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The Stars in Flames: A Military Science Fiction Anthology Box Set
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The Stars in Flames
A Military Science Fiction Box Set
Introduction by Christopher G. Nuttall
Scott Bartlett | PP Corcoran
Christopher G. Nuttall | DJ Holmes
Rick Partlow
The Unsung © 2018 Scott Bartlett
Invasion © 2017 PP Corcoran
Ark Royal © 2014 Christopher G. Nuttall
The Void War © 2015 DJ Holmes
Recon © 2017 Rick Partlow
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Cover designed by The Gilded Quill
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published by
The Stars in Flame: Military Science Fiction Box Set © 2018 Castrum Press
Visit our website at www.CastrumPress.com
Printed in the United Kingdom
First Printing: November 2018
Castrum Press
Print Edition:
ISBN-13 978-1-9123273-9-3
Table of Contents
Introduction To Military Science Fiction
The Novels I. THE UNSUNG 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
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
About Scott Bartlett
II: INVASION Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Crossing Paths
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
About PP Corcoran
III. ARK ROYAL Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
About Christopher G. Nuttall
IV. THE VOID WAR Prologue
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
Epilogue
About D.J. Holmes
V. RECON: A WAR TO A KNIFE Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
About Rick Partlow
More For Military Sci-Fi Lovers
More For Military Sci-Fi Lovers
Int
roduction To Military Science Fiction
By Christopher G. Nuttall
“Anyone who clings to the historically untrue and thoroughly immoral doctrine that violence never settles anything I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms.”
-Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers.
I’VE BEEN TOLD I’M the highest-selling military science fiction author in the UK.
I don’t know if that’s actually true. I’d like to believe it, of course, but is it true? (Don’t tell me... I don’t want to know.). That said, I am outsold regularly by American military SF authors like David Weber and John Ringo, while a handful of authors who combine pulp and literary fiction (Heinlein is perhaps the most successful example) have achieved a degree of fame that leaves me in the dust. I would like to think that people will still be discussing and praising my work twenty or so years after my death, but common sense tells me it’s unlikely. Pulp writers - and military SF authors are almost always pulp writers - rarely achieve lasting fame.
And yet, over the past thirty years, military SF has become more and more popular. Who knows? Maybe I will be cited by literary historians in 2100 after all.
By its very nature, science fiction is a genre that draws in other genres and makes them its own. There are SF books that are de facto detective novels, attracting readers who would never pick up a book by Conan Doyle or Ian Rankin; there are SF books that have elements of high fantasy as well as science fiction (Star Wars is a prime example of a blended mix of science fiction and fantasy tropes); there are SF books that are centred around romance, rather than adventures in deep space, or time travel and alternate history. This tends to have interesting effects on realism, triggering debates between fans of ‘hard SF (realistic technology) and ‘soft SF (technology that might as well be magic). Does murder still count as murder, Peter F. Hamilton asks in Pandora’s Star, if the murder victim can be restored to life? And if she (or her clone, depending how you look at it) actually benefits from her own murder?
Military SF blends tropes from science fiction (alien invasion, starships, faster-than-light travel) with tropes from military fiction. On one hand, military SF, as I see it, is centred around fighting men and women, be they square-jawed heroes and heroines or massively-flawed individuals who nonetheless have to stand up and fight for the right. And, on the other hand, military SF is focused on the impact of newer and better technology. It may be many years before we can build and deploy reliable armoured combat suits, for example, but we have fiction that assesses their strengths, their weaknesses and possible tactics for taking advantage of them that future generations can use as a guide. Heinlein talked about ACS troopers in Starship Troopers; Allan Cole and Chris Bunch deconstructed the concept in Sten. Only time - and technological development - will tell us who was right.
Military SF also allows a writer’s imagination to roam free. Where military thriller writers like Eric L. Harry and DC Alden could write books about invasions of America and Europe (Alden, in particular, outlining a plan that no sane military would consider because of the number of elements that could go wrong), military SF writers can consider the implications of different technologies and how they might reshape the nature of war. Some authors predict that interstellar warfare will be impossible in the absence of any faster-that-light technology, others discuss the implications of everything from transfer points to FTL drives that can move ships from one star system to the next in a heartbeat. It’s quite interesting to note how many military SF books owe their origins to past wars. David Weber’s Honor Harrington draws much from the Napoleonic Wars, John Ringo’s Posleen books are based on the First World War, my own First Strike is based on the Russo-Japanese War. The writer often has to work quite hard to devise a technological mix that allows the comparison to be made, but it can be quite rewarding. A solid technological framework is one of the key elements of military SF.
And many - many - authors, starting with HG Wells, consider the possibilities of alien contact ... and alien war.
