Miranda's War

by Eric S. Brown

  Does this validate Kenny’s wisdom?

  Benno shook his head, dazed and in shock, knowing he had to engage his brain. Looking beyond, he could see the glowing edges of bulkheads and decks gouged out by the fast, hot knife of the nuclear-pumped xaser. Only vaguely could he recall the sudden buffeting of explosive decompression that had nearly wrenched him through the straps of his acceleration couch.

  He knew he had things to do. He had to check his suit’s integrity. Was he leaking? Was he injured? And what about Kenny? Was he gone, unrecoverable? Or was he waiting for his poor, shocked-stupid boss Benno to reach out and save him?

  And there was something else, something important he needed to be doing. He wasn’t supposed to just sit here and think of himself or unlucky, lazy Kenny. Oh no, thought Benno, still trying to marshal his thoughts back together, Mio is going to be so angry with me, sitting here like a fool…

  “CSMC, report!”

  Benno shook his head against the ringing he hadn’t realized filled his ears. He reached out for the comms key on his console, swore at how futile that was, then keyed his suit mic. “Last station calling, this is CSMC. We’ve taken a hit. I lost my technician, console is…down, hard. Over.”

  “CSMC, TAO,” the Puller’s Tactical Action Officer said through the suit channel, “pull it together! We just had a near miss by a capital class Dauphine warhead. The battle with the Terrans has spread out of the main body. I have missiles up but zero point-defense. I need guns and beams back, now!”

  * * * * *

  Get “The Mutineer’s Daughter” now at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BRTDBCJ/.

  Find out more about Chris Kennedy, Thomas A. Mays, and “In Revolution Born” at:

  https://chriskennedypublishing.com

  * * * * *

  The following is an

  Excerpt from Book One of the Revelations Cycle:

  Cartwright’s Cavaliers

  ___________________

  Mark Wandrey

  Now Available from Seventh Seal Press

  eBook, Paperback, and Audio

  Excerpt from “Cartwright’s Cavaliers:”

  The last two operational tanks were trapped on their chosen path. Faced with destroyed vehicles front and back, they cut sideways to the edge of the dry river bed they’d been moving along and found several large boulders to maneuver around that allowed them to present a hull-down defensive position. Their troopers rallied on that position. It was starting to look like they’d dig in when Phoenix 1 screamed over and strafed them with dual streams of railgun rounds. A split second later, Phoenix 2 followed on a parallel path. Jim was just cheering the air attack when he saw it. The sixth damned tank, and it was a heavy.

  “I got that last tank,” Jim said over the command net.

  “Observe and stand by,” Murdock said.

  “We’ll have these in hand shortly,” Buddha agreed, his transmission interspersed with the thudding of his CASPer firing its magnet accelerator. “We can be there in a few minutes.”

  Jim examined his battlespace. The tank was massive. It had to be one of the fusion-powered beasts he’d read about. Which meant shields and energy weapons. It was heading down the same gap the APC had taken, so it was heading right towards that APC and Second Squad, and fast.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “Jim,” Hargrave said, “we’re in position. What are you doing?”

  “Leading,” Jim said as he jumped out from the rock wall.

  * * * * *

  Get “Cartwright’s Cavaliers” now at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MRZKM95/.

  Find out more about Mark Wandrey and “Cartwright’s Cavaliers” at: http://chriskennedypublishing.com/imprints-authors/mark-wandrey/.

  * * * * *

  The following is an

  Excerpt from Book One of The Psyche of War:

  Minds of Men

  ___________________

  Kacey Ezell

  Now Available from Theogony Books

  eBook, Paperback, and Audio

  Excerpt from “Minds of Men:”

  “Look sharp, everyone,” Carl said after a while. Evelyn couldn’t have said whether they’d been droning for minutes or hours in the cold, dense white of the cloud cover. “We should be overhead the French coast in about thirty seconds.”

  The men all reacted to this announcement with varying degrees of excitement and terror. Sean got up from his seat and came back to her, holding an awkward looking arrangement of fabric and straps.

  Put this on, he thought to her. It’s your flak jacket. And your parachute is just there, he said, pointing. If the captain gives the order to bail out, you go, clip this piece into your ‘chute, and jump out the biggest hole you can find. Do you understand? You do, don’t you. This psychic thing certainly makes explaining things easier, he finished with a grin.

  Evelyn gave him what she hoped was a brave smile and took the flak jacket from him. It was deceptively heavy, and she struggled a bit with getting it on. Sean gave her a smile and a thumbs up, and then headed back to his station.

