BOOK PROMO
If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH
FIRST THE ROLLING NOVEMBER TO NEW YEAR 99c SALE
ROLLING, ROLLING, ROLLING….. Remember that if you order these for delivery on Christmas to people’s kindles, they won’t know it was on sale, and you look like a big spender…. (If you order one of each, that is.)
When Lilly Gilden discovers a cyborg in her airlock, she should turn him in for immediate destruction—harboring any cyborg means death, no exceptions. These abominations are born from violent, illegal brain extraction, forbidden across all human colonies. But this tortured soul believes he’s Nick Rhodes, a legendary detective from the 20th century, and his fractured mind may hold the key to finding her missing husband.
The penalty for harboring him is execution, but Lilly is desperate. Her husband vanished while investigating a case that leads straight into the galaxy’s most dangerous criminal networks. With time running out and nowhere else to turn, she makes a fateful choice: trust the half-mad detective trapped in synthetic flesh.
Joined by a mysterious journalist with secrets of his own, Lilly plunges into the shadow world of interstellar crime syndicates, corrupt officials, and deadly conspiracies. As the cyborg’s detective instincts clash with his deteriorating programming, Lilly must navigate a web of lies and violence where one wrong move could cost her everything.
In a universe where love is the ultimate liability, how far will she go to bring him home?
A pulse-pounding sci-fi thriller that blends classic detective with high-stakes space adventure—perfect for fans of cyberpunk mysteries, noir whodunits and interstellar romance.
Trade Winds, A collection of short stories
A collection of science fiction short stories by Prometheus Award Winner Sarah A. Hoyt. What if aliens walk among us—not as conquerors, but as refugees seeking humanity’s moral guidance? What if our greatest creations return as lethal threats, and time itself has watchful guardians we never notice? From interstellar immigration crises to generation ships doomed by human nature, from aliens who set fiendish traps to futures inventing entirely new forms of misery—these thirteen thought-provoking tales explore humanity’s place in a vast and often bewildering cosmos. With the vivid storytelling and engaging characters that have made her a standout in Analog, Asimov’s, and Weird Tales, Hoyt delivers science fiction told from a uniquely warm perspective that welcomes readers into worlds both strange and intimately human. Discover what happens when probability itself defies replication, journey to the Darkship universe ten years after the Olympus revolution and witness an alternate history where Carthage sowed salt on Rome’s ruins. How long does memory truly endure? Reviewers praise this collection as “off-beat,” “light fun but thoughtful,” and note that “all stories are engaging and worth reading unlike so many which have one or two stand out stories and a lot of filler.” Standout tales include the clever alien refugee story “Yearning to Breathe Free” and the emotionally powerful “And Not To Yield” set in Hoyt’s USAians universe.
The collection contains the stories: And Your Little Dog Too; Who Goes Boing?; A Cog In Time; All Who Are Thirsty; Yearning To Breathe Free; Calling The Mom Squad; On Edge; Some Other Pieta; Leaving Home; Flying; The Big Ship And The Wise Old Owl; And Not to Yield; Trade Winds.
FROM PAM UPHOFF: Tiger Hunter (Chronicles of the Fall Book 19)
A novella in the Chronicles of the Fall series
Yuri Popov was born and raised on a primitive Research World, where his scientist dad and uncle worked, avoiding the rest of the family.
But as he approaches his eighteenth birthday, it’s time to meet that family, and deal with a culture having more trouble adjusting to the new reality, than Yuri the Tiger Hunter will have dealing with a modern society..
FROM LLOYD TACKITT: Murder In Texas: Book One of the Colt Andersen Detective Series (Colt Andersen Murder In Texas Detective Series 1)
Colt Andersen thought he’d left the chaos behind. After a near-fatal shooting ended his Dallas detective career, he retreated to the solitude of Ten Dog Ranch—two hundred acres of wild Texas land, a pack of wary feral dogs, and the memory of a promise made to his dying cousin. But when the body of a beloved local brewer is discovered on the eve of Buchanan’s legendary October Beer Festival, Colt is pulled back into a world of secrets, suspicion, and danger.
Sheriff Elena Mendez knows trouble when she sees it. With the festival bringing outsiders, corporate interests circling, and tempers flaring over mysterious land deals, she needs Colt’s sharp mind—and his uncanny ability to see the truth in people’s colors. Together, they uncover a tangled web of greed, betrayal, and a decades-old family feud that threatens to tear their small town apart.
But nothing is as it seems in Buchanan. As Colt digs deeper, he discovers the murder is only the beginning. Hidden beneath the rolling hills and ancient oaks lies a secret that powerful men will kill to protect—a labyrinthine cave system filled with priceless archaeological treasures and rare earth minerals worth billions. The caves are mapped in ancient petroglyphs, guarded by warnings from a vanished people, and coveted by a ruthless corporation willing to do anything to claim them.
