T Excerpt
“It owned her. Maybe it—the fear, the darkness, The Creep—wouldn’t take her this morning, but she knew it was out there. No, not out there. In here. In her head. The worst place of all. This was an inside job all the way. The monster rummaged in the rooms of her mind, hid in cramped [...]
“”You’ve got some sort of wild man!” Lycon blurted with first glance. “Nonsense!” Vonones snorted. “Look at the tiny scales, those talons! There may be a race somewhere with blue skin, but this thing’s no more human than a mandrill is. The Numidians called it a lizard-ape in their tongue—a sauropithecus.” After that first startled [...]
Continue reading about Killer 1-7 – David Drake and Karl Edward Wagner
“Fyodor Kolyokov hadn’t needed the isolation tank for a long time: not since the early days when all needs Physick were safely defined by the razor-wire fences of City 512. But need and desire often mingle to the same effect, and so as soon as he found a way, Kolyokov moved the tank from Russia [...]
“So it was the blowpipe, then, as if there had been any doubt. Nothing else had the power to shake the ground like that. A hundred or more kilometres to the west, at this very moment, a payload was racing through the bowels of the Earth, slamming along a rifle-straight vacuum tunnel that would eventually [...]
Continue reading about Blue Remembered Earth 1 – Alastair Reynolds
“So it was the blowpipe, then, as if there had been any doubt. Nothing else had the power to shake the ground like that. A hundred or more kilometres to the west, at this very moment, a payload was racing through the bowels of the Earth, slamming along a rifle-straight vacuum tunnel that would eventually [...]
Continue reading about Blue Remembered Earth 1 – Alastair Reynolds
“Only a Sakhran would be polite enough to describe it as a Command Post. It was a collection of three sheds (two plus an outside toilet) to which Madsen and two others had travelled by tracked groundcar. It was the only collection of buildings anywhere near the area where they had calculated, from the lifeboat’s [...]
“Memphis paused for breath. It must have been hard, carrying Sunday and also having to keep his own balance. ‘The artilect sensed the presence of Sunday’s machines, the ones inside her head. It worked out how to talk to them, how to make Sunday think there was someone calling.’ The idea of a machine tricking [...]
Continue reading about Blue Remembered Earth Prologue – Alastair Reynolds
“Memphis paused for breath. It must have been hard, carrying Sunday and also having to keep his own balance. ‘The artilect sensed the presence of Sunday’s machines, the ones inside her head. It worked out how to talk to them, how to make Sunday think there was someone calling.’ The idea of a machine tricking [...]
Continue reading about Blue Remembered Earth Prologue – Alastair Reynolds
“It is necessary to speak of beginnings. Understand one thing, though, above all else. Whatever brought us to this moment, this declaration, could never have had a single cause. If we have learned anything, it’s that life is never that simple, never that schematic. You might say it was the moment when our grandmother set [...]
Continue reading about Blue Remembered Earth Prologue – Alastair Reynolds
“The Ivoire dipped, then rose, then flipped and doubled back. Inside the bridge, the crew could feel no difference despite the rapid movements. The only way anyone could tell if something had changed was the flow of data coming through all the monitors. The six-person bridge crew had fallen into their various roles, speaking rarely. [...]
Continue reading about City of Ruins 1 – Kristine Kathryn Rusch
“We are at a tipping point in history. The Ghosts were driven back from Cthuga at the beginning of the war, and now they are reaching out towards Cthuga again. It is clear that they came to Fomalhaut because they wish to communicate with the Mind. We do not know if it wishes to communicate [...]
Continue reading about In the Mouth of the Whale 9 – Paul J. McAuley
“He refused to be baited. “So the Virga Home Guard agrees with Abyss’s official story, that the monster was a capital bug all along? — Even though there are dozens of Guard cruisers patrolling the sunless countries even now?” 3.5 out of 5 http://www.tor.com/stories/2012/01/ashes-of-candesce-excerpt
Continue reading about Ashes of Candesce Prologue – Karl Schroeder
“Nowhere else in the Archipelago is privilege and status so nakedly displayed as in Thule, the thistledown city, the city of tiers. It was built by swarms of machines long before the first generation of Quicks was created from their seedship’s genetic templates. The machines dropped a superstring of entangled gravitons into the centre of [...]
