Recently a fan commented that the Universe of Exodus could be the home to a great number of stories, which got me to thinking about how I started out, and how one of my favorite authors, Larry Niven, also started. I am really a novelist, I prefer the form that is most complicated, with numerous storylines and lots of characters. I did write quite a few short stories in my first couple of years of writing. I have them up at my website, free for the taking. I’m not sure how many people have actually looked at them. I do know that the Exodus series is doing well. Hopefully it will do even better in the future. I have a lot of ideas for the series, both for the main storyline, and for many spinoff novels that will cover some other aspect of the Galaxy and the war. It has also been suggested to me that I concentrate on Exodus to the exclusion of my other series, Refuge and The Deep Dark Well. I have enough readers in those series to keep them going. In fact, I really want to see them continue. So I have come up with a compromise that I think will at least partially satisfy everyone, as well as helping to grow the readership of this blog and visits to my website. Larry Niven also wrote a lot of novels, and a lot of short stories, some with the same characters as his novels, some with a different cast. I always loved the stories from Tales of Known Space and Neutron Star.
I have decided to write at least a short story a month set in the Exodus Universe, in one of three areas. The Dark Side, Tales of Hyperspace, and A Day In The Life. These short stories will be posted on my website, with links on the blog page to get to them. I will also give notice in my newsletter when a new one comes out. In this manner I hope to get more subscribers to the newsletter and the blog, and more visitors to the website. And I can keep putting out stories for those who are interested. Some will be short shorts, some novellas, and everything in between. They will be free for the downloading, or can be read at the site on your web browser. After enough of them have accumulated in one of the themes I will package them up and publish them as an ebook on Amazon.
I will also, over the next month, publish sketches and drawings from the Exodus Universe. Eventually I want to put some professional level art work of ships and other objects, but since people have asked me what the ships look like, or for a map of the Galaxy, I think this is a good compromise for now.
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All posts for the month May, 2013
Just a few moments ago I uploaded Exodus: Empires at War: Book 3: The Rising Storm, the much anticipated sequel to my successful Exodus: Empires at War series. I think it will be a very entertaining addition to the series, and one that fans of the first two books will really enjoy. For those who didn’t like the first two books due to the complicated storyline and large number of characters, I am afraid you will not enjoy this one either, as it has the same problems, if problems they are. I love this kind of story, and don’t see a large cast as a problem, especially when telling a story across a huge expanse of space. Book 4 of the main storyline will wrap up the initial phase of the war, and I realize that future books will have to cover a much greater time frame in order to advance the series to the point where I can finish it before I die of extreme old age. For those who want to go right to Amazon, right now, and get the book, be patient. I uploaded it a day ahead of time to make sure that it was there by the official release date, Saturday, May 25th. It takes Amazon up to twelve hours to place a book on their digital shelves. This book was proofread, which hopefully will reduce the number of errors that were legion in the first two books. I am sure there are still some there. I have read books put out by the big publishers, supposedly professionally edited and proofread, that still have a number of typos. I have a theory that it has something to do with Quantum Mechanics. You know, the quantum tunneling of electrons at random intervals, leading to changes in the electron signatures on the media on which manuscripts are stored. Just a theory, but until proven wrong I will stick with it.
I am already working on the next chapter in the Refuge series, and expect to have the first draft finished by mid June, after which I will tackle the third volume of The Deep Dark Well series. By late Fall I hope to have the spinoff novel, Capitulum, about the political climate in the capital of the Empire, and the investigation into the murders of Members of Parliament, finished. In that book I will introduce more of the technology of everyday life, as well as the tech of crime solving, and the methods criminals use to get around discovery. I may also release an already completed, in first draft form, book tentatively titled Soulless, about the possible horrible side effects of matter transmission by nanotechnology. I say tentatively as there is already a very famous book by that name, so I will be searching for something else that fits and still is different enough. And now for the excerpt.
Colonel Samuel Baggett recalled hearing about something call The Wilderness Campaign from the time of old Earth. He didn’t remember much about it, except it was during the North American Civil War of a prespace century. He was sure that whatever it involved it would not be anything like the wilderness that he had his back to.
All night the static in the atmosphere had been clearing as the enemy systematically eliminated the human electronic warfare assets. Some of those assets were too small and dispersed to be eliminated entirely in any time frame less than weeks. Still, the enemy was getting a better look at the ground from space at any time since he had arrived. That had spelled death for more of his forces, including the young Lt. Colonel who had come to his rescue the other day.
This kind of war was totally unlike anything he had experienced on Janaikasa, fighting the Lasharan rebels. Here he was the outnumbered and outgunned force. Here he needed to use stealth and guile to bleed the enemy, while keeping his force alive.
I still have more than six hundred effectives, thought the Colonel, looking over his HUD. Not a lot of heavy weapons, but enough to hit and run for weeks if necessary. And what then? He looked up at the sky, just as he did every morning, hoping to see Imperial assault shuttles landing reinforcements. And what then, he thought in a continuing train. We can’t be the only system these bastards are hitting. We’re probably low on the list of systems to relieve, if there even is such a list.
“All the civilians are into the forest,” said the voice of Sergeant Major Terry Zacharias over the com, bringing a smile to the Colonel’s face.
Zacharias had been in the thick of the fighting the whole way, and hadn’t suffered a scratch. The irrepressible little noncom was one tough and smart SOB, and Baggett was glad to still have him.
“We’ll start falling back to the forest in five mikes,” said the Colonel over the com. And with luck we’ll be under cover before the demon fuckers even realize we’re gone. Not sure how well the civilians are going to do in this here wilderness though, the Colonel thought as he envisioned the forest filled with all those huge carnivores, and even the herbivores that could be deadly just because of gigantic size. They’ll just have to do as well as they can. At least most of them are armed, and hopefully I can use some of them as guerillas.
