[Sorry everybody, it’s time for a serious talk about the status of this crowdfunding project;  put plainly, I think it’ll take a miracle to get 189 backers in the month that remains.  The contest got me excited and I jumped the gun with this project.  We had a fantastic start, I really appreciate that, but just haven’t been able to keep up that pace.

So I’m going to pivot the business model, and today I started up a Patreon.

First thing’s first?  If this doesn’t reach that funding goal, you all get your money back, a full refund.  Don’t be worried about that!

Also, don’t worry about Over The Stars.  I’m still going to publish this , but it’s likely going to be either a Kindle Direct product with print-on-demand options, or I’ll go the Kickstarter route.  I’ll keep you posted as best I can.  The book will happen, and it will probably be a lot cheaper than $10 for an e-book, FWIW.

Some of what I have planned for this universe is shorter fiction, little vignette pieces that flesh out a character’s back-story, or show a different perspective on a major battle.

In order to support that (and other) short fiction, in order to go ’hands on’ with my writing and help shape some stories, in order to get unique geeky loot, and in order to be first in line to get updates on the status of Over The Stars, please consider supporting that new Patreon page.  

In the meantime, stay tuned here for a few more pieces of preview fiction, which I hope you’ve all been enjoying.  Thank you so much for trying to help get this project off the ground, and I’m sorry I couldn’t hit Inkshares’ pledge goals.]

[Ready for another update?  Let’s meet the rest of this season’s contestants, huh?  As always, remember this is early draft material (no one’s gone over it with a fine-toothed comb yet, least of all a third-party editor), and names are subject to change.  I’m not above bribes!  ;) 

Keep spreading the word, keep sharing what’s been posted so far, and let’s get some more pre-orders, so this book can happen!  You guys have been great, let’s keep it up!

--RRZ]

“And now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for, Randy!”

“That’s right, Danny.  It’s time for every good citizen to meet the High Protectors!”

A slow pan as the camera feed flickers away from the flawlessly-smiling flashcasters and back to New Hibernia’s gorgeous blue skies, then a zoom.  Another zoom.  An Adeyemi Enterprises Coyote, the High Protector’s smallest workhorse, their catch-all small craft;  jump capable but still ship-deployed, a jack-of-all-trades that serves as a heavy fighter, a bomber, an assault shuttle, and a planetary invasion craft.

“Oo-rah,” Danny Xie’s scarred face, a picture-in-picture, splits into a smile around her instinctive Marine grunt.

The DFMC, every one of them, has a crush on the Coyote.  Even she, off the battlefields for years and trading her carbine for a camera, can’t help herself.

Randhawa covers for her slight gaffe by taking point, cuing the rest of the image montage while Danny just watches the ungainly—so ugly it’s gorgeous—craft’s rear hatch open.  Feeds come to life from within the craft, and a half-dozen jumpers prepare their grav-chute rush out the back.

He talks while the bold TECH scrolls into place, overlaying a montage of the first High Protector jumper;  they’re huge, having to noticeably duck to keep from smashing their helmeted head on their way out the Coyote’s assault hatch.

“First up is the lowest-ranked High Protector, Private First Class Chen Urbanek, hailing from Crake IV—it says here his one request upon accepting a spot on the show was that we say hello to his family, what a trooper!—and as you can see, PFC Urbanek wasn’t hurting for food out there on that agri-world, was he, Danny?”

“He sure wasn’t, Randy, he sure wasn’t.”  The brief montage is startling;  he’s as tall as a low-grav-born, but as broad as most who grew up on high-grav conditions.  A jaw like the jutting prow of a Coyote, dark hair regulation-short, shoulders and rippling muscles like a recruitment poster.  One brief shot of the ship technician in action has him lifting—solo—a busted modular power relay section out of its assembly slot, while three of his shipmates struggled to haul the replacement module over.  Whether from his time aboard ship, pasty-white parents, or the unique environment of Crake IV, he seemed constitutionally incapable of getting much of a tan, though.   

“They sure do grow Devil Dogs big on Crake,” Danny continued, sounding almost as dreamy as when she’d eyed her beloved Coyote.

“And speaking of,” Randy cleared his throat, TACTICAL rolling onto the screen, “We’ve got another Marine up next, of course, and another enlisted man.  Lance Corporal Sunjay Armstrong!”

Armstrong was more graceful, more efficient in his movements, than Urbanek.  His every movement was clipped, precise, whether the practiced way he leapt from the rear of the combat shuttle, or his curt actions in the array of screen-within-screen scenes being displayed.  In more of them than not, the Marine had his standard carbine at hand.  His skin was as dark as Randy’s, a struggle with a perpetual five-o’clock shadow that darkened it even more seemed to be Armstrong’s only violation of uniform protocols;  the Corps likely granted him leeway, there, simply chalking it up to excessive testosterone that had to seep out from somewhere, lest he explode.

