The Last Valkyrie

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When the Synthetic Intelligence Val Ky Ree wakes from her emergency shut-down after a climatic battle, she discovers thousands of years have passed, and her creator race, The Aesir, have all gone. The last of her kind, she finds a new purpose in protecting the remaining few thousand humans from the hostile alien races called The Compact. As humanity teeters on the edge of extinction, one human male helps her to realize her destiny. She takes on a new role as the last of the mythical Valkyries who have been given the power to decide who lives and who dies. She will need all that power and her Warrior Code discipline when an old threat from the past re-emerges, a threat that this time, she must face alone.

After the collapse of the interstellar Federation, human civilization descended into a new Dark Age as planets, cut off from Earth and each other reverted to a lower tech level. After centuries of struggling to pull themselves back up by their bootstraps, they face a new and terrible threat. Raiders with faster-than-light ships and contra-gravity tanks steal anything they want and kill anyone that gets in their way. This military SF novel is the story of three generations of a family as they fight to protect their planet and loved ones from the forces of chaos.

Be aware that the first 50,000 words of this novel are also in The Merlin Gambit. This is now the re-edited and revised 2nd edition of my sequel to H. Beam Piper's Cosmic Computer. You do not have to read Cosmic Computer to understand and enjoy this sequel. For those of you who are new to Piper's brand of mid-20th century science fiction, you can read a copy of Cosmic Computer at the end of my story. 

The Tides of Chaos: In this sequel, those who wish to use Merlin for the benefit of all are confronted by power players, who seem to want to embrace the chaos that would lead to a quick and violent collapse of human civilization and who may have their own Merlin-type supercomputer to help them do it. As both sides make moves and counter-moves, the outcome, which will either be a relatively short and relatively mild decline or a plunge into chaos that lasts for thousands of years, will depend on what happens on a secret planet called Tanith. 

Cosmic Computer: Human Civilization, composed of hundreds of colonized planets, is slowly dying. The mythical supercomputer, that was supposedly used to win the war against the breakaway System States Alliance, might (if it really does exist and if it can be found) be able to mitigate the worst of the decline, but what terrible secret does it hold, that caused the Federation to abandon it after the War?

The Empire is a political entity that encompasses hundreds of colonized worlds united by a common language (Esperanto) and under a single individual, the Emperor. But the Empire is getting old and creaky. Its government is riddled with corruption and is choking on red tape. The Space Force is bloated with the incompetent who have risen to high rank due to nepotism and patronage. The Emperor has been assassinated and the Empire is surrounded by alien races that are becoming more hostile and more powerful as time goes on. When an exploration fleet in the rift between sections of the spiral arm are attacked by an unknown race, the dead Emperor’s clone-son, now on the throne, recognizes that the Empire is standing at the edge of an abyss and must find a way to not only win this new war against the alien aggressors but also overcome the inertia of the arrogant Space Force officers who are more ready to overthrow their Emperor than fight the war. Fans of military SF action will find it in this book.

Watch out, Homo Sapiens. Version 2.0 has arrived and they’re planning a hostile takeover. This story contains 37,000 words. When Cmdr. Eric Stoner, Executive Officer of the Terran Republic Navy battlecruiser Tobruk, is suddenly reassigned to the Reserve Fleet, in order to make room for the promotion of a genetically enhanced officer, he suspects that something is wrong. He quickly discovers that Homo Sapiens is in danger of being replaced by Homo Superior, a stronger, more intelligent and more aggressive version of Humanity. The Enhanced Humans are still outnumbered by Sapiens but they’re very intelligent and they’re just about ready to take over complete control of the Navy. Can Stoner and his fellow Sapien officers save their species or will Homo Sapiens go the way of the Neanderthals? Who will win the Evolution Wars? This story will appeal to fans of military SF.

 My name? Rook. Bishop Rook, star pilot. And yeah, I own and pilot a one-man starfreighter between stations out beyond the Core systems. You think it’s a glamorous life and an easy way to get rich quick, right? Wrong. It’s an easy way to go broke fast or get dead even faster. Sure, a few star pilots strike it rich. And then, if they’re smart, they sell their ships and do something safe. The rest of us are scrambling to keep our ships operable while we deal with the corrupt, psychotic, or just downright evil people who inhabit the amber and red zones where the only law is what you make yourself. And then there’s what the Core Space Navy recruitment posters euphemistically refer to as the ‘wonderous unknown’ out there in deep space. Wondrous, my ass! Terrifying is a better adjective if the rumors we star pilots share with each other are true. I keep telling myself that I should have stayed in the Core Space Navy. Running down pirates and smugglers might be boring, but the odds of surviving another year are pretty good. Yet here I am, piloting the ugliest starfreighter you’ve ever seen. So far, I’ve managed to keep my head attached to my body and above water. And if you buy me a drink, I’ll tell you an interesting story or two.