With the help of a determined sheriff, a brilliant local historian, and the murdered man’s courageous daughter, Colt must race against time to expose the truth. As more bodies fall and the stakes rise, he’ll face armed mercenaries, corporate hitmen, and the ghosts of his own past. The fate of Buchanan—and a legacy stretching back centuries—hangs in the balance.
Murder in a Small Texas Town is a gripping blend of mystery, thriller, and small-town drama, set against the evocative backdrop of the Texas Hill Country. Rich with unforgettable characters, atmospheric detail, and a plot that twists like a country backroad, this novel will keep you guessing until the very last page.
Perfect for fans of Craig Johnson, C.J. Box, and James Lee Burke, this is a story of justice, redemption, and the enduring power of community.
Can one man’s promise—and a town’s courage—stand against the darkness rising from beneath their feet?
FROM MICHAEL MORGAN: Three Righteous Souls
The lights have gone out, and nobody knows why. As society begins to crumble, Emma Pitts and her children set off to her parent’s place outside of Toledo, but the road turns bad. Out of gas, food, and water, Emma and the children are afoot wandering through unfamiliar rural landscape peopled with desperate refugees and even more desperate local authorities trying to control the flood. Fearing the worst, and out of options, Emma knocks on a farmhouse door. Three Righteous Souls is an award winning short story of humanity in a world falling apart.
BY JOHNSTON MCCULLEY, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMMING: The Rangers’ Code (Annotated): The classic pulp western
Cactusville needed cleaning up, Sheriff Tom Thomas knew that. But the deputies he kept sending to do the job always turned up dead.
Until ex-Texas Ranger Dick Ganley took on the job, at least. Or so Ganley claimed would happen. He would not only take out the gang running Cactusville, nor would he stop at identifying and bringing to justice the shadowy head of the gang, the “King of Cactusville”.
No, Ganley had his own score to settle into the bargain, and it was a score that could only be settled by blood!
- This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving the book historical and genre context.
FROM J.J. DIBENNETO: Ten Years and Then…
What if the love of your life was the one who got away… over and over again?
In 1988, Daniel Keller is a shy, brilliant college sophomore who never expected to fall for anyone—until Nora Langley crashes into his life like a thunderstorm in heels. With wit, ambition, and a wild heart she tries to hide, Nora makes Daniel feel seen for the first time. Their love is messy, exhilarating… and more than either of them knows how to handle.
When the pressure of family expectations and uncertain futures becomes too much, they break apart—but the story doesn’t end there.
Over the next ten years, Daniel and Nora keep finding their way back to each other. Different cities. New careers. Almost-relationships. But the connection never fades. Every reunion brings joy and pain, hope and heartbreak. And always, the question: what if?
Told with nostalgia, emotional depth, and aching romanticism, Ten Years and Then… is for anyone who’s ever looked back at a lost love and wondered what might have been. Can two people who never stopped loving each other finally get it right, or are some hearts never meant to stay?
FROM WILLIAM GEORGE MEISHEID AND ANNA MARIE MEISHEID: Remembrance: Book Three of the Chronicles of Moses the Lawgiver
This will be Moses’s last journey from the mountain’s high summer pasture.
Moses is eighty years old, and the fugitive shepherd knows his time is ending. For forty years, he has lived with his wife, Zipporah, and his two sons, sharing the life of Jethro’s family in the grasslands of Midian. He has been silent about the man he was before he arrived at Jethro’s well and saved his wife and her sisters from the bandit slavers. His sons, Gershom and Eliezer, know only the father who tends flocks and speaks nothing of the past. He is an uncommonly gifted man who changes everyone’s life for the better but remains an enigma to all who know him. No one knows the Prince of Egypt who commanded armies, who stood in Pharaoh’s court, who bore a name that once made his enemies tremble.
Tonight, before they descend the mountain for the last time, Moses will break his silence and open his heart to his sons.
Using the ancient practice of zikaron—remembrance that transcends memory and makes the past live again—he will take his sons into those hidden forty years. He will show them the palace and the battlefield, the friendships and betrayals, the prophecies and the choices that drove him into exile. He will open his heart and reveal everything.
But this is more than a father’s final confession to his beloved sons. For forty years, Moses has heard nothing from the Most High, the God of his fathers. Tonight, he repents of his failures and asks the Lord to give him strength to share what he has kept buried. After a night of revelation, dawn breaks, and Moses and his two sons begin their descent down the mountain. As they journey past Horeb, the Mountain of God, the Most High’s silence will finally end, and Moses will discover that his life’s true mission, what he was born for, is only beginning.
