Call of Courage
7 Novels of the Galactic Frontier
C. Gockel M. Pax Allen Kuzara Amy J. Murphy Deirdre Gould Zachariah Wahrer Chris Reher
C. Gockel
Contents
About the Books
Archangel Down
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Anti Life
I. Novos
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
II. Constance
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
III. Outpost
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
IV. Breakdown
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Allies and Enemies: Fallen
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part II
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Traveler in the Dark
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Breakers of the Dawn
Acknowledgments
Prologue
01 - Felar
02 - Wake
03 - Maxar
04 - Tremmilly
05 - Lothis
06 - The Founder
07 - Cazz-ak-tak
08 - Wake
09 - Felar
10 - Lothis
11 - Maxar
12 - Tremmilly
13 - Crasor
14 - Cazz-ak-tak
15 - Wake
16 - Felar
17 - Lothis
18 - Maxar
19 - Tremmilly
20 - The Founder
21 - Crasor
22 - Cazz-ak-tak
23 - Wake
24 - Felar
25 - Lothis
26 - Maxar
27 - Tremmilly
28 - The Founder
29 - Crasor
30 - Cazz-ak-tak
31 - Wake
32 - Felar
33 - Lothis
34 - Maxar
35 - Tremmilly
36 - Cazz-ak-tak
37 - The Founder
38 - Crasor
The Backworlds
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Sky Hunter
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Call of Courage
Copyright © 2019
These novels are works of fiction. Names, characters, and locations are either a product of the authors’ imaginations or used in a fictitious setting. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or people, living or dead, is strictly coincidental. No part from this book may be used or reproduced without written consent from the authors.
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About the Books
Archangel Down by C. Gockel
Commander Noa Sato doesn’t believe in aliens. She’s wrong. In the face of genocide she must hatch a daring plan with a ragtag crew to save the lives of millions—and her own. Every step of the way she is haunted by the final words of a secret transmissio
n: The archangel is down.
Anti Life by Allen Kuzara
The opposite of life isn't death; it's something far worse. Mission colonel John Alvarez must carry out one last mission, a rescue attempt. Unknown to Alvarez, however, is the hidden threat that awaits him, one that—if he cannot stop it—will doom humanity to a fate worse than death.
Allies and Enemies: Fallen by Amy J. Murphy
Born into service of the Regime, Commander Sela Tyron is about as subtle as a hammer. To hammers, any problem can look like a nail. But things aren’t always that easy —especially when Sela is forced to choose between the only life she's ever known and rescuing a trusted comrade.
Traveler in the Dark by Deirdre Gould
Sixteen centuries ago, they fled Earth. They've never walked on soil, felt rain, or breathed unrecycled air. At last, they sent exploratory mission to a new planet. It's ideal... but they are not alone. Struggling for survival, they must make a choice. Sacrifice another species or accept their own extinction.
Breakers of the Dawn by Zachariah Wahrer
Humanity has fallen from its once majestic place amongst the stars. Desperate for resources, they seize every available planet, exterminating their alien inhabitants. Sent to subdue an uprising, a government operative unearths an alien relic. The strange device promises extraordinary power, but can he trust it?
The Backworlds by M. Pax
After the war with the Foreworlds, competition among the Backworlds is fierce. Pickings are scant enough that Craze’s father boots him off the planet. Cut off from everyone he knows with little knowledge of the worlds beyond, Craze must find a way to survive and get his revenge.
Sky Hunter by Chris Reher
Terrorists plot to destroy a space elevator on a remote planet. Nova Whiteside, Air Command pilot, is caught behind enemy lines in a bloody uprising. The treacherous and illicit schemes she uncovers there make her question who, really, is the enemy.
Archangel Down
Archangel Project. Book One.
C. Gockel
In the year 2432, humans think they are alone in the universe. They're wrong.
Commander Noa Sato plans a peaceful leave on her home planet Luddeccea ... but winds up interrogated and imprisoned for her involvement in the Archangel Project. A project she knows nothing about.
Professor James Sinclair wakes in the snow, not remembering the past twenty four hours, or knowing why he is being pursued. The only thing he knows is that he has to find Commander Sato, a woman he's never met.
A military officer from the colonies and a civilian from Old Earth, they couldn't have less in common. But they have to work together to save the lives of millions--and their own.
Every step of the way they are haunted by the final words of a secret transmission: The archangel is down.
To my dad, Jim Evans. Thanks for getting me hooked on sci-fi, fantasy, and comic books. I miss you.
Chapter One
“We know you are a part of the Archangel Project.”
Commander Noa Sato of the Galactic Fleet glared across the table. Two men wearing the dark green uniforms of planet Luddeccea’s Local Guard glared back at her. Her arms were shackled behind her back to the cold metal chair she sat on. The room was chilly—she could smell the cold of it, along with the odors of various bodily fluids. Her back ached, her mouth was as dry as lizzar skin, and she thought the bright lights of the interrogation room might leave her permanently blind.
“I told you, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she spat.
“Then why are you here?”
“I’m on leave,” she explained for the hundredth time. “I thought I’d spend my vacation visiting my brother on the planet where I grew up. Is that so difficult to understand?” Agitated, she spun her engagement and wedding rings around on her finger. Closing her eyes, she thought of her brother, Kenji, and inwardly begged his forgiveness. When they’d picked her up, she’d assumed this was all a misunderstanding. She hadn’t meant to pull him into this.
“I’ve had enough!” said one of her inquisitors. A pair of sharp, pointed pliers emerged in his hand, and suddenly he was on Noa’s side of the table. “Do you understand what I can do with these?”