“Every Marine is a rifleman, they sa—“

“You’re damned right,” Danny cut in.

“But of course, some of them are nothing but, and that’s LC Armstrong, here.  He’s a shooter, through and through, and his only secondary training has been adding versatility to that;  additional insertion methods training courses, Oh-Gee Assault,” the zero-gravity tab showed on one of the young Marine’s uniformed shots, “And, it says here, he’s actually rated at the very top of the MACE protocols.”

“Marine/Army Combative Exercises,” Danny said with her usual gusto, “It’s the real deal, and so is he.”

“You bet’cha!” Randy defaulted to his camera-perfect smile again. 

“And last but not least for the Marines, we’ve got Siobhan Rhett,” Danny kept talking as FLIGHT scrolled into view, amidst a flurry of slow-motion shots.  “She’s just the third Warrant Officer we’ve had on the show, and our first graduate of the DFMC’s new Accelerated Flyer Training program!”

Cranberry-red hair and Crake-pale skin clashed in shot after shot of the wiry young pilot, her smile more fierce than friendly when the drones showed it.  In real-time, away from the dreamy montage pieces, she’d done a jaunty little flip while leaping from the rear of the shuttle.

“Rhett also comes from an edgeward world, and took advantage of the Corps as a way to see the galaxy,” Danny supplied helpfully.  “She sure seems to be making the most of it.  She’s racked up three kills so far in her young combat career, and I’m sure she plans to add to that as soon as she can.”

“Well, let’s hope it’s after the season’s over,” Randy laughed, sounding forced again.  “But you know who’s not from an edgeward world?  Ari Schumaker, that’s who.  The Lieutenant’s actually from the second moon of New Oxford—just a shuttle ride away from the capital!—and his credentials and education certainly show it.”

TECH floated onto the screen, alongside the DemFed Navy’s logo, at long last.

“Lieutenant Schumaker’s one of the few commissioned officers the High Protector sent to this year’s competition, but he’s no slouch.  A graduate of the Dangxiong Technical School and near the top of his class at the Nevatim Academy, Schumaker brings some heavy academic credentials to bear, this season.”

Schumaker seemed bookish, but sharp-looking.  He wore smart-glasses in more of his montage pictures than not, whether in the classroom or the flight bay, eyes perpetually a hair out of focus, soaking in a dizzying array of holographic data alongside whatever the rest of the world was seeing.

  With that weapons-engineering experience, heavy focus on power plants, and those type of aptitude scores, he’s going to be tough for the Low Protectors’ best and brightest to compete against.”

“Not that the Lopies sent thei—ahem, moving along, though,” Danny pushed through a smile as TACTICAL and a fresh set of images snubbed her.  “The Fleet’s lent us Master at Arms First Class Larissa Ree for the season!”

As Ree leapt from the rear of the Coyote, the flashcast screens filled with images of her running through cramped hatches and hallways with a compact shotgun at the ready, leading a hand-to-hand class, or—in one instance—slapping a fist onto the main control of a brig hatch, shutting some petty shipboard criminal up.  Ree’s spiky hair was going salt-and-pepper, by far the oldest of the season’s contestants, but she hadn’t lost a step.

“Ree’s another top-notch MACE student, and no slouch at all in shipboard actions.  She’s been commended for repelling boarders on four different occasions, and once even stowed away with Marines leading a counter-attack operation, just getting carried along by the momentum of the fight.”

“She’s going to be a real asset this season, that’s for sure,” Randy nodded.  “And she is, of course, this season’s Top Vet, so let’s all take a second to celebrate her years of service.”

The ‘second’ for enlistment-time celebration was fairly accurate;  dead air was dead air, and the producers didn’t like it.  Instead, a bold FLIGHT scrolled into view again, as the final contestant prepared to leap from the rear of the assault shuttle.

“And last of all, this season’s highest-ranked contestant—“

“Following in the footsteps of her aunt, a Rear Admiral!”

“—We have Lieutenant Commander Tomiko Covington,” Randy pushed through, as he always did, as though Danny didn’t walk all over his lines.

Covington gave a crisp salute to the drones—the only contestant to acknowledge their presence so far this episode—before following her team in her grav-chute deployment.  Her montage showed jet black hair in a stark ponytail, startlingly blue eyes, and a ramrod-straight spine.  She was young, surprisingly so, for her rank, but the dazzling array of medals on display when she was shown in her dress grays left it clear she’d earned her the stripes on her sleeves.