Continue reading about In the Mouth of the Whale 8 – Paul J. McAuley
One dead parrot. 3 out of 5
Continue reading about Novel Excerpt The Desert Of Souls – Howard Andrew Jones
“”All that happened here, when we returned, was to deny Dragon information so it would snatch back its dracoman, like it did before, but also, to make it think we had followed up on our proposed plan but were then entertaining suspicions. I think that if Dragon had known that we knew what had really [...]
Continue reading about Gridlinked Scooby Ending – Neal Asher
“”I could use a man like you.” “If I fold, I die?” “I believe so.” “Then I’m forced to play.” “That’s the nature of a game with such stakes.” “No different then ruling a country,” Renue says. “Like the lives you’ve so callously taken over the years.” Mesmer scoffs. “What would you know? What inkling [...]
“During the days after they left the Green Palace that wasn’t Oz after all—but which was now the tomb of the unpleas- ant fellow Roland’s ka-tet had known as the Tick-Tock Man—the boy Jake began to range farther and farther ahead of Roland, Eddie, and Susannah. “Don’t you worry about him?” Susannah asked Roland. “Out [...]
Continue reading about The Wind Through the Keyhole 1 Starkblast – Stephen King
“He caught up with the boy as the boy was turning away from the canal, down a narrow soi. People passed them both but the observer ignored them, his attention trained on the boy. He caught up with him in the shadow of a doorway and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. The boy [...]
“The sun was going down by the time they decided to hang me. In fairness, they hadn’t rushed the decision. They’d been debating it for almost an hour since my capture and initial beating. One of the three was in favour of handing me over to an officer from amongst the regulars. The second had [...]
““You look like shit. But shit that I’m pleased to see,” she replied. “Buy me a drink.” He’d known her for years, but the core of their rela-tionship was a sixteen month assignment to Seventy-Seven. Cleesh was a data wet nurse, feeding, supplying and managing the newslines from a can station circling at twenty-nine miles. [...]
“Bartholomew Nyquist parked his aircar in one of the hoverlots at the end of the neighborhood. The Dome was dark this morning, even though someone should have started the Dome Daylight program. Maybe they had, deciding that Armstrong was in for a “cloudy” day—terminology he never entirely understood, given that the Moon had no clouds [...]
Continue reading about Anniversary Day 1 – Kristine Kathryn Rusch
“A roach sits paralyzed in the middle of the floor. “Shoo,” she says. “Fuck off. You’re free to go.” The roach does as it’s told. Itboogies under the pull-down bed, relieved. Back to the mirror, then. “They always said you were an old soul,” she mutters. Tonight she’s really feeling it.” 3.5 out of 5 [...]
Continue reading about Blackbirds 1 The Death of Del Amico – Chuck Wendig
“The Child was becoming very interested in photosynthesis. When Roberto had come back from his first semester at the Federal University of São Paulo, he’d shown her how the logic of quantum mechanics integrated with messy biochemistry at the point where light-harvesting centres transferred solar energy to the reaction centres that transformed it to biological [...]
Continue reading about In the Mouth of the Whale 7 – Paul J. McAuley
“The tech put her through a battery of physical and mental tests to make sure that her mind had integrated properly with her new body, then he gestured toward a curtained-off corner of the room where a pile of clothes awaited her. Once she was dressed, the security guards delivered her to the office of [...]
“‘Why you’re not going to take the long drop right now, someone is interested in you. Because of your close encounter. You’re going to be tested. If you fail, you fall. And even if you pass, you’ll probably fall anyway. Because the man who thinks he has a use for you, he’s crazy,’ the True [...]
