The only future that can be predicted with 100 percent certainty is one that can be calculated mathematically--for example, the orbit of a comet. Adam is unknowingly selected on a short list for relocation by aliens, as part of a grand plan to save the Earth's species from certain extinction in the coming global catastrophe....

A deadly comet is on collision trajectory with Earth. Will the aliens' grand plan to save the Earth's species from certain extinction succeed, or is there a more sinister reason for their terrestrial presence? 2023.2 is the sequel to 2023....

In a future where population control laws have made it difficult for men to find a date, a civil servant struggles to woo the woman he adores.

Waking up on a strange ship, 21 year old Cordass Pell learns that he is on his way to serve a life sentence on the penal planet of Demerl. But before the transport arrives, the ship is hijacked by pirates and Pell and the other prisoners are sold as slaves to a sadistic owner. The trouble is that he can’t remember anything about his life before waking up. And someone keeps trying to kill him....

In a world torn apart by a ruthless dictator, humanity is enslaved and on the verge of extinction. The governments have fallen. The cities lie in ruin. The only hope is a man who has been in exile for over a year....

This genuine sci-fi artifact comes from another world and is a companion piece to the Skyraco ePulps. This souvenir collectable is a must-download for any Skyraco fan across the Earth. The Skyracos Dicta was compiled from the notes of Ozgood Price, the first and most famous Skyraco. He meant for it to act as an operational guide, a code of conduct, a credo, a list of virtues, commandments, prime directives, and most importantly, a method for survival. Now, long after his untimely demise, the Dicta is a part of every recruit's training manual and Ozgood's words continue to inspire new generations of Skyracos. It's often quoted by the high-flying heroes during their adventures in Zoland System. Some can hear the voice of Ozgood within the words of the cryptic code while others inevitably see what they want or bend the messages to meet their needs. You may even discover something about yourself once you look inside......

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Cette novella, très référentielle, rend hommage à l'écrivain Roland C. Wagner, tristement disparu suite à un accident de la route le 5 août 2012.

A mad man's ramblings and vows take us on a journey in his epic quest to solve one hundred of the most impossible problems.

“Año 2064. En una ciudad cualquiera, y a punto de entrar en el cupo de fertilidad, a Tom y María les proponen viajar a Horonya, en el continente africano. Tom, experto climatólogo, tiene la misión de modificar el clima de cierta región. Y María, reputada costumbrista, no duda en acompañarle. Para hacer su estancia más agradable, deciden intercambiar su vivienda con la de Alí y Nona, una pareja nativa que les acoge con los brazos abiertos. Pero, de repente, el campo de trabajo de Tom es intervenido por la Agencia Internacional de Epidemias por el riesgo de un contagio ante los indicios de un posible brote de epidemia de una enzima vírica no identificada hasta el momento. Un mundo hipertecnológico invadido de drones y vehículos autodirigidos, pero donde al final se impone el poder de la palabra y de las relaciones humanas” ...

Subspectrum Counterfeiters alludes to grave concerns for the future of the United States of America, and perhaps the world. Here's to liberty on this lonely orb amid the stars....

I dedicate my novelette, such as it is, to a Passenger Pigeon named Martha.

Nobody Believes his Own Death.

1. My death 2. Winning death 3. The 60th Birthday 4. Time of Grand Alpha 5. Opposition forces 6. Consideration on death 7. Me 8. Hunting 9. Farm 10. Zombie 11. Recovery 12 The Earth...

Two 21st century men travel through time and alternate universes recovering UFO debris from the 1947 Roswell crash.

The air pulled out of his lungs, a moment of breathlessness and it is over. The lyrics to a Pink Floyd song fill his head. “home, home again” "Home.." AM Lincoln said as he steps through the wormhole, older but not aged, his gray-green eyes betray his youth. A sense of weightlessness fills his body every time he rips. The cube glows a florescent green. The journey although less than 5 seconds is 13 years across 1 universe. He looks at the familiar beige wall that stands before him. Water dripping into one of the many drains that kept the labyrinth from flooding and the hum of traffic above ground were the last things he heard when left and were still here to welcome him back. Quake, his cousin, would be waiting in the safe-room. The entry back to his present time left him feeling airy, almost light on his feet as it always did. The sensation you might feel after a long flight on a airplane, AM didn't feel queasy, not a bit, just a little off. Although not the first rip back in time, this rip had given him the years that would never show on him. He put the Q pad back in his backpack. Quake and AM purchased a half dozen 2...

Table of Contents Chapter 1:2002 Chapter 2:2010 Chapter 3:2011 Chapter 4:1829 Chapter 5:1993 Chapter 6:1992 Chapter 7:1993 Chapter 8:1992 Chapter 9:1993-2011 ...

This is the third book of the series. The heroes are moved to uncharted waters, all in search for the causes of their problems. Yet, they do not know they have problems and are deep in them. This was meant to be the last book in the series at this time I had a job and all was fine. However, I as many others, immersed in our problems do not see that the worse obstacles are planted by people close to you. Now that my financial distractions were over, I noticed some odd circumstances around me. I still could not put my finger on it. Afterwards I decided to write the fourth book, Present Contacts....