The hidden past becomes the present. The fugitive becomes the deliverer.
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Khuldhar’s War
The war was over, but where was the peace the victors had promised?
Geidliv the Tyrant was dead, and the rogue nation of Karmandios now lay in ruins, its people prostrate before the occupying armies of the five allied nations. But now the winners are quarreling among themselves, and where brothers fight, enemies will enter to widen the gap.
Merekhet is a man torn between competing loyalties, tormented by guilt over his past failures. Raised the scion of a Karmandi noble family, he discovered upon puberty that he was in fact the son of a senior war commander of the telepathic People of the Hawk. Yet he could not entirely disavow his mother’s people, and thus became entangled in Geidliv’s regime and his nephew Khuldhar’s doomed attempt to fight it.
Now Merekhet has evidence that Geidliv used telepathy and the bioscience of the mer-people to create a living weapon from Khuldhar’s genetic material and hid it in plain sight. Worse, a former ally now estranged is seeking that weapon, and must not be allowed to capture it, lest all the world of Okeanos fall to far greater tyranny than Geidliv could ever have hoped to create.
Merekhet must regain Khuldhar’s confidence, and together they must find the five young men who are the keys to Geidliv’s final vengeance weapon.
FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Dragon’s in the Details
Six stories of dragons hiding in today’s world:
A Friend, Indeed–A little girl meets the best friend she could ask for when she finds a dragon sleeping in her wagon.
Tempest–What do you do when you find a dragon in your favorite teacup?
Clowder–These are absolutely not cats, no matter what they look like, and will take offense at your mistake.
Back Yard Birds and Other Things–If the dragon defends your chickens, you invite it to stay.
Houdini–When the pet supplier sends the wrong kind of dragon, the pet store’s got a problem.
Hoard–Not every dragon cares for gold, gems, or cash.
FROM MARY CATELLI: Through A Mirror, Darkly
What lies behind a reflection?
Powers have filled the world with both heroes and villains. Helen, despite her own powers, had acquired the name Sanddollar but stayed out of the fights.
When the enigmatic chess masters create a mirrored world reflecting her own home and the world about it, it’s not so easy to escape. All the more in that the people of that world are a dark reflection of all those she knows.
FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Land Magic and Shadows: Familiar Generations Book 10
How far will a seeker go to find an answer?
Thomas A. “Art” Chan struggles to balance his duties as university faculty with those of husband and Hunter. Toss in a tenure committee with members who insist on putting new obstacles in his way, and Art begins to contemplate a job in retail, almost.
Meanwhile, a professor searches for items in a place best left undisturbed. A place where darkness looks back. Darkness with an interest in careless magic workers.
Which is more dangerous: academics with grudges, or an irritated earth power? Or a third force, one that combines the worst of Art’s worlds?
FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: I Never Applied for This Job (Family Law Book 8)
Lee seems to be getting a handle on this sovereign business. Mostly it is making sure you have exceptional people and then stay out of their way. She’s learning moderation a little at a time and commissioned a self programming AI who may be a he instead of an it.
Friendship is also a difficult process to master when you are torn between the standards of several species, but she manages to satisfy Badgers ideals, and her Human allies turn out to be very good friends too. A little working vacation with Jeff and April solidifies that bond and gives then a couple of adventures too. They really needed to check on the Bunnies and the Jeff had to teach the squids to keep their filthy tentacles off Lee.
Now if the Earthies would just stop trying to kill her, and they figure out how to deal with the impending death of money, maybe she can do some stuff again just for fun.
FROM ANNA FERREIRA: The Root of All Evil
When murder comes to Stockton, it brings long-buried secrets in its wake…
Kate Bereton leads a busy but unexciting life as the clergyman’s only daughter in a small Dorsetshire village. She’s grateful for the break in routine heralded by the arrival of her stepmother’s latest guests, but when Kate discovers a dead body in the parsonage one morning, she finds herself in much more danger than she could have ever anticipated. Terrified and desperate, she turns to the local magistrate for help. Mr. Reddington is eager to aid his dear friend Miss Bereton, but can they discover the murderer before it’s too late, and the secrets of the past are forgotten forever?
With a dash of romance and a generous helping of mystery, The Root of All Evil is a charming whodunit that will delight fans of Jane Austen and Agatha Christie alike.
Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.
We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.
If you have questions, feel free to ask.
Your writing prompt this week is: ITCH
According To Hoyt 
Well, I satisfied one itch.
