 |
| Original U.S. Cover |
REGARDING STEN #3:
THE COURT OF A THOUSAND
SUNS
Chris uttered an oath, then angrily raised the telephone receiver
over his head, pausing when it reached its apogee. I could see the wheels
turning. He could either spend the afternoon buying a new phone, or lunching on
a prime rib sandwich at Bob Burns, washed down by maybe a Scotch or three.
I said, “Buy you lunch partner?”
Chris barked laughter then slowly and dramatically lowered
the receiver and placed it gently in its cradle.
“You talked me into it, you silver-tongued devil,” he said.
Later…
The pretty waitress in the Campbell-patterned kilt delivered
a second pair of scotches to our table. We watched appreciatively as she ankled
away.
Then Chris frowned. Took a hit off his drink and turned to
me. “Cole,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about killing our agent.”
He was talking about a Hollywood ten percenter he’d dubbed “The
Weasel.” The squeaky-voiced, mouse-sized little shit who had been the cause of
the near destruction of Chris’ phone. Neither of us could stand the guy, but he
really, REALLY got to Chris.
I thought about his proposal for a beat, then nodded. “Sounds
good to me, CB,” I said. “Just give me a heads up before you geek him so I have
time to establish my alibi.” Swallowed a little scotch, then added, “Never get
the next Sten written if both of us are locked up in the slammer.”
Our sandwiches arrived accompanied by tubs of
mouth-scorching horseradish sauce and big baskets of hand-cut onion rings. We
ate for a bit, cooling our mouths with healthy swigs of icy scotch and water.
Finally, I wiped horseradish from my mustache with a napkin,
and said, “If you really want to kill the Weasel I’ve think I figured out how
to do it.”
Chris’ eyebrows shot up. An evil grin creased his face. “Far
fucking out,” he said. “Tell me more, Little Brother.”
“We’ve always wanted to do a science fiction murder mystery,”
I said. “Why not do it in the next Sten?” (At that point we were in the middle
of plotting Sten #3 – The Court Of A Thousand suns.)
Chris snorted. “The Weasel would make a lousy victim,” he
said. “Everybody’d want to pin a medal on the murderer.”
“I don’t want to make him a victim,” I said. “We can make
him the killer and Sten and Alex have to hunt him down.”
Chris brightened a moment. Then grimaced. “Yeah, but Sten
isn’t a cop. In this book, his main job is guarding the Emperor.” (We’d
promoted Sten head of the Gurkha contingent that had been loyally protecting
the Emp for a couple of thousand years.)
“Yeah-but me no ‘yeah buts,’” I said. “All we have to do is
make the victim somebody who is really close to the Emperor. Make them so tight
that the Emp orders Sten to personally track down the son of a bitch.”
Chris was warming to the idea. “You know,” he said, “we
already set up that the Emp likes to go incognito and mix with ordinary
citizens. Knock back a few narco beers. Pick up a girl. Like a regular guy.”
“Which could put him in the sights of an assassin who’s been
tipped off,” I said. “Maybe a friend who is a diplomat, or key official. I mean,
we are dealing with a situation where the Empire is teetering on the edge of
galactic war.”
Chris shrugged. “Diplomats? Petty officials? Kind of boring.”
I had a flash. “Maybe it’s nothing like that at all,” I
said. “Maybe it’s somebody he’s screwing on a semi-regular basis.”
My partner glowed with delight. “The fucking Weasel,” he
said, “kills the Eternal Emperor’s favorite Joygirl.”
I signaled for the bill. “Let’s go home and write,” I said.
A few minutes later… We’re driving back to my place at 15th
and Wilshire in Santa Monica. Silence as we ruminate over our discussion.
Finally, Chris said, “One favor, Cole.”
I’d known Chris since our senior year in high school, so I had
a pretty good idea what was on his mind.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “You want to write the scene where
we kill the hell out of the Weasel.”
“Yeah,” Chris said. “To quote my hero, Gully Foyle, I want
to kill him filthy.”
And so, eventually, that’s what he did. First he tortured
the Weasel. Then he brain burned him. And then he… Well, pick up the book and
find out.
Meanwhile, read on for a taste of Sten #3 – The Court Of A
Thousand Suns.
*****
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| New U.S. Cover |
The Court Of A Thousand Suns
By Allan Cole & Chris Bunch
CHAPTER ONE
THE BANTH PURRED at the quillpig, which, unimpressed, had firmly stuffed itself as far as it could into the hollow stump.
The banth's instinct said the porcupine was edible, but the
six-legged cat's training told it otherwise. Meat was presented by two-legs at
dawn and dusk, and came with gentle words. The quillpig may have smelled right,
but it was not behaving like meat. The banth sat back on its haunches and used
a forepaw to pry two needles from its nasal carapace.
Then the animal flattened. It heard the noise again, a whine
from the forest. The banth looked worriedly up the mountain, then back again in
the direction of the sound before deciding.
Against instinct, it broke out of the last fringe of the
tree line and bounded up the bare, rock-strewn mountain. Two hundred meters
vertically up the talus cliff, it went to cover behind a mass of boulders.
