I know Shadow Legions ended on more of a cliffhanger than my books usually do. So, I thought I should give you a sneak peak at the next book. I made you all wait longer for SL, because I published Gehenna Dawn in between (and because I struggled with how to transition between books 7 and 8), but Book 8 will be out more quickly.
So, here is a preliminary (very lightly edited) first chapter to wet your appetites for CW: Even Legends Die. This might change with editing, but it's an early look.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
spoiler alert if you haven't read The Shadow Legions yet
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Chapter 1
MCS John Carter
Earth Orbit
Sol System
It is beautiful, he
thought, staring at the blue and white disk portrayed on the main screen…so
much prettier than his adopted homeworld’s dusty-red image. Duncan Campbell had been born on Earth,
though his childhood memories of the slums of Edinburgh stirred a different set
of emotions than the celestial vision he now enjoyed. Despite his ugly memories of violent streets
and ancient, crumbling structures, he had to acknowledge that even centuries of
war and pollution hadn’t completely destroyed the beauty of mankind’s
birthplace…at least not when viewed from a distance.
Mars, on the other hand,
was dusty and generally inhospitable, a hostile place where a man still needed
machines to survive a walk on its surface.
A century’s aggressive terraforming had created a far friendlier
environment than the one men had first found on the red planet, but there was
far still to go. Seas and lakes and
walks outside without a respirator and heated pressure suit would be his
grandchildren’s joy, not his.
Those grandchildren, and
the children that would precede them, would have to wait. Campbell’s life now was one of duty, and anything
remotely resembling a personal life had taken a backseat to his military
career. Campbell was enormously grateful
to be a Martian citizen, a committed patriot to his adopted home. He knew how fortunate he was to be on John
Carter’s bridge and not prowling through the squalor of Edinburgh’s notorious Cog
neighborhoods. He considered it a
privilege to serve the Confederation.
“We’re getting multiple inquiries on all
channels, Captain.” Lieutenant
Christensen’s voice pulled him from his daydreaming. “All of the Powers have requested
confirmation of our intentions.”
Of course, he
thought…they would be concerned, wouldn’t they?
Earth had been a demilitarized zone for over a century, ever since the
Treaty of Paris had imposed peace between the Superpowers on Earth. War hadn’t been abandoned by mankind, nothing
of the sort. It just moved out into
space, where the constant conflicts didn’t threaten the survival of the species
quite so severely.
“Yes, I imagine they are a
bit anxious right about now.” Why
wouldn’t they be worried, he thought, with the Confederation’s newest super-battleship
knocking on their door without warning or introduction? Mars wasn’t a signatory to the Treaty of
Paris, so a warship entering orbit without warning wasn’t a violation of any
covenant. But that was a diplomatic fine
point, one that didn’t make the situation any less worrisome to the Superpowers. The Earthly nations were all parties to the
treaty, which meant they were virtually defenseless from space. And John Carter was one of the most powerful
warships ever built by man, larger even than the Alliance’s vaunted
Yorktown-class battlewagons and bristling with weaponry.
The Confederation hadn’t
been a major factor in the balance of power a century before when the treaty
was signed, and the shattered Earth powers were too weak in space to compel the
nascent Confederation anyway. The
successive Martian administrations had maintained a relatively neutral stance
ever since, though they had steadfastly refused all entreaties to belatedly
agree to the terms of the Paris accords.
Still, the fear of a Confederation attack on Earth, while occasionally
debated in one Power or another, had rarely been a serious concern. The Martians were the least expansionistic of
the Powers, committed more to building wealth than fighting wars. They controlled most of the mineral resources
of the solar system, and they could deliver their ores to Earth at vastly lower
cost than the other Powers’ own interstellar colonies. They preferred markets and trading partners
to enemies, and they conducted their foreign policy accordingly.
