The Price of Power
Archon. It is a word that radiates power. Even the slave races comprehend it, in a fashion. Not the intricacies of our tongue, of course. But they understand. With its…
The Price Paid
Endless, precise formations of Guardsmen marched below, the earth trembling beneath the tread of their boots. Banners snapped majestically in the wind at the head of their columns, while cheering…
The Eye of the Beholder
Flickering blasts of red light chased the shadowy figure as it flitted across the cramped hab-unit, searing super-heated holes in the cheap plascrete wall and setting the thin mattress alight…
You Don’t Dogfight
https://youtu.be/DDgsUAcSuKE You don’t dogfight with an Avenger.I can remember Flight Instructor Willingham drilling that phrase into us. It was his mantra. If there was one thing he wanted us to…
What Price Conviction?
Jaryon lay sweating, his fitful mind questing for the calm of the craftworld. He felt himself a discordant note without its song, an aberration marring some foreign melody. The world…
The Thorned Rose
The fingernails he runs across my thigh are tipped with neurotoxin. Yet I do not tense. I run my hands through his hair wearing rings that could slice him in…
The Sky Warriors’ Due
Paying the Sky Warriors’ Due was no simple task. From their village it was a five-day trek across shattered cliffs and brackish jungle rivers. Besides the terrain, there were stranglevines,…
The Denestral Lifeguards’ Game to Improve Morale
Lieutenant Thaddeus dropped into the luxurious armchair, the dirt from his fatigues rubbing into the leather from an animal which died centuries before he was born.'How was that, eh?' grunted…
Efficiency
Nathaniel hesitated before loading the shotgun. The shell was one of Engineer Abimelech’s personal creations. It housed an inverted cone of vectordet behind a copper plate, which inverted into a…
Chain of Command
Major Hale sighed and knocked back his recaff. He grimaced as the stone-cold liquid hit his tongue and stepped over to the tiny ablutions alcove to pour the dregs away…