Noa tried to keep from screaming … and woke up in the darkness, her whole body shaking, her breathing so fast and ragged her ribs hurt, cold air stinging her lungs. The darkness smelled like cold and various bodily fluids, an unhappy constant with the nightmare. She rubbed her eyes. But the rest had been just a dream. They hadn’t used those pliers except to scare her during the interrogation. When she hadn’t told them what they wanted to hear, they’d brought her to this camp.
She blinked. Was it unusually bright in the barracks? Stifling a groan, she sat up. Her vision immediately went black. She tried to access the reason why—and for the millionth time remembered her neural interface had been deactivated since she’d arrived here. Sucking in a sharp breath, she clutched her head, fingers drifting to the smooth, cool surface of the neural interface in her left temple. The guards were fond of parroting, “Freedom from information streams is the path to real wisdom,” but it was torture, not freedom.
Noa’s body swayed. Why was she dizzy? It couldn’t be Luddeccea’s gravity—the planet’s gravity was the same as Earth’s and standard starship grav. Was it malnutrition, or something more sinister? She bit her lip to stifle a bitter laugh. She was being slowly starved to death. How much more sinister could it get?
The spell finally passed, and she surveyed the barracks. All around her were rough wooden bunks four platforms tall. The beds were narrower than the single bunks on a starship, but each was shared by up to three women packed chest to back beneath thin blankets and without pillows. She could make out their faces—just barely—but it was definitely lighter in the barracks. Noa looked down at her bedmate, Ashley. Noa’s skin was dark as straight Earth coffee. Ashley’s was what Tim’s people would call “peaches and cream.” It made Ashley’s delicate features easy to see, even in low light. As she slept, clutching her crutch like a pillow, her face looked peaceful and her breathing was gentle. Not wanting to wake her, Noa gently folded her side of the blanket over Ashley’s sleeping form. Slipping down the slats at the end of the bed, she padded to the window.
Peering through the dirty glass, she caught her breath. Sure enough, thick white flakes of snow drifted from the sky, sparkling in the camp’s harsh spotlights. Their barracks was close to the barbed-wire fence that enclosed them, and she could just make out snow catching on the Luddeccean pines in the surrounding forest. Noa pressed a hand to the window. The snow on the dense foliage would throw off heat-seeking scanners, and the thick branches would throw off radar, but it wasn’t bitterly cold—yet. If they were going to escape, now was the time. Her brow furrowed, and she touched her interface. She squinted at the clouds as though she could will herself to see through them. Somewhere above their heads, the satellite that was Time Gate 8 floated just outside the atmosphere above Luddeccea’s equator. The gate allowed instantaneous travel to any other system that had a gate of its own. It also sent and received data. Time Gate 8 and the other satellites that orbited around Luddeccea’s equator acted as relay stations for the vast data traffic of the ethernet. And, she thought more darkly, if her neural interface couldn’t be activated, the satellites would serve as useful landmarks for navigation … if the snow let up.
Dropping her hand to her side, she balled it into a fist and bowed her head. As a pilot of the Galactic Republic Fleet she’d been given POW training. She was taught to stay put, to obey orders, and not to make foolish escape plans. She closed her eyes. But there was no war going on, and she wasn’t the captive of some pirate clan. She was in a concentration camp on her home world, Luddeccea, which hadn’t declared independence from the Republic. Opening her eyes, she looked down at her wrist. A black ‘H’ and a number had been tattooed there, barely visible against her dark skin. She’d been captured, interrogated, and interned without a trial f
or being, in the guard’s words, a “heretic.” Not an admissible crime in the Republic. If the Fleet had known she was here, she’d have been rescued by now. Her hands formed fists at her sides. Kenji should have reported her missing. If he hadn’t reported her missing, it had to mean he’d been interned, too … spinning on her heels, she went back to her bunk.
A few moments later, she was leaning over her bedmate, gently shaking her shoulder. “Ashley, Ashley, wake up, it’s time to leave.”
Ashley rolled over onto her back. Her eyes opened—visibly blue in the snow-brightness. She stared at Noa dumbly.
“Today is the day,” Noa whispered. “It’s snowing.”
Ashley put a hand to her head and ran it through her sparse hair; they’d all been shaved when they arrived. A tattooed ‘A’ for “augment” stood out on her wrist like a black scar. Ashley’s fingers went longingly to her neural interface just as Noa’s had. About three centimeters in diameter, the interfaces were made of copper with titanium and polyfiber exteriors. At the center of each was a circular port that could be hardwired directly to external computer systems via cable, but it was more common to use the internal wireless transmitters. Around the central port, tiny drives, the width and breadth of fingernails, were arranged. When functioning, they could be used for app insertion. Normally, Noa thought neural interfaces looked like flowers—the tiny drives surrounding the central ports like petals. But like every prisoner in the camp, Ashley had a large, ugly, black polyfiber screw jammed into her interface port. The screw disrupted the flow of electrons between neurons and nanos and completely jammed their wireless transmitters. It was a primitive but very effective way to keep inmates from accessing their neural interfaces and the wider universe with their minds.
“We have to get ready before the others get up,” Noa whispered.
Ashley stared at her a beat too long, but then sat up and quietly handed Noa her crutch. Noa slid off the bed and down the ladder, crutch in hand, and waited for Ashley. When Ashley had first arrived at the camp, she had a cybernetic limb, her ‘augment,’ having lost her left leg to an accident as a teenager. The guards had ripped the leg off on Ashley’s arrival—no anesthesia, of course. Noa scowled in the darkness, anger bubbling in her gut on Ashley’s behalf. Noa’s thumb went to the stumps of the fingers on her left hand—her ring finger and pinky had been removed for different reasons than Ashley’s leg, but at least Noa’s “surgery” had been quick.