  The other men were checking in and charging their weapons. A short time later, Evelyn saw through Rico’s eyes as the tail gunner watched their fighter escort waggle their wings at the formation and depart. They didn’t have the long-range fuel capability to continue all the way to the target.

  Someday, that long-range fighter escort we were promised will materialize, Carl thought. His mind felt determinedly positive, like he was trying to be strong for the crew and not let them see his fear. That, of course, was an impossibility, but the crew took it well. After all, they were afraid, too. Especially as the formation had begun its descent to the attack altitude of 20,000 feet. Evelyn became gradually aware of the way the men’s collective tension ratcheted up with every hundred feet of descent. They were entering enemy fighter territory.

  Yeah, and someday Veronica Lake will...ah. Never mind. Sorry, Evie. That was Les. Evelyn could feel the waist gunner’s not-quite-repentant grin. She had to suppress a grin of her own, but Les’ irreverence was the perfect tension breaker.

  Boys will be boys, she sent, projecting a sense of tolerance. But real men keep their private lives private. She added this last with a bit of smug superiority and felt the rest of the crew’s appreciative flare of humor at her jab. Even Les laughed, shaking his head. A warmth that had nothing to do with her electric suit enfolded Evelyn, and she started to feel like, maybe, she just might become part of the crew yet.

  Fighters! Twelve o’clock high!

  The call came from Alice. If she craned her neck to look around Sean’s body, Evelyn could just see the terrifying rain of tracer fire coming from the dark, diving silhouette of an enemy fighter. She let the call echo down her own channels and felt her men respond, turning their own weapons to cover Teacher’s Pet’s flanks. Adrenaline surges spiked through all of them, causing Evelyn’s heart to race in turn. She took a deep breath and reached out to tie her crew in closer to the Forts around them.

  She looked through Sean’s eyes as he fired from the top turret, tracking his line of bullets just in front of the attacking aircraft. His mind was oddly calm and terribly focused...as, indeed, they all were. Even young Lieutenant Bob was zeroed in on his task of keeping a tight position and making it that much harder to penetrate the deadly crossing fire of the Flying Fortress.

  Fighters! Three o’clock low!

  That was Logan in the ball turret. Evelyn felt him as he spun his turret around and began to fire the twin Browning AN/M2 .50 caliber machine guns at the sinister dark shapes rising up to meet them with fire.

  Got ‘em, Bobby Fritsche replied, from his position in the right waist. He, too, opened up with his own .50 caliber machine gun, tracking the barrel forward of the nose of the fighter formation, in order to “lead” their flight and not shoot behind them.

  Evelyn blinked, then hastily relayed the call to the other girls in the formation net. She felt their acknowledgement, though it was almost an absentminded
thing as each of the girls were focusing mostly on the communication between the men in their individual crews.

  Got you, you Kraut sonofabitch! Logan exulted. Evelyn looked through his eyes and couldn’t help but feel a twist of pity for the pilot of the German fighter as he spiraled toward the ground, one wing completely gone. She carefully kept that emotion from Logan, however, as he was concentrating on trying to take out the other three fighters who’d been in the initial attacking wedge. One fell victim to Bobby’s relentless fire as he threw out a curtain of lead that couldn’t be avoided.

  Two back to you, tail, Bobby said, his mind carrying an even calm, devoid of Logan’s adrenaline-fueled exultation.

  Yup, Rico Martinez answered as he visually acquired the two remaining targets and opened fire. He was aided by fire from the aircraft flying off their right wing, the Nagging Natasha. She fired from her left waist and tail, and the two remaining fighters faltered and tumbled through the resulting crossfire. Evelyn watched through Rico’s eyes as the ugly black smoke trailed the wreckage down.

  Fighters! Twelve high!

  Fighters! Two high!

  The calls were simultaneous, coming from Sean in his top turret and Les on the left side. Evelyn took a deep breath and did her best to split her attention between the two of them, keeping the net strong and open. Sean and Les opened fire, their respective weapons adding a cacophony of pops to the ever-present thrum of the engines.

  Flak! That was Carl, up front. Evelyn felt him take hold of the controls, helping the lieutenant to maintain his position in the formation as the Nazi anti-aircraft guns began to send up 20mm shells that blossomed into dark clouds that pocked the sky. One exploded right in front of Pretty Cass’ nose. Evelyn felt the bottom drop out of her stomach as the aircraft heaved first up and then down. She held on grimly and passed on the wordless knowledge the pilots had no choice but to fly through the debris and shrapnel that resulted.

