The Ten Thousand and The Fall are now available in audiobook format.
The Ten Thousand (Portal Wars II)
General Jake Taylor and his army of cyborg soldiers are
veterans of Erastus, a planet so brutal, so hellish, it is called Gehenna by
the men sent to fight and die there. He
and his comrades battled for years in the most appalling conditions human
beings have ever endured, believing the entire time they were protecting Earth
from bloodthirsty alien monsters. But it
was all a lie, the cynical propaganda of the totalitarian regime that rules
over all mankind.
The alien Tegeri, and their bio-mechanical soldiers Taylor’s
men call the Machines, were the victims, innocent targets of human aggression. Taylor and the rest of the Earth soldiers
have unwittingly been the aggressors. When
the Tegeri chose Taylor as their contact and told him the horrible truth, he
rallied the veterans of Erastus for a new battle, one to free Earth from its
self-appointed masters.
Taylor’s soldiers begin the long campaign back toward Earth,
toward a reckoning with the brutal government they are sworn to destroy. The heart of this force is the Ten Thousand,
surgically-altered Supersoldiers, products of an experimental enhancement
program and the first of their kind. But
they are not the last, and on the planet Juno they will meet their
counterparts, the Black Corps, a force created by the Earth government specifically
to destroy them. The Black Corps
outnumbers Taylor’s soldiers 2-1, and they have a vast advantage in supply and
logistical support. But Taylor’s men are
veterans of the furnace of Gehenna, and they don’t die easily.
But there is more at stake than the freedom of humanity,
greater stakes than even Taylor can imagine.
For there is another alien race, one shrouded in legend and myth, known to
the Tegeri only as the Darkness. Long
ago the Darkness made war on the Ancients, the mighty beings that built the interstellar
Portals and mentored the fledgling Tegeri race eons ago. The Ancients are remembered in Tegeri lore as
wise and powerful…almost as gods. But
they fell ages past, destroyed utterly by the Darkness.
Now that great evil is returning, and this time it will
destroy not only mankind and the Tegeri, but all the fledgling races the
Ancients planted, hundreds of young species, only now grasping for civilization.
The Ancients long ago foretold that an alliance of men and
Tegeri would stand and defeat the Darkness, and save the galaxy from
destruction. But if this prophecy is to
come to pass, Taylor and his men must destroy their enemies and bring the dark truth
to mankind, that there is another war to fight, vaster and more terrible than
any in human history or legend.
The Fall (Crimson Worlds IX)
The Epic Conclusion to the Crimson Worlds Series…
Erik Cain is the hero of the Marine Corps, a celebrated
warrior who has led his grim veterans into every war the Alliance and mankind
have faced. But now he has left the
Corps, driven to near madness by an overwhelming need for vengeance. He has sworn to kill Gavin Stark, the madman
responsible for his mentor’s death and, with a small band of dedicated
followers, he is pursuing his prey across occupied space.
Meanwhile, on a dozen colony worlds, Marines land to face
the occupying forces of Stark’s Shadow Legions.
They are supported by the Janissaries, their longtime enemies, now
turned allies, but they are exhausted and outnumbered, facing a vastly superior
enemy entrenched and waiting for them.
But they are veterans, Marines and Janissaries both, men and women who
have battled the armies of the First Imperium and lived to tell the tale. They know what is at stake, and they are
determined to prevail, even if none of them come back.
And on Earth, the economic collapse Stark engineered has
shattered the Treaty of Paris and its century-long prohibition against
terrestrial warfare. Millions are
already dead as the war between the Superpowers spreads across the Earth, a
growing conflagration that could end in apocalyptic nuclear, chemical, and
biological exchanges between the powers.
Will mankind live under the iron boot of Gavin Stark and
his clone descendants forever? Or will
Erik Cain and the Marines defeat him once and for all?