Continue reading about In the Mouth of the Whale 6 – Paul J. McAuley
“‘The Quick discovered all manner of strange quantum effects in the core of Cthuga. Some of our philosophers believe that they might yield weapons that can win the war. Others believe that they are manifestations of some form of computational system. A Mind. Some say that this Mind was created when the Quick dropped their [...]
Continue reading about In the Mouth of the Whale 5 – Paul J. McAuley
“But the Child was beginning to learn something about diplomacy and strategy, about when it was worth arguing a point and when it was not. So this time she kept her silence, the moment passed, and Father Caetano went on to talk about the properties of the four moons – fiery Io; Europa, with its [...]
Continue reading about In the Mouth of the Whale 4 – Paul J. McAuley
“It began like every other day. Ori climbed into her immersion chair and plugged into her bot, trundled it out onto the skin of the Whale, and helped her crew shepherd a pair of probes from their garage to the staging post. Fuelling and charging them, running final checks before they set off on their [...]
Continue reading about In the Mouth of the Whale 3 – Paul J. McAuley
““Do you know what the Many Worlds Theory is?” Everett said. He leaned forward across the table. Previous occupants had doodled stars and spirals and cubes and the names of football clubs on the peeling plastic. “Every time the smallest least tiniest thing happens, the universe branches. There’s a universe where it happened, and a [...]
“Nix and Egil had pulped a score of the undead creatures – onetime temple guards animated to unlife by the wizard-king’s priests – on their way through the tomb.” 3 out of 5 http://paulskemp.com/blog/meet-egil-and-nix-from-the-hammer-and-the-blade/
Continue reading about The Hammer and the Blade 1 – Paul S. Kemp
“Maui wasn’t much different from the farm rock where I’d spent my early childhood. A dwarf planet about three hundred kilometres across, just large enough to have been pulled into a sphere by its own gravity: a rough ball of water ice accreted around a core of silicate rocks, contaminated with pockets of methane and [...]
Continue reading about In the Mouth of the Whale 2 – Paul J. McAuley
“Late that night, Maria returned from the hospital and looked in on her daughter and found the bed empty. She checked the other rooms in the bungalow and went outside and woke Ama Paulinho. The two women went to the shed where the Child kept her menagerie, and then they searched the rest of the [...]
Continue reading about In the Mouth of the Whale 1 Bow Shock – Paul J. McAuley
“Yet this was one of the safest places near any inhabited part of the Moon. The area around Armstrong was mostly flat by Moon standards, but it still contained dips and hillocks and hazards too small to place on any official map. And then there were the tiny alterations in the landscape that occurred because [...]
Continue reading about Extremes 1-2 – Kristine Kathryn Rusch
“”Come to me, brothers,” she chanted softly. She didn’t use a true beckoning spell — she only said the words in time with the shifting waves. “Come fill my nets before I turn into a cold stone here in the sea.” Flickering color caught her attention, and she shifted her gaze to follow the erratic [...]
“There is a giant computer which straddles the world. It has its roots deep in the Fifty-second Millennium; that so-distant past when Man discovered electricity. It walked through history hand-in-hand with Man; it saw the building of the first Domes, it survived the reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field, it watched the Age of Resurgence, [...]
“Baylus stood in a white tunnel, long and bare, leading upward to a thick portcullis. A gatekeeper stood a few paces in front of him checking his fingernails for dirt. A lever protruded from the wall over his left shoulder. Baylus ignored the gatekeeper and regarded the bench to his right. There for support, he [...]
John Rain finds people watching him at Judo training in Tokyo. He decides to make it a smaller number watching him. 4 out of 5
““Look,” Larison said, “no one can just disappear anymore. Everyone is findable. It’s a condition of modern life. You want total security? You have to disconnect. Live off the grid, remotely, no contact with the outside world. But if you like cities, and judo, and jazz, and coffee houses, and culture, all of which is [...]
“Instead, he sighed and let his arms fall to his sides. “Salvage, Rose?” It was her turn to shrug. “Once a cargo monkey, always a cargo monkey,” she said with less levity than she had planned. “Still,” he said, “someone as brilliant as you shouldn’t work salvage.” “I needed time off from being brilliant,” she [...]