“We have movement to our front, Colonel,” said the voice of one of the new company commanders, just a platoon leader the day before. “Sounds like rumbling, but different than the barrage.”
“Let me listen,” said Baggett, jacking the gain from his helmet earphones up to max. It was a sound that was unmistakable to one who knew what to listen for. The creaking of metal, crumbling of building fragments underneath. And there were several of them. Baggett looked at his HUD, which was transmitting what the officer saw, and cursed under his breath as he saw what looked like a long gun.
“Those are tanks, Lieutenant,” he said, checking the rest of the front and seeing more armored vehicles just out of easy detection range. They screwed that one up. Should have waited a little longer and just come on when they were ready.
Kinetic rounds started coming down from the sky, most into the farmlands in front of the Infantry positions. Some were falling into the wilderness, knocking down multiple square kilometers of trees at every strike. The ground rumbled underneath, and some cursing came over the com.
“Quiet on the com,” came the voice of the Sergeant Major. Baggett mentally nodded his head. Any signals could be traced, though the probability was remote that any single transmission would. Multiply that probability by several hundred and the enemy would be sure to pinpoint one signal. The best protection was to only send necessary info, and to move after each transmission set.
“What’s this look like to you, Terry?” asked the Colonel over the private circuit between them as he changed positions.
“It looks like a rolling barrage, sir,” said the Top Sergeant. “I think they’re going to come in right after this and roll over our positions.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” said the Colonel. He engaged the general circuit. “All units are to leave their positions immediately. Repeat, leave your current positions immediately, unless you are already in the wilderness. All others move into the wilderness immediately.”
The acknowledgements came back immediately over the com, and Baggett’s HUD showed his men streaming into the heavy forest as fast as they could move. There were still keeping good order and separation, something needed when the enemy could always switch their targeting and hit the forest at will.
Less than a minute after they evacuated their trenches and holes the barrage came down on where they had been. Bright flashes lit the area. The rounds were not all that powerful, less than a kiloton each, but they were striking in mass, and any troops who had been underneath the strikes would have been killed, or at least seriously injured and their suits incapacitated. Rounds continued to come down in the wilderness as well, and Baggett lost about a dozen troopers to the barrage, though the unarmored civilians fared worse. But when the enemy rolled over the Imperial positions with tanks and armored infantry moments later they found nothing living. And enough booby traps that survived the barrage to make their lives miserable.
I am a psychologist by training. Due to very bizarre circumstances, partially my fault, I never received my PhD, though I received all the formal training and clinical experience to earn that degree. One thing that really interested me in graduate school was the role of stereotypes in our thinking processes. Stereotypes, assumptions, prejudices. They all had a useful role in our survival at one time, or they would not have developed. Today they are not as useful, but also not totally without utility. We are limited in the information that we can process at any one time, and by using stereotypes and making assumptions we are able to make decisions. Maybe not the best, but the best we are capable of making at the time.
Back in prehistoric times is was a useful paranoia to believe that those who were different were bad. It was hard wired into us to be for our side and against the OTHER. The OTHER might be fine people, deserving of survival, maybe even more deserving than we are. But to think this way is not to give our all to our own society. And not giving our all could mean that we fail, and the OTHER survives on the resources that we need. In much of human prehistory the word for stranger was the same as that for enemy. And very true. OTHERS were competitors, and competitors were to be destroyed so that we could prosper. Now in more civilized times things changed a bit. Not by a whole lot, but a bit. Not every stranger was an enemy. Some were allies, trade partners, or even just curiousities. But there were still dangers. If we saw a large number of furred horsemen coming our way, bows across their backs, swords in hand, it was assumed that they were a threat. It was a safe assumption. To assume they were a threat and act accordingly was to survive, or at least have a chance to. To act as if they weren’t a threat was to risk being killed, or worse, captured and tortured for the information we might have. Now this is a stereotype, that all furred barbarian horsemen were a threat. Now Bob the barbarian might be a great guy, as signified by the way he wears his enemies’ fingers around his wrist instead of his neck. But in scanning the horde, even if we possess that bit of information, we really don’t have time to catagorize each and every rider. Same as when captains were plying the South Seas in the 18th and 19th centuries. If dark skinned people with bones through their noses were said to be canibals, it was a smart decision to treat all such people one met as someone who might wish to have one for dinner, and not as a guest. It might not be fair to all people with bones in their noses, but it is definitely safer. And safer equals survival.
Now where stereotypes and assumptions, and the prejudices they lead to, break down, is when we start looking at all people of a certain racial or ethnic group (which are two different things) as all the same. All black people are faster than white people. All Jewish people are doctors and lawyers. Now place groups on a bell curve and there may even be some truth to the stereotypes. The bell curve for Jewish people is heavily weighted toward the doctor/lawyer/scientist spectrum. But some of the most brilliant mathematicians come from India, even though the bell curve for the general population of the sub continent would not be that impressive. There are more black speedsters in the NFL, but there have also been some exceptionally fast white people. There is something to say for the notion that stereotypes are bad. But there is still something to say about their usefulness. We still don’t have any more mental resources than Cro Magnon man did thousands of years ago. When I have time to judge a person individually, I will try to do it. If I’m walking down a street and see a bunch of kids coming toward me, black, white or brown, with pants almost hanging around their ankles and wearing baggy shirts, the safe bet is to go with the stereotypes and be cautious. Maybe that isn’t fair to them, but my survival is more important to me than how I am perceived to be thinking about someone. If I see the same kids in suits and ties and carrying bibles, I will probably feel relieved. I might end up getting jacked by the bible toting gang, but the odds are in my favor that I will be safe letting them walk around me.