Now, however, all that
was about to change. For the first time
in history, a Martian ship had come to Earth not to trade or parlay, but to
attack. Campbell’s mission was highly
specific, and he had a single target. John
Carter was here to unleash thermonuclear fury on man’s homeworld.
“Maintain communications
silence, Lieutenant.” You’ll all know
why we’re here soon enough, he thought.
Then all hell will break loose…but it will be someone else’s problem,
not mine. “And I want scanners on full
power. We’re not expecting any of the
Superpowers to have ships near Earth, but that’s no excuse for
carelessness.” Campbell had been awarded
the newest and largest ship in the Confederation’s navy because of his spotless
record, and he intended to live up to it in every particular. He was an odds on favorite for promotion to
the admiralty after this tour, and he owed most of his success to his
meticulous caution.
“Yes sir.” Christensen’s hands worked over her board,
and the image of Earth moved to the left half of the screen, the right now
displaying a scanning plot of local space.
“No warships within scanner range, Captain.”
“Very well.” He leaned back, thinking quietly for a few
seconds. “Bring the ship to
battlestations, Lieutenant.” Campbell
pushed away the extraneous thoughts that had been clouding his mind. Now it was time to do what he’d come to
do. “And get me weapons control.”
There was a brief pause,
no more than a second or two, and the bridge was bathed in a reddish light from
the battlestations lamps. Another 3 or 4
seconds then: “Commander Linken here, sir.”
“Are the weapons ready to
go, Commander?” Campbell skipped the
pleasantries. He and Linken had served
together for two years, and they worked together like a finely tuned machine.
“Yes, sir.” Linken’s response was crisp and
immediate. “The missiles are fully
fueled and ready for launch, and the warheads are cleared and ready.” Campbell could see an updated weapon status
display appear on his personal screen. “Awaiting
your final order to arm them, Captain.”
Campbell took one more
look at the gauzy blue image of Earth floating on the display, smaller than it
had been a moment before when it occupied the entire screen, but just as
beautiful. “You may arm your weapons,
Commander.” Campbell closed his eyes for
an instant, pondering the gravity of what he was about to do. The 125 megaton Penetrator warheads were
nothing special in terms of ship combat.
In the vacuum of space, without atmosphere to carry heat and shockwaves,
vessels targeted enormously powerful missiles at each other, with warheads yielding
500 megatons or more commonplace. But
against a ground target, 125 megatons was an enormous weapon, even an
inefficient one. Unless you were trying
to dig out and destroy a heavily fortified subterranean target, in which case
five or six of the big warheads were likely to do the job. Campbell was about to launch 60 of them…and,
in doing so, become the first commander to bombard an Earth target since the
end of the Unification Wars. He sighed,
thinking of the significance of the act, the crushing responsibility of what he
was about to do. His actions could lead
to war; they could provoke reprisals against the Confederation. But he had his orders, and duty was first to
Campbell, another factor he suspected had played a role in his appointment as
mission commander.
“You may arm your
weapons, Commander.” Campbell’s voice
was eerily calm. “And prepare to
launch.”
“What the hell is
that?” The shaggy old ranch hand pointed
toward the sky.
His companions almost
ignored him, all but one. The old man
was a little crazy, and no one took him very seriously. No one except Gus Hart, who’d been friends
with grizzled Chuck Trexler since he’d been an unpopular kid befriended by the bizarre
old cow hand. Trexler had been ancient
even then, at least to Hart’s recollection, but the two had developed a strong
friendship, one that endured to the present day.
“What the fuck?” Hart was staring now too, his mouth open in
shock. The rest of the group looked up
immediately. Hart was the informal
leader of the ranch’s Cog workers, and everyone paid attention to whatever he
did.
“Are those aircraft of
some kind?” Gyp Tompkins was the first
to look, after Hart and Trexler. His
voice was a little shaky, nervous. You
didn’t see things like this every day in the ranchlands of Dakota.