I purchased “I’m The Beautiful But Evil Space Princess Who Rules A Galactic Empire But Really Wants To Leave People Ruthlessly Alone!”. [Crazy Grin]
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Remember, o Readers, that you can be FORCE MULTIPLIERS! When you read books, you can rate and review them.
Even short reviews are of aid to the writer, because sheer mass helps. (And if you really can’t review, still rate.)
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Honor wondered if there were anything she could say.
Finally, his voice remote, Edur said, “Yes. They are diligent. They will not move for a hour or two unless they have to scratch an itch.” For a moment, his mouth tightened. “They were dutiful enough to follow instructions. And survive.”
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A new world is full of surprises, and not all of them are pleasant. We were lucky that the sap of that pretty flowering plant only made us itch. Others could raise welts, even huge blisters. A few had consequences even the Kitties’ formidable medical technology could not fully heal.
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”That’s no moon…”
Aster looked over at the ship AI screen sharply. “No, it’s an asteroid we want to mine. And don’t wander off into cultural memetics again, Horace. I need you to be the ship right now.”
”Understood, Captain, but I am getting some unusual readings. As we had previously confirmed, the target is perfectly spherical to eight decimal places, but as we get closer the radar returns seem to be, well, flickering in certain locations on the surface. I would say I have an itch at the back of my neck if I had a neck.”
Suddenly the ship jolted. “Horace, did you do that?”
”Negative. The ship is no longer responding to attitude thruster inputs, and our approach vector is being changed by some outside force.”
”So, like a … tractor beam? I swear to God, Horace, if this is some sort of 20th Century movie joke…”
”Captain, I am not doing anything. And I have resolved our new vector’s destination on the surface – please note the view from optical telescope three I have shared on your display.”
”Is that … a door opening?”
”It looks doorliketo me. And our comms are being jammed, including somehow our laser link back to Ceres station.”
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Dahak would have been much harder to find hiding in the asteroid belt, jus’sayin’.
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A space ship 48 times bigger than Ceres would have a hell of a hard time hiding in the Belt. Or anywhere short of the Oort Cloud. We’re finding dark rocks as small as 40 miles across in the Kuiper Belt.
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So you’re saying Ceres is just a frigate, then?
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Dahak was just a little large to hide there, though.
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Dahak was just a little large to hide there, though.
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If there was a Luna-sized rock in the belt, it would not stand out, especially to scans from out-system.
IIRC, hiding from observation and identification from Earth was secondary to why Dahak camouflaged up as the Earth’s moon.
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The second worst thing you could have in any kind of spacesuit? An itch in that one spot you couldn’t reach, no matter what you did or moved around. And this itch was deep, went right across my shoulder blades and down my back and was bone-deep in fear.
“Confirmed,” I whispered, making sure my helmet seals were good. Captain Barnes had sounded the alert and insisted on all of us wearing our suits before we strapped in. Not a problem-thank God for modern gloves, which allowed us to have 95% of our normal finger dexterity without the mitten effect of older gloves-but I strapped into my chair and latched my feet on the foot platform to ensure I didn’t float away.
The bridge of a long-haul spaceship is boring-large windows just mean easy ways for radiation and the random bit of debris in “hard” vacuum to get in and for air to get out. And this goes double for a warship. Besides, sensors are cheap these days and triple-redundancy cameras and basic active sensors are standard everywhere. As I fired up my console, my suit comm clicked twice then twice again-private channel from the Captain. “Tom,” Captain Barnes hissed softly, like was trying to whisper, “I’m sending you a visual image on Channel Two. Don’t announce anything until we’ve finished talking about it.”
“Yes, sir,” I enunciated clearly-all of this just felt like some kind of game-and opened my console to Channel Two. It was a boring shot of space, a few small bits of something and…a black…disk? My fingers tapped some preset macros and my eyes widened. “Sir, we need to have Leen run a diagnostics…if this is true, the ladar says we’re ten thousand kilometers out from that disk, but this FOV…,” I could do the trigonometry in my head, then there was a sudden little hiccup as I could see details on the disk. “That’s not a disk, is it?”
“No,” Captain Barnes replied, his voice almost conversational. “Only saw it now because of star occultation. It’s as close to thermal neutral as possible, and radar is giving futzy returns. And yes, the sphere is nearly five thousand kilometers wide.”
The shock gave me clarity, and I realized that the odd vibrations I was feeling in my suit life support pack was the pumps starting to run for the fusion torch. “Sir…are you saying…,” I was about to ask when I could feel…what I could only call a full-body lurch inwards, like someone was squeezing me perfectly on all sides. “What the fuck?!?” I yelled, highly unprofessional, and the starscape started to swing around like the camera was moving but I couldn’t feel any acceleration. My hand slammed down on the collision and emergency alarms half-a-second after Captain Barnes and I looked. “I’ve got no acceleration on the thrusters or accelerometers,” I spoke quickly but clearly. “Guess from our visuals, we’re rotating along our Y axis at two degrees a second!”
