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| Original Sten /:#1 Cover |
REGARDING STEN #1
Chris and I saw Sten in book form for the first time at the
paperback rack of a liquor store on our way home from MGM studios. We were story
execs for the Robert Urich-starring “Gavilan” TV series, a troubled show that
required copious quantities of Scotch to keep the stress level below the Shoot
All The Suits high water mark.
Chris spotted it first. Pointing, he said, “Fuck me, Cole…
there’s our book!”
My heart quickened as I goggled at it. With trembling hands
I lifted the book from the rack. I was so overcome I took in very little of the
cover, except for the title: Sten. And the bylines… heart be still… Allan Cole
and Chris Bunch.
Flipped it over and scanned the back-of-the-book blurb, with
its typically muscular (for military Science Fiction) and over-hyped prose. It
read:
"A TALE OF REVENGE: Vulcan was a factory planet, centuries old, Company run, ugly as sin, and unfeeling as death. Vulcan bred just two types of native -- complacent or tough...and Sten was tough. When his family died in a mysterious "accident," Sten rebelled, harassing the Company from the metal world's endless mazelike warrens. Sten would have ended up just another burnt-out Delinquent if he hadn't rescued a mysterious stranger who turned out to be his ticket off Vulcan -- and an express ride back!”
"A TALE OF REVENGE: Vulcan was a factory planet, centuries old, Company run, ugly as sin, and unfeeling as death. Vulcan bred just two types of native -- complacent or tough...and Sten was tough. When his family died in a mysterious "accident," Sten rebelled, harassing the Company from the metal world's endless mazelike warrens. Sten would have ended up just another burnt-out Delinquent if he hadn't rescued a mysterious stranger who turned out to be his ticket off Vulcan -- and an express ride back!”
Flipped it back over to study the cover again. The image
finally came into focus. And it was a… well, I wasn’t sure what exactly it was.
Then I realized it was the artist’s conception of Vulcan.
“Looks like a fucking toilet bowl plunger, Cole,” Chris said.
And it did, by gosh and golly. It did.
A bit of a letdown, when you consider it was an idea that
was born waiting in a two-block gasoline-rationing line astride my motorcycle, while
harried gas station attendants dealt with pissed off motorists.
That was in 1979. This was 1982. In between were thousands
of hours of work building the world of Sten, getting it down on paper, endless
hours of rewrite and months of nail-biting while we struggled to land a
publisher willing to take on a couple of first time novelists.
As I’ve said before, at one point we even junked nearly two
hundred pages and started the book all over again, keeping only the first
sentence: “Death came silently to The Row.”
But, back to the gas crunch. The oil shortage was the end- result of the Iranian Revolution where the despot monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was replaced by the despot cleric, Ayatollah Khomeini.
In short, the oil producing kleptocracies in the Middle East had us by the cajones, and were squeezing hard. And not for the first – or last – time.
But, back to the gas crunch. The oil shortage was the end- result of the Iranian Revolution where the despot monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was replaced by the despot cleric, Ayatollah Khomeini.
In short, the oil producing kleptocracies in the Middle East had us by the cajones, and were squeezing hard. And not for the first – or last – time.
As I sat there in that gas line – trying to ignore all the
motorists who glared at me suspiciously because I was a motorcycle, and
therefore capable of any atrocity – it came to me that if one person could
control all the world’s energy, he would effectively control the planet. And if
he could control this planet, then any others he occupied would fall under his economic
sway, and so on and so forth until he had a…
“I have this idea about an empire,” I told Chris, when I
reached his house, where we spent 36 hours a week (besides holding down
responsible full-time jobs as journalists) trying to break into novels and
screenwriting.
Chris just gave me a look. He didn’t have to say it aloud.
There have been countless science fiction books dealing with empires, galactic
and otherwise. But he waited, figuring I already knew that, so there must be
more.
I went on to explain how a guy might be able to build an
empire if had sole control of a single-energy source that was cheap enough and
green enough to replace all other forms of energy.
These were the days when there was much written about “cold
fusion” (which proved to be a fraud), so the idea a of cheap, single source of
energy wasn’t all that outlandish.
Chris sparked to the idea and we got down to it for many,
many hours, fuled by rivers of Scotch. The fuel source turned out to be anti-matter
two (AM2), discovered by our Emperor wannabe in another universe. And the
empire itself would be by far the largest, most successful, and most powerful
in all of galactic history.
