand down from battle-stations,” Admiral Collae barked.  “Begin recovery operations.”  He would give his people a chance to celebrate their victory… yet it wasn’t one that he felt like celebrating.

He would rather have finished the enemy, destroyed them utterly.  With the blind jump, he didn’t know how many might have survived or where they might have gone.  They could all be dead.  They could be damaged, or they might, with some kind of psionic skill, emerge perfectly fine.  He didn’t know… and not knowing would eat at him.

“Well done,” Admiral Collae nodded at his people.  He pushed his concerns aside.  Later he would contemplate the ramifications.  For now, as always, he must appear to be fully in control.

***

“What the hell was that, do you think?” Alanis asked, staring out the armored windows of the command center for Purgatory Prison Station on the surface of Golgotha’s not-quite planet.

The flash had illuminated the entire surface and the glare had been bright, brighter than the day that the surface never saw, orbiting a red dwarf star that emitted the vast majority of its radiation on the infrared spectrum.

“I don’t know,” Lizmadie said, looking up from the communications console, “but it knocked out all of our remaining communications systems, our sensors… just about everything.  Massive electromagnetic pulse.  Half the base’s surface systems are cooked and…”

The base’s lights flickered and died.

Princess Lizmadie Doko growled, “We just lost power.  The fusion reactor is deep-buried but I think we blew half the fuses in the base itself.  We’re going to be down for days, maybe weeks…”

“Ma’am, that is, Princesses…” Lieutenant Ambrosio said from the doorway, “You need to see this.”

They followed him outside.  On the way, Alanis fumbled with a flashlight, but it seemed the same pulse that had knocked out the base systems had fried it too.  Of course…

Outside, on the same platform that Major Scaparetti had threatened her from, she followed Lieutenant Ambrosio’s gaze upwards… and gasped.

The entire sky was alive with witch-fire.  It must have been a massive electromagnetic burst to make the magnetosphere of the planet glow so powerfully.  While some part of her appreciated the beauty, especially as the diaphanous colors illuminated the world, softening the harsh planes, most of her was thinking over the implications.

“This would have to be a world-wide effect,” Lizmadie said next to her, echoing her thoughts.

“Communications and defenses could be out everywhere… not just here.” Alanis nodded.  She clapped her friend on the shoulder, beginning to smile, “Get everyone together.  This is our chance!”

They’d freed themselves from capture, they’d managed to get weapons and equipment, to take over an entire prison facility, their captors none the wiser.  They had a shuttle and they could have slipped into orbit, taken a ship, and escape the system.  For anyone else, that might have been enough.

That wasn’t enough for Alanis Giovanni.  She was going to capture the entire Star Engine… and this was her chance.

***

Science Fiction, Writing

Now on Sale: The Fallen Race

Leave a comment

In preparation for the release of The Star Engine, I’ve put the The Fallen Race on discount for the next 7 days (17-24 June 2024). If you haven’t read The Fallen Race, the first book of the Shadow Space Chronicles, here is your opportunity to get it!

http://amzn.to/1FzQRRq

Humanity has fallen.

Earth has become a charnel house, the bones of twelve billion inhabitants moldering in ruined and gutted cities, victims of their own governments. Earth’s remaining colonies are besieged. On two sides, aliens bent on the eradication of humanity continue their unstoppable march, capturing world after world.

Baron Lucius Giovanni, Captain of the War Shrike, finds himself in a position to stand and fight. The son of a renegade officer and a social outcast himself, he nevertheless refuses to give up. Lucius has few resources: a forgotten colony in a backwater of space, his ship and crew, and the rumors of a lost fleet that might hold the key to the survival of the human race. He’ll take on pirates, aliens, and his own treacherous allies in a bid to save humanity.

Lucius will not give up. He will not go quietly into the night. He will stand against humanity’s foes and he will prove that while humanity may have fallen, they will rise once again.

Science Fiction, Writing

The Star Engine Snippet 2

Leave a comment

Here is the second snippet of The Star Engine, coming July 12, 2024. Be sure to preorder from Amazon. https://amzn.to/3V9blRc

Sidewinder watched as the human fleet launched their fighter craft and their ship drives went hot, the ships shifting position to form a defensive perimeter from his ships coming in above the ecliptic plane.  He would have preferred to catch them unawares with the sneak attack, but he didn’t regret the loss of surprise.  Some part of him relished in the chance to fight an enemy on more even terms.

Fixer was right, he thought to himself, we are no longer Balor… we are hybrids.  His parent species would not have felt enjoyment at the thought of a challenge, they would not have felt any real emotions at all.  They were a hive mind, made up of individuals who existed for the collective whole, with no more personality or emotion than a terrestrial ant.

Still, it didn’t change his goal here.  The humans could not be allowed to hold the Star Engine.  They must be defeated and eradicated.  Every one of them would have to be hunted down… and while Sidewinder didn’t view that task with pleasure, he at least felt relief that the force readied itself to face him instead of fleeing.  Best to get it all done with.

Sidewinder sent a message to his ships, Prepare to repel fighters and missiles.

