by Chris Fox
PRESS THE LINE
CHRIS FOX
CONTENTS
Dedication
Cast of Characters
Previously on Ganog Wars
Hold The Line
Planetstrider
Prologue
1. Nyar Prime
2. Warp Anchor
3. Explain
4. The Summit
5. Fleet Leader
6. Rebuffed
7. Kokar
8. Grak
9. Workable
10. Nowhere Is Safe
11. The Mission is Yours
12. Azatok
13. To Me
14. Clanless
15. Nyar Will Fall
16. A Fool I've Been
17. Don't Do This
18. Halut
19. Sanitation Ducts
20. Life Debt
21. Reunited
22. Spit In Death's Eye
23. Defiant
24. Called To Account
25. No Legend
26. Extraction
27. Fall Back
28. The First Arcanotome
29. Inside The Tome
30. More Guards
31. Bruth
32. Longshot
33. We Have The Technology
34. Repairs
35. Nyar
36. Catch Our Breath
37. The Void Wraith
38. No
39. Into The Spire
40. Yeah, Still No
41. Nameless One
42. I'll Get Right On That Miracle
43. Get Their Attention
44. Everyone Is Online
45. Upper Spire
46. Assault The Beacon
47. No, You Are Not
48. Sacrifice
49. Boom
50. Azatok
51. Respect The Tigris
52. Not Good
53. Online
54. T'kon's Decision
55. Dire Consequences
56. Speech
57. Transform
What Comes Next?
Planetstrider
I. Tech Mage
1. Cargo Hold
2. Into the Eye
3. Demons
4. Enlightenment
5. Betrayal
DEDICATION
To you. I make my living writing, because you read. Thank you.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Aluki- Whalorian mechanic / pilot with a fondness for rocket launchers.
Annie- Former space miner turned mech pilot. Annie has a southern drawl, a foul mouth, and loves chewing tobacco. Totally not based on Annie Oakley.
Bruth- A powerful and respected Nyar leader.
Major Burke- The commander of Alpha Company, and all around pain in Nolan's ass. If this were a buddy cop movie, Burke and Nolan would be the cops.
Dryker- President of the Coalition, hero of the Eight Year War, and the Void Wraith invasion. Totally not based on Riker from Star Trek.
Fizgig- Mighty Fizgig, a feared Tigris commander who rose to prominence during the Eight Year War. She now serves as Admiral of the First Fleet. #dontmesswithfizgig
Grak- Kokar's father and the leader of the Nyar clan.
Hannan- A grenade loving hard ass who hates authority. Lieutenant Hannan is fiercely loyal to Captain Nolan, having been with him through the entire Void Wraith war.
Hruk- Kokar's mentor. He's pretty forgettable. If this were a movie he'd be a paid extra with like, three lines of dialogue.
Jehanna- T'kon's wife, and a very skilled Adept.
Kokar- A young leadership caste in the Nyar Clan. Kokar has a scar on his right cheek, given to him by Khar.
Nolan- The protagonist. Basically, a super handsome version of the author.
Nuchik- Nuchik is a stoic sniper, who chose to leave Alpha Company to join Nolan's squad. Her name originated from the placeholder I used-- New Chick. Yeah, I went there.
T'kon- T'kon is the displaced ruler of the Azi Clan, now a masterless hunter who's pledged himself to help the Coalition destroy the Nameless Ones.
Takkar- Takkar is the Clan Leader of the Vkash, and is the most accomplished fleet leader of his generation. He's lost twice to Fizgig, but who's counting? Pretty much everyone is counting.
Utfa- Utfa is the emissary of the Nameless Ones, which he's starting to realize may not have been his best plan ever.
Yulo- Master Yulo is a master Adept from the Yog clan. He's advised the empress for her entire life, and has personally tutored her in the arts of metabiology.
Zakanna- Empress of the Ganog imperium, until Utfa booted her off the throne.
PREVIOUSLY ON GANOG WARS
Whenever I pick up a later book in a series I'm torn. Should I go back and re-read the first few? Or just dive right in?
When I became an author I decided to offer readers a solution. At the beginning of every book I recap the previous book(s), just like you'd see on a television show. I try to make it as funny as possible.
Announcer voice: Last time, on Ganog Wars...
Behind the Lines
The prologue opens with a prisoner interrogation. Takkar, Clan Leader of the Vkash, seeks to learn more about this mysterious Coalition of United Species, or CUS for short. Since CUS is a stupid acronym, I chose to go with Coalition instead.
Anyway, Takkar gets all villain-ish, complete with the muhahaha I'm going to invade the Coalition. He sets a trap, and we already know our heroes are going to walk into it, because... it's on the freaking cover. Like we can literally see them getting their asses handed to them. Plus, the title is Behind The Lines. Spoilers, right?