As an addition to this post, while I was in my car just a moment ago another thought occured to me. I was reading an article by another writer, who stated that one of the problems with fantasy today was that the authors tended to think in terms of today’s values, with a politically correct slant to them. There was no political correctness in Medieval times, or even the early to mid 20th century. Strangers were still people to be suspicious of, and life was a lot cheaper than the cost of keeping prisoners. People were killed for just about anything that the people in charge didn’t like, and there was no appeal. People were seen as Barbarians if they observed different customs than the society around them, and trying to worship in a way not endorsed by the public could be a death sentence. As far as the mid 20th century Chinese were considered Wogs by the British, and there were many other unsavory names for people with darker skins around the world, and even some perjoratves for people of the same general racial group as those casting the aspersions. I remember watching the movie, The Color Purple, and cracking up when Sophie hit the white lady, while my mom and aunt’s all took in a breath of horror. They understood those times as I didn’t. I had grown with some black people, and seen many black versus white fights on TV boxing, and thought nothing of it. To women raised in the south in the 1930s and 40s, that scene was one they knew would have grave consequences for Sophie. We can think differently today, at least I hope most of us can, but just remember, people didn’t always think like this.
This is part two of my post about how comedians and entertainers don’t seem to have a clue about how the military functions in the real world, and how they don’t understand how armed civilians can fight that military. They seem to feel that any advanced weapon that the military possesses is powerful in all situations. I discussed the use of Drones, Aircraft and Artillery, and how they are of limited use against an insurgent force, and also have their own weaknesses. And how the use of weapons of mass destruction might backfire on those who use them, not only driving more people to revolt, but also probably many regulars and guardsmen as well. Maybe even whole units of them. But let’s say that the government can keep most of the troops in line. The strength of our Army and Marine Corps is in their discipline and ability to proficiently use weapons. Now the strength of the civilian gun owners, especially the hunters, is their knowledge of the area they are operating in, and the ability to proficiently use weapons. Most hunters, and many of those who aren’t, can consistently hit a target within the effective range of their weapon, whether it is a pistol or a scope mounted deer rifle. Many civilians are also veterans, who with a minimal amount of retraining, could effectively use machine guns, mortars, rocket launchers, etc. Where would they get these weapons? From the people that are using them against the populace. Supply convoys, warehouses, trains, all kinds of places. Whenever a military unit loses a firefight there will be weapons to pick up.
The strength of the rebels is their familiarity with their area of operations. A soldier from New York State may also have been a hunter, but he is not going to be as familiar with the Ozarks as someone raised in Arkansas. The rebels will be able to choose where they fight. As a relative of mine pointed out to me, this will not be a recreation of the civil war, where regiment fought regiment in open battle. Rebels will strike at the best place and time for them to strike, bringing their forces together to hit a smaller and weaker Federal force. Sure, there will be times when the soldiers gain the advantage, moving troops into position by APC or helicopter. Even if they win a thousand of these battles they will still lose the war. In a battle of attrition the side with the most troops is almost sure to win. And the strength of the military, its discipline, will become diluted as they lose well trained men and have to replace them with new conscripts who may not be the most motivated to put their lives on the line for the government against their friends and neighbors. I figure the desertion rate would continue to grow throughout the fighting. In John Ringo’s book Live Free or Die, the US sends troops into Vermont to take away the maple syrup that aliens want because it acts as a valuable intoxicant for other aliens. The men of Vermont don’t want to give up their syrup, which can eventually be sold to the aliens that really want it for the technology to raise the Earth up to a status where they can defend themselves. The soldiers don’t fair too well in the woods of Vermont against experienced deer hunters, many of whom are good enough shots to wound instead of kill. I think Ringo was spot on in developing this scenario. Sure, hunters would die, but the soldeirs wouild also be run through a meat grinder.
The strength of the rebels will be in their anonimity. When not on operations they will be indistinguishable from the rest of the population, while a soldier will look like a soldier, whether while in battle or in garrison at a base. The rebels could not be found while they were not pursuing their non-rebel tasks. Leaving the military to either depend on catching enough of them, or on using reprisals to stop people from fighting as rebels or supporting the rebel cause. History has shown that such a tactic is unlikely to work. Rounding up and hanging innocent civilians might cause some people to give up their neighbors, but most would become really pissed, and the ranks of the rebellion would swell. History has also shown that colaborators normally don’t last very long either. And again, except in limited situations, the rebels will be dictating the time and place of battle, and many of them will be men and women with military experience, some with a great deal of experience. They will know how to cammoflauge and use terrain to their advantage. What about the militias, said to be the target of the government forces? Coming to target the militias would also mean that the militias would target them. I doubt these paranoid people would just hand over their weapons and allow themselves to be led to detainment centers, which would also become targets of the rebels.
The military has tanks and armored vehicles, you might say. Yes, they do, and such weapon systems are formidable. They are also very vulnerable in a number of ways, especiaily when deployed in urban or forested terrain. Modern tanks are very hard to kill, but fire can still do the job, and insurgents have been using fire against tanks since WW2 and the Molotov Cocktail. Most verterans know how to make jellied gasoline that sticks to tanks (and people). Many Americans have some expertise with explosives, either from military training or civilian demolitions work. A seventy ton tank dropped into the river is dead. Tanks, armored vehicles and helicopters will still inflict severe casualties in some fights, In others they will helplessly patrol the edge of a battlefield in frustration. My brother told me of a situation in Vietnam where paratroopers on a training jump were trapped in a swamp. Their armored cav company was called in to bail them out, and after the one culverted bridge into the area was taken out by a rocket, all they could do was fire their cannon on a high arc and hope they hit something. They weren’t very successful. The Afghanies learned how to shoot down heavily armored Soviet helicopters with fifty caliber machine guns fired down from the heights. There are quite a number of fifty caliber rifles out there, with more to be gathered by the rebels after a battle.
