Quantum Series: Book 7
Action, Adventure, Robots …& Vampires?!
Deanna, a small backwater Terran colony generally known as an idyllic tourist-magnet (if watching jet propelled birds blow up if they fly too high is your kind of thing) had just hit a speed-bump on the highway of life called ‘the Deannan Un-civil War’. Only, it hadn’t quite kicked off just yet.
Fascists were in charge of the place now, a foreign, imported clandestine group calling itself the ‘Deannan Service League’ – and it appeared to have support from much higher up the Terran political food chain. The D.S.L. entrenched its positions in the three largest cities on Deanna, where they thought they were safe – and tried to repair the new Chancellor’s three crippled patrol ships as quickly as possible – while the people who lived there desperately tried to make sense of their lives under the draconian new government, and hoped for better days.
Meanwhile in Skeggs Valley, a loyalist militia began to form around the deposed fugitive Governor Landry at an uncanny pace, and yet, while General Albert McIntyre-Smythe (recently re-un-retired) gingerly accepted the role handed to him by destiny (and Gary Beck) he harbored nagging doubts about just how ‘civil’ it was all going to turn out. Oh, he knew the loyalty and dedication of the volunteers – and many of their names and faces, very well. After all, a lot of them were fellow members of the Skeggs Valley Dynamite Fishing Club. Not that Smythe considered himself to be old – thanks to his monthly fishing trips, he could still duck for cover like a limber twenty-year-old – but he was enough of a realist to accept that the majority were just like him – angry, sleep-deprived, creaky old farts who were veterans of every action fought by the Terran Empire over the last three-quarter century, and a good stretch past their sell-by dates.
Retraining the Loyalist Militia had to be the first priority, just to get them back into the swing of things – which was why, of all the scarce resources they needed most, time was at the top of his wish list. Oh, and an organized resistance movement to make life difficult for the enemy who controlled the cities – that would be nice too.
Cue an ally, who until just days before had been nothing but fiction to most people living on the planet: Deanna’s hyper-secretive vampire community.
Being a secretive subculture that had existed on the fringes of Human society for millennia, the vampire underground already had a well-developed intelligence gathering network – and combined with their natural abilities for stealth and speed, that sort of thing would be right up their alley. The VC realized they were in an ideal position to help – and after all, the Humans had asked for it. The only obstacle was – well, history: the last time Humans actually believed vampires were real and not some storybook fantasy, that hadn’t ended too well.
In the meantime, while the Militia relearned the art of breathing faster, the VC looked for someone with the right sort of mindset, motivation and qualifications to entrust with the responsibility of setting up the resistance and making the cities ungovernable for their common enemy. Their gaze fell on a certain Marla De Bris – who, despite having been around long enough to have actually worked for the original C.I.A., found the task handed to her more than a little daunting. Guerrilla warfare and sneaking about had never actually been her forte’ (she considered herself more of an inside girl) – but well, someone had to do it. Someone had to buy time for the Loyalists to prepare themselves to take on the formidable, well-drilled and snappily-dressed Deannan Republican Army – and to get as many innocent people as possible out of harm’s way before the ‘hot’ war really got going.
It might as well be her.
Available in eBook, paperback and audiobook formats!
Details:
- Published: First Edition, May 07, 2023 (eBook, paperback); July 20, 2023 (audiobook).
- Words: 60,791 (Flowing Text eBook)
- Pages: 207 pages (6×9 paperback)
- Duration: 7 hrs 40 min (eBook narrated by Darla Middlebrook).