“When he came down the stairs, he saw Doctor Orient waiting for him outside the study. He was so thin these days, even thinner than the time he had the trouble with the crazy girl. His dark skin was getting sallow from being indoors so much and his green eyes were washed out and dim. [...]
“As the man moved his head to look first at his two defeated opponents, and then at Rad, the weak light reflected off an angled helmet, a sharp-fronted slatted visor covering the entire face and continuing back and up past the ears. The edges stood nearly a foot away from the top of the man’s [...]
“A man does not need Visions to know you’re making a mistake, the Black King had said. We need a rest. We’re no longer ready to fight. So you have seen nothing, Rugar had said. Nothing at all. Rugar took a deep breath. Rain dripped off his nose onto his lips. The water was cool [...]
Continue reading about The Sacrifice 1-3 – Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Death stalked the night. It haunted the shadowed alleys of Shasesserre. Those it passed near hurried away, driven by the knives of fear. Death wore the guise of a squat, gnarly man in a vile yellow mask, the mask of a shantor, a carrier of the weeping sickness. Death was a liar, a wearer of [...]
“Now that was creepy on more than one level. “At this point we’ve entered the comic book realm,” I said, repressing a shiver. “The preferred term is graphic novel,” Zotz called from the galley. “A rose by any other name and no way I’m gonna wear spandex,” I growled. “And you never found any scuba [...]
“”ID?” the man behind the desk growled. He was younger than the man who’d thrown the boots at Nick, but not by much. He was also a lot fatter, and the stripes on his shoulder identified him as a Staff Sergeant. “Um…Nick Morrow.” “No one gives a shit about your name, fuckwad.” The fat sergeant [...]
“The fangs, of course, went without saying. But she had undergone another extreme makeover in drinking my mutated blood a few months ago. Now her sharp, pointy teeth were all but gone. More obviously, her skin was approaching the mocha and cream shade that came from a daily regimen of sunbathing—something you rarely see in [...]
Continue reading about Habeas Corpses 1-6 – William Mark Simmons
“The Witch of Cachtice remained on my mind as I jogged into the gloaming. Gloaming. What a lovely word for that deepening purple twilight between the setting of the sun and the actual fall of night. My state of mind, however, was anything but lovely as skies downshifted from azure to indigo and the first [...]
Continue reading about Dead On My Feet 1-7 – Williamm Mark Simmons
“The only dead man whose shirt didn’t look worse than his did was the one with the broken neck. Their sizes matched well enough. He stripped the jacket, vest, and shirt off the body, threw away his own ruined Henley. He moved carefully as he put on his new clothes; the wound on his side [...]
“‘I served a cause,’ Ringil said stiffly, sticking to the role. ‘I served my Emperor and defended my people. That was payment enough for me.’ The shaven-headed man nodded. ‘Yeah. And now you’re hunting bandits in a foreign land for fifty florins a pop.’ ‘There’s no brawling in here,’ the clerk warned. ‘Start anything and [...]
Continue reading about Poets and the Prosaic – Richard Morgan
“The biggest chupacabra in the pack was only four feet tall, but what they lacked in mass, they made up for in sheer ferocity. Being unable to get to their dinner was making them even surlier than usual. The peasant girl had been futilely tinkering with the engine of her broken-down Chevy Vega when the [...]
Continue reading about Monster Hunter Vendetta 1-6 – Larry Correia
“There was no mistake, Lutaar was most definitely dead. Most of his blood was on the floor, for a start. With a growl, Ullsaard pulled the former king from the throne and pushed the body to the floor. Kneading his temples, Ullsaard sat down. He was tired, that was the obvious explanation for the voice [...]
Continue reading about The Crown of the Conqueror 1 – Gav Thorpe
“Beyond the Real, within the digital second world of the System Wide Grid, vast and ugly things with teeth of sharpest code circled Richards’ nominal soul. These leviathans were murderously alert to intrusion through the base unit’s data portal, a fat Gridpipe carried upon microwaves to a shaped hollow on the vault’s wall. The sole [...]