Another area in which the rebels might have some success is in the world of industry. Weapons need to be built and transported to where they are going to be used. This includes spare parts, ammunition and fuel. The rebels can interdict these in the factory through sabatoge of production lines, then stop the transport by rail or truck on the transportation arteries. The military could try to compensate for this by transporting equipment by air, an expensive propostion in fuel and time. And of course the airbases themselves could be attacked. Any way you look at it, the US Military would face a daunting task trying to supress a population in revolt. Just about anything they do would just cause the revolt to widen and the rebel forces to increase, while their own strength was whittled away. I believe that not only could the American civilian population stand up to an attempt at military control, they would eat the military alive within a very short time. A year on the outside. Even if they achieve a nine to one kill rate they lose. So all the rhetoric about how civilians don’t have a chance against the military is a bunch of crap. If their firearms are taken away their chances are really reduced. This is waht happened in the Soviet Union and NAzi Germany, where only the authorities had weapons. That is not the America I want to see.
I have been watching Bill Maher recently on HBO. Now I really like the guy, and find his New Rules segments really funny, though I realize many people do not like him. And like most entertainers, he has no idea of what real world military operations are like. Don’t get me wrong by reading too much into this little rant. I really do not want to see a revolution or insurrection in the United States. That would really ruin my plans for the future. However, saying that the revolution would not have a chance because it would be staged against a government that controls the most awesome military on Earth. And the words Drones and Nuclear Weapons are mentioned a lot in all of these rants about the hopelessness of any kind of insurrection. First of all, the numbers would be with the revolutionaries, as long as the reasons to revolt are clear enough. I really believe that if the government was foolish enough to try and take all firearms away from Americans there would be a fight. I don’t believe this would occur over background checks, or banning high capacity magazines. The last one is kind of stupid as well. There are a lot of high capacity magazines out there, and only a grab would get rid of most of them, precipitating the very revolt the government doesn’t want. Now, just how many gun owners are there? Another point of contention. I have heard estimates that there are over thirty million deer hunters out there, most of them possessing bolt action high velocity weapons with scopes. In other words, Sniper Rifles. I firmly believe that in any kind of long range fight these hunters hold the advantage over regular infantry. I have also seen figures that over twenty million AR-15s, the semiauto version of the M16, are in the hands of US gun owners. No, they are not full automatic assault rifles, but the advantages of the full auto have been overstated. They are great when you are spraying a bunch of grouped targets at close range (the Spray and Pray method of engagement). At medium to long ranges the AR15 is just as effective. So now we have fifty million servicable infantry weapons in the hands of the public. Probably a lot more than that, but just for argument’s sake, let’s say fifty. And if half of those weapons are used in an insurrection, that’s twenty-five million weapons. Now I know that at the peak of the cold war we had three million regulars in uniform, most of them in noncombatant support roles, and maybe two million in the reserves, with a higher percentage of trained combatants. So even at their best the military was heavily outnumbered, and that is if all of them lock step and just do what they’re told, never a sure thing with citizen soldiers. Same with the police. Maybe the FBI and Homeland Security will just do as they’re told, but I doubt the police and sheriff’s of the country will just go and take the guns away from all of their friends and neighbors. The opinions I have heard and read seem to indicate that many of them are strong Second Amendment people. So the numbers game favors the people.
But the military has drones, you say. Like drones are some magical weapon that defeats all opponents. Actually manned aircraft, in my opinion, are more effective, able to drop large weights of weapons on a target and switch targets at will. Still not a match for the enormous fleets of bombers we deployed in WW2. Drone are very effective at making surgical strikes, like taking out the so called bad guys. So let’s say you have a meeting taking place at a restaraunt that you want to take out, knowing that they will see ground forces coming. So you fly your drone over, see what looks like the targets (to the drone operator looking through the vehicle’s camera) and you hit the target. If it isn’t your target you’ve just caused a bit of colateral damage (to be talked about in a future post on how to piss the civilian population off). Even if it is your target, say Dr. Smith, the leader of the resistence in Houston, is it really to be expected that killing him will cause the movement to come unravelled? Not really. Smith’s second in command may be an idiot, and will soon be forced from command by the irregulars he leads. Or he could be a genius, in which case the drone strike has caused more problems than it has solved. But even in the best case, if Houston had twenty thousand rebels, you have at most killed off one tenth of one percent of their manpower. So if you do a drone strike a day in Houston you may kill a couple of percent of the rebels, unlikely, since they are probably going to come up with ways where you won’t find their meeting places. Aircraft could do a better job on taking out more of the rebels, even without carpet bombing the city and killing a good percentage of the population. Again, you only have so many aircraft, even if it numbers in the thousands, and there are sure to be some pilots who balk at dropping bombs in their hometown, or any American city for that matter. Or, if the objective is just to kill a lot of people, use that greatest of all historical killers, artillery, something the rebels are sure to have a dearth of. But being rebels they will never conveniently congregate for you to mow them down. And now we come to the weakness of these weapons. All weapons, no matter how strong, have a weakness. With Drones, Aircraft and Artillery the weakness is in the supply system and in deploying them where they can be taken out by ground attack. Aircraft need fuel and spare parts, which must be transported to their base, and therefor can be interdicted. Aircraft also need runways, which must be protected, unless they are VTOL (Vertical Takeoff and Landing). That brings up another problem. Troublemakers must be kept off those runways and away from the hangers. In peacetime airbases are protected by manned gates and a few roving patrols. If you think that will suffice during a rebellion you are sadly mistaken. Protecting an airbase requires fortified positions all around the perimeter of the base. And being a perimeter it is vulnerable to a concentrated attack on any one point. Not to mention the waste of manpower that could be used for infantry patrols to fight the rebels elsewhere. Drones and VTOLs, not to mention artillery, don’t need such a large area to deploy, but still require a large perimeter to protect them, otherwise the operators will come under fire from all those scoped deer rifles. So the perimeter is expanded and reinforced by the troops who can’t be used for other duties. So in a rebellion, where the enemy is dispersed and only comes together at the time and place of their choosing, these are not super weapons. Useful, yes. But not war winning in and of themselves.
