Read So It Begins Online

Authors: Mike McPhail (Ed)

So It Begins

 

 

SO IT BEGINS

 

Praise for
Breach the Hull
,Book One in the Defending the Future series Winner of the 2007 Dream Realm Award

 

"There is more than enough great SF in Breach the Hull for any true fan of the genre, military or not."

—Will McDermott, author of
Lasgun Wedding

 

"I enjoyed this book and heartily recommend it."

—Sam Tomaino,
Space and Time Magazine

 

"Pick up Breach the Hull. You're sure to find stories that you like."

 —David Sherman, author of the
DemonTech
series and co-author of the
Starfist
series

 

"[Breach the Hull] kicks down the doors in a way that allows anyone access to the genre[ . . . ]it read like a bunch of soldiers sitting around swapping stories of the wars. Fun, fast-paced, and packed with action. I give it a thumbs up."

—Jonathan Maberry, Bram Stoker Award-winning author

 

"[Breach the Hull] is worth the purchase. I normally don’t partake of anthologies as a general rule . . . but Mike McPhail has done a great job in making me rethink this position."

—Peter Hodges, Reviewer

 

"Breach the Hull is full of excellent stories, no two of which are the same. While similar themes crop up throughout, each writer has managed to take the subgenre and make it his own."

—John Ottinger III, Grasping for the Wind Reviews

 

"A collection of military science fiction from a well mixed group of authors, both new and established. Found it a good source for  some new authors to investigate."

—Tony Finan, Philly Geeks

 

 

 

 

 

The Defending the Future series

Breach the Hull

So It Begins

By Other Means
No Man’s Land

 

(Pending)

Best Laid Plans

Dogs of War

 

 

 

 

 

 

SO IT BEGINS

Book Two in the Defending the Future series

 

 

 

 

Edited by Mike McPhail

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dark Quest, LLC

Howell, NJ

 

 

Special thanks to “DAN
·
E” . . . Fix it!

 

PUBLISHED BY

Dark Quest, LLC

Neal Levin, Publisher

23 Alec Drive,

Howell, New Jersey 07731

www.darkquestbooks.com

 

Copyright ©2009, Dark Quest Books, LLC.

Individual stories ©2009 by their respective authors.

 

All interior art ©2009 by Mike McPhail.

Radiation Angel icon ©2008 by James Daniel Ross.

 

ISBN (trade paper): 978-0-9796901-5-0

 

All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

 

All persons, places, and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.

 

www.defendingthefuture.com

 

Design: Mike and Danielle McPhail

Cover Art: Mike McPhail, McP Concepts

Copy Editing: Mike and Danielle McPhail

www.mcp-concepts.com

www.sidhenadaire.com

www.milscifi.com

Contents

 

 RECIDIVISM

Charles E. Gannon

 

THE LAST REPORT ON UNIT TWENTY-TWO

John C. Wright

 

THE NATURE OF MERCY

James Daniel Ross

 

CLEAN SWEEPS

Jonathan Maberry

 

WAR MOVIES

James Chambers

 

THE BATTLE FOR KNOB LICK

 
Patrick Thomas

 

JUNKED

Andy Remic

 

FIRST LINE

 
Danielle Ackley-McPhail

 

TO SPEC

Charles E. Gannon

 

GUNNERY SERGEANT

Jeffrey Lyman

 

GRENDEL

Jack Campbell

 

CLING PEACHES

 
Mike McPhail

 

THE GLASS BOX

Bud Sparhawk

 

LOOKING FOR A GOOD TIME

Tony Ruggiero

 

EVERYTHING’S BETTER WITH MONKEYS

C.J. Henderson

AUTHOR BIOS

 

DEMONTECH TRIBUTE: SURRENDER OR DIE

David Sherman

 

eBOOK BONUS CONTENT

 

CONFRONTATION

Charles G. Weekes

 

This book is dedicated to the memory of:

The DemonTech Series,

2002 – 2008

Authored by David Sherman

 

Onslaught (January 2002)

Rally Point (Febuary 2003)

Gulf Run (December 2003)

 

See the back of the book for Surrender or Die, a special bonus story, and the previously unpublished beginning of the fourth DemonTech novel.

Recidivism

Charles E. Gannon

 

Dan stared out across the rolling green fields, over two vaporous snippets of cloud and up to the faint, ghostly disk that hovered high in the vault of the deep blue sky. He held his breath and then sighed it out very slowly. A daytime moon always made Dan think of traveling in space. At night, the white disk was solid, not spectral, its bold materiality inviting an exacting consideration of the starkly detailed craters. Dan craved a telescope at those times, felt an amateur astronomer’s call draw him from the moon to the stars. He imagined swiveling the telescope and adjusting the lenses until those distant suns no longer twinkled, but shone fully and frankly at him.

  But a moon in the daytime sky was an object of haunting fancy; it seemed to beckon rather than reveal. And so he always daydreamed of travel up, up into the seamless skies that began as cerulean, deepened to sapphire, fell through to blackness—adorned only by the stars that out there, as in the telescope, would have shone rather than winked at him. But that was all a dream—at least for one such as himself. Had he been allowed to study for the doctorate—well, his life might have gone differently. Indeed, everything might have gone differently.

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