“The Ell Cee, of course, is the niece of the Hero of Epsilon Secundus, Rear Admiral Asuka Covington, who brought the Dashing to bear and turned the tide.  Covington—our Covington—was engaged elsewhere at the time, but along with Lieutenant Kalinsky, she’s also an ace.”

“More than double ace, at that!  With her fourteen confirmed kills, Lieutenant Commander Covington’s proven herself to be a real scourge of the PML, and, before her reassignment here for the season, led her Air Wing, in fact.”

“She’s a real firecracker in that cockpit, that’s for sure,” Randy nodded.  “And a natural team leader for the High Protectors this season!”

Hi all!  Things are still progressing nicely, wracking up new followers (and a few new readers), and that’s awesome to see.  I had a few pre-existing contract gigs to take care of this last week or so, but I’ve also almost got the next chunk of fiction carved out and ready to serve up (including naming a few more characters, thanks, backers!).

Keep spreading the word to your sci-fi lovin’ friends, getting them hooked via the short fiction posted so far, and we can still haul this thing up to that sweet, sweet, 250 threshold.  :)

--Russell Zimmerman

Hi all, just a quick update this time around -- no fiction, sorry! -- to let folks know we’re still chugging along, we’re up to a whopping 59 pre-orders (yay), and things are still progressing.  I had plenty of excuses for a slower update (I had a family member visiting (hi mom) for a while, we were out of town a little bit, yadda yadda yadda), but mostly it’s that with the contest itself being over, my update schedule’s going to slow down a bit.  Partially it’s to give myself a break, but also so I don’t just spam the heck outta you readers.

For the next little bit, my plan is weekly updates, with maybe every other one featuring some more preview fiction.  I’m not sure how many folks are even reading ’em (I’m not crazy about the text-dump format, myself, and I bet it’s a real bear on a phone or a tablet), but I also don’t want to share half the book while we’re here for the next two months of campaigning! 

Thanks for all the support and interest so far, and let’s keep it up!   Keep sharing and telling your friends, it’s greatly appreciated.

Feel free to ask questions, leave comments, say hi to me on Facebook or Twitter, and get a dialogue going! 

--RRZ

[Hello, 60 readers!  We’re up to 51 pre-orders, and we only have a few more days for that number to climb in this contest.  We’ve done really well in this Inkshares/Nerdist thing so far, and it would be great to do even better before the contest ends on the 15th.  If you like what you’re reading, remember to link, share, and get your friends to give it a shot, too!

As always, this is an early draft, but it’s time for our next fiction preview/character introduction!  We’re interrupting our preview of "The Protectors" to show you their opposition;  a soldier in the PML.  Sort of.  --RRZ]

The People’s Military League didn’t care one whit about actually holding onto Yaren Tertiary, a sun-baked world on a decaying orbing on the way into the gas giant, Yaren Prime, they just didn’t want those DemFed bastards to hold onto it, either.  Between them, they’d bombed almost everything worthwhile about YT into the dirt—on the dark side, the cold side, the side that could sustain human life except for all the bombing—but neither side was willing to give it up, now.  Amidst the urban rubble, they fought over the worthless hunk of rock like it was still teeming with life, like the colonists hadn’t given up on it after just a few centuries, like it mattered at all.  They fought, but in a half-hearted, uncaring, way;  the contest was all that mattered, not the prize.

And when the contest was all that mattered, the 227th Shock Troopers (Penal) got sent in.

“Threepeat,” the order began, as weary as it was wearying, on a radio a generation too old for standard issue, cutting through the thing atmosphere of Yaren Tertiary, coming in a voice muffled by an old rebreather (still in better shape than the secondhand ones that left most of the 227th coughing and panting). 

“Take twenty men and flank left.  Advance, establish a base of fire to draw enemy attention, and await support.”

Austin Baird, called Threepeat, had been enlisted for seventeen months, and had gained a Private First Class’s stripes--theoretically, that is, none of the troopers in the 227th were allowed to wear rank patches--then a Lance Corporal’s, then a Corporal’s, and now a Sergeant’s, by way of attrition alone.  The spotty, half-missing, command structure of the punishment detail meant it was normally a Captain giving the order, but over time they’d changed from “Coble, take Threepeat and twenty men,” to “Marshall, take Threepeat and twenty men,” to “Randall, take Threepeat and twenty men,” to, finally, “Threepeat, take twenty men…”

But it was always him.  And he knew why, as much as everyone else did.  The 227th were, like all Penal units, the scum of the People’s Military League Army, disposable troops in a disposable command structure, united only by their contempt for the PML and the PML’s contempt for them;  thieves, rapists, murderers, shirkers, and cowards.  Never quite deserters, of course, those were simply executed by the nearest morale officer. 