But all this couldn’t be accomplished in a single lifetime.
These were also the days of the human cloning hysteria, based on totally false
claims that a mysterious billionaire or three had cloned themselves.
And mysterious billionaires were all over the news back
then, chiefly because of the strange stories and bizarre rumors (some of which
turned out to be true) surrounding the hermit billionaire-crazy-guy-supreme,
Howard Hughes.
Of course, our Emperor – like any Emperor – couldn’t be all
that nice of a guy considering what it would take to become an immortal who
would reign over a three-thousand-year-old galactic empire.
We would need a common guy for a central character. Someone
you wouldn’t mind sharing a narco-beer with. Make him a kid to start with. A
delinq. Whose folks were unskilled migrant workers at a factory planet. A road
their son would most likely follow. But tragic events would punt him forward,
and over the succeeding novels he would rise from a common grunt, to a skilled
black-ops assassin, to a wartime naval hero, to a confidant of the Eternal
Emperor himself.
We named him Sten – after the British submachine gun.
Anyway, you can easily see how all of these elements could gel together to form the framework of what would prove to be an eight-novel series that became a world-wide phenomena in multiple languages and sales of over 25 million copies.
Okay, okay. We didn’t know about all that yet. The 25 million copies. Or the international acclaim. Or if someone said “Bunch and Cole” in a crowd that the eyes of science fiction readers would light up with recognition.
All we knew – way back then in 1982 at the liquor store just down from MGM – was that the cover of our newly born child looked, as Chris said, “like a fucking toilet bowl plunger.”
(Interesting factoid: STEN is an acronym, from the names of the submachine gun's chief designers, Major Reginald V.Shepherd and Harold Turpin, and EN for England.)
We named him Sten – after the British submachine gun.
Anyway, you can easily see how all of these elements could gel together to form the framework of what would prove to be an eight-novel series that became a world-wide phenomena in multiple languages and sales of over 25 million copies.
Okay, okay. We didn’t know about all that yet. The 25 million copies. Or the international acclaim. Or if someone said “Bunch and Cole” in a crowd that the eyes of science fiction readers would light up with recognition.
All we knew – way back then in 1982 at the liquor store just down from MGM – was that the cover of our newly born child looked, as Chris said, “like a fucking toilet bowl plunger.”
(Interesting factoid: STEN is an acronym, from the names of the submachine gun's chief designers, Major Reginald V.Shepherd and Harold Turpin, and EN for England.)
*****
And now, here is the first chapter of:
.jpeg) |
| Current American Cover |
By Allan Cole and Chris Bunch
Chapter One
Death came quietly to The Row.
The suit stank. The Tech inside it
stared out through the scratched port at the pipe that looped around the
outside of the recreation dome and muttered a string of curses that would’ve
peeled a deep-space trader.
What he wanted more than anything was
a tall cool narcobeer to kill the hangover drumrolls in his head. The one thing
he didn’t want, he knew, was to be hanging outside Vulcan, staring at a
one-centimeter alloy pipe that wouldn’t hook up.
He clamped his waldos on the flange,
set the torque rating by feel, and tried another round of obscenities, this
time including his supervisor and all the stinking Migs enjoying themselves one
meter and a world away from him.
Done.
He retracted the waldos and slammed the suit’s tiny drive unit into life. Not only was his supervisor a clot who was an exjoyboy, but he was also going to get stuck for the first six rounds. The Tech shut down his groundzeroed brain and rocketed nimbly for the lock.
He retracted the waldos and slammed the suit’s tiny drive unit into life. Not only was his supervisor a clot who was an exjoyboy, but he was also going to get stuck for the first six rounds. The Tech shut down his groundzeroed brain and rocketed nimbly for the lock.
Of course, he’d missed the proper
torque setting. If the pipe hadn’t been carrying fluorine, under high pressure,
the error wouldn’t have made any difference.
The overstressed fitting cracked, and
raw fluorine gradually ate its way through, for several shifts spraying
harmlessly into space. But, as the fracture widened, the spray boiled directly
against the outer skin of The Row, through the insulation, and, eventually, the
inner skin.
At first the hole was pin-size. The
initial pressure drop inside the dome wasn’t even enough to kick over the
monitors high overhead in The Row’s roof control capsule.
* * *
The Row could’ve been a red-light
district on any of a million pioneer planets - Company joygirls and boys picked
their way through the Mig crowds, looking for the Migrant-Unskilled who still
had some credits left on his card.
