Inferno is Publishing... NOW!

 So, first up, hit a grand slam this morning, 8.05 miles, 655 calories on Dad's bike. I couldn't do pushups or planks afterward though, Red had to play 'low bridge' and try to stick her tail up my nose... and tickle me with it.

lol

  In other news, Loki is on the mend. He still is not 100 percent though. Red bounced back faster last week after the bug laid her low, but she's young. (she's back to scampering and being a lovable pest as I said above) He's a waddling 18 year old Maine Coon. He is feeling better though, I can feel/hear the rumble of his snore under the bed behind me even now. :)

Anyway, Inferno is publishing now. On Amazon Prime Day of all days.

  The golden age of the Federation is well and truly over as the Xenos, aliens from another galaxy continue their rampage. Civilization is in flames as the Federation desperately tries to find ways to fight back effectively.

  The Xenos believe they will be victorious as they had been before. But the flames of war can consume both sides easily in a raging Inferno…

 

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08L5NP5HD

B&N: ... https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/inferno-chris-hechtl/1137897002;jsessionid=31E22D10FE1FD3FC7ACAE8E3482F8820.prodny_store02-atgap05?ean=2940162849070

Hey! It is finally on B&N!

In other news here is the cover to Wildfire:

I threw a different planet surface texture on my planet model then layered on lava effects. The mushroom clouds are from a pack I bought on CGtrader. The destroyed moon you've seen before. :)

And I finished the rough draft to Embers. I sent it off to the first of the Betas and here is the cover:

The background is from an image pack from Renderosity. The ships are mine. :)

Inferno Snippet 5

 Sitrep: So, Rea sent me back the manuscript. I just sent it to Goodlifeguide, so the clock is officially ticking.

The cats have been sick so I'm running on 2 hours sleep. Fun.

On to the snippet!

Chapter 4

 

Ramses Star System

 

Captain Phil Subert looked at the notice and then sighed. He'd hoped that he'd get a transfer out but no such luck. For the time being, he was stuck in his posting for at least another quarter, more likely another half year. So be it.

The good news was that he was making some headway with parts produced in the star system. He was quite proud of that, of squeezing just a little bit out and assembling it in freighters to send to the nearest major naval base. It all fit under the heading of “every little bit helped.”

At least, that was how he sold it to the governor and the planetary industrial council. People were actually volunteering to work in the industrial centers assembling equipment. That was something. Work credits were being issued. Many hoped to get paid back later or a permanent job, but that was someone else's problem.

If he didn't get his desired transfer, he at least got a commendation for initiative, plus a bump in the budget to continue his efforts. That was good. He was promised a transfer within the next quarter, but there were no guarantees on what he'd end up with.

<(((@)))>

In Hyperspace

 

Captain Amadeus White watched Admiral Bites Big put the tactical staff of her bridge and his through their paces. So far so good, Bavaria was responding smoothly to all of the tactical problems the T'clock dreamed up. Many had already been tried by the various staffs. He noted that the latest was a tactical exercise based on the latest intelligence about the enemy. He also noted that the bug had added a few twists to it and even ramped up the difficulty level.

He nodded to himself. It was always better to train harder than reality. You learned more from getting beat then winning and getting complacent. He made a note of that trick as he tweaked the level slightly higher. It wasn't nasty per se, but it wasn't nice either.

Well, as the admiral liked to say, war wasn't about playing nice.

<(((@)))>

Nexus 3

 

Admiral John Henry Irons watched the ship unloading and shook his head mentally. Why anyone would want to request more army units … honestly? He didn't understand it. He couldn't complain that it was the 82^nd though; he knew some of the people in there. They were a tight group. He just had to wonder at the wisdom of sending his friends onto a world that might be lost.

Not that he expected that to happen.

Nexus 3 had a pretty solid layer of defenses. They hadn't invested in planetary shields but were making up for that now. The governor had also requested he dedicate more fixed defenses. He had done what he could, but he knew it wasn't enough. The governor's emails said so.