“What’s going on up there?!?” Chief Leen snapped in a harsh Manilla accent, breaking through on our coms, “I’ve got a green board here, what’s happening?”
Captain Barnes looked around, “We just got grabbed by something,” he said with an eerie sense of calm. “Prepare for a hard, combat burn in…fifteen seconds,” and his fingers touched the manual throttle controls. “XO, full distress and laser to anybody nearby-Ceres, Mars, anybody. Dump the log and a live feed as long as possible.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied and Captain Barnes hit the screamers for both acceleration and combat stations. He let them go for a good twenty seconds before his fingers slammed the manual throttle for the fusion torch to full-military power.
We should have been slammed back into our seats at nearly three Gs at our current fuel load.
Other than two solid shudders, like someone kicking us in our chairs, nothing happened. My eyes slipped over to the communications board, and they were even wider than before. “Captain! I’ve got negative signal from anywhere-it’s like someone is bouncing back our laser to us! Nearly zero lag time in the reply signal!”
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When I was 9 or 10, my friends attributed all sorts of weird things to predict the future. One said, “If your right hand had an itch, you were going to become wealthy soon.”
When I asked my Mom, she said, “It means you need to wash your hands.”
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My girlfriend and I were doing the dishes after a meal with her family. Her mom, who would have been my mother-in-law had she not died before the wedding, saw me drop a dishrag on the floor as I was wiping off the counters. She then shared this little bit of folk wisdom: “That means a whore is coming to see you.” It took me a week to convince my girlfriend that her mom was just stirring the pot because she really didn’t like me, despite what she said to my face.
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You just lucky she didn’t see you drop a spoon.
Or Heaven forbid, a spatula. <shudder>
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Ethan preferred the couch for these “talks.” Dr. Jefferies preferred that word to the more clinical “session,” and she preferred her patients to sit in the padded wing-back chair across the low coffee table from hers.
It’s just that Ethan couldn’t bring himself to look his therapist in the eyes. His problems were very personal. Reclining on the couch and starting at the ceiling made the discussion just impersonal enough that he could talk … to a woman … about sex.
As she flipped back through her notes, Dr. Jefferies said, “I’m very concerned, Ethan, that you haven’t been totally honest with me. I understand that traumatic memories can be a bit vague; however, you seem to be altering key details each time we discuss the incident.”
“The incident?” Ethan said. The distress was plainly audible in his voice. “Is that the medical term for it? Dammit, I can’t sleep, I don’t want to eat, I can’t concentrate at work. I had to call an Uber to come here today because I can’t focus enough to drive. And you call it an ‘incident?’ You make it sound incidental, and believe you me! It was anything other than incidental.”
The psychiatrist stared at her patient for a long moment, weighing several approaches to his issues. Given the details of Ethan’s case, she decided that a cold, impersonal approach was best. “Ethan,” she began, her voice stiff and formal, “you had an intimate experience which has left you with unresolved feelings. I believe you are conflating your encounter with this older woman with memories of your mother.”
“Who are you, Sigmundette Freud?” Ethan sneered.
“And now you’re projecting that animosity on to me.” Dr. Jefferies sighed quietly as her frustration with Ethan began to build. “Yes, I realize I am about the same age as your older lover. Women our age are not immune to the same lustful urges as young men such as yourselves. Perhaps she was experiencing what some call the ‘seven-year itch.’ But we’re here to resolve your issues, not hers.”
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Another attempt to entertain:
“When the Stars Fell”
Verse 1
On 18 Scorpii’s amber dawn, life moved slow and sure,
Fixing tractors in the dust, dreaming futures clean and pure.
But the sky went dark at 21:47,
And the stars we trusted vanished into heaven.
Sirens cried through New Canaan’s streets,
Families running, scrambling feet—
And Jax looked up, saw the night unmake,
As silent ships began to take.
A world built by hands now shook with fear,
When the Whisperers came and the end drew near…
Chorus
When the stars fell, we stood our ground,
Hearts of iron in a colony town.
Through fire and blood, through the endless night,
We learned to break, we learned to fight.
Oh, the shadows came, but we did not yield—
Human souls are a stronger shield.
When the stars fell, we rose instead—
From ashes, iron— from the living and the dead.
Verse 2
Whisperers crawled from a fallen ship,
Twisting minds with a psychic grip.
Guardians followed, armored and tall,
Shrugging bullets like raindrops as they marched on the wall.
The militia formed from scared young men,
Fathers, sons— boys turned to soldiers then.