So the government has nukes, chemicals, even biological weapons, and surely they could be used to crush a rebellion. Only if the government was willing to burn down the country it rules. The rebels will never gather in sufficient numbers to warrant the use of a nuke, and dropping one on a city will probably result in a revolt by the military. The weapon might not even be deployed, and entire divisions are likely to come over to the rebel side to fight against a government that they see as insane. The same with chemical and biological weapons. Too many innocents would be killed, and from my time in the Army and National Guard, that would not be tolerated. And good luck to you on getting the police to go along with the wholesale destruction of the people they are sworn to protect. The government using these weapons on its own citizenry suddenly becomes the enemy domestic that all take an oath to oppose.
I had orginally planned to do only a one post rant on this topic, but the more I think about it the more the response has expanded. The one thing most non-military people don’t seem to realize is that there is no such thing as a supreme weapon that is equally suitable for all occasions. Battleships were great, with their superior fiorepower, but also made huge targts for aircraft. The King Tiger was a match for anything in WW2, but its own size made it impossible to deploy in areas that didn’t have major highway bridges, and it suffered from many mechanical failures as well. A great book to read to learn how to think about these things is Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace by Edward Luttwak, in which he gives many examples of how weapons that seem unstoppable or wise fail in the strategic situation in which they are deployed.
In the next post on this topic I will talk about how collateral damage and strategies intended to cow populations actual backfire, as shown in many historical precidents.
The light is finally apearing at the end of the tunnel for Exodus 3. Many people have asked me when the next in the series is coming out, and now I can say it will be out by either next weekend or the weekend after. A fan graciously proofread it for me, and didn’t find that much to be corrected. There was some, and it still surprises me how many things escape my eyes. I will be going over the document one more time, and will be adding quotes at the beginning of each chapter, as well as date/time stamps for each major section, at least at the chapter level. The novel is twice as long as either of the previous books, as recommended by several of my readers. The main storyline continues, with all of the characters introduced in the first two books. Not everyone makes it out alive. This is a story of a drag out no holds bared winner takes all war. Even the really cool people sometimes die. Sometimes innocent people die as well. Children, babies, people who just want to be left alone. Others find themselves in the war, discovering that they are natural born killers who just needed to opportunity to express their talents.
If you like the first two books I am sure that you will like this one. So far over eighteen thousand copies of Books 1 & 2 have been sold, over ten thousand of Book 1 alone. I have hopes that it will catch on even more. If you like books that have lots of characters and cover a great scope of territory, this is probably one you will like. If that style is confusing, then you might want to pass. It’s not for everyone, but about sixty-five percent of the reviews have been five stars, while almost ninety percent have been four or five. Some reviewers have compared the books to those written by David Weber and John Ringo. Don’t know about that, but I love the work of those authors and feel flattered by the comparison. I try to produce the kind of book that I would want to read. And for my critics who thought the battles were too detailed, that detail was expressed to set the ground rules of the combat. The need is no longer there, so some of the detail has been toned back. Not completely, but somewhat. An now for the excerpt:
The earth had stopped rumbling under foot for almost fifteen minutes. Cornelius Walborski lifted his head above the edge of the trench he was dug into and looked out over the smoke and dust filled terrain. No rumbling meant no kinetic weapons dropped for a while, no sympathetic tremors, no balls of fire reaching into the air.
“There they are,” came a voice over the com circuit.
Cornelius looked up to see a trio of assault shuttles moving across the sky. Shuttles of an alien design, still under the constraints of the laws of physics and aerodynamics. Cornelius felt the sick center of fear in his guts as he watched them heading for the main landing field in the city of Frederick, not twenty kilometers from his position. Fear for himself, having to face whatever those shuttles contained with outdated equipment. Fear for his wife and unborn child, hiding out in the shelter under his house. Shelter that seemed very inadequate while facing an invasion of who knew what.
An autocannon opened up nearby, its swift burping sound cutting through the air. A moment later a couple of missiles swooshed from the antiaircraft vehicle that was hidden from the eye. The missiles climbed toward the shuttles while the cannon continued to fire.
The shuttles juked and jinked in the sky. The missiles exploded as they ran into the defensive fire from the shuttles, the craft unloading a wave of spreading steel. Most of the cannon rounds also exploded in that field, though the explosions on the nose of the nearest aircraft showed that not all were intercepted. That shuttle nosed down, trailing smoke, to pull up at the last moment and slam in a skidding landing into the ground. The other two shuttles moved away, getting out of range of the antiaircraft vehicle.
A wooshing sound filled the air and that vehicle, well camouflaged as it was, exploded into an incandescent ball, targeted by the ships in orbit for a kinetic barrage. Cornelius ducked low, hoping that his position wouldn’t be next. They hadn’t given the enemy any reason to target them yet, but spotting them would be enough.
There was another bright flare. Walborski shielded his eyes as he stood up in the trench, looking for the source. A small hill a couple of kilometers away had shed some of its hardened foam covering, revealing the turret of a multi thousand ton mobile shore defense gun. A bright beam of light rose from the long laser barrel, highlighted through the dust and smoke. Twin barrels alongside the laser recoiled back at three second intervals, sending kinetic rounds at the target. Over the horizon another beam lanced into the sky, another unit of the mobile battery firing on the ships in orbit.
Something flashed in the sky. Cornelius looked up, his visor polarizing against the glare. Something had exploded well above the atmosphere, a bright pin point of light. Then came the dread wooshing sounds of kinetic projectiles, coming down on the now revealed battery. The private looked over at the closest gun, still blazing away with laser and rail guns. Something struck the earth nearby, sending up a cloud of dust as the earth rumbled underfoot. The four turrets of the close in defense system on the huge track opened up, each with several multiple barrel weapons putting up a cloud of metal, while metal storm barrels along the turret added their fire.