The Coalition sends a fleet led by Admiral Fizgig (an angry Tigris based entirely on my house cat) to investigate. Fizgig sends in a ground team while her cloaked fleet waits in orbit. This ground team is commanded by Major Reval, who doesn't much like our protagonist, Nolan.
Nolan is the non-emo version of most anime heroes, a dude in his 20s who's a total badass in a mech. Reval makes Nolan wait on the ships while he walks into *gasp* an ambush. We're totally shocked, since we just read the prologue...where we were told this was going to happen.
Reval is attacked by large ape-like aliens called the Ganog. Nolan decides to disobey orders, and leads his squad to bail Reval out of trouble. Then Things Go Badly™.
Up in space, Fizgig's fleet engages the Ganog. The Ganog start kicking her ass in a way the Void Wraith never achieved. She cleverly uses the enemy's own ships as cover, but knows that she's going to need to retreat...quickly.
Back on the ground, things are going south. Early in the book we're told that there are three mounds erected around the city, and we have no idea what they're used for. We find out when 3,000-meter-tall planetstriders step out (see the cover of this book, or download Planetstrider).
The planetstrider blows up their cruisers, catching Annie in the explosion. Nolan, Edwards, Lena, and Hannan are forced to flee into a rust storm. They take shelter, and realize they have no way off-world.
Nolan leads a scouting party into an alien market, where they're approached by a Ganog named T'kon. T'kon says he knows where one of their people is, and will lead them there. Nolan reluctantly agrees, and is brought back to Aluki's shop.
Aluki is a Whalorian--a race of adorable little whale people...with rocket launchers. It turns out Annie survived, which is a good thing for me personally. I killed a fan favorite character in my Void Wraith trilogy, and have been informed that if I go the George R.R. Martin route snipers will be dispatched to deal with me. I'm constantly looking over my shoulder.
Meanwhile, Fizgig is trying to find a way to deal with the Ganog's superior technology. She returns to the
Birthplace, a mysterious (terribly mysterious) system run by the Ancient Primo. Time passes at an accelerated rate there, speeding the Coalition's manufacturing.
The Coalition has created the Theta cannon, which fires a micro-singularity. It will take time to outfit Fizgig's fleets--time that Nolan and Alpha Company may not have.
We flip back to Nolan, who picks up a Coalition signal. He and T'kon lead the squad to the location, racing to beat the Saurian kill squads. There's a skirmish, and Nolan leads a pair of Coalition survivors to safety. Those survivors turn out to be Burke and Nuchik, both of whom hate Nolan and his squad.
Burke is kind of a dick about ... well, pretty much everything. Nuchik doesn't talk much, but when she does it's usually to say something dickish. Hannan gets tired of this, and smashes Burke in his smug face with a pot of soup. Things come to a head, but Nolan breaks it up.
He gives a rousing speech about teamwork, then we get a Team America style montage. Nolan's squad starts working together, assembling the parts to build a small warp device so they can send word back to the fleet.
Along the way Nolan keeps looking for something called Gorthians. If you've read the Void Wraith trilogy, you're like...okay, I get it. If not you're probably wondering WTF a Gorthian is. Every twenty-six millennia the Gorthians return to our part of the milky way to harvest it--and when I say harvest, I mean eat. The only Gorthian we meet in that trilogy is a moon-sized giant floating eye. Of doom.
They tried that harvesting shit on Earth, but Fizgig, Dryker, and Nolan were all like: Yeah, no. (I won't say more in case you haven't read those books.)
Anyway, I bring up the Gorthians because Nolan keeps hearing the Ganog talk about "Nameless Ones." The more he hears, the more he thinks they sound an awful lot like the Gorthians. We don't find out if he's right in this book, but anyone who's read this far is pretty damned sure of the answer.
Nolan is pondering this very question when Krekon, the Ganog melter, pops onto the scene. He rolls into Nolan's camp with a whole lot of angry Ganog elites. Fortunately, Sissus is secretly working against Krekon. He manages to warn Nolan, and Nolan is ready when Krekon arrives.
There's a brutal fight where Edwards is crushed under a collapsing roof. All sorts of pew-pew-BOOM. Then Nolan has a duel with Krekon, the toughest, baddest gorilla alien you've ever seen. Nolan pulls it out at the last second and wins. We're shocked.
Beating Krekon gives Nolan the last missing piece of the puzzle. Now they have access to a ship, the one Krekon arrived in. So Nolan launches a desperate plan to get his people off-world: He is going to assault one of the planetstriders, while everyone else captures Krekon's cruiser.
This last part should be easy, since Sissus works for Krekon. Sissus tricks the Ganog into opening the ship, and Burke leads a squad in to seize it. Aluki finally uses a rocket launcher. Annie drawls.