Long rows of gambling computers
hooted enticements at the passing workers and emitted little machine chuckles
when another mark was suckered into a game.
The Row was the Company-provided
recreational center , set up with the Migs’ “best interests” at heart. “A
partying Mig is a happy Mig,” a Company psychologist had once said. He didn’t
add - or need to - that a partying
Mig was also one who was spending credits, and generally into the red. Each
loss meant hours added to the worker’s contract.
Which was why, in spite of the music
and the laughter, The Row felt grim and gray.
Two beefy Sociopatrolmen lounged
outside The Row’s entrance. The older patrolman nodded at three boisterous Migs
as they weaved from one bibshop to another, then turned to his nervous partner. “If ya
gonna twitch every time somebody looks at ya, bud, pretty soon one of these
Migs is gonna wanna know what you’ll do if they get real rowdy.”
The new probationary touched his stun
rod. “And I’d like to show them.”
The older man sighed, then stared off
down the corridor. “Oh-oh. Trouble.”
His partner nearly jumped out of his
uniform. “Where?”
The older man pointed. Stepping off
the slideway and heading for The Row was Amos Sten. The other man started to
laugh at the short, middle-aged Mig, and then noticed the muscles bunching
Amos’ neck. And the size of his wrists, and hammer fists.
Then the senior patrolman sighed in
relief and leaned back against the I-beam. “It’s okay, kid. He’s got his family
with him.”
A tired-looking woman and two
children hurried off the slideway to Amos.
“What the hell,” the young man said,
“that midget don’t look so tough to me.”
“You don’t know Amos. If you did, you
would’ve soaked your jock - especially if Amos was on the prowl for a little
fight to cheer him up some.”
The four Migs each touched small
white rectangles against a pickup and Vulcan’s central computer logged the
movement of MIG STEN, AMOS; MIG STEN, FREED; MIG-DEPENDENT STEN, AHD;
MIG-DEPENDENT STEN, JOHS into The Row.
As the Sten family passed the two
patrolmen, the older man smiled and tipped Amos a nod. His partner just glared.
Amos ignored them and hustled his family toward the livee entrance. “Mig likes to fight, huh? That ain’t
whatcha call Company-approved social mannerisms.”
“Son, we busted the head of every Mig
who beefed one on The Row, there’d be a labor shortage.”
“Maybe we ought to take him down
some.”
“You think you’re the man who could
do it?”
The young patrolman nodded. “Why not?
Catch him back of a narco joint and thump him some.”
The older man smiled, and touched a
long and livid scar on his right arm. “It’s been tried. By some better. But
maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you’re the one who can do something. But you best
remember. Amos isn’t any old Mig.”
“What’s so different about him?”
The patrolman suddenly tired of his
new partner and the whole conversation. “Where he comes from, they eat little
boys like you for breakfast.”
The young man bristled and started to
glower. Then he remembered that even without the potgut his senior still had
about twenty kilos and fifteen years on him. He spun and turned the glower on
an old lady who was weaving happily out of The Row. She looked at him, gummed a
grin and spat neatly between the probationary’s legs, onto the dock.
“Clot Migs!”
“Clot Migs!”
* * *
Amos slid his card through the
livee’s pickup, and the computer automatically added an hour to Amos’ work
contract. The four of them walked into the lobby, and Amos looked around.
“Don’t see the boy.”
“Karl said school had him on an extra
shift,” his wife, Freed, reminded him.
Amos shrugged. “He ain’t missin’
much. Guy down the line was here last offshift. Says the first show’s some clot
about how some Exec falls for a joygirl an’ takes her to live in The Eye with
him.”
Music blared from inside the theater.
“C’mon, dad, let’s go.”
Amos followed his family into the
showroom.
* * *
Sten hurriedly tapped computer keys,
then hit the JOB INPUT tab. The screen blared, then went gray-blank. Sten
winced. He’d never finish in time to meet his family. The school’s ancient
computer system just wasn’t up to the number of students carded in for his
class shift.
Sten glanced around the room. No one
was watching. He hit BASIC FUNCTION, then a quick sequence of keys. Sten had
found a way to tap into one reasoning bank of the central computer. Against
school procedure, for sure. But Sten, like any other seventeen-year-old, was
willing to let tomorrow’s hassles hassle tomorrow.
With the patch complete, he fed in
his task card. And groaned, as his assignment swam up onto the screen. It was a
cybrolathe exercise, making L-beams.