He snorted. He was an officer; he knew that no officer was ever fully content with what they had when facing an attack. They always wanted more—more people, more material, better material and ships, what have you. Armchair theorists said that you needed to have the best to win. That was bullshit. The best was the enemy of good enough. Translated it meant to get what you needed but don't kill yourself trying for perfection. Perfection was unattainable anyway.

That didn't mean you abandoned striving for it though. You just didn't tell your junior officers that you would settle. What was the other saying? Aim for the moon and see what the other side settles for?

He snorted again.

He couldn't blame the governor for wanting more. He wanted more. More … and less. Less people to have to worry about defending and potentially loosing.

Well, he was getting some of that soon enough. The yard had hit its stride in converting freighters into liners and building new liners. The ships were evacuating families, but he had prioritized some ships for military dependents as well.

He'd even gone so far as to slip Gretchen onto the list. She'd suffered enough.

He winced in remembered pain. She still tried to talk to him about … Hazel. He was no longer identifying the girl as his daughter, most likely out of some form of defensive reaction. But he had done the minimum to talk to his ex-wife, if only to make her feel better. She had finally accepted counseling. She'd said she was making progress.

The idea that she might run into another copy of her daughter out there in the galaxy … he shuddered and shook his head. He hoped and prayed that the law enforcement departments were finally on top of that hunt.

He didn't have much faith though. After all, they'd not noticed until someone in ONI had put their career on the line to get their attention. On the other hand, he knew it wasn't entirely their fault. Even with A.I. and the best facial recognition software, they had literally trillions of people out there running around. Seeing ghosts of people who shouldn't be there hadn't been on their radar.

They were at least taking it seriously. Seriously enough that Nexus 3 had been cleansed of any known changelings. If there were any surviving ones, they were doing their level best to keep a very low profile in the boonies somewhere. Somewhere away from prying electronic eyes.

Again, not his problem. He had enough to worry about. The next refugee shipment, plus news that the Xenos were marching in his direction.

<(((@)))>

Psi sector

 

Lieutenant Jeffrey Irons groaned as word came in. It was official; the ship was assigned escort duty again. They were to cover the refugee convoys passing through the sector. He shook his head in disgust. Just about everyone wanted to get off convoy duty. They all knew that everyone had a role to play, but it seemed stupid. Even the pirates were taking on a low profile during the war … at least as far as the news reports said. He hadn't seen a copy of the Navy Times recently, so he couldn't be sure.

It still sucked though, not that he expected a destroyer to make much difference on the war front.

<(((@)))>

Hammer & Crockett star system

 

Lieutenant Vince Perry Junior watched the line of ships and shook his head. They had a massive habitat to unload the people in but only one functional spaceport. Somehow that was laughably typical of the times.

"They've had another shuttle accident," a communication tech reported.

"Damn it, why can't they open another port up? Even a freight hub to unload the people and turn the ships around faster?" he said out loud.

"Good question," a familiar voice said, making him cringe slightly. He turned to see the skipper. "I don't know. Why don't we find out?"

"Ah, Skipper, I was just venting …"

"But you raised a good point. Call them and find out," the captain said.

Vince frowned but then turned and began to access the directory. He didn't know who to call but he would find out. There were tens of thousands of people out there in the ships. The ships needed to have a fast turnaround. Unload and then get out there to get more … or whatever.

<(((@)))>

Inferno Snippet 4

 Into chapter 3:

Chapter 3

 

Selma's Junction, Omicron Sector

 

The sniper teams had a lock on the tango but were waiting for confirmation from higher to engage. According to their betting they were sure they were going to get the go ahead.

They were up in the trusses, a hawk's perspective of the people moving around 100 meters below them. The distant people seemed like ants. It was hard not to think of them as such. People were going through security, but that was a bottleneck so they'd allowed the tango through but tagged him to follow him.

The tango had changed his haircut and hair color, added some piercings, and had a grunge look going for him. He had wraparound sunglasses and a facial tattoo. He had been picked up on several cameras though; you couldn't avoid them in a busy spaceport.