“They’re missiles.” Hart’s voice was deadpan, his eyes locked on
the long white trails in the sky. Most
of the workers on the ranch had never traveled more than a few klicks from the
pastures, but Hart had served a five year stint in the terrestrial
military. Mustered out in one of the
periodic downsizing efforts, he returned home with corporal’s stripes and a
reasonable knowledge of military hardware.
“Probably nuclear.” And if they
airburst, he thought but didn’t say, we’re screwed. “C’mon…we have to get back to the
village.” He looked at the others then
back to the sky for a few more seconds.
“Now.”
He turned and started
back, walking a few steps then breaking into a run. He glanced back over his shoulder. The rest of the group was standing still,
transfixed on the rapidly descending smoke trails. “I said now!” he screamed, waving his arm
wildly. “We need to move now!”
The group followed this
time, running hard on his heels. What
the hell is this, he thought…what is going on?
What’s out here worth attacking?
He was in a near panic, but his military training was there too, rising
from the back of his mind, telling him their only chance was to keep moving. They were running across the flat plains,
Hart looking around desperately for some kind of cover. He glanced back over his shoulder, shaking
his head violently when he saw how far the missiles had traveled in just a few
seconds. There was no way they were
going to make it far enough, he thought…those birds could detonate any second
now.
He looked around as he
ran, nearly tripping over a rock as he did.
There, he thought, scrambling to regain his balance. To the south was a small depression. He knew the spot…the ground dropped off
sharply to the banks of a small river.
The slope would give some protection from any detonations. “Let’s go!”
He waved his arm, pointing south.
“Get down that hillside there, and hit the dirt when I say so.”
His companions were screaming
and panicking, but they followed him.
The ground on the hillside became steadily more rugged, and Trexler
tripped. Hart swore bitterly, but he
dropped back, pulling the old man to his feet and shoving him forward. He looked back again. Most of the smoke trails extended behind the
hillside, past his field of vision. He
wanted to get a little farther, but he knew he was already pushing his
luck. “Get down,” he shouted, as loud as
he could. He dove into the ground,
holding his hands ahead to absorb the impact and slow his momentum.
He felt a sharp pain in
his arm as he landed, but he tried to ignore it. A broken wrist was the least of his problems
now. “Stay down and close your eyes,” he
screamed.
A few seconds later his
eyelids glowed orange. He squeezed them
tight, but the blinding light still penetrated enough to hurt his eyes. He clutched the ground, his hands digging
into the soft wet grass. He felt the
waves of heat, burning his back. The
hillside was blocking most of it, but it still hurt like fire. Then he heard the blasts, one after another,
a deafening rumble. His hands went to
his ears, instinctively trying to cover them, to block out the shattering roar,
but it was futile. The deafening blasts
kept going…ten, twenty…then he lost count.
The ground shook too,
throwing his body up and back down with a jarring thud. He felt himself tumbling, rolling down the
hillside as the terrible earthquake continued, fed by detonation after
detonation. His burned back scraped painfully
along the ground as he slid toward the river edge. My God, he thought, as his broken body
finally came to a rest 20 meters from the stream…this is the end. This is the end.
“Weapons control reports
43 missiles successfully penetrated Alliance air defenses and impacted on or
near the target.” Christensen’s voice
was a little shaky, but still remarkably calm, Campbell thought, considering
she is reporting the results of a nuclear attack on Earth.
“On or near” wasn’t the
kind of precision terminology Campbell typically demanded from his crew, though
he knew she was just giving him a preliminary assessment. More details would follow as soon as she had
them. He waited a few more seconds and
then pushed her. “Damage assessment,
Lieutenant?”
Her hands were flying
across her screen. “Working on that now,
Captain.”
He knew how demanding he
was with his people. Christensen was a
good officer, and he knew she’d have the data to him as soon as humanly
possible. He was just anxious…and he
knew the only way to keep a blade sharp was to hone it constantly. He had good people, but he made damned sure
they stayed that way by constantly pressing them to do better. And this mission was no place to let those
standards fall. Roderick Vance had been
brutally clear…Campbell was to launch one attack…and one attack only. Then he was to break orbit and return to Mars
immediately. And he was to make sure that,
no matter what – those had been Vance’s exact words…no matter what – he was to make sure that one attack completely
destroyed the target.