It would take forever to make the
welds, and he figured that the mandated technique, obsolete even by the
school’s standards, created a stressline three microns off the joining.
Then Sten grinned. He was already In
Violation.
He drew two alloy-steel bars on the
screen with his lightpen, then altered the input function to JOB PROGRAM. Then
he switched the pens function to WELD. A few quick motions, and somewhere on
Vulcan, two metal bars were nailed together. Or maybe it was a computer-only
exercise.
Sten waited in agony as the computer
screen blanked. Finally the computer lit up and scrolled PROJECT COMPLETED
SATISFACTORILY.
He was finished. Sten’s fingers flashed as he cut out of the illegal patch, plugged back into the school’s computer, which was just beginning to flicker wearily back into WAITING PROGRAM,
Sten input the PROJECT COMPLETED SATISFACTORILY from his terminal’s memory, shut down, and then he was up and running for the door.
He was finished. Sten’s fingers flashed as he cut out of the illegal patch, plugged back into the school’s computer, which was just beginning to flicker wearily back into WAITING PROGRAM,
Sten input the PROJECT COMPLETED SATISFACTORILY from his terminal’s memory, shut down, and then he was up and running for the door.
* * *
“Frankly, gentlemen,” Baron Thorosen
said, “I care less about the R and D program’s conflicting with some imagined
ethical rule of the Empire than our own Company’s health.”
It had started as a routine meeting
of the Company’s board of directors, those half dozen beings who controlled
almost a billion lives. Then old Lester had so very casually asked his
question.
Thoresen stood suddenly and began
pacing up and down. The huge director’s bulk held the board’s attention as much
as his rumbling voice and authority.
“If that sounds unpatriotic, I’m
sorry. I’m a businessman, not a diplomat. Like my grandfather before me, all I
believe in is our Company.”
Only one man was unmoved. Lester.
Trust an old thief, the Baron thought. He’s already made his, so now he can
afford to be ethical.
“Very impressive,” Lester said. “But
we - the board of directors - didn’t ask about your dedication. We asked about
your expenditures on Bravo Project. You have refused to tell us the nature of
your experimentation, and yet you keep returning for additional funding. I
merely inquired, since if there were any military applications we might secure
an assistance grant from one or another of the Imperial foundations.”
The Baron looked at Lester
thoughtfully but unworried. Thoresen was, after all, the man with the cards.
But he knew better than to give the crafty old infighter the least opening. And
Thoresen knew better than to try threats. Lester was too scarred to know the
meaning of fear.
“I appreciate your input. And your
concern about the necessary expenditures. However, this project is too
important for our future to risk a leak.”
“Do I sense distrust?” Lester asked.
“Not of you, gentlemen. Don’t be
absurd. But if our competition learned of Bravo Project’s goal, not even my
close ties with the Emperor would keep them from stealing it - and ruining us.”
“Even if it did leak,” another board
member tried, “there would still be an option. We could possibly affect their
supplies of AM2.”
“Using your close, personal ties with
the Emperor, of course,” Lester put in smoothly.
The Baron smiled thinly. “Even I would not presume that much on
friendship. AM2 is the energy on which the Empire and the Emperor thrive. No
one else.”
Silence. Even from Lester. The ghost
of the Eternal Emperor closed the conversation. The Baron glanced around, then
deliberately dropped his voice to a dry, boring level. “With no further
comments, I’ll mark the increased funding as approved. Now, to a simpler
matter. We’re fortunate in that our maintenance expenditures on Vulcan’s port
facilities have dropped by a full fifteen percent. This includes not only
internal mooring facilities, but the presealed container facility. But I’m
still not satisfied. It would be far better if...”
* * *
Amos’ eyes flickered open as the
livee ended and the lights came up. As near as he could gather, the Exec and
his joygirl, after they’d moved to The Eye, had gone off to some pioneer planet
and been attacked by something or other.
He yawned. Amos didn’t think much of
livees, but a quiet nap came in handy every now and then.
Ahd nudged him. “That’s what I wanna
be when I grow up. An Exec.”
Amos stirred and woke up all the way.
“Why is that, boy?”
“‘Cause they get adventures and money
and medals and...and...and all my friends wanna be Execs, too.”
“You just get rid of that notion
right now,” Freed snapped. “Our kind don’t mix with Execs.”