Several objects exploded above the track, maybe a kilometer high. As soon as they flashed smaller objects hit the turret and hull of the massive vehicle, pieces of the projectiles that had been shattered higher up. The turret clanged like a struck bell, but the weapons continued to track and fire into space. Hundreds of small particles raised spurts of dirt around the vehicle.
“I just wish they weren’t so close to us,” said Jacob Bennett, Walborski’s only friend in the platoon, standing next to him in the trench.
Walborski looked over and gave his friend a quick grin. “I agree. And you know another thing I wish?” His friend shook his head negative and Cornelius’ smile widened. “I wish we had a lot more of them.”
“Hell,” said Jacob. “I wish we had a battle fleet in system that could have kept these assholes away from us. That’s what I wish.”
Walborski nodded his head, then turned back to watch the slugging match between shore defenses and invading ships. A deafening blast filled the air, and a flash of fire followed by a mushroom cloud came over the horizon. They must have gotten one through, thought Walborski as he looked at where the other gun had been stationed. Beams of light came down on the nearest gun, splashing and widening as they hit the massive weapon’s electromag field. Another kinetic struck nearby, sending a mushroom into the air as the ground groaned underneath.
“Look at that,” yelled another squad member. Walborski looked up to see several distant objects smoking through the sky. They were coming down at an angle and looked to hit dozens of kilometers from where the militiamen covered, if not further.
“I guess that will teach them,” said one of the other men. A loud clanging sound brought them all back to reality, and Cornelius looked back at the nearest mobile gun. Something had struck the turret hard, and one of the kinetic cannon was out of action. The rest of the hill shook for a second, then crumbled as the huge vehicle pulled forward and started to move away. Its laser rotated down and it was obviously running for another position. Kinetic rounds continued to come down but were knocked from the sky by the vehicle’s defensive systems. The air shimmered over the mobile gun. Cornelius had talked with the crew of one of the machines, so he understood that the weapon was using most of its generated energy to produce a distortion field over it. One that the enemy would have trouble seeing through with visual, radar or any other spectrums. To them the gun would always appear to be shimmering from place to place, displacing by hundreds of meters, never giving a firm target. “What about a nuke or AM warhead,” he had asked the crew chief of that gun, while the smiling officer looked on. “I guess we’re fried then,” said the chief. “We can just hope they don’t think we’re worth the effort.” Obviously the enemy didn’t think they were worth the effort, or just weren’t thinking, because only kinetic rounds and light amp weapons continued to fall, and the vehicle lumbered away.
As soon as the mobile gun was over the horizon booming sounds started coming from the distant city. Walborski looked at his fellow troopers, then back at the city, where new clouds of smoke and dust were rising.
“It will be our turn soon,” he said to himself. “May heaven help us.”
* * *
“Crap,” yelled Captain Glen McKinnon, zooming in on the landing field with his suit systems. “As if we didn’t have enough problems.” A trio of large landing shuttles were on approach to the field, a strip near the edge of Frederick that was already swarming with Ca’cadasan troops, huge figures in battle armor that looked formidable as hell. Colonel Baggett had set him the mission of interdicting the shuttle field, but it didn’t look too promising with all those big bodies down there, some setting a perimeter to keep the field, others starting to form up and move off the tarmac and into the city. One of the shuttles slowed to a stop and lowered itself to the field. Moments later a vehicle began to disembark, something that looked much like a light tank. The other two came down on either side and started to disembark their own vehicles.
But then again that’s the enemy’s job, to make things difficult for us. I wonder why they tend to cluster so close together, thought the Captain, a plan coming to mind. He linked into the tactical net, looking at what assets were available. That looks like something I can use, he thought, sending his request up the line, then sending orders to his own company while waiting for acknowledgement. When it came the three shuttles had unloaded and were getting ready to take off, while another trio came through the clouds and started on their approach.
Approval came back from command, and McKinnon quickly set his plan in motion. Within moments the roar of incoming rounds filled the air, and the Imperial Marines moved forward.
My fantasy genre bender Refuge: The Arrival: Book 1 reached two thousand ebook sales this morning. Add to that the almost 1,700 for book 2 and 866 for Doppleganger and the series had sold over 4,500 copies. Compared to the over 18,000 sales for the two Exodus books and it isn’t even in the same ballpark. But still doing well enough to continue the series and hope that its popularity grows. I have been developing the world of Refuge for fifteen years, soon after I started putting fiction to hard drive. I call it a genre bender because it mixes military fiction and fantasy.
The story of Refuge revolves around the coming of Earth people to a world made up of our fantasies, and world in with Elves, Dwarves and Dragons exist, and great armies and mighty magics have raised empires, good and evil. A nuclear war on Earth opens wide the gates between the dimensions, and millions of Earth humans find themselves in a world of dreams and nightmares. The enemies they face are strong, and the ruler of the evil empire of the Ellala elves see the humans as nothing more than life energy to further his dreams of immortality. The humans have also brought fighting men, and tanks, artillery and attack helicopters. And three nukes, which rival the powers of the gods of this world. The technology is destined to stop functioning as the physical laws of the planet exert themselves. So it’s use it or lose it, and the humans use it with a vengeance to win enough great victories to gain breathing room.
In Book 3, the human tech no longer works, which does not mean the humans, who were also much more advanced in the muscled powered technologies than the natives of the planet, must now fight with weapons centuries behind those they are used to using. They still have a lot of surprises in store for the evil empire. Below is a first daraft excerpt from the current work in progress. An airborne assault on a fortress, shades of Eben-Emael.
Paul wasn’t really sure how he felt about the dragons. They were beautiful creatures to be sure, in their gold and silver scales. And damned intimidating as well. There were only a few ways to kill his kind, and he wanted to live a long time. Dragons possessed two of the killing methods. They could burn his body to ash, and they could eat him. Both methods would destroy his body, and that would be the end of his immortality on this mortal plane.