  In the meantime, the gunners continued their rapid fire response to the enemy fighters’ attempt to break up the formation. Evelyn took that knowledge—that the Luftwaffe was trying to isolate one of the Forts, make her vulnerable—and passed it along the looser formation net.

  Shit! They got Liberty Belle! Logan called out then, from his view in the ball turret. Evelyn looked through his angry eyes, feeling his sudden spike of despair as they watched the crippled Fort fall back, two of her four engines smoking. Instantly, the enemy fighters swarmed like so many insects, and Evelyn watched as the aircraft yawed over and began to spin down and out of control.

  A few agonizing heartbeats later, first one, then three more parachutes fluttered open far below. Evelyn felt Logan’s bitter knowledge that there had been six other men on board that aircraft. Liberty Belle was one of the few birds flying without a psychic on board, and Evelyn suppressed a small, wicked feeling of relief that she hadn’t just lost one of her friends.

  Fighters! Twelve o’clock level!

  * * * * *

  Get “Minds of Men” here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0778SPKQV.

  Find out more about Kacey Ezell and “Minds of Men” at: http://chriskennedypublishing.com.

  * * * * *

  The following is an

  Excerpt from Book One of the Earth Song Cycle:

  Overture

  ___________________

  Mark Wandrey

  Available Now from Theogony Books

  eBook and Paperback

  Excerpt from “Overture:”

  Dawn was still an hour away as Mindy Channely opened the roof access and stared in surprise at the crowd already assembled there. “Authorized Personnel Only” was printed in bold red letters on the door through which she and her husband, Jake, slipped onto the wide roof.

  A few people standing nearby took notice of their arrival. Most had no reaction, a few nodded, and a couple waved tentatively. Mindy looked over the skyline of Portland and instinctively oriented herself before glancing to the east. The sky had an unnatural glow that had been growing steadily for hours, and as they watched, scintillating streamers of blue, white, and green radiated over the mountains like a strange, concentrated aurora borealis.

  “You almost missed it,” one man said. She let the door close, but saw someone had left a brick to keep it from closing completely. Mindy turned and saw the man who had spoken wore a security guard uniform. The easy access to the building made more sense.

  “Ain’t no one missin’ this!” a drunk man slurred.

  “We figured most people fled to the hills over the past week,” Jake replied.

  “I guess we were wrong,” Mindy said.

  “Might as well enjoy the show,” the guard said and offered them a huge, hand-rolled cigarette that didn’t smell like tobacco. She waved it off, and the two men shrugged before taking a puff.

  “Here it comes!” someone yelled. Mindy looked to the east. There was a bright light coming over the Cascade Mountains, so intense it was like looking at a welder’s torch. Asteroid LM-245 hit the atmosphere at over 300 miles per second. It seemed to move faster and faster, from east to west, and the people lifted their hands to shield their eyes from the blinding light. It looked like a blazing comet or a science fiction laser blast.

  “Maybe it will just pass over,” someone said in a voice full of hope.

  Mindy shook her head. She’d studied the asteroid’s track many times.

  In a matter of a few seconds, it shot by and fell toward the western horizon, disappearing below the mountains between Portland and the ocean. Out of view of the city, it slammed into the ocean.

  The impact was unimaginable. The air around the hypersonic projectile turned to superheated plasma, creating a shockwave that generated 10 times the energy of the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated as it hit the ocean’s surface.

  The kinetic energy was more than 1,000 megatons; however, the object didn’t slow as it flashed through a half mile of ocean and into the sea bed, then into the mantel, and beyond.

  On the surface, the blast effect appeared as a thermal flash brighter than the sun. Everyone on the rooftop watched with wide-eyed terror as the Tualatin Mountains between Portland and the Pacific Ocean were outlined in blinding light. As the light began to dissipate, the outline of the mountains blurred as a dense bank of smoke climbed from the western range.

  The flash had incinerated everything on the other side.

  The physical blast, travelling much faster than any normal atmospheric shockwave, hit the mountains and tore them from the bedrock, adding them to the rolling wave of destruction traveling east at several thousand miles per hour. The people on the rooftops of Portland only had two seconds before the entire city was wiped away.

  Ten seconds later, the asteroid reached the core of the planet, and another dozen seconds after that, the Earth’s fate was sealed.

  * * * * *

  Get “Overture” now at:

  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077YMLRHM/

  Find out more about Mark Wandrey and the Earth Song Cycle at: http://chriskennedypublishing.com/imprints-authors/mark-wandrey/.

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