The boy hung his head. Amos patted
him. “It ain’t that you’re not good enough, son. Hell, any Sten is worth six of
those cl -”
“Amos!”
“Sorry. People.” Then Amos caught
himself. “The hell. Callin’ Execs clots ain’t talkin’ dirty. That’s what they
is. Anyway, Ahd, those Execs ain’t heroes. They’re the worst. They’d kill a
person to meet a quota. And then cheat his family outa the death benefits. You
becomin’ an Exec wouldn’t make me and your ma - or you - proud.”
Then it was his little girl’s turn.
“I wanna be a joygirl,” she announced.
Amos buried his grin as he watched
Freed jump about a meter and a half. He decided he’d let her handle that one.
* * *
Pressure finally split the pipe, and
the escaping gas forced it directly against the hole it had punched through
into The Row.
The first to die was an old Mig, who
was leaning against the curving outer wall of the dome a few centimeters from
the sudden hole in the skin. By the time he’d seen the fluorine burn away flesh
and ribcage, leaving the pulsing redness of his lungs, he was already dead.
In The Row’s control capsule, a group
of bored Techs watched a carded-out Mig try to wheedle a joygirl into a
reduced-rate party. One Tech offered odds. With no takers. Joygirls don’t give
bargains.
The pressure finally dropped below the danger threshold and alarms flared. No one flinched.
Breakdowns and alarms were an every-shift occurrence on Vulcan.
The Chief Tech strolled casually over
to the main computer. He tapped a few keys, silencing the bong-bong-bong and
flashing lights of the alarms.
“Now, let’s see what the glitch is.”
His answer scrolled up swiftly on a
monitor screen.
Hmmm. This is a little dicey. Take a
look.”
His assistant peered over the Tech’s
shoulder.
“Some kind of chemical leak into the
dome. I’ll narrow it some.” The Tech tapped more computer keys, cutting a bit
deeper into the information banks.
AIRLOSS INDICATED; PRESENCE OF
CONTAMINANT; POTENTIAL LIFE JEOPARDY; REDLINE ALARM.
The Chief Tech finally reacted with
something other than boredom. “Clottin' Maintenance and their damned pipe
leaks. They think we’ve got nothing better to do than clean up after them. I’ve
got a mind to input a report that’ll singe every hair off their hairless - “
“Uh...sir?”
“Don’t interfere with my tantrums.
Whaddaya want?”
“Don’t you think this should be
repaired? In a hurry?”
“Yeah. Figure out where - half these
damned sensors are broke or else somebody’s poured beer in them. If I had a
credit for every time...”
His voice trailed off as he traced
the leak. Finally he narrowed the computer search down, pipe by pipe.
“Clot. We’ll have to suit up to get to it. Runs over to that lab dome - oh!”
“Clot. We’ll have to suit up to get to it. Runs over to that lab dome - oh!”
The diagram he was scrolling froze,
and red letters began flashing over it: ANY INCIDENT CONNECTED TO BRAVO PROJECT
TO BE ROUTED INSTANTLY TO THORESEN.
His assistant puzzled. “But why does it -”
He stopped, realizing the Chief Tech was ignoring him.
“Clotting Execs. Make you check with
them anytime you gotta take a...” He tapped for the registry, found Thoresen’s
code, hit the input button, and settled back to wait.
* * *
The Baron shook the hands of each of
his fellow board members as they filed out. Asking about the health of their
families. Mentioning dinner. Or commenting on the aptness of someone’s
suggestions.
Until Lester.
Until Lester.
“I appreciate your presence, Lester,
more than you can imagine. Your wisdom is definitely a guiding influence on the
course of-“
“Pretty good duck-and-away on my
question, Thoresen,”Lester broke in. Couldn’t do it better myself.”
“But I was not avoiding anything, my
good man. I was only -”
“Of course you were only. Save the
stroking for these fools. You and I understand our positions more clearly.”
“Stroking?”
“Forget it.” Lester started past, then
turned. “Of course you know this isn’t personal, Thoresen. Like you, I have
only the best interests of our Company at heart.”
The Baron nodded. “I wouldn’t expect
anything else of you.”
Thoresen watched the old man as he
hobbled out. And decided that old thieves get foolish. What could be more
personal than power?
He turned toward the source of a
discreet buzz and pointed. Six shelves of what appeared to be antique books
dropped away, allowing access to a computer panel.
He took three unhurried steps and
touched the RESPONSE button. The Chief Tech floated into view. “We have a
problem, sir, here in Rec Twenty-six.”