It is hard to say just what percentage of military SF books feature wars against alien races. They tend to be tricky books to write, owing to the need to present alien characters as genuinely alien; indeed, many alien races are presented as being similar to a number of different human cultures, rather than truly alien. But, in some ways, they present situations where all of humanity can unite against them (if, indeed, the human race of the book’s era is not already politically united). Some books even suggest that the galaxy isn’t big enough for two races, let alone a hundred or more; they tend to focus on guilt-free extermination wars, waged against races so hostile - or so alien - that peaceful coexistence is impossible. It’s hard to feel sorry for the Bugs of In Death Ground and The Shiva Option when they introduced themselves to humanity by luring a survey fleet into an unprovoked ambush, then launched an invasion of human space, and then started eating human captives. (It is later discovered that they also domesticated several alien races as food animals.) As one character notes:
“The universe must be cleansed of these monsters! We're dealing with an abomination beyond humanity's conception of evil. By comparison, Hitler was a naughty boy, the [former alien enemy] mildly maladjusted!”
There are many pulpy books that are little more than endless battles, with character development coming a distant second. The best military SF books, however, are the ones focused on their characters, rather than the war itself. Soldiers (and sailors, airmen and spacers) are people, men (and women now) who are under immense pressure in the midst of combat. The realities of war are hard to grasp, no matter how much you study. You will simply be unable to know, truly know, how you will react in a crisis until you are plunged into the fire. Is the car driving towards your checkpoint at breakneck speed loaded with explosives? Are you going to die if you let it get too close? Or is it driven by an idiot who wants to win the Darwin Award? Or is it a provocation? Is someone hoping to trigger an incident that will be blown into atrocity with the gleeful help of the world’s media?
Do you take the shot?
Military SF is, in that sense, a mirror of the real world. Many works focus on the realities of military life - and the effects, for better or worse, of decisions taken for political rather than military reasons. Books written by military vets (a category that doesn’t include me) tend to divide politicians into good and bad categories and rarely, very rarely, showing reporters as anything other than slimy creeps who are de facto enemy agents. (In fairness, very few modern reporters have anything like the experience necessary to understand the military context.) The majority of military SF, as I noted, tends to centre on men and women in uniform, not on any wider context. It also tends to eschew the complexity of political intrigue. There is very little room for nuance on the battlefield.
Why, then, is military SF so popular?
I’ve been challenged to answer this question before and I’ve come up with several different answers. One of them is that we like adventure, or at least the concept of adventure; we want to dream of a frontier in the same sense that British schoolboys once dreamed of patrolling the North-West Frontier (now the Pakistan-Afghanistan Border). Our world is a small place now, but the final frontier is just waiting for us. Another is that military SF represents a look into a very different set of worlds, with very different rules; we like imagining what will happen if - when - we have new toys to play with, new kinds of societies, friends and foes who are very different to us. A third is that military SF is both a reminder that force can and will be used to settle an issue and a reassurance that, no matter how bad it gets, humanity will prevail against all-c
omers. And a fourth is that the very best military SF is refreshingly free of the taint of political correctness. Indeed, many books point out the flaws in fighting a politically-correct war.
But the core reason, I think, lies in the simple fact that military science fiction is about heroes, about men and women putting their lives on the line for their people. It does not matter if the hero is a staggeringly handsome man with muscles on his muscles or a drunkard who is drinking away the time until his early retirement, as long as he is a hero who answers the call to action when it comes. We admire heroes. We want to be heroes.
And, most importantly of all, we want to believe they exist.
CHRISTOPHER G. NUTTALL
The Novels
I. THE UNSUNG by Scott Bartlett A mysterious enemy seeks to make slaves of the last ‘real’ people. If Joe can’t put a stop to it, the human dream will die.
Joe is nearing the end of a long deployment and looks forward to home leave so he can visit his daughter. Protecting digital people pays the bills, but Joe is one of the few who prefers to spend time with those made of flesh and blood. His last assignment takes him to Earth, humanity’s deserted homeworld, to learn why all contact has been lost with Sol’s Subverse – the digital utopia where most of humanity now live. First, he finds a pirate impersonating the corporal responsible for guarding the Subverse terminal. Then he visits Earth’s last settlement to find everyone dead...except the children, who have all been taken.
II. INVASION by PP Corcoran
Humanity, previously dependent on the K'Tai for its Redlazore, discover vast resources of the most valuable mineral in the galaxy on Agate. The planet Agate is, however, the human colony-world which lies perilously close to the K'Tai Imperium and the K'Tai resolve to put the upstart humans back in their place. The K'Tai soldiers of the infamous Black Legion invade Agate, opposed by a meagre, poorly-armed militia and a sprinkling of regular marines. In the midst of the whirlwind conflict is the Carter family: Dave a mid-level exec is working in downtown Gemini City, Sue his wife, a high school teacher and their teenage twins, Jodee and Chris are on a school trip to a Redlazore mine. The planet and those upon it are to be engulfed in the flames of war. However, the K'Tai, did not count on the Carters... and their secrets... secrets which will cost the K'Tai Imperium dearly and may just save their colony world.