Liberation_Age of Expansion_A Kurtherian Gambit Series

by Craig Martelle

  “We will, but then we’re next, aren’t we, my good girl?”

  “How did a wombat get all the way out here?”

  “Maybe wombats are aliens and someone took them to Earth? We should be asking, was it the grays who dropped them off, like the sailing ships of old and rats.”

  “You have some strange thoughts,” Char suggested, squeezing her husband’s hand tightly.

  Terry keyed the mic. “Status?”

  “We’ll have the fleet in orbit within two hours,” the captain replied. “Looks like a great time to go home.”

  “Charge the gate drive, Micky. We’re bringing home one of the greatest fleets in humanity’s history. We’re going to slap Bad Company logos on all these bitches, and then the bad guys can stand the fuck by. We’re bringing the heat.”

  The End

  Liberation, Book 4 of The Bad Company

  If you like this book, please leave a review. Reviews buoy my spirits and stoke the fires of creativity.

  Don’t stop now! Keep turning the pages as Craig & Michael talk about their thoughts on this book and the overall project called the Age of Expansion (and if you haven’t read the eleven-book prequel, the Terry Henry Walton Chronicles, now is a great time to take a look).

  Terry, Char, and the rest of the Bad Company’s Direct Action Branch will return in Dreadnought.

  Welcome to the Age of Expansion

  BONUS MATERIAL

  This is the original outline that I used as the basis to write this book. You’ll see how my mind works and how much I have to fill in outside of the key points.

  Enjoy!

  The War Axe

  TH, Char, Ted and Felicity are having a quiet dinner in the director’s quarters on Keeg Station. Ted apologizes for being a bully. He did it just to get back at Terry while Terry’s orders and what Ted perceived as coercion were for a different purpose.

  Aaron and Yanmei introduce Cory to eastern philosophy to help her cope. Jenelope plays a role. Cory spends a lot of time working in the kitchen.

  Cory and Christina have increased roles and visibility.

  Introduce Asplesians – Felicity was warned about them as the previous station manager had been killed by one in a bar fight.

  Kae & Marcie head out to support the integration of former Empire Forces into the FDG as an offensive peacekeeping military – big numbers and old-time tactics.

  Shonna and Merrit take over the management of the asteroid mining operation while Sue & Timmons take over Spires Harbor. Felicity jacks people up to improve access for trade with Keeg Station. She works Nathan hard to out the station and build a gate.

  Some of the people take vacations and head out. Fitzroy, Cory, Aaron, and Yanmei go back to Earth (now starting the Age of Madness) to deliver the communication units that Ted and Ankh have invented. They take a small ship, one of the Harborian frigates with a new miniaturized gate system and an EI under Smedley’s tutelage.

  Kailin is having trouble managing the home business (son of Kim & Auburn).

  TH has a beer in All Guns Blazing on Onyx Station, decides to take his windfall from Nathan for the not swearing bit and open up a franchise on Keeg Station. The Crooner (Ankh) takes an interest in the business of the bar. Asks that a few of his people immigrate to Keeg to run it for Terry while he’s away on missions. These little guys will be all about profit and start getting into shady side deals once the station is opened up to all people.

  Best bar in outer space, on Meredith Reynolds, in dock area. Room to drink (solo space, or in groups), room to dance, adults with adults, families, game area, private rooms. Bar down the middle, separating drinking side from other activities. Large viewing window, into space (20’ high, 60’ long). Premier draw for the bar. Can create auditory privacy, as needed, in any area of the bar. Expanding, to franchise in other systems, other planets. Will help Dark Company to further it’s ends. TKG18

  Ixtali - Physical description - Look like standing spiders. 4 eyes. Humanoid form in pic, but 4 legs (spider legs crossed with crab legs) in text. Four major mandibles, 2 minor ones also, one top, one bottom

