SIMPLE SERVICE
Your parents thought they were emigrating to a terraformed planet. That didn't happen.
Now you're second generation on a lost colony world.
You're one of Martha's Sons.
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LONG IN THE LAND
A lost starship.
A lost colony.
A man on the run.
Peter Dawe shares the same horizons as the rest of the stranded starship's offspring. First Landing shelters them from the worst aspects of the planet, but it doesn't shelter them from each other.
Sure, Peter was recovering stolen property, but the colony's governor doesn't see it that way, and Peter faces a stark choice. He can stay on the farm and bring the governor's wrath down on his family, or he can run.
He wants to stay and fight, but the day an aircraft—a machine not seen for decades—appears in the sky, everything changes.
And the person hunting the aircraft also hunts for Peter.
UNDER THE EARTHLINE
With only a slender hold on their alien world, human settlers from a marooned starship inhabit a single terraformed valley. As technology frays, as the second generation of settlers cannibalizes its past, and as the governor cancels elections again, tension grows between the city and the western farms.
One Dawe son dead, one in exile, and Thaddeus Dawe now slated to serve as a hostage for his younger brother's crimes, Thaddeus has a task. He must locate the colony’s last terraseeder for the secret enclave another brother works to carve from the northern wilderness. But with the governor's men harboring no love for Dawes, and First Landing’s bureaucracy and its preeminent practitioner having other plans, Thaddeus is not the only one whose life is at risk.
A tale of adventure, loyalty, and love.
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MERCENARY CALLING
It’s the twenty-second century. Humanity’s first and only interstellar starship returns safely. Its mission to discover a habitable planet succeeded beyond all hopes, but there’s one problem. Captain Paolina Nigmatullin of the USS Aeneid left an unsanctioned human colony behind and now stands charged with mutiny.
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RAPUNZEL
FAA attorney Terrence Rogers dreams of space, but he spends his days on informed consent for space tourists. The arrival of an alien spaceship may mean real change for a young foreign service officer, but it means something else for Terrence.
A short story.
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FRACTIONAL OWNERSHIP
When his company demands either a move to Mars or the loss of his job, perpetual plaintiff Lewis Ostrow finds he can't even get a ticket to the world without lawyers.
A short story.
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SLEEPING DUTY
A lost starship. A lost colony. A cryo-frozen space marine.
Gilead Tan and Andrea Fielding survived their stint in the military, got married, signed up to emigrate to a terraformed colony world, and went into cold sleep for the journey from Earth. While they slept, the starship went through the wrong fold in space and settled for a different world, a wild world.
Three centuries after the founding of a colony on the uncharted planet, Gilead awakens to find humanity slipped back to medieval tech and a feudal structure.
Worse, the king who wants Gilead awake won’t let Gilead awaken his wife.
When Gilead learns the awful truth of what happened in the colony’s early days, he despairs. But he must learn to go on because only he can save the other sleeping colonists whose lives the king insists belong to "the greater good."
Sleeping Duty is the first book in the immersive Waking Late science fiction series. If you like gripping action, insurmountable odds, and alien worlds, you’ll love this rugged adventure.
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OUT OF THE DELL
On the planet Nwwwlf, in the lost colony of First Landing, the original settlers carved out one sylvan valley, a lone outpost where humans flourish. But their bright hopes and best intentions devolved over centuries into a rude replica of medieval feudalism.
Gilead Tan, who had been held captive for centuries in his sleeping cell, survived treachery and pain to free a small group of sleepers. But he and his friends now face the perils of life outside First Landing’s sanctuary–without their powered armor, their tools and technology, or anything else they need save for a few chickens.
Gilead must establish a safehold for his crew, but the alien environment does not welcome them and petty bickering threatens their meager resources. He hopes that a trace of smoke – spotted above a distant ridge – beckons them to a better place.
It doesn't.
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LIKE A CONTINENTAL SOLDIER
The starship Valerie Hall failed to reach the terraformed world of its original destination. Instead, it found a habitable substitute where the settlers split into two factions. First Landing devolved into a rude replica of medieval despotism. Seccon might promise more.
Or so hope Gilead Tan and his companions.
Gilead spent three centuries in cold sleep, held there by a First Landing custom that decreed only one sleeper could be awakened every fifty years. Once awake, Gilead freed two dozen of his fellows—all soldiers like himself—and led them into the wilderness.
Close to two hundred civilians still lie trapped in the decaying cryo-cells of First Landing. Their captive slumber haunts him.
But despite its vaunted freedom, Seccon has one rule. No one goes back to First Landing.
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EARLY SPACEPORTS
In the late 21st century, orbital industry floods the world with riches, riches which can wash up against the unsuspecting just as readily as they accrue to those who reach for them.
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MANX PRIZE
Charlotte Fisher lives under colliding skies.
It’s the second half of the twenty-first century, and mankind has reached Earth orbit but not much farther. Orbital debris is a by-product of the industrial activity, and it’s dangerous both to everyone up there and the bottom lines of the corporations offering a prize to get rid of it. Charlotte heads up a team chasing the Manx Prize for the first successful, controlled de-orbit of a dead satellite. To win, she and her team must out-think and out-engineer a cheating competitor, dodge a collusive regulator, and understand the temptations offered by a large and powerful seastead.
The sky’s not the limit. It’s the challenge.
Lots of space law, real and imaginary, in this one.
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FAR FLUNG
In the very near future a seastead offers consumers a choice in governing systems. Navy Capt. Adam Tenney’s daughter takes that offer, but what can he do for her when pirates threaten the seastead, the U.S. refuses to recognize it, and he is trapped in a desk job on land?
A novelette.
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