While mothers healed and children hid,
We fought for tomorrow with everything we did.
They learned our strength, they learned our pain—
And still we rose again, again…
Chorus
When the stars fell, we held the line,
Bleeding hope in the dust and brine.
A thousand souls with a single vow:
“You will not take our home, not now.”
Oh, the dark closed in, but we did not break—
Every life was a stand we’d make.
When the stars fell, we carried flame,
And burned our courage into their name.
Bridge
In the hospitals, in the trenches,
In the ruins and the fences,
Every breath was borrowed time.
Every sunrise felt like war,
But New Canaan’s heart beats at its core—
Human, stubborn, unrefined.
Verse 3
At Miller’s Ridge, the first line cracked,
But Jax kept fighting, never looked back.
With Kane’s command and Voss’s mind,
Every death taught how to survive.
Blood and adaptation in the dust—
This world would fall unless we must
Become the steel our fathers forged,
Against a cosmic, mind-born horde.
Final Chorus
When the stars fell, we found our voice,
Paid the cost of the hardest choice.
To stand as one and never flee—
To guard what’s ours, for eternity.
Oh, the night was long, but we endured—
Wounds were deep, but our hearts were sure.
When the stars fell, we didn’t run—
We became the fire— and the rising sun.
Outro
So remember the night the heavens cried,
And the long war’s toll, and the ones who died.
For in the dark, humanity swelled—
And we learned who we were
When the stars fell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAh3ZyWbhJA
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Song lyrics and a YouTube link may have triggered the Gatekeeper…
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https://hotair.com/stephen-moore/2025/12/06/if-young-people-want-more-affordability-they-should-get-jobs-n3809589
Yeah, this is a point where I may join our hostess in vehement disagreement with Mr. Moore.
He misestimates cause, I think.
So, other day I found myself in disagreement with someone in RL.
It was a jobs Americans will not do sort of statement. By an older man.
I do not feel that the jobs Americans won’t do model has been true for at least twenty years. I have an Austrian view that tax, regulation, and other employment costs are set beyond what unskilled or crazy Americans can offset. Before considering the, also Austrian influenced, model that the ‘energy transistion’ was basically a destruction of wealth, that substantially changed the pricing for Americans trying to work inside the lawful employment process. Even would do so had minimum wage, hours per week before benefits, etc., stayed the same.
And the white collar union card grifters can go frustrate themselves.
I have a nuanced multi-faceted view that a lot of it is basically fraud, and race war ideology. There are bits within scholarship and with science that may be both true and useful, but that is not well represented in what universities make money by pushing.
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Yeah, what jobs? Illegal aliens are taking over the low-end jobs, and H-1Bs are taking over the credentialed jobs. We’re importing doctors and nurses from 3rd world countries that have substandard…standards. Some of them are competent but the only way to tell which ones is to watch for dying patients.
———————————
So long as there is one American unemployed, we’ve got no business bringing in foreigners.
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New Masters degreed grad in a computer science related technical discipline, an acquaintance‘s son, is having a lot of problems finding anything. Acquaintance asked me if I thought Son should go back to school for his PhD, to which I said “Oh, gosh no” just on general principle – as far as my experience goes, PhDs are only a plus for teaching positions.
Even with networking connections on the hiring org’s interview panel at a large Silicon Valley company, though he got an interview, he had no luck on their active openings. Their starting positions are looking for 8 years experience.
Just guessing, but maybe the AI-generated-code thing is eliminating the low-experience positions. If so I am not sure how they think they will find their 8 years of experience folks in 7 years.
I have been where this kid is now, looking for a job during a job drought. Not fun times.
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The commercial on TV blared, “I’ve got an I.T.C.H.!” with a fellow proudly unboxing his new computer. It was from Integrated Technologies Computer Hardware.
“You know, it might seems silly,” said Marissa, “but sometimes I think they have just named the company after a fruit or something. These commercials put in mind of creams normal folks try hard to not talk about.”
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”Come see this year’s new models – the Basic I.T.C.H. for home, and the Workplace I.T.C.H. On the job!”
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One young man was talking, rather loudly, of where the king had gone before, and whether it really had been to Goldengrove. Violetta winced. But those about him were more eager to have their itch for gossip scratched than to attend lecture. She started to pick her way about them.
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(Part 1/3)
“Your arguments are cogent and flawlessly presented, Minister. But the answer is still no, because it has to be, because the facts support no other alternative. As I have stated in some detail.” My voice was level and calm and direct — as it had to be. Despite the storm gathering in those famously sky-blue eyes of our High Minister for Warfare.
But of course, a warrior isn’t allowed to be afraid of a little rain.