“Magic had drained from the world and technology had once again gained the upper hand. People called it the Post-Shift resonance. Magic came and went as it pleased, flooding the world like a tsunami, dragging bizarre monsters into our reality, stalling engines, jamming guns, eating tall buildings, and vanishing again without warning. Nobody knew when [...]
“I always assumed that if you have a clandestine organization then you’d have a clandestine headquarters. Stands to reason. And—I concede this point—Oxford is, admittedly, short on skull-shaped volcanoes. Shark-infested waters—ditto. But there is some pretty awesome architecture. Dreaming spires and all that. I always thought you could bury something beneath the limestone columns and [...]
“Vendacious raised his heads. “All true, my lord. And I am proud of my ‘treason.’ Woodcarver has allied with the mantis queen and her maggots.” “Maggots?” Tycoon’s eyes were wide. “Yes, my lord. ‘Mantis’ and ‘maggot’ refer to different aspects of the same creatures, humans as they call themselves. ‘Mantis’ is the appropriate term for [...]
Continue reading about The Children of the Sky 00 – Vernor Vinge
““But how does that change things?” Yalda wondered. “If I see red light and violet light at the same time . . . then the slower, red light must have left the sun earlier.” “Right. So how does that affect what you see?” Yalda struggled to picture it. “Where the sun is in the sky [...]
“Simon tensed. “How soon can we be underway, Mr. Novak?” “Ten minutes.” “Make it five. It’s no longer safe to stay here.” “Not for nothing, Simon, but the same could be said of the rest of the world.”” 3 out of 5 http://www.briankeene.com/?p=7434
“The fab’s still warm from that bampot Malc’s job, so you start by stuffing fresh cans of feedstock up its arse—this job’s a hybrid, multiple plastics in the same structure and a skeleton made using the special brew that’s been doing the rounds these past couple of months. The work-space is clean, and there’s no [...]
Continue reading about Rule 34: Part Three TOYMAKER: The Leith Police Dismisseth Us – Charles Stross
“The fab’s still warm from that bampot Malc’s job, so you start by stuffing fresh cans of feedstock up its arse—this job’s a hybrid, multiple plastics in the same structure and a skeleton made using the special brew that’s been doing the rounds these past couple of months. The work-space is clean, and there’s no [...]
Continue reading about Rule 34: Part Three TOYMAKER: The Leith Police Dismisseth Us – Charles Stross
“Point zero: initiate. A sense kicked in. Something like vision. Not because it emulated sight, but because it revealed. Himself: Nikko Jiang-Tibayan. An electronic pattern scheduled to manifest at discrete intervals. Nikko Jiang-Tibayan. He’d been an organic entity once. Not now. Point one: identify. Personality suspended on a machine grid: He is the mind of [...]
“The Gnome chuckles, a quiet hiccuping noise like a vomiting cat. “I take your point.” He necks another mouthful of beer. “And is business good?” “Don’t be daft, Adam.” You switch off the pad. “I’ve only been out two months; my mobie’s running six different kinds of Polis spyware, and I can’t even surf for [...]
Continue reading about Rule 34: Part Two Chapter 2: ANWAR: Job Interview – Charles Stross
““Against the wall, Archos”–he pants–“against the wall, a human being becomes a different animal.” “Perhaps. But you are animals just the same.” The man slumps back against the door. He slides down until he is sitting, lab coat splayed on the ground. His head rolls to the side. Blue light from the computer screen flashes [...]
“And so you have to drag yourself away from your office for eight hours a month to supervise the kicking of litter-lout ass from the air-conditioned comfort of a control room on the third floor of Fettes Avenue Police HQ. It could be worse: At least they don’t expect you to pound the pavement in [...]
Continue reading about Rule 34 1. LIZ: Red Pill Blue Pill – Charles Stross
““You’ve got the wrong house,” he said conversationally. The invigilator’s face mottled with anger. “How do you dare to-“ “No, you’re not listening to me.” Egar kept his voice patient and gentle. “There’s obviously been some mistake back at the Citadel. Pashla Menkarak isn’t keeping you up to date. When he sent you down here, [...]