The Baron nodded. “Report.”
The Chief Tech punched keys, the
screen split and the details of the leak into The Row scrolled down one side.
The Baron took it in instantly. The computer projected that the deadly gas
would fill the rec dome in fifteen minutes.
“Why don’t you fix it, Technician?”
“Because the clotting computer keeps
spitting ‘Bravo Project, Bravo Project’ at me,” the Chief Tech snarled. All I
need is a go from you and I’ll have this thing fixed in no time flat and no
skin off anybody’s - I’ll have it fixed.”
The Baron thought a moment. “There’s
no approach to that leak by now except through the Bravo Project lab? Can’t you
just put a vacuum maintenance Tech out?”
“Not a chance. The pipe’s so badly
warped we’ll have to chop it off at the source. Yessir. We’ll have to get into
the lab.”
“Then I can’t help you.”
The Chief Tech froze. “But - that
leak won’t stop at Rec Twenty-six. Clotting fluorine’ll combine, and then eat
anything except a glass wall.”
“Then dump Twenty-six.”
“But we’ve got almost fourteen
hundred people -”
“You have your orders.”
The Chief Tech stared at Thoresen.
Suddenly nodded and keyed off.
The Baron sighed. He made a mental
note to have Personnel up recruiting for the new unskilled-labor quotient. Then
rolled the event around, to make sure he wasn’t missing anything.
There was a security problem. The
Chief Tech, and, of course, his assistants. He could transfer the men, or, more
simply - Thoresen wiped the problem out of his mind. His dinner menu was
flashing on the screen.
* * *
The Chief Tech whistled tunelessly
and slowly tapped a fingernail on the screen. His assistant hovered nearby.
“Uh, don’t we have to...”
The Chief Tech looked at him, then
decided not to say anything. He turned away from the terminal, and swiftly
unlocked the bright red EMERGENCY PROCEDURES INPUT control panel.
* * *
Sten pyloned off an outraged Tech and
hurtled down the corridor toward The Row’s entrance, fumbling for his card. The
young Sociopatrolman blocked his entrance.
“I saw that, boy.”
“Saw what?”
“What you did to that Tech. Don’t you
know about your betters?”
“Gee, sir, he was slipping. Somebody
must have spilled something on the slideway. I guess it’s a long way to see
what exactly happened. Especially for an older man. Sir.”
He looked innocent.
The younger patrolman brought an arm
back, but his partner caught his wrist. “Don’t bother. That’s Amos Sten’s boy.”
“We still oughta. . . oh, go ahead,
Mig. Go on in.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Sten stepped up to the gate and held
his card to the pickup.
“Keep going like you are, boy, and you
know what’ll happen?”
Sten waited.
“You’ll run away. To the Delinqs. And
then we’ll go huntin’ you. You know what happens when we rat those Delinqs out?
We brainburn ‘em.” The patrolman grinned. “They’re real
cute, then. Sometimes they let us have the girls for a few shifts. . . before
they put them out on the slideways.”
Hydraulics screamed suddenly, and the
dome seal-off doors crashed across the entrance. Sten fell back out of the way,
going down.
He looked at the two patrolmen.
Started to say something. . . then followed their eyes to the flashing red
lights over the entrance: ENTRANCE SEALED. . . EMERGENCY. . . EMERGENCY. . .
He slowly picked himself up. “My
parents,” Sten said numbly. “They’re inside!”
And then he was battering at the
solid steel doors until the older patrolman pulled him away.
* * *
Explosive bolts fired around six of
the dome panels. The tiny snaps were lost in the typhoon roar of air blasting
out into space.
Almost in slow motion, the escaping
hurricane caught the shanty cubicles of The Row, and the people in them, and
spat them through the holes into blackness.
And then the sudden wind died.
What remained of buildings,
furniture, and the stuff of life drifted in the cold gleam of the faraway sun.
Along with the dry, shattered husks of 1,385 human beings.
Inside the empty dome that had been
The Row, the Chief Tech stared out the port of the control capsule. His
assistant got up from his board, walked over and put his hand on the Tech’s
arm.
“Come on. They were only Migs.”
The Chief Tech took a deep breath.
“Yeah. You’re right. That’s all they
were.”