The whine grew louder as a gravsled lifted over the scrubby
treetops, pirouetted, searching, and then grounded near the hollow stump.
Terence Kreuger, chief of Prime World's police tactical
force, checked the homing panel mounted over the gravsled's controls. The
needle pointed straight up the mountain, and the proximity director indicated
the banth was barely half a kilometer away.
Kreuger unslung a projectile weapon from its clips behind
his seat and checked it once again: projectile chambered; safe off; ranging
scope preset for one meter, the approximate dimensions of the banth's chest
area.
He checked the slope with a pair of binocs and after a few
seconds saw a flicker of movement. Kreuger grunted to himself and lifted the
gravsled up the mountain. He'd already missed the banth once that day; he was
less than pleased with himself.
Kreuger fancied himself a hunter in the grand tradition. Time
not required for his police duties was spent hunting or preparing himself for a
hunt, an expensive hobby, especially on Prime World. The Imperial capital had
no native game, and both hunting preserves there charged far more than even a
tactical group chief could afford — until recently.
Kreuger's previous hunts had been restricted to off-world,
and mostly for minor edible or nuisance game. That was well and good, but
provided Kreuger with little in the way of trophies, especially trophies of the
kind that the gamebooks chronicled.
But things had suddenly become different. His friends had
seen to that. After thirty years as a cop, Kreuger still prized his honesty. He
just rationalized that what his new friends wanted wasn't dishonest: look at
the benefits! Three weeks away from Empire Day madness. Three weeks on a
hunting reservation, expenses paid. Tags for four dangerous animals — an Earth
rhino, a banth, a male cervi, and a giant otter.
He had already planned on which wall each head would be
mounted. Of course, Kreuger did not intend to mention to his
soon-to-be-admiring friends where those trophies had been taken.
The gravsled's bumper caromed him away from a boulder,
bringing Kreuger back to the present. Concentrate, man, concentrate. Remember
every bit of this day. The clearness of the air. The smell of the trees below.
The spray of dust around the gravsled.
Kreuger guided the gravsled up the slope, following the
homing needle toward the sensor implanted in the banth.
Below, a second one-man sled coasted through the trees.
Clyff Tarpy did not need binocs to track Kreuger's sled. Contour-following, he
lifted his sled after Kreuger.
The banth was cornered.
Ahead of him to the right, the ground fell away steeply, too
steeply for even his clawed feet to descend. To the left was a sheer cliff. The
banth huddled behind a boulder, puzzling.
Kreuger's gravsled landed just outside the nest. Weapon
ready, Kreuger moved forward.
Again, the banth was perplexed. The whine had been the cause
of a loud explosion and searing pain earlier, the pain that sent the banth
fleeing through the forest toward the mountains.
But the smell was two-legs. Two-legs, but not familiar. Had
the banth done something wrong? The two-legs would tell him, feed him, and then
return him to the warmth of his pen.
The banth stood and walked forward.
Kreuger's projectile weapon came up as the banth walked into
view. No errors now. Safety off, he aimed.
The banth mewed. This was not his two-legs.
"Bastard!"
Kreuger spun, the banth momentarily forgotten. He had not
heard the second gravsled land behind him.
From five meters, the barrel of the weapon was enormous.
Tarpy allowed just enough time to pass for terror to replace the bewilderment
on Kreuger's face. And then he fingered the stud.
The soft metal round expanded nicely as it penetrated
Kreuger's sternum, then pin wheeled through the tac chief's rib cage into his
heart. Kreuger, instantly dead, sat down on a small boulder before slowly
toppling forward onto his face.
Tarpy smiled as he took a thick chunk of soyasteak from his
beltpak and tossed it to the banth. "Eight lives to go, pussycat."
Tarpy took a small aerosol can from his pak, and, backing
up, erased his footsteps from the dusty rock. He paused by Kreuger's gravsled
long enough to shut the power off and disconnect the beacon. The longer it took
to find the body, the better. Tarpy mounted his own sled and nudged it back
down the hill.
The banth's tail whipped back and forth once. He did not
like the smell from the strange two-legs. He picked up the slab of soyasteak,
sprang over the rock wall, and went back down the mountain. He would eat on the
ground he was familiar with, and then perhaps unravel the puzzle of the other
soyasteak, the one with needles that walked.
(Interesting factoid: The character of Clyff Tarpy was named for my former political editor, back in the days when I was the metro editor of a
major Los Angeles daily.The real Cliff Tarpy is a gentle, inquisitive soul, who recently retired as an editor for National Geographic. We also used him as a reporter in our Vietnam novel, A Reckoning For Kings. Cliff was kind enough to hunt down some hard to find maps of Vietnam for us, as well as historic maps of America for the Shannon Trilogy)
NEXT: STEN #4 – FLEET OF THE DAMNED.
*****
CLICK HERE TO GET ALL 8 STEN NOVELS IN TRADPAPERBACK AND KINDLE
CLICK HERE TO GET AUDIO EDITIONS OF ALL 8 STEN NOVELS,
INCLUDING EMPIRE'S END
*****
CLICK HERE TO GET AUDIO EDITIONS OF ALL 8 STEN NOVELS,
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
|
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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