The big Gold looked him over as he approached, with calm golden brown eyes. The woman seated on its back rendered a salute, her long reddish brown hair coming under her helmet and blowing in the wind. If she can bloody well get used to the things, then so can I, thought the Brit. Can’t let a bird show me up.
Paul moved into place, standing about five meters from the Polish woman, the immortal Izabella Kozlowski. She was also in full armor, though of lighter construction of his own, a long sword and shield attached to her back. Now she’s a right good looking one, he thought of the blond hair, blue eyed woman who was said to be almost four hundred years old. But I like an older woman, he thought with a smile, knowing that she would be young and beautiful for centuries to come, as long as she didn’t get eaten by a dragon as well, or burned to death.
Oh, crap, he thought as the dragon flapped its wings and reared up on its hind feet. Two human troopers were holding on to the rear legs, some of the paratrooper contingent from Earth who were along for what could amount to a suicide mission. They were doing this kind of thing on Earth, thought the big Brit, who had been too large for the para regiment, and had never learned to jump. Until coming here, and training over the winter for just such a contingency. Well, maybe not this exact thing, he thought. The paratroopers, mostly Americans, with a smattering of Germans and a few Brits, had not jumped from dragon or battlehawk during their training on Earth. Their transport was more staid and stable, aircraft that all were familiar with.
The dragon grabbed him with it right claw, the woman with its left. It tensed its rear legs and jumped into the air, wings flapping with a booming sound. In moments it was high in the sky, heading toward the fortress. Other dragons rose along with it, thirty of the beasts. The larger carried four warriors each, the smaller two, for a total strength eighty-four paratroopers, about what one drop plane would have transported on Earth. Eighty battlehawks would also be in the air, each hauling one trooper into the air. It would be up to them to take the gates to the fortress and its keep, along with one follow up stick of another eighty, if all the hawks made it back from the first wave.
The ground passed below, visible in the faint light of the largest moon, a quarter full, but still brighter than a full Luna on Earth. The camp fires of the legion were visible in the distance, surrounding the fortress, which was lit with torch light and glow globes. It seemed to come toward them slowly, or really they toward it. But also too fast. Paul would have preferred it take longer, so he could gather his thoughts before jumping into what could be hell.
[Go] yelled the voice in his mind as they were almost over the fortress. Too far away as far as Paul was concerned, but he also knew that was the illusion of the jump. He took the order seriously and let the dragon drop him from its claws, looking back to see the two human paratroopers let go of their claws and fall. He turned his attention back to his own drop, counting to five, then pulling his rip cord. The US Army issue parachute opened above him, and in a second he was jerked into the sky, then floated. It was a steerable chute, the latest of airborne technologies, and he could control his drop and fly where he wanted, even pulling into a hover when needed. Some of the human commanders had wanted to use the levitation of magic, but the Elves had pointed out that levitation could be picked up and tracked by a skilled mage, and there were many such mages in the fortress.
The Brit watched the fort get closer, his eyes focused on the outer walls where sentries walked their posts. Those sentries should have been watching the skies as well as the ground outside the fort. A demonstration was in progress that attracted their attention, as ranks of legionaries formed up and marched, as if they were about to attack the walls. Engineers worked at engines, while pots of projectiles flamed behind them. The Ellala in the fort had to feel secure in their ability to repel any such attack, but they also had to know that the Earth people could pull tricks on them that they had never heard of. Like they were about to do at this moment.
The outer wall of the fort passed beneath Paul’s boots, and he pulled on his cord to change his trajectory toward the inner keep, where the garrison could shelter if the outer fort fell. Taking the courtyard meant nothing if the keep held out. So it had been decided to take them both at the same time. The four immortals and twenty troopers would try to take the gate to the keep, while a full company of paratroops would take the outer courtyard and open that gate. Or at least that was the way it was hoped it would go.
The Brit pulled his right riser, then his left, and aimed for the top of the tower to the left of the gate. The roof came up fast. Paul was wishing it would come fast as two Ellala looked his way. The one with the pike shouted, then set the spear to take the Immortal when he landed. The one with the bow pulled an arrow to his ear and released. The shaft sped into Paul’s chest and bounced from the armor. The immortal pulled on both risers and slowed, then dropped straight down, while the pikeman screamed and charged forward.
Paul’s feet hit the roof and he pulled the quick release tabs that attached his parachute pack to him. His next move was to pull the bastard sword from the sheath on his back, while his left hand grabbed at the ax haft that was attached to his left side. The pike head hit his chest and slid away. The immortals were all encased in the best armor that could be found, it thought to be more important to protect them so they could do what they did best, fight. It actually saved more lives to protect those with the best ability to take damage.
Another arrow hit his shoulder, and Paul roared as he struck the pike away with his sword, then swung the ax in to cave in the shoulder of the spearman. The archer was drawing another arrow when Levine landed behind him. A swing of the ancient immortal’s sword and the archer was headed for his afterlife, to reward or punishment. More paratroopers came in to land, while Izabella Kozlowski came down on the other tower with a dozen more paratroops. Gregor Babich yelled in frustration as he missed the roof of that tower and fell onto the roof of the keep, forty meters below the tops of the towers.
Guess we’ll have to do without him, thought Paul as he ran toward the stairway coming up from the wall, where dozens of Ellala swordsmen were swarming up. Just hope he makes it OK. Then he was standing over the landing to the stairway, and his sword and ax rose and fell in a rhythm of destruction that dropped and Elf every couple of seconds to his death.
He glanced to the side, looking down into the outer court, where the other paratroopers had landed. There were bodies on the ground, both human and Elf. The humans were getting the worst of it in the melee, men who had only been practicing the sword for less than a year, against beings who had been using a blade for centuries. Arrows were coming down from the walls to take more of the humans. But even as he watched the humans were clumping together into groups of a half dozen, then a dozen, then fifty, sixty, forming a tortoise formation. Now the arrows were glancing from the shields or sticking to them, while the men under the protection of that cover thrust with their short swords and killed all the Elves that came at them.