The gray hoody just made him stand out even more, well, that and the A.I. thing that was covering his tracks electronically.

Based on what they knew, each changeling was a clone of someone that had gone to what most people now called the Xeno galaxy, or the galaxy from hell at some point. The more prominent were the ones who had been on some of the lost ships.

Each changeling seemed to have an A.I. watch dog or partner. The spooks weren't certain if the A.I. was controlling the clone like a meat puppet or if there was some sort of parasitic or symbiotic relationship. Given that they tended to suicide rather messily when cornered, taking one down in a spaceport was what he'd thought of as a bad idea.

Not that anyone had asked his opinion.

"We have confirmation. Facial recognition is within ninety five percent. We're a go," Scrounger, the team's A.I. stated.

Lieutenant Lansky cleared her throat. "Take him out."

PO1 Max Sittero surveyed the group of civilians below. There were a couple of dozen people milling about the area, waiting for their shuttle's boarding call. He noted a couple of kids playing tag near the tango. "Are you sure ma'am? We've got a lot of eggs in the basket," the Neodog asked carefully. He knew the LT wouldn't come back on him about breakage unless he really screwed up, but he wanted his furry ass covered anyway.

There had been recent stories of a couple of unfortunate kills that had turned out to be innocent civilians. The media had ran a story about it but there hadn't been much traction over it... at least, not yet.

He knew that in time, some things can and will come back to haunt them. They therefore needed every I dotted, every T crossed.

"Better the bunnies traumatized than dead. Do it."

"Roger that."

He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them, refocused and breathed out. He refocused on the target and waited for him to have a little bit of room around him with no one on the other side. He didn't want collateral damage on his conscience. Between heartbeats he stroked the trigger ever so gently.

As expected the shot surprised him as much as it did the changeling who was on the move. He felt the slight recoil, something the designers of the weapon had deliberately left into the weapon. It didn't ride up though; his scope was dead on target. He saw the .50 caliber shot went through the tango's torso below his left arm, through his left spine, tearing him apart and liquefying whatever passed for his internal organs these days.

There was a startled pause as people around them turned, some noted the blood and bits splattered on them and then the screams began.

"Great shot, except for the splatter. You know all those people are going to need to be decontaminated for nanite exposure now right?"

"Oops?"

<(((@)))>

Lieutenant Anabella Lansky heard the 'oops' and shook her head. It was probably like that all across the galaxy as teams hunted the changelings. There were bound to be some breakage. She checked the feed again. No, no one else seriously hurt. The round had been a single shot that had passed through the tango and into the planter nearby. That had been fortunate.

Hell, there was plenty of breakage, she thought with a pang. She heard the stories, saw the reports. Some changelings, when cornered went nuclear if they could get the time and material to do so. Others went full on nanite rampage; it apparently depended on the being. If they could go to ground they did though.

Twenty changelings in their sector had gone nuclear in the past month. That sucked. Two of those changelings had managed to take out the teams chasing them. The hunters had all been advised to be damn careful about spooking their prey. So far she hadn't lost a single SEAL. She didn't intend to let down her guard and get sloppy. She knew Chief Gomez felt the same way.

This was their third hunt of the week. Normally they'd leave such things to the FBI or some other agency but the President had signed off on the Changelings being considered enemy combatants. That meant they were legally fair game to the military personnel hunting them.

Not that military personnel hadn't been used before the politicians had come in to neaten everything up and give their official blessings.

The good news was at the moment they only had to deal with the changelings. There were forces moving to the gates and bridge jump points to the other sectors, but so far none of the aliens had shown up in their sector.

At least, not yet at any rate.

That meant they were tasked with hunting for the changelings and helping with security until something changed. She'd already heard scuttlebutt that once the changeling hunts were wound down they would be trained to handle planetary or habitat evacuations, or even be tapped to be inserted behind enemy lines to do some recon. She wasn't looking forward to that last thought, it seemed rather stupid. Not that anyone had asked her opinion.

Just another day in the life of the SEALs.

