Lucas Cats

by on December 8, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Races of Humanity

The single most and least successful species on San Lucas was based on Earth’s extinct sabertooth cats. The Albion engineered them up to the size of a draft horse, with the muscle and bone mass to support it, and a thick hide capable of deflecting any conceivable small arms fire. The stated goal of that first project was a biological tank. They were completely successful on that point. It was the attempt to graft human-level sentience into the new race that failed spectacularly. They have the brain mass necessary for hyper-intelligence, but we can’t see evidence that they use it. They are aggressive, combative, and dangerous as hell, but they lack anything like language or culture as seen in the other cats. They just don’t seem sentient, even though they should be.

 Comment 

San Lucas

by on December 7, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Essential Galactic Atlas

The first continent humanity colonized on San Lucas was not much larger than Earth’s Australia. New Brazil had the largest population of sabertooth-descended alpha predator cats of any of the major continents, but it also had the largest deposits of heavy metals and coal in the tall mountain range that dominated most of the continent’s central region. There was a thick forest belt around those mountains where the stupid cats lived, and massive fuel reserves resided under the shallow underwater shelves that spread out in every direction for dozens of kilometers off the coasts. It was as if someone designed a continent with all of the raw materials a civilization would need to thrive, and then added an aggressive, unreasoning, natural predator the size of a draft horse who would fight you fang and claw for every square meter of ground you wanted. Humanity wanted all of it.

 Comment 

Hello, my name is Jack

by on December 6, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I’m not a big fan of fighting. Yeah, I know, I’ve spent a lot of my life doing it. And I must say I do enjoy doing it while I’m doing it. There’s a real rush to coming out the victor in a battle of fisticuffs and wits. But at the end of the day, I’d be happy if I never had to fight again. There’s always a cost to it. Someone always looses something important when a fight decides anything. And when it comes down to it, I just don’t like taking things from people by force. It’s hard to keep your hands clean when you spend all your time fighting. I suppose that’s one of the reasons I wear white.

 Comment 

Lucas Cats

by on December 5, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Races of Humanity

One of the important things to consider about the cats of San Lucas, is that they originally came from Earth. The genetics is quite clear on that. The Albion took them off Earth many thousands of years ago and began a long experiment to turn them into loyal soldiers. They used heavy genetic modifications to give them hand-feet, and human-level intelligence. The Albion abandoned the experiments and the world when they proved unsuitable for Albion needs. I’ve often wondered why they ever thought they could take cats and turn them into loyal soldiers for the defense of Albion interests. My best supposition is that the Albion were capable of just as much hubris as Earthborn humans, and thought that their science was up to the task of making the “perfect” cat that would obey their every whim. News flash. They failed.

 Comment 

The Future of Jack

by on December 4, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

This is a fun little cover I asked Stephen Huda to create for my next short story. It’s an early draft of the cover art, and the final one will be subtly different, but I rather love it and wanted to show it off for all of you fine folks.

The working title is “Thunderbirds,” though I’m certainly trolling around for other title ideas. It’s the first appearance in fiction of the Thunderbirds of Betelgeuse, the descendants of an old, failed Albion genetic engineering project to create superior aerial warriors. Though the eagle-eyed among you who pay attention to my daily posts may have noticed some of my past writings on the race in the diary formats. The story is complete at this time, though will probably go through another round of edits or two before it is published.

I’m also working on the next Wolfenheim story, while my muse keeps kicking me to work on A Family Affair at the same time. So I’ve been dabbling in three different stories lately, in three totally different locations in time and space, all depending on what the muse wants each day. 😉

The Wolfenheim story takes us out of Earthspace for the first time in my fiction. Thousands of lightyears away. It will have the first appearance in fiction of the Arnam and the Aesiran, and will show how the Wolfenheim Project affects The War in unexpected ways.

A Family Affair takes place after The War, as those who’ve read the abortive attempt at a first version of that story I started years ago. It didn’t work back then. Partly because I hadn’t written enough to have a clear understanding of what the characters were going to want to do. Both Angel Flight and Wolfenheim Rising have given me that clarity on the characters. So I look forward to getting to that little gem in the future. And so does my muse…

High rez version available for free on Patreon

 Comment