Welcome back to Author Ren Garcia with his Saga today!
Book 1 - Sands of the Solar Empire
GET THE BRANDY TO BAZZ . . .
That’s all Paymaster Stenstrom, the Lord of Belmont-South Tyrol, has to do and the old warbird Seeker is his. He has dreamed of captaining a Fleet ship his entire life.
Little does Paymaster Stenstrom realize that he is in the grip of an old Vendetta and the short trip to Bazz might very well be his last.
Faced with a dead ship and a lost crew, Paymaster Stenstrom finds help in the strangest places: the thief Marine and the milquetoast young man from the Admiral’s office, and, though he just became acquainted with these two strangers, he discovers they have been influencing each other’s lives for a very long time.
Faced with a dead ship and a lost crew, Paymaster Stenstrom finds help in the strangest places: the thief Marine and the milquetoast young man from the Admiral’s office, and, though he just became acquainted with these two strangers, he discovers they have been influencing each other’s lives for a very long time.
Something sinister hovers over Paymaster Stenstrom and his two new friends, something they are only now becoming aware of. The SANDS OF THE SOLAR EMPIRE stretch out before them in an endless gulf brimming with the unknown. Can a masked Paymaster, a thief, a coward and a once great warbird face what awaits them?
Book 2 - Against the Druries
That’s what they say on Bazz, that the “Deep Sea”, the open space between the two planets, is cursed and full of bad dreams—but nobody ever listens to people from Bazz, do they?
Paymaster Stenstrom, Private Taara and Lord A-Ram struggle to navigate the Seeker, an old warbird, through the shipping lanes to Bazz. If the Paymaster can’t get to Bazz with his cargo of brandy, he loses the ship and will probably end up in jail as well.
Jail? If only . . . The three adventurers are about to discover the old farfetched mariner stories are very real and that the Devil himself waits for the unwary in dark places where there is no help.
The Circle closes in on Stenstrom, Taara and A-Ram, and its judgment for them is far worse than any jail cell. The Seeker is about of become just another ship that set sail from safe shores and was never heard from again, unless . . .
The Belmont Saga concludes in this heartbreaking and action-packed tale of friendship and dedication, of vile evil and hopeless terror, and that sometimes help for those gone astray comes from the most unlikely of places.
Ren Garcia is a Science Fiction/Fantasy author and Texas native who grew up in western Ohio. He has been writing since before he could write, often scribbling alien lingo on any available wall or floor with assorted crayons. He attended The Ohio State University and majored in English Literature. Ren has been an avid lover of anything surreal since childhood, he also has a passion for caving, urban archeology and architecture. His highly imaginative "League of Elder" book series is published by Loconeal Publishing
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Excerpt
Chapter 1: The Deep Sea, from Against the Druries:
T hree souls huddled in the dark of the great, airless ship flying backwards through the deep sea to Bazz.
A fabled ship with a proud history, the Seeker had seen better days. She was designed decades prior to be fast and strong, to be agile, to inflict damage up the enemy, and to comfortably house several hundred souls deep into the empty cradle of space, the “Deep Sea” as the Fleet sailors called it. The MVF Seeker had done that and more. A veteran of such classic battles as Sorrander-quo, Mirendra I and II, Two-pitch Nebula, Hardee and Xandarr, she had survived them all, had sunk many enemy ships, and was feared among them.
But, as in all things, time passes, the new becomes old and the state-of-the-art becomes obsolete. The glory days of the past become footnotes on withered pages in a forgotten history book and the Seeker, old and worn, in need of costly repairs and refits, ought to be barge-towed to the boneyard, smelted, and remade into something fresh and useful. Many great ships had taken that sorry trip.
But, the right people favored the Seeker. The Sisterhood of Light, beloved of the Fleet Admiralty and of the League, was fond of the old Warbird. “How is the Seeker?” they often asked, and those casual asides, frequently posed, helped save her. The Admiralty could not simply smelt the Sisters’ favorite ship that would not do. So, they decided to raise the Seeker’s chair for debate one last time, and appoint a captain with vast sums of money to donate and demonstrate to the Sisters once and for all that the Seeker was simply too old and unsafe to continue flying. Why, they could melt her down, sell the refined metals to the Sisters, and they could build a new convent from it if they wished. That would be a bold irony.
So, they put the Seeker’s captain’s chair on the blocks and they appointed a captain, an odd man from Tyrol wearing a hated HRN coat and a mask of all things: Lord Stenstrom of Belmont-South Tyrol, a self-styled eccentric and a Paymaster to boot. He had been the only person to make a serious offer for the chair, and he had privilege, he had Programmability, and best of all, he had money. Lots of it.
Giving the chair to a Paymaster, a civilian clerk, was unheard of, and, not only that, he was a clown as well in an HRN coat and mask. Such an appointment would make the Admiralty a laughing stock—if such a man could take a Warbird’s chair, why not anybody? Soon every peg-legged Diddy from Calvert would be storming the Admirals’ Hall demanding a chair. What would become of the Fleet?
So, they kept the appointment quiet, out of the Posts and usual gossip and intended Paymaster Stenstrom not sit on the Seeker’schair for long. Admiral Derlith of the 3rd Fleet devised a wonderfully devious plan to ensure just that.
They went in and gutted the Seeker, had her huge SM coils ripped out, her thermoplant dismantled, her battleshot batteries and canisters hauled away, and her bridge partially disassembled. They took everything: carpeting, tables, chairs, beds, they even took food from the pantries, stationary from the drawers, and toilets from the heads, leaving bare, knurled metal and gaping holes where toilets once resided. As for the crew, they were allowed to conscript onto other vessels and were encouraged to do so.
As per tradition, a newly appointed captain was obliged to perform a mission at the pleasure of the Admiralty. Normally, this mandatory mission was something simple and easily accomplished; however, if Lord Belmont were to fail in this mission, then his chair would be lost and his money forfeited.
Lord Stenstrom’s mission for Admiral Derlith: Deliver brandy to a ball being thrown at the Fleet HQ annex Teflegar-Martin II on Bazz in twelve days hence. It was more of an errand than a mission. Bazz was barely a full day’s hard sail away, unworthy of a once great Warbird.
But, with the Seeker disembowled in a steadily decaying orbit, with no crew to man her, no engines to propel her, and with his orders specifying that the Seeker herself be the one to deliver the brandy to Bazz, Admiral Derlith and the rest of the Admiralty couldn’t conceive of any way Paymaster Stenstrom could possibly succeed.
In one devious stroke, Admiral Derlith would take Lord Stenstrom’s money, humiliate him in the process, and prove to the Sisters that the Seeker was done as a Main Fleet Warbird—why, it couldn’t even make an easy trip to Bazz; the fact that she was scuttled and without propulsion was irrelevant.
In sporting terms, the plan was the Cinco Pass. It couldn’t fail.
One small thing Admiral Derlith didn’t plan for or anticipate: great ships are said to have a soul and a will of their own. Like a champion race horse that refuses to lose though its competition might be stronger and faster, the Seeker had never failed a task it had been assigned, not in decades and after hundreds of engagements. Its current task: deliver brandy to Bazz, a demeaning, worthless task, but, regardless, that’s what was set before it, and if it had to make the trip to Bazz on its knees, gasping, crawling every inch of the way with stolen parts and a misfit crew, then so be it.
Great ships found a way.
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