  Malatians! Originally from Malatia, but those in Shadow Vanguard 1: Gravity Storm are colonists on Alma Nine. They have teal skin and bright eyes. Females are born with buzzcut-short blue hair, which stays that way for life. Males have long, flowing silver hair, which they wear in eccentric styles to attract a partner - like certain animals and birds do on Earth. Quiffs, spikes, dreadlocks and more - some men add strings of LED lights, small ornaments or even glitter to garner attention. When happily married, men allow their hair to grow long and unkempt to show they are no longer ‘on the market’. The messier the hair, the happier the marriage! Every Malatian has a name consisting of two, three-letter words which are never used separately. So, Tor Val, Saf Tah, Jon Rey, etc. But, never just Tor, Saf or Jon.

  K’Thrall starts training with the Bad Company along with a number of new recruits, a whole platoon’s worth, many Harborians like Brice, some station personnel like Tim.

  The team comes back together, minus Kae, Marcie, and the pack. Ted decides he has to go because he can’t leave Char as an alpha without a pack and Nathan makes him promise to watch over Christina. Kimber takes over the mech recon. Christina moves up to be a deputy to TH, filling the role that Marcie held for all those years.

  They leave for Home World, taking a number of captured ships as a ruse to get close to the planet. Ted brings the bit of Ten that they’d sequestered. Plato runs the ships and it becomes a battle of wills between Plato and Ten with Ted & Ankh on the outside looking in.

  The planet is lush and they find the women. They hadn’t been culled as Ten led the men to believe. The number of women equals the number of men, but the problems with them are reversed as they also don’t know how to act with the opposite sex. Everyone is challenged to the extreme until the women of the Bad Company have to take over and get things under control.

  Author Notes - Craig Martelle

  Written April 14th, 2018

  I can’t thank you enough for continuing to read this series. Terry Henry Walton and the fine characters who surround him have become a part of my world. I hope they’ve become a part of yours as well. Honor. Courage. Commitment. Something we can all live for and be proud of.

  Sarah Lewin gets to celebrate the first anniversary of her 29th birthday today (publication day, April 23rd, 2018)! Hearty congratulations from this side of the pond and many more joyous days to follow (you don’t need to wait for your birthday to bash like it’s your birthday).

  TSP’s Fine Dining – my friend Scott Paul who is a world-class author, is a real chef with a formal education from culinary school. Have you ever eaten the kind of magnificence these good people produce? You should. There’s a big difference between the way they cook and what you get at chain restaurants.

  Thanks to the incredible world of the internet, I know all kinds of Irish – real people who live in Ireland. Thanks to my friend Tommy Donbavand, he volunteered his cousin to be a character within the Bad Company, so Lieutenant Clodagh Shortall was given some screen time. Someone had to keep watch on the good king Wenceslaus, our most favorite big orange cat.

  It snowed in Dublin, a fairly rare event, and Clodagh made a snowman (see the picture on the next page) and that is where the inspiration for Micky (character named after our very own Micky Cocker from the UK) and the great HVAC failure came from. So there we are, living in a world that is only a few keystrokes apart no matter where you live. What a great time in which we live! Think about it. Too many think the world is falling apart because the whole world is at your fingertips. Out of seven billion people, we let the misdeeds of so very few weigh us down. Think about your parents and when it was a much simpler time, when you had to get off the couch to answer the phone because the cord wouldn’t reach. The world was a very small place back then. Now, we can make it whatever we want if we don’t let the immensity of it all overwhelm us. Take a moment to say hello to Clodagh in Dublin
.

  Shout out to Beck Young who gave me the name Alant and Nicole Emens who offered Cole. I love the fact that I don’t have to search the internet for names anymore. All I have to do is ask the best fans in the universe. Two minutes later, I have a huge selection to choose from and it makes me feel bad that I can’t pick them all. Thank you so much for being there for me.