Still, he thought, don’t
take your tension out on Christensen.
Let her do her job. Duncan
Campbell was driven…a creature of duty who took his commitments, especially
those of the service, very seriously.
But he also trusted his crew and, even as he pushed them, he also knew
he had to have faith in their own dedication.
His commitment came from
a powerful source. He knew just how
lucky he was to be a naturalized citizen of the Confederation…and how many Cogs
living in squalor and deprivation in the slums of the Superpowers would kill
for the life he had.
Campbell’s mother had
been his father’s maid…and later his lover.
A widowed Martian executive, Arthur Campbell was on Earth overseeing his
business interests in a manufacturing complex in the Scottish countryside. The Martian magnate took both his lover and
their child with him when he returned home, but tragedy would soon destroy
their happiness. Duncan’s mother had
been infected with the X2 virus as a child, and her acclimation to the Martian
environment triggered the dreaded disease out of remission. She died a few months later, despite the best
medical care the wealthy – and guilt-stricken - Arthur Campbell could buy. A remnant of the biological weaponry used during
the Unification Wars, mutated forms of X2 remained incurable, even to the
cutting edge medical technology of the Confederation.
Broken-hearted, Arthur
Campbell doted on his son, though resistance from his adult children compelled
him to purchase an alternate estate to house the young, illegitimate, Duncan. His father had insisted he would find a place
for his youngest son in the family business, but Duncan didn’t want his
relationship with his half-siblings to become any more difficult than it
already was, and he chose a military career instead.
He had excelled at the
Naval Academy, graduating second in his class, and he’d followed that up with a
distinguished career that took him from one end of human space to another…and
finally out beyond the Rim with Augustus Garret’s Grand Fleet. He’d returned to a decoration and command of
the newest battlewagon in the fleet.
And, five weeks later, the mission to launch a nuclear attack on Earth. How, he thought…how did it come to this?
“Captain, I have the
scanning report.” Christensen’s voice
pulled him from his introspection.
He turned to face the
tactical officer. “Yes,
Lieutenant.” He hesitated a few seconds,
clearing the residual thoughts away.
“Please, continue.”
“The attack appears to be
a complete success, sir. Based on the
parameters provided to us, the AI estimates the total destruction of 99% of the
targeted land area to a depth of 3 kilometers.”
Campbell was silent for a
few seconds, his mind imagining the nuclear fury his missiles had
unleashed. How many had he just
killed…not just in the base, but in the surrounding areas? It wasn’t a heavily populated region, but his
bunker busters had burrowed into the ground before they detonated. The resulting explosions were vastly dirtier
than airbursts, and the massively toxic fallout would spread for hundreds of
miles. Thousands of civilians would die
from radiation poisoning, townspeople and farmhands and normal workers who had
nothing to do with the plots and schemes of the politicians and soldiers.
He’d fought in space
before, and he’d killed enemies in those battles, but this was somehow
different. His enemies were combatants,
just like he and his crew. This was…different. He felt odd, queasy…guilty. He’d been a warrior before. Was he a mass murderer now?
He exhaled slowly and
looked across the bridge. He didn’t have
time now for indulgent self-reflection. The
Alliance – and the other Powers – were in shock right now, but they’d all be
recalling any ships within range. Campbell
was glad he didn’t have to sort out the international uproar. Was the Alliance at war with the Confederation
now? Would Admiral Garret be recalled
from the frontier to lead his fleet against Mars itself? Campbell didn’t know, but he was glad it was
Vance’s problem and not his.
“OK, Lieutenant, we have
our orders.” He sighed softly, taking
one last look at the perfect blue image of Earth on the main display. “Prepare to leave orbit.”