Continue reading about Penultimate Pre-pub Taste: The Cold Commands – Richard Morgan
“The Host spoke. Of course I’d seen its like many times. Some lived in the interstice where we dared ourselves to play. We sometimes found ourselves facing them, as they walked with crablike precision on whatever their tasks were, or even running, with a gait that made them look as if they must fall, though [...]
“As always, before the warmind and I shoot each other, I try to make small talk. “Prisons are always the same, don’t you think?” I don’t even know if it can hear me. It has no visible auditory organs, just eyes, human eyes, hundreds of them, in the ends of stalks that radiate from its [...]
Continue reading about The Quantum Thief 1 – Hannu Rajaniemi The Thief and the Prisoner’s Dilemma
“Dalehouse stopped and watched her cup her hands around the lighter to shield it from the gentle morning breeze. They had had a good deal to drink and not very much sleep. He could feel a certain interior frailty as a consequence, but Marge Menninger seemed unaffected. This was the first time he had gone [...]
“He lived in the only airtight room left intact in the wreck, a tool locker off the main-deck corridor. The locker was four feet wide, four feet deep, and nine feet high. It was the size of a giant’s coffin. Six hundred years before, it had been judged the most exquisite Oriental torture to imprison [...]
Continue reading about The Stars My Destination – Alfred Bester
“How nice.” “Let’s see. Christopher L. Csejthe: Caucasian, male, thirty-two years of age,” she read from the clipboard. “No significant history of disease in either personal or family medical records. Military records are curiously incomplete. . . .” Which meant that she had the edited version. And she shouldn’t have had even that. “Marital blood [...]
Continue reading about One Foot in the Grave1-6 – Wm Mark Simmons
“Lucius could not think what to say to this, and did not get a chance to try, for just then the man’s spirit flared in a golden burst of light, swallowing Lucius’s sense of anything beyond it. Lucius saw the dying man’s life even as it left him, lived it as though it were his. [...]
“I met a retired navigator while I was drinking. She is almost deaf and almost blind—she’s outlived many of the ships she served on. Her hair has aged from ebony to white, her eyes from black to luminous gray. Too many flights have battered her, and stray radiation has turned her corneas to ground glass. [...]
Continue reading about The Exile Waiting 1-2 – Vonda N. McIntyre
““We are not afraid,” Jaffar said. Perhaps he was not; I covertly made the sign warding against evil, hiding it behind my thigh. She paused a moment more, staring into his eyes. “You have paid the price,” she spoke without sentiment, “and I will honor your coin with my service.” She motioned to the boy, [...]
Continue reading about Desert of Souls 1 – Howard Andrew Jones
“‘Your situation could actually be worse,’ Silveira said. ‘The tektor you’ll be facing is a class-B unit; the class-A is twice as big and can produce at least twelve mechs a day. There is a world once called Karagal, away at the edge of the Hegemony’s rimward tracts. After a century of protests over the [...]
Continue reading about The Orphaned Worlds 1 – Michael Cobley
““Attempting to eviscerate the ocean?” She tapped the head of an arrow against her chin thoughtfully. “That’s something insane, maybe. You’re just going to open your stitches doing that.” Her ears twitched, as though they could hear the sinewy threads stretching in his leg. “How is your wound, anyway?”” 3 out of 5 http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/03/black-halo-excerpt?start=3
“Sethra greeted me with the words, “There’s someone I’d like you to meet, Vlad.” I had expected something more like, “What are you doing here?” as I’d shown up at Dzur Mountain without any advance warning. But then, if Sethra Lavode had been accustomed to do the expected, she wouldn’t have been Sethra Lavode. I [...]
“Fahzir was both surprised by his success, and confused. “But you stopped Bryllit spacing her prisoners.” “No,” said Horth. “You challenged Bryllit, as I understand. And that was why she did not throw those people out the airlock.” “Erien challenged Bryllit,” said Horth. “I did not want her to kill him.” “Oh.” ” 4 out [...]