The men and women of a Penal battalion, malcontents one and all, received inconsistent rations, ungenerous quartermaster attention, unfair orders, and suspended pay.  They lost their rank upon entry.  The one perk was a lack of a morale officer;  after the casualty rate of attached morale officers was nearly four times that of standard units, even the stubborn PML High Command had stopped assigning them to these disciplinary commands.  The 227th was among the longest-lived of such units, but the same didn’t hold true to the individual soldiers assigned to it.  Thieves received a three-month tour.  Rapists a six.  Those showing a reluctance to fight, also six.  If they managed to live, they returned to their old units—or some other one on-planet if their former comrades had moved on, there was no need to waste interstellar travel on such scum—and worked their way back up the ranks.

Threepeat, though, seemed to be here indefinitely.  It was, effectively, a death sentence without a date specified.  His seventeen month tour was the longest anyone remembered—records were spotty, because a penal battalion didn’t exactly have a regular unit historian so much as lean on disciplinary notices from officers scattered throughout the PML as a whole—and was essentially unheard of. There were others who had been assigned to penal units multiple times for, perhaps, as long, but none had ever been in one without reprieve. 

Baird was here because he had failed a test. 

The People’s Education/Aptitude Test, widely called the PEAT, was an essential tool in the state assessing the abilities of every citizen, the culmination of a PML citizen’s academic career, and was used to best assign them to fill the needs of the League.  Austin Baird had excelled in similar, preliminary, exams as a boy.  His general scores had been impressive, his comprehension scores from primary school had placed him in top brackets and juggled him to high classes.  He’d matched his academic performance with athleticism, celebrating the physicality of the People’s Military League by overperforming in competitions with rival schools, and—once—even scoring repeatedly in an exhibition match with a visiting academy team from the capital.

Then his father had died, and everything had changed.  Eugene Baird had been life-long PML loyalist, a true believer, a hard-working man with scarred hands like hams and a bald head that shone brighter than his smile, a builder of homes and workplaces, a crafter of whatever the League had needed.  He worked and bled for the PML.  For decades the Baird family lived in their drafty state-assigned housing—Austin’s mother got too cold, then got too sick—while he left to insulate and reinforce the homes of others, to breath in the dust of his labors, to kill himself from the inside out.  Three days before his only son took the PEAT, three years after his wife’s pneumonia killed her, Eugene Baird was reduced to little but a bloodstained pillow and a sleep from which he never awoke.

On the day the state buried his father, Austin Baird got every question wrong on the People’s Education/Aptitude Test.  Every one.  His teachers had nervously exchanged glances, spoken with school administrators, and offered him an almost-unprecedented second chance.

He did it again.  Proudly.  Defiantly.  Answering each question differently than the last time—to show them he could—but meticulously never selecting the right answer.

Morale officers visited his home.  They knew their work.  They didn’t leave any marks, didn’t leave any bruises.  Austin took the test a third time, and once again scored a perfect zero.

His enlistment paperwork was filled in without him, signed by a morale officer, stamped by a morale officer, and in the same moment, on the same desk, marked by a morale officer for transfer to the 227th Shock Troopers (Penal).  He was taken in the night, given most of a uniform to hide the marks and bruises they had left this time, and put immediately to work.  His superiors in the 227th had special orders for him.

And then it had begun;  “Coble, take Threepeat and twenty men…”

But he had lived. 

So now he took the twenty men.  Twenty other malingerers, thieves, looters, rapists, killers, and cowards, led into battle—always from the front—by the Sergeant they all looked down on and called Threepeat.  They were in ugly gear cobbled together from battlefield trophies, looting stores and homes they came across, and half-hearted gear assignments from central command.  They wore green and grey and black and brown, most without a patch in sight, and they fought with weapons just as mis-matched.  They had a banner back on the dropship that had expelled them at the start of their time on Yaren Tertiary;  someone had vandalized the (Penal) into (Penile) with stolen paint or or stolen cloth or stolen thread and stolen needles, so they had disembarked without it.  Again.

Threepeat took twenty of them—not all men, actually, a half-dozen of his nearby hand-picked troopers were women—and flanked left.  He was young and strong and fast and fit.  He had hatred in his heart, and was able to take it out on the enemies of the PML, for all that he’d rather take it out on the PML itself.  This week he had a stolen shotgun, DFMC-issue, picked up from a corpse right next to a DFMC ammunition carrier that held 150 rounds for it. 

He was sure he’d make it back, like he always did.  Cut, battered, bruised, panting behind this damned rebreather, later to be patched up with stolen cloth and stolen needles and stolen thread, and perhaps with a dozen or so of his unlucky twenty with him.

But he’d make it back.  He always had.  Whether Baird liked it or not, he served, he worked, he bled, like his father had, and he would until it killed him.