***

The enemy ships tightened their formation and their drives, shields, and weapon systems all went live.  Admiral Collae’s dark eyes studied those emissions, particularly those of the ship’s weapon systems.  These enemy ships didn’t seem to mount missile systems.  The reports he had seen described immensely powerful gamma ray emitters, powerful by any standard, but at wavelengths where they bypassed defense screens.  The magnetically contained plasma that formed the defense screens could be adjusted for a variety of threats, but Admiral Collae’s engineers had been unable to find a solution for particles at that highest end of the spectrum.

They seemed to use the same emitters for their point defense weapons, splitting the beams a dozen or more times to engage missiles.  At close range, that left them the options of firing at enemies or defending themselves from missiles and fighters.  That would be an advantage to Admiral Collae’s forces.  Also, the weapons were slow to fire, which meant they could be over-saturated.  “Engagement Pattern Delta,” he said.  “Order the first launch… now.”

The first ten squadrons launched two hundred and sixty fission warhead missiles, followed a moment later by a staggered launch from the next ten squadrons, and then the next ten squadrons.  Half of his fighter force launched their missiles, across a set of purposely staggered firing parameters.  In all, over a thousand missiles headed towards those seventeen ships, their flight times staggered across forty seconds.

Admiral Collae watched those salvoes go out, even as his gaze went to the transports of Force Manticore.  They had just reached position and he noted that the captains of all three vessels had positioned them exactly where ordered.  Excellent.

***

A staggered launch, Sidewinder thought to himself.  He approved of the tactic… but he wasn’t his deceased predecessor, Hunter.  He sent the order out to the force without hesitation, his mind making the calculations for the inbound missiles, the ship’s systems tied into his mind directly through psionic link.

He could sense those missiles on their way in, a skill that he had practiced and rehearsed.  He would not allow the clever humans to hit him with unseen missiles.  That had been how Hunter had died, a failure who had lost far too many resources in his death.  Sidewinder’s mind reached out, amplified and augmented by the minds of his ship’s crews, and he sensed every one of the inbound missiles, directing his ships to stagger their fire across the entire inbound wave in an interlinked sequence designed to let their weapons recharge in time to engage again and again.

It wasn’t perfect.  Just because he could sense a missile’s location didn’t mean he could predict where it would be when his light-speed weapons engaged.  Yet it was far more effective than any merely human engagement and of the thousand missiles, less than ten penetrated the defenses to detonate against his ship’s shields.

***

“Negative on the battle damage assessment, sir,” Captain Thompson reported.

“Unfortunate,” Admiral Collae grunted.  Yet that was why he had held back half of his fighters missiles and all of his shipboard missiles.  He watched as the four hundred fighters began docking to rearm… but he didn’t think they’d make it in time.  The enemy ships came in too fast, their drives far faster than they had any right to be.  I’m tired of being at a disadvantage in technology.  That was their entire purpose of being here: to gain the advantage.  Yet Spencer Penwaithe’s manipulations and Marius Giovanni’s planning and efforts had yet to produce any tactical advantages.

“Go to engagement pattern Bravo-Bravo-Three,” Admiral Collae said.  “Hold missile fire until I give the order, all vessels, engage with energy batteries as your designated targets enter your engagement envelope.”

His formation shifted.  Deep in the bowels of the converted Chxor dreadnought, he was insulated from much of it, but he could sense the tension in his people even so.  This was an enemy they had faced before.  This alien threat was behind attacks that had already annihilated dozens of colony worlds… and most of his crews were drawn from the survivors of those colonies.

The eagerness in his people’s actions and voices as they readied themselves gave him a sense of satisfaction.  They didn’t fear this enemy.  They were eager to fight and eager to stand against them.

The enemy force flashed into the engagement area and their powerful batteries fired, lancing out and smashing through defense screens, armor, and hull as if it were non-existent.  Their attack lanced down, driving towards the heart of Admiral Collae’s fleet.  Destroyers and frigates vanished under that powerful weapons fire… yet they didn’t die alone.  His converted Hellbore and Four-class cruisers engaged with their powerful energy weapons as the ships closed into range, their immense spinal mounts firing, blasting into enemy ships again and again.  Enemy shields flared and died, enemy ships erupted into brief-lived stars.

Admiral Collae’s command ship shuddered under several impacts, and then the enemy ships were almost within his formation.  “Fire,” he snapped.

Fifteen hundred missiles lanced out.  The enemy had clearly saved some of their main weapons for the purpose of engaging those missiles, but they weren’t enough, not at such close range.  Dozens, hundreds of missiles erupted in the enemy formation and while the small, swift vessels dodged ten missiles for every one that hit, that still meant that many ships were hit by over a dozen missiles each.

The enemy formation vanished, eradicated in the span of a few heartbeats, yet Admiral Collae’s gaze went to sensor display, drawn by a shout from his sensors section.

“Admiral, enemy ships detected along Axis Golf!”  That was on the other side of the Star Engine, and his ships and those of Commodore Caras were out of position, especially with how close those ships were.  The only ships between the planet and this oncoming fleet were the three freighters of Force Manticore.

***