  According to Chrisa Changala, the names Eldis and Xianna are from a 20-year long friendship that started online in EverQuest and continued through many other MMOs and into real life. It is great to see an online friendship that turns out well, as opposed to the Craig’s List killers (or parade of killers on my namesake site! Damn – could they make things suck any worse?). But not for Eldis and Xianna. The green woman may be free with her affections as part of her culture, but welcome to humanity! We’ll see how Jenelope does keeping the young couple on track.

  James Grant is one of the Kurtherian Gambit Universe Just In Time readers. He also does some 3D modeling of space ships and such, so I included one in the story – the combat support drone. It’s a necessary addition to the combat power of The Bad Company, in addition to the cryo-drones (that idea came from Norman Meredith). As we always do in life, we learn most of the lessons the hard way. We tend to fight the last battle as we prepare for the next one. Terry and company are trying to get ahead of the bad guys with a massive increase in the ability to put munitions on target.

  This book has a significant amount of crossover in it. I had to coordinate extensively with those in the know – Tommy Dublin, Sarah Noffke, Micky Cocker, James Caplan, Kelly O’Donnell, Natale Roberts, and Erika Everest. They made sure that I hit the right notes on the crossover work. Tommy and Sarah actually wrote those parts that I’ve pasted into this book. Shows what a team effort all of this is. As I tell other indie authors, this is a lonely profession, an author at his/her computer writing the words, but you don’t have to be alone. I have people around the world that I can talk to no matter what time of day or night it is.

  Why did Ramses have to die? War sucks and the more we fight, the more times our number might come up. It is a taste of reality, but I don’t want it to be debilitating. We all have loss in our lives, but we still move forward, even if we think we don’t want to. I want people to be happy after they finish reading my books. I ended Price of Freedom on a sad note and that needs to be remedied! I hope you found this book to be more fun and uplifting, ending on a high that made you feel good.

  Marcie and Kaeden moving on? There’s a reason for that, too.

  I introduced the Belzonians as a prelude to the series that Jonathan Brazee and I will co-write. This will be more traditional military science fiction, combined arms combat operations on a planetary scale. Two Marines writing it. I don’t think we can go wrong. Marcie and Kae will oversee the operations but we’ll create all new characters for the brunt of it. I’m going to write from the perspective of the Sergeant Major who spends most of his time with the front lines, while Jon will write from the command team’s perspective, but in the Belzonian Army, the command team fights, too. Everyone fights. It’s how they’re wired.

  I was starting to get lost in the story tendrils because I had so many main characters. Cutting that back was important for my sanity, which is another reason I had to trim the numbers of main characters. We can’t have the same people doing the same thing forever. By splitting things out, we can broaden what people do and that opens up so many more plot lines. You, the readers, deserve that.

  I also introduced Rivka, our soon-to-be favorite barrister who will star in her own series that will be called ‘Kurtherian Legal.’ The first book is titled The Queen’s Barrister. I have a bit written on this one already, but I’m mostly dabbling story ideas at present. I can’t take credit for the concept. Michael came up with the overall arc. He knows a few lawyers and asked one to co-write the series, but he wasn’t able to – the day job working as a lawyer sucks your life away where the last thing you want to do when you’re off is sit in front of the computer.

  I’m one of the other lawyers that he knows, so there was Michael, knocking on my virtual door… It’s hard not to like the story line. I’m ashamed that I didn’t think of it, but I shouldn’t be. Michael is the story guy. He lives to tell tales. I get quagmired in the details. I think between the two of us, we came up with something pretty compelling. The stuff I wrote as the introduction in here has been incredibly well-received by the readers who follow us on the Kurtherian Gambit fans page. I mean really well received, almost overwhelming. It is so much fun to put it together that I want to drop everything else and go all in. Alas, I have too many commitments.

  I’m not sure when the first one will be ready. I’ll say sometime this summer. I can’t commit beyond that, sorry. But it’ll be a total bash when it arrives. The choice bits that I’ve been able to cobble together are flowing well.