“Admiral Takashi, you do know we’re able to remove you at any time? There is no… tenure even in your exalted position.” His voice had grown soft, almost gentle, in the way of a finger lovingly caressing a low-pull trigger. In my world, yet one more rookie mistake as my instructors had forthrightly called it. (“Keep your booger hook off the bang switch” had been an odd thing to hear, at first; yet the reality is undeniable.)
“Yes, you can — that is the Ministry High Council and Executive Committee can do that summarily, and next appoint another provisionally in my place; as you personally cannot, even despite your own most highly exalted position. But even you, collectively, are entirely responsible for what you do, especially with such emergency powers, to the Emperor and his Privy Council, to the Imperial Senate and House of Delegates.
“And for you to just remove the supreme acting chief of all our military, on the eve of this… proposed snap attack of yours you-all want so very, very intensely to mount — is to take on yourselves almost all the responsibility for the outcome, especially the bad over the good. You can attempt to appropriate the credit and ‘glory’ of a victory earned by the sweat and blood and toil” — I did not say ‘tears’ though that also would be real enough — “of our Imperial Forces; you cannot escape the ignominy and actual, causal blame for having ruined our carefully-plotted grand strategy, by indulging an itchy but wholly-metaphorical trigger finger.”
“Moving up your timetable slightly, and well within the capability of our forces as already massed and deployed, is hardly to cast our reduction and invasion and occupation plans into ruin. Surely you must know this.”
Minister Stearnes’ voice had grown even softer, though still easily heard by me and the seven other highest-level commanders present. Even a tiny bit offhand, as if pointing out the blatantly obvious to us. Likely, even as if pointing out to me and the Core General Staff how, if we could not see the obvious, others could and would be found who would see it clearly.
I leaned back in my chair a little. I could do it without seeming even a tiny bit nervous or cowed, so I did. “Are you listening to yourself, well and truly to what you say? Because I am, and the rest of us here are too. What you say is precisely correct: reduction, followed by as much of an invasion as we are obliged to mount, followed by an occupation that is an integral part of a reconstruction and normalization process. A whole that is designed to function to remove the up-and-coming threat to us, our entire Empire, posed by the Star Collective of Roma Magna. And its novel ways of political thought and military action. Which are downright poisonous; as insidious and contagious as Old Rome’s grand gangsterism, or various Marx-isms of the centuries astraddle the second-next millennium.
“And that is our objective, Minister, full eventual victory — no less.”
I folded my arms. Looked around the table; saw people counting on me. No different to any other day in this military, ever, really.
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(Part 2/3)
“There’s a classic saying, Minister, don’t win the battle to lose the war. Have you read your Old Earth pre-millennial history? World War Two and the Battles of Hawaii? What was supposed to be a minimal-notice stealth attack got turned into a zero-notice ‘Pearl Harbor’ peacetime declaration of war by war — simply because typical bureaucratic delays kept diplomats from delivering their grand ultimatum until their razor-thin margin of timing was gone, until the war they were sent to threaten was already well begun.
“And that’s what you want to do to us, very soon; deliberately as a matter of policy, not carelessly as a matter of too-close tolerances and sheer if predictably-likely bad luck. Have you ever heard those words attributed to that old Empire’s Admiral Yamamoto? ‘We have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve?’ Historians still fight over whether he actually said it — but surely he might just as rightly have done.
“This is exactly what we do not want to do, should not want to do, with today’s so-called ‘Roma Magna’ and its inevitabilist culture and political faith. This is what all our analyses say you, and I mean you and yours on the High Council and Committee, will accomplish with your shiny notion of a ‘zero-notice first strike at our enemies’ — fill them with a deep sense of betrayal, and of our unworthiness as partners in war; so that then quite necessarily by their own cherished beliefs and attitudes they must and will be filled with such a ‘terrible resolve’ never to surrender or accommodate, to what they will and must see as an unworthy culturally-lower form of life — us.
“Personally I think they’re nuts, plumb crazy as a squirrel on jimson weed as some of my forebears used to say. But that changes not the realities.”
The Minister’s icy eyes had gone perhaps a little more cold and grim. “You and your — diplomatic niceties — will likely get thousands, or tens of thousands, of our people killed. An enemy well-warned is an enemy well and effectively prepared. So many of our people, who will not come home after your harder battle is over, to their families, save in coffins and urns.”
“Yes, Minister. Yes, they will die, and earlier. As the man who designed the old Titanic said, before he went down with her, it’s really a mathematical certainty — statistically even if not individually. And if I’m yet sitting in this chair come M-Minute, they’ll do it at my command.