Then his attention was captured by the Ellala who continued to swarm up toward him. A quartet of paratroopers had by now put together short pikes from sections they had carried and were thrusting into the enemy, while others were firing heavy crossbows into the Ellala on the walls and in the courtyard. And then the Ellala on the wall backed away, and Paul wondered what was going on. The glowing staffs of mages appeared among the press and moved forward, and the Brit knew another deadly aspect had been added to the fight.
* * *
The Archduke had been walking the wall when the attack came, though it took him a few moments to realize that it was an attack. He wasn’t sure what he was seeing as the soldiers dropped from the sky underneath the fabric canopies that slowed them. There was no magical emanations, nothing to set off the alarms that would normally be triggered by an attack from above. But there was no levitation at work here, only more of the inventive technologies of the Earthers. And we were told that their technology would no longer work. Maybe that was true where the machines were concerned, but obviously not all of it.
Still, when the humans landed in the courtyard, they were at a disadvantage. They were not as capable as the Ellala who sorted from their barracks in the outer wall and the keep, and proved easy marks for the blades of trained swordsmen, despite their strange but well-designed armor. A dozen were down, then a score. And then the damnable humans grouped, and the strength of their tactical doctrine rose to the fore. A dozen of them got together and held their own against a dozen or more Ellala. Then a dozen became a score, then more, and what had been a slaughter from one side was now going the other way. Arrows fired into the courtyard bounced from the rectangular shields or stuck into the surface of them. No humans dropped, so the Archduke could tell that even the arrows that sank into the material of the shield was not harming them. And then that damnable rectangle, protected on all sides and above, started to move toward the gate.
Another group of soldiers dropped into the courtyard. The Archduke didn’t get a good count, but knew it had to be three score or more. They did the same thing as the other group, and soon there were about three score formed into another rectangle that moved toward the gate to the keep. Not all of those dropped made it, but the majority did, and they were nigh invulnerable in their formation.
“We must get more men into that courtyard,” yelled the Archduke to a nearby officer. “We must get mages there, or the humans will take the gate.”
“The keep will still be secure,” yelled back the officer, motioning for several of his men to run and direct reinforcements.
“I wouldn’t count on that,” screamed the Archduke, gesturing toward the gate towers above the keep, where several heavily armored warriors were slaughtering the defenders while more of the other humans were firing crossbows into the courtyard. “We have to keep them from opening this gate, so we can keep them from opening the keep as well.”
The officer gave a gesture of accent, then yelled and pointed to the courtyard, indicating to the archers to keep pouring on the arrows.
The Archduke turned and looked at to where the besiegers were gathered, and his breath caught in his throat as he saw a half dozen of the rectangles running in formation toward the wall. That was well over a thousand troops, and he had no illusions as to what would happen should a thousand of those well-disciplined troops enter the fort in those deadly formations. “Archers,” he yelled, pointing toward the oncoming humans, and several dozen bowmen turned and fired. As soon as the first arrows arched out the human formations shifted into more of those invulnerable walking fortresses. “Mages.” yelled the Archduke, and the half dozen magic users fired balls of flame or bolts of lightning at the formations.
In the past history of warfare on this world such a magical attack would have broken up the formations, one reason why armies did not march into battle, but charged in a mass of running, dodging individual fighters. But the fire or lightning that struck these formations either bounced from shields of magical energy, or simply flowed through the humans without effect. He couldn’t understand what was happening, even having seen it himself in the past. Some of the humans were simply immune to magic, following some over-god that protected them from such. The others were obviously using their own magic to protect themselves. That he did not understand at all. It took decades to learn how to use that kind of magic, and these creatures had been here less than a year. Some more technology we know nothing about. Will we ever figure them out, or will they march into the capital, unstoppable by anything we can do.
A crash and a crackle turned the noble’s attention back to the keep towers, where other mages were trying to drive the humans from the heights, and were seeming to not be having much success. That lack of success was apparent in the sight of the huge human in full armor moving down the stairs with a bastard sword in one hand and an ax in the other. At each strike an Ellala died, and the Archduke was sure that the fort was going to fall. His next thought was on how he was going to escape this mess.
I took a trip to my home town of Venice Florida this weekend, a place I hadn’t been since 1995, and a place I hadn’t lived at since 1975. I met with old friends, gave away signed books, and general went around the area and reminisced. And thoroughly enjoyed myself. I left there like so many to see the wider world. And I did, first Germany and much of Europe, then North Florida and Alabama. Kind of got sidetracked after Europe I guess. Anyway, the quiet of the place was unbelievable. Seeing the old houses that friends used to live in, at least one of them housing for the poor that are now historical sites and probably worth a small fortune. Hearing the coo of a Mourning Dove, and the sounds of the wind whispering through the Australian pines of a local park. The sight and sound of breakers on the beach. All in all it was a wonderful experience, and one I hope to become more common. I will try to move back there next year, to the old home. It is not the same place it was, but is still a very nice place, with great beaches, restaurants and other activities, but without the hustle and bustle of places like Panama City Beach or Daytona Beach or Ft. Lauderdale. I don’t need a big house down there, just enough room for me and my cats, where I can write in a quiet neighborhood.
Working hard on the next installment of Refuge, which follow the war between the Earth people and the natives. The Earthlings have lost their technology, at least anything depending on explosives or internal combustion engines. But they have other tricks up their sleeves, centuries of improvements in transportation and shipping that didn’t depend on engines. And strategy and tactics totally unheard of to the residents of Refuge. They also bring the scientific method to the study of science, and make great strides there as well. Meanwhile, Exodus is being proofread, and will be coming soon.