  But that’s all boring story stuff. You didn’t read this far just to hear me prattle on about future stories. You want me to bag on Michael Anderle about what he looks like in our early morning Zoom calls. We rely on Zoom because the phone calls work only intermittently. “Can you hear me now?” “How about now, motherfucker?” That’s how those conversations go. So Zoom it is.

  It’s important that neither of us stand up. As we say in the indie author community, if you’re wearing pants, you’re probably missing out on valuable writing time.

  I unfortunately had to see that Jonathan Brazee adheres to that rule as well. We were on a conference call together and told him to let the ugly noise go, but he said he had to check it out. Neither Michael nor I got our eyes closed in time.

  I can’t bag on Michael or Jon. Those two guys are so damn upright, it’s not even funny. Me? I’m boring as hell. I live in the interior of Alaska, far afield from the rest of the world. Although, Michael slept through the opening of 20Books London. There I was, doing the welcome to the show and Michael was in his bed, sound asleep. His wife woke him up at 9:09 am, eight minutes into my tap dance. And it still irks me that I started a minute late.

  I stretched it out to thirty minutes so Michael had time to collect his wits. Many people would not be able to address a major conference twenty minutes after they’ve been awakened from a sound sleep, but Michael pulled it off. He promised not to be late in Vegas. I promised not to put him on before noon.

  Michael has made it possible for me to work with some incredible people. Tommy Donbavand (writing as Tom Dublin), Sarah Noffke, and Amy DuBoff, to mention a few. I’ll take credit for introducing Amy to Michael and bringing her in for at least four books within the Age of Expansion. We’ll keep after her for four more, and then more…

  Tommy D wrote the meeting between Terry, Char, and the Shadow Vanguard team. I hope you like it. It meant a lot to me that he would take time out of his schedule to jam some words that we can both use.

  Same thing for Sarah Noffke. I asked if she would do a crossover with the Ghost Squadron where they could meet Terry and Char. She readily agreed as well and jammed lots of cool words that you’ll find in this book. Thanks, Sarah – well done!

  At the beginning of May, Michael and I will visit a major facility. We’ll share pictures after that has gone down. For now, you’ll have to wonder where we’re going and with whom we’ll be talking.

  And today (April 23rd, 2018) marks the release date for Darklanding 8, too. That series is running along with a new release every 18 days for the entire first season (twelve total episodes). We call it a space western, but if you like Firefly or Tombstone or Bonanza or any of those, then you should be able to sink your teeth into Darklanding. Please, give it a try - always free in Kindle Unlimited. myBook.to/Darklanding

  That’s it—break’s over, back to writing the next book. Peace, fellow humans.

  ***

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  If you liked this story, you might like some of my other books. You can join my mailing list by dropping by my website www.craigmartelle.com or if you have any comments, shoot me a note at craig@craigmartelle.com. I am always happy to hear from people who’ve read my work. I try to answer every email I receive.

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  Thank you for joining me on this incredible journey.

  Author Notes - Michael Anderle

  Written April 21, 2018

  First, THANK YOU for not only reading this book, but reading these Author Notes, as well!

  Here we go, running down the path of book four and finding out MORE about The Bad Company.

  Plus, we get a hint into a new player, and new view into The Kurtherian Gambit Universe.

  When we are thinking of a new series to create, we don’t look at what’s successful (well, we do some of that of course) but rather we look at areas we think would be fun to do, within what we believe are stories fans would like to read.

  And what we think would be fun to write.

  Enter Rivka.

  Something born of Boston Legal crossed with a real lawyer (Craig) while kicking ass and taking names (a bit of Judge Dredd) but wrapped up as a lawyer first, not a cop.

  A lawyer with some bite.

  Bad Company is moving on, and moving forward with new stories and The Kurtherian Gambit Age of Expansion is just opening up as we move forward into the future.

  New stories with familiar friends. New stories with new friends that always remind you of a certain something that runs through everything we do.