Continue reading about Reetions on Swords post-contact – Lynda Williams
“She was looking at a scorch mark that ran along the side, but she didn’t touch it. “Weapons fire?” she asked, and she was checking with him. She hadn’t done that before either. He nodded. He moved closer. The yacht had an expensive blast coating, but not enough to protect it from whatever had shot [...]
Continue reading about The Disappeared 1 – Kristine Kathryn Rusch
““They may be. Some of them must be. The bright child has all too often grown up to be a queer, maladjusted, unhappy adult. Or else he has thrown away half of his intelligence in order to adjust and be happy and get along as a social being. These children are bright beyond anything the [...]
Continue reading about Children of the Atom: Opening Doors – Wilmar Shiras
““The garbled reports are proof, if we needed any more. Our machines are playing funny tricks. Patrol communications are in a shambles. We’ve got interference and aberrations in all our equipment.” Kinnison tossed the papers down next to him and put his hands on his thighs, bending over in that between-you-and-me posture, massive head tilted [...]
Continue reading about Z-Lensman:Reunion at the Circus – David A. Kyle
“What no one knew, except himself and the other two Rigellians of his three-unit-cluster, was that Tregonsee was in mental fusion. He had locked mind-souls with his bristers, “Two” and “Three.” Across the immensity of distance from galaxy to galaxy, Tregonsee had the unshakable mental anchor of his two other empathetic psyches. Never before had [...]
Continue reading about Lensman From Rigel: Two Only for Tanse – David A. Kyle
“Boskonians? Pirates? A robotic conspiracy taking over Pok? “Lensman Kallatra here, sir! Bosko-Spawn! Two, three hours and all will be lost!” The contact went as quickly as it had come. The cryptic message had been sharp and precise. Worsel’s overwrought mind fastened on those discouraging words “. . . all will be lost!” By Klono’s [...]
Continue reading about The Dragon Lensman: Lens to Lens – David A. Kyle
“The young man, Cadwaladr, the last of the Pendragons, fixed his eyes on those of the woman sitting beside the King. She was Alcfrith, Cadfael’s wife, taken as bride after the death of Cadwaladr’s father. Rhiann couldn’t see her face, but from the back, the tension was a rod up her spine and her shoulders [...]
“The men’s attention was then stolen by a shining figure riding a warhorse. The Cavalier rode down the line of Sujins, inspecting the lot of them. The morning sunlight sparkled off the warrior’s plate armor. Balto and Gatesin glanced up at the same time. Gatesin saw the man, saw the face, and his mouth puckered [...]
Continue reading about The Troll Hunter 1 – Keith C. Blackmore
“‘I’ll tell you what’s going on, Zombie Bait,’ the girl said, her voice slightly accented – Malawian, Batswana, maybe. ‘Ash here just saved your ass.’ ‘Ash?’ I said to him. ‘Is that really your name?’ He nodded curtly. ‘And you are?’ I said to the girl. ‘Saint,’ she said with a curl of her lip. [...]
“Shatters fell sideways with his head still in the bucket, spilling water over himself and the floor. He lay there, coughing violently, his body convulsing with the effort. I knelt down and relieved him of his dagger as he vomited up water and bile. “The name,” I said when he was done. Shatters spit. “Screw,” [...]
Laura never did take care of him properly. Blood matted the hair on the back of Laura’s head and stained the tablecloth. He sank his hands in it, feeling the warmth, the richness. It was time. She had betrayed him. He saw no trace of the woman he had once loved in the white, bruised [...]
Continue reading about Sins of the Blood 1 – Kristine Kathryn Rusch
“The man steps back, instinct kicking in. He’s too late. I have his larynx between my thumb and curled first finger, and it’s the work of a moment to crush his windpipe. For good measure, I slam my forehead into his face, breaking his nose. The corporal’s already dead, he’s just too stupid to realize [...]