The second part is a little harder. How the hell do you do deal with a 3,000-meter-tall Godzilla mutant mech thing? Nolan, T'kon, Lena, and Hannan scale the planetstrider like it's a mountain. They're only halfway up when the planetstrider punches out of the mound.
It fires into orbit, where Fizgig has led her newly outfitted fleet back into battle. They deploy their Theta cannons, and actually have some success against the enemy. They're still getting pounded though (huh huh).
Nolan battles his way inside the planetstrider's control room, where we receive a startling revelation. The technology is definitely Primo (the first race, see the Void Wraith trilogy for more details). That gives them an idea, though. Instead of blowing up the control unit, they remove the core and plug in Edwards. Edwards gets to pilot a 3,000 meter planetstrider. Pretty much his dream job.
Fizgig has severely damaged the enemy fleet, but is also taking heavy losses. Her flagship is hit, and things are looking grim.
Lena figures out how to use the planetstrider's warp, so Nolan orders Edwards to warp them into space. They appear near Fizgig's flagship, and just start wrecking shop. Ganog ships are blown to shit, and Clan Leader Takkar is forced to warp away.
It's almost a total victory, except for two problems. Fizgig's fleet has been savaged, and a lot of her booster mechs--including fan favorite Khar--were inside Takkar's flagship when it warped away. Our very last chapter shows Khar realizing this, and trying to figure out what the heck he's going to do.
That leads us into the book two, which we'll get to on the next page.
HOLD THE LINE
Hold the line kicked off with Takkar being received by the Empress of the Ganog Imperium. We're introduced to the concept of a Ganog Adept for the first time, and we learn that warriors and Adepts (Ganog monks) don't play nicely.
The Empress makes it clear that she could kill Takkar, but decides not to once he shows her a Coalition core. She agrees to re-outfit his fleet, and to lend her own to augment his forces. Together, they'll crush the Coalition muahaha.
Meanwhile, the real baddy is quietly introduced in the background. His name is Utfa, and he's part of the seeker caste. The seekers are religious zealots dedicated to attracting the gaze of the Nameless Ones, which even Takkar thinks is crazy. More on Utfa later.
Khar manages to escape into the underbelly of Takkar's dreadnought, where he joins forces with a spunky little Whalorian named Halut. Astute readers caught the subtext that Aluki is looking for her missing husband, and correctly realized that's Halut.
Halut helps Khar board a Saurian transport, and he escapes into the Imperial City. Khar learns that he needs money to afford a warp home, but that if he can get the money he can go back to Ganog 7. To get that money, Khar starts fighting in the arena.
Scenes like these are why I write, and 10 year old Chris would be ridiculously excited about how awesome Khar fighting in the arena is. Hell, 40 year old Chris is excited about it. Khar, as expected, kicks the crap out of his first opponent.
A weasily Ganog in the crowd tells Khar that he can arrange a fight in the Royal Spire, which will give Khar enough money to warp. Khar agrees, only to find he's been sold out. He and many other Ganog and Saurians have been forced into very lethal games.
Those games culminate with a grand melee where the survivors brawl with a full Ganog elite in their great form. Khar does pretty well, almost blinding the Ganog. The Empress stops the fight, and we learn that Kokar (the Ganog) is the heir to the Nyar Clan. He's embarrassed, and pretty pissed at Khar.
Meanwhile, Nolan and T'kon have landed on the Azi home world. Their fake goal, bring the Azi into the war on their side. The Azi hate the Vkash, because Takkar and his clan broke their only planetstrider, and peed on their lawn. Cats were shaved. Dogs got spray painted. It was terrible.
Since T'kon can re-activate the Azi planetstrider he figures maybe they'll work with him. Instead, they're assholes. It turns out the clan is now led by his former friend, Ro'kan. Good old Ro-Ro also stole T'kon's wife. Ro'kan is in bed with the seekers (not literally), led by a former warrior named Oako.
T'kon is alarmed, for damned good reason. Nolan quickly pieces together that these seekers directly serve the Nameless Ones, and he's also pretty damned sure that those are the Gorthians. It can't be coincidence that the seekers are growing in strength, after being a fringe caste for so long.
So where's Fizgig in all this? She's setting a big-ass trap for Takkar. She knows he's coming, and has given Nolan a super-sneaky secret mission. Make sure that Takkar learns the location of the planet Atreas. Make sure he thinks that planet is the location of the Coalition naval shipyards.
Burke has rebuilt Alpha Company, and has a Team America style training montage against Edwards in the planetstrider. We see them getting ready to brawl, and we know they're ready. The Coalition fleets start arriving, all outfitted with Theta cannons.
Khar is summoned before the Empress, and is worried that she'll have him interrogated. Instead, she claims not to care about some random, lone enemy warrior. She adopts Khar as a sort of pet, and allows him to observe her court. Khar gets to learn about the Ganog Imper
ium, and the Empress asks nothing in return.