“But what about the rest of the war? What about the surrender phase that’s built into your variation of our plans, as well as into ours? Do you, High Minister Hugo Stearnes, have an answer for convincing them, after likely years of horrible, grinding, murderous losses — we can and will do that to them, almost certainly — that there is such a thing as honorable and reasonable surrender? Or will they instead fight to the last man, ‘return with your shield or upon it’ and at the very maximum possible cost to us?”
I fixed him with a look. “Do you mean to ensure they will do their worst to us, before they’re done? Or do you mean to do our best to minimize the losses they inflict, before they cease to be a threat and a virulence?
“Clearly your finger itches to jerk the trigger of war, Minister. But that is one of the surest ways to miss your target, and maybe strike one you do not intend to hit.”
Stearnes smiled, and it was not a nice smile. “You were just now heard to call the Star Collective our ‘partners in war’ — surely that isn’t the sort of talk the Court and the Ministries and the Legislature would find congenial, or proper, in any high leader of ours.” One a bit greasy around its badly-lit back corners, perhaps, too.
Which happily unlocked the door to a very old and unmalleable part of me.
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(Part 3/3)
“Have you ever heard the purpose of war, explained? Few indeed ever even try — not the purpose of any specific war, of any cause of action, but of the gloriously and horribly ugly thing itself. But at least one man said it very simply, around the time of the old Civil War Between the States in North America. ‘The purpose of war is to explore each other.’ Which is one of the most chilling and insightful things anyone has ever said on it, far less one hard-cussin’ pre-spaceflight bloke named Zebulon Vance. But very far from wrong, to anyone who’s been ever at all ‘to see the elephant’ as the very old, obscure saying puts it.
“The purpose of this war, Minister, is for us and the Collectivists to be able to live with each other — yes, as parts of our Empire, but to live. Not for them to die, and surely not ever for us to be subverted or lost.
“Your ‘Pearl Harbor’ attack, with no diplomatic or cultural context to our overwhelming military opening — and it will be — is not in the interests of that purpose. So if you remove me, and install someone else who will do as your itch demands, I will go to the Emperor and offer him my sword, and inquire of him if and how I may still be useful to his Empire. To set, as is proper to the Son of Heaven himself, our major military aims mostly as he pleases; and also do with me exactly as he wishes as well of course.”
Duelling had been outlawed centuries before now. Offering your sword, never a thing that guaranteed your own survival, not so much. Only, my ancestors fought in the old Rising near the end of the nineteeth century; heeded the words of Mori-san in the middle of the Lonely Years (the Bottleneck as the rest of humanity called it, the population trough around the millennium) to be ‘every man a samurai, and every woman too, and swear your service to the Japan of our future, first before all else’ as they straightened out the dive and brought the nation back to level; and helped found our new and very, very much improved Empire out among these stars. So, and simply, I could do no less. Literally, from now, ‘could do no other’ as that also possibly-apocryphal quote had it, from the old remaking of Christianity.
And there was a murmur from around the table, that could’ve been ‘aye’ and could’ve been ‘hai’ — either meant just about the same in context now.
“You’d actually go to the Emperor himself? Over a policy dispute?” Arched eyebrow, insinuating still. Only I was, in a very real way, beyond all that.
“A matter of life and death for, as you’ve said, hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of my brother and sister warriors. Possibly even for our Empire itself, soon or soon enough down the road, Minister. So not exactly any tame, bloodless sort of ‘policy dispute’ as you’ve just called it.”
And I knew our prospective Empress was very much in the know, on this. As I knew, and could not even hint, that she’d written many of our executive summary points — herself, personally, with no attribution and little help besides the commonplace kind a staff gives any command professional.
She’d told me the Vance quote — my first experience of it. She’d stated to me what I’d just said, about the purpose of this war we meant to light and burn all the way to injection into final transfer orbit. She was, as much as I or anyone else, the main architect of all we meant to do. Maybe Amaterasu herself might’ve been able to do more… if not likely by much, in this so-mundanely, Earthly realm of our Imperial capital of New Kyoto.
The Minister of War had required of me a choice. Now I’d made mine.
“And we do have a war to win, Minister. As bloodlessly as we may, but also as bloodily as events require of us. So try not to be further in our way.”
In my mind, I bowed to the Emperor, to our lovely Empress-to-be. Nodded to the ghost of old Mori-san, indomitable one-eyed Poet of Desolate Hokkaido. Bowed deeply and most deeply to the spirit and memory of Saigo Takamori, ‘last’ of old-school samurai and bright beacon to all of us who follow.
And, with a smile in my mind though not on my face, committed myself fully and without any reservation to our war to come, in all its many facets and ramifications. Even ones that came with ice-blue eyes and a greasy grin.
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