““Sven,” Anton says. “I know what I’m doing.” “Hey,” says my gun. “Always a first time.” We’re circling, the fury and I. It lunges and I block its wrist. Like being hit with a steel bar. Next time I’m going to use my combat arm. I step sideways and it steps sideways. Not sure this [...]
Continue reading about Death’s Head Day of the Damned – David Gunn
“Neen’s seen me kill swiftly. All my troopers have. But catching Neen’s puzzled face in the crowd, I realize he has never seen me bide my time. Kill early, kill often . . . It’s our unofficial motto. This is different. I’ve never gutted someone in front of Aptitude. She’s a well-brought-up girl, and I’m [...]
Continue reading about Death’s Head Maximum Offense – David Gunn
“She wondered if Mandughai was watching her, then dismissed the thought. First Mother would be busy now with the return of her troops to Tengri-Nayon. Perhaps they’d already arrived there. Nearing sleep, mostly through the habit of years, Kati felt the urge to go to the gong-shi-jie, the place of creation, to wander among the [...]
“Swirling clouds of purple laced with blue enveloped her and in every direction were the vortex manifestations of stars in real space, colored deep blue to red in a pattern immediately familiar to her, a pattern compressed, for in this place there was no continuum of space or time. Still, the pattern remained constant, connected [...]
“Toregene awoke to the turbine scream of a flyer, and discovered that her right leg was numb. She’d been crammed in the spider-trap like a cork in a bottle since dusk, and had somehow worked her right leg beneath her in sleep. No feeling there, clear up to her hip, and her neck and shoulders [...]
“Kris banished those distractions by replaying the drop plan in her mind as she waited. These kidnaping sons-a-bitches had a simple plan. They’d snapped up the Sequim General Manager’s sole child during a school outing, then dragged the poor kid off to the northern wilderness before anyone knew what had happened. Ignore the child’s name [...]
Continue reading about Kris Longknife Mutineer – Mike Moscoe
“”You have something the Confed wants,” Stark continued. “Information on Black Sun. They are sending a man to … discuss it with you. That doesn’t matter. You are mine until he gets here, and if you survive his questioning, you are mine when he leaves. Make it easy on yourself or make it hard, I [...]
“Murphy glanced at the contract. The employer was listed as “a member corporation of the collective.” So it was one of the big twelve, the mega-corporations that ran the galactic government. Seventy-five years ago, the Plutocrat wars had ended in a settlement: Local governments handled planetary matters, but space habitations and inter-stellar issues came under [...]
“Niflheim. Outpost of Human Space. Home of the 34th Fleet Initial Strike Team, Confederation Marine Corps. When the Marines of 34th FIST weren’t off on a campaign on some other world, they spent most of their time in the field, either on Niflheim or one of the other islands, training for operations they might not [...]
Continue reading about Starfist: School of Fire – Dan Cragg and David Sherman
“Eagle’s Cry shouted, “They don’t have navy marking either.” “Now this is absurd,” Baccacio called out. “If they aren’t Marines and they aren’t navy, they don’t exist. So they have to be ours. Everybody, eyes front.”” 3 out of 5 http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780345406224&view=excerpt
Continue reading about Starfist: First to Fight 23 – Dan Cragg and David Sherman
“Nothing ever lived inside a globular cluster. Everyone knew that. Globulars were made up of thousands – sometimes millions – of stars, but all them old, population II types, formed back when the galaxy was nothing but primordial hydrogen. All those millions of stars were too metal poor to spawn a single planet. So the [...]
“Mostly they were called gorgons or, altogether, the Hive, as the gorgons in their countless millions seemed to compose one organized whole. A single vast alien entity characterized by an inexhaustible, indiscriminate capacity to eat organic matter. And Herius Asinius threatened all ships in orbit with crucifixion for not alerting him to this latest wave’s [...]
Continue reading about The Sagittarius Command 1 – R. M. Meluch
“”Multiple-body FTL bogie, Captain. Conga line of them. Quick and dark.”” 3.5 out of 5 http://www.rmmeluch.com/wolfstar.HTM