<(((@)))>

Inferno Snippet 3

 In Chapter 2:

Chapter 2

 

Sol

 

Captain Junior Grade Fenton Resa settled into his new office chair and stared at the spreadsheet before him. The numbers didn't lie, or so they said.

There were teams doing searches for specific bioforms all across the Federation. The team in the capital coordinated those searches and the various branches involved. The most famous search was of course the search for the Captain Takao-Irons clones. Since he had been the one to figure out the changelings were infiltrating their society he'd been kept on the team. He'd done his best but he'd felt like a third wheel for a time. He had asked and received approval to take a step back and do a deeper think on the situation.

He was starting to regret his impulsiveness.

He had decided to start from the beginning. Security had the number of people and identities of who returned to the Milky Way from the moment the gate opened. It was funny what people kept track of. In this case it was a good thing.

He did have to wonder about the validity of the later data however. From all reports the ansible connection on both ends had been under the control of the enemy. He had no idea if they had reported accurate information or not.

Still, what he did have was a starting point. He had a team running down each individual, preferably by actually finding the person in question and running a check on them.

He had found out something, they could filter out anyone who had returned to the Milky Way before Endurance had been lost. That had given him a hard timeline to base things off of. It had also eliminated thousands of suspects.

Leaving tens of thousands more still on it.

Well, an A.I. had run a comparison chart on gender and species. Since the Xenos seemed to prefer humans over other bioforms they had prioritized that list.

It was still a lot of people to track down. They had scattered of course, going their separate ways. EEC had started running down their personnel. That was good. The FBI had tracked the known clones. There were still gaps in their timelines, but they had traced back to specific times when a ship had come through with a clone.

Unfortunately, his team didn't have access to all of the security footage and biometric data of people moving in and out of spaceports. But they did know what ships went where from Crellis. He flat out refused to cull anything between the loss of Endurance and the first known arrival of a changeling. That was complicating the search a little. Until someone confirmed when the first changelings had arrived he wasn't going to take anything for granted.

He made a puttering sound as he rocked his chair from side to side and then spun in it.

They had discovered something in the search, that in the latter time period some of the people from Home Base had come back to Crellis to either take positions there or to move on. Two had been identified as clone baseline forms. That gave them a general timeline on when Crellis had been invaded and the data compromised.

Of course, someone could have performed a hack and altered the data later too. But the A.I. insisted all known copies of the data were consistent. So, at least there was that.

There was another spreadsheet, everyone who had gone to the Canis galaxy. There were versions broken down by species and gender. He wrote a note to look into breaking down the spreadsheet by age and doing a comparison there.

Could the Xenos alter a baseline's gender? They seemed to only do the minimum cosmetic changes before turning a changeling loose. According to all reports they had made minor changes to hair color, length, fur, chitten color, that sort of thing. They had not altered facial recognition marks... yet.

There was of course something else to consider. Since they had taken Crellis they had to have instituted some sort of changeling production line there. It was the only thing that made sense.

He frowned and wrote a memo to look for when people started to notice something wrong in any correspondence they had access to. Theoretically they had it all, or, at least everything that passed through the ansible.

He paused and winced. Could there be an alien A.I. lurking in there? He hoped not, but wrote a memo for someone to check that. There had to be a reason why someone didn't notice and do something sooner. He hoped he wasn't kicking off any witch hunts, but damn it, they needed to know.

His frown deepened. The very worst thing he'd considered and wrote out was that the Xenos might be making more clones from people they captured in the Milky Way now, ones based on new bloodlines, not the known compromised people. That was a damn scary thought and one he'd been specifically warned to not brood about with anyone.

He had to wonder if they would continue the fifth column infiltration model or if they'd disband it. Or would they take the deep infiltration path? He had no idea; no one knew how the damn aliens thought. Their best models had too much variety to be used.

But, they had to start somewhere, with what they knew, or at least suspected, he thought. He went back to the spreadsheet and then stared at it before writing a script to filter for age for human females and then see what he could glean from that.