*****
NEXT: STEN #2 – THE WOLF WORLDS
*****
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*****
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INCLUDING EMPIRE'S END
*****
NEW AUDIOBOOK:
THE WARS OF THE SHANNONS
By Allan Cole & Chris Bunch
Narrated By Scott Larson
A NATION AT WAR WITH ITSELF: In Book Three Of The Shannon Trilogy, young Patrick Shannon is the heir-apparent to the Shannon fortune, but murder and betrayal at a family gathering send him fleeing into the American frontier, with only the last words of a wise old woman to arm him against what would come. And when the outbreak of the Civil War comes he finds himself fighting on the opposite side of those he loves the most. In The Wars Of The Shannons we see the conflict, both on the battlefield and the homefront, through the eyes of Patrick and the members of his extended Irish-American family as they struggle to survive the conflict that ripped the new nation apart, and yet, offered a dim beacon of hope.
*****
LUCKY IN CYPRUS: IT'S A BOOK!
THE WARS OF THE SHANNONS
By Allan Cole & Chris Bunch
Narrated By Scott Larson
Here's where to get the paperback & Kindle editions worldwide:
Here's what readers say about Lucky In Cyprus:
- "Bravo, Allan! When I finished Lucky In Cyprus I wept." - Julie Mitchell, Hot Springs, Texas
- "Lucky In Cyprus brought back many memories... A wonderful book. So many shadows blown away!" - Freddy & Maureen Smart, Episkopi,Cyprus.
- "... (Reading) Lucky In Cyprus has been a humbling, haunting, sobering and enlightening experience..." - J.A. Locke, Bookloons.com
*****
NEW: THE AUDIOBOOK VERSION OF
THE HATE PARALLAX
THE HATE PARALLAX: What if the Cold War never ended -- but continued for a thousand years? Best-selling authors Allan Cole (an American) and Nick Perumov (a Russian) spin a mesmerizing "what if?" tale set a thousand years in the future, as an American and a Russian super-soldier -- together with a beautiful American detective working for the United Worlds Police -- must combine forces to defeat a secret cabal ... and prevent a galactic disaster! This is the first - and only - collaboration between American and Russian novelists. Narrated by John Hough. Click the title links below for the trade paperback and kindle editions. (Also available at iTunes.)
*****
THE SPYMASTER'S DAUGHTER:
A new novel by Allan and his daughter, Susan
After laboring as a Doctors Without Borders physician in the teaming refugee camps and minefields of South Asia, Dr. Ann Donovan thought she'd seen Hell as close up as you can get. And as a fifth generation CIA brat, she thought she knew all there was to know about corruption and betrayal. But then her father - a legendary spymaster - shows up, with a ten-year-old boy in tow. A brother she never knew existed. Then in a few violent hours, her whole world is shattered, her father killed and she and her kid brother are one the run with hell hounds on their heels. They finally corner her in a clinic in Hawaii and then all the lies and treachery are revealed on one terrible, bloody storm ravaged night.
BASED ON THE CLASSIC STEN SERIES by Allan Cole & Chris Bunch: Fresh from their mission to pacify the Wolf Worlds, Sten and his Mantis Team encounter a mysterious ship that has been lost among the stars for thousands of years. At first, everyone aboard appears to be long dead. Then a strange Being beckons, pleading for help. More disturbing: the presence of AM2, a strategically vital fuel tightly controlled by their boss - The Eternal Emperor. They are ordered to retrieve the remaining AM2 "at all costs." But once Sten and his heavy worlder sidekick, Alex Kilgour, board the ship they must dare an out of control defense system that attacks without warning as they move through dark warrens filled with unimaginable horrors. When they reach their goal they find that in the midst of all that death are the "seeds" of a lost civilization.
*****
Here's where you can buy it worldwide in both paperback and Kindle editions:
United Kingdom ...........................Spain
Also: NOOK BOOK. Plus ALL E-BOOK FLAVORS.
TALES OF THE BLUE MEANIE
NOW AN AUDIOBOOK!
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Venice Boardwalk Circa 1969
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In the depths of the Sixties and The Days Of Rage, a young newsman, accompanied by his pregnant wife and orphaned teenage brother, creates a Paradise of sorts in a sprawling Venice Beach community of apartments, populated by students, artists, budding scientists and engineers lifeguards, poets, bikers with a few junkies thrown in for good measure. The inhabitants come to call the place “Pepperland,” after the Beatles movie, “Yellow Submarine.” Threatening this paradise is "The Blue Meanie," a crazy giant of a man so frightening that he eventually even scares himself.
*****
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