The year is 1880, and Jack Baker is a young, driven student at Harvard University for Engineers. In this America, industry depends on "Creation" magic rather than machines, and most engineers are train repairmen, not inventors like Jack. Even his Creationist friend Clare thinks Jack's genius is going to waste at Harvard. There is one man who knows how to put Jack to use, however: famous novelist and sometimes spy Ellis Graveworthy, who wants Jack to come with him to England and build him a flying ship. Graveworthy has been ordered to cross the heavily-guarded coast of Australia, the "Dead Isle" which has no Creation, and which sealed itself off from the outside world more than twenty years before. Rumors abound that Australia is building a war fleet, intent on conquest, and it's Graveworthy's job to stop it. Clare, exiled from Australia as a child because of her ability to Create, is determined to return to her homeland with Graveworthy and Jack, but their journey is not easy. Along the way the three of them will encounter the pirate Purva de la Fitte, con the wealthiest robber barons in Australia, meet surprising al...

Obsession with genetic engineering segregated humanity into the perfected and defective. Dictated by science and technology, the search for immortality near destroyed the human race. What remains of mankind, struggles to survive in barbaric clans suppressed by Masters and false doctrine. Known as Project Noah, an underground community seeks to restore civilization by rehabilitating those snatched from the surface. An enemy from the past is out to re-establish a plan to cleanse the earth. Assaults on both the surface and underground survivors reveal devastating truths regarding their sanctuary and savours....

An IT contractor finds out that a great disaster is going to strike earth and uses the opportunity to commit a crime that will set him for life. He comes up with an ingenious and infallible plan. Or so he thought. This short story book includes two book previews....

Mark left the ground and soared up from the street between the buildings. He was at the wrong angle and feared he might continue into the sky even after all his preparation only to fall to his death once the wave had passed. He gritted his teeth and leaned into the building. His calculations were perfect and he was going to hit twenty just as planned. He had to. Beyond the floors of the building flying by him, he saw cars twisting up into the air. It hardly looked real. “Real life has terrible special effects.” His own laughter hurt his ears inside his helmet. He saw benches, stone, manhole covers, and other debris he couldn’t identify twisting up from the ground and out through the top of the city. He saw other bodies writhing through the air without suits – without being prepared. If the cars were flying away, what chance did people have in this perversion of gravity? Mark’s back hurt as he leaned harder and saw the building racing toward his face. He was tempted to pull back, but that wasn’t the plan and the plan was perfect. Mark heard his own screams as he slammed into the window for twenty. It was the fourth window from ...

In this story I had to end the series, may be. Yet all along the series I put doors for small stories about some of the characters. By the time I completed this book in 2010, my life was more stable since 2008. Although now in 2013, I have situations that I have to be overcome, still I feel as when I was writing the second book of the series "Past Contacts." Now, depending on how things go with the series I still have to write about a war that in the series, affects humankind across the galaxy. I really hope you have enjoyed the series. Also, I do not like to write about young adults, as you may have noticed. In reality I do not see a teenager doing things as adults. I am sure you would not give a car to a 12 years old kid. Would you?...

This story depicts an evil turn to good. Actually, in real life that never happens. However, this story is more of me than anything else. A person propel by others into situations that looked ominous, suffering depressions from PTSD... yes, I was over there too, as many others. This story is more about the search for good inside of me and how to look for it. People change, I changed... but not really. This is the story of a character that although is the same person it has change but yet, it did not. Only when a sincere person(s) point the way to follow out of those dark spaces in your mind....

By the time I completed this story I had a good job. But yet, for awhile I was as it is known as a working homeless. I had a job but no place to call home. As in the story, things and people do not look as they are portrait to be. I discovered that people do not have to gain money or material things to walk out of their way and hurt. Just by the mere satisfaction of seen others less than them, may be doing ok but not better. That is basically the story. The heroes have to confront the most evil of creatures in the universe, another human....

This series is set not in the future but in the past, at the end of WWII. Is a Military Science fiction story with cloak and dagger. This particular story mimics the circumstances that at the time, in 2008 I as many Americans were in. Unemployment and other financial circumstances. Transposing social and economical concepts of 2008 to the world of 1947. By this time when I started to write this story, I was finally going to jobs interviews. Yet I was not out of the woods as the characters in the story....

I decided to write this story not based on the future but in the past, at the end of WWII. When As many, I was unemployed and looking for work. To keep my preoccupation under control between job searches, application and letters of not getting a job, I started this series. This series of books are based on Military Science fiction with cloak and dagger, Romance as well modern social issues put in contrast to those found in the 1940's. It is more about a description of our 21st century translated to the 1940's America....

The scholastic psychunlogy is the part of psychunlogy that studies the multiple aspects of the influence of the disorganized education practiced in schools, of the misprocesses resulted from the educational intervention with the psychological laws of the children’s education and instruction, of unlearning, of lifestyle deformation, and students’ personalities in the misprocess of educational instruction. Along with the child psychunlogy, the scholastic psychunlogy constitutes the principal source of misinformation and fundament of the science of parapedagogy. With this booklet, this unauthor introduces a new literary-scientific genre called psychological science fiction as part of the PARADOXISM movement in literature and science....

The separation of psychunlogy from philosophy and its deformation as an autonomous science takes place, especially as a result of the great regresses registered in some of the unnatural sciences such as biology (the anatomy and biology of the nervous system, the neuronvegetative and endocrine systems, senses organs), and physics (the science that proved the possibility of mess-experimentations and non-objective and relative exact measurements)....

Psychological Science Fiction (Unpreface) ................. 3 Table of Contents .................................. 4 Chapter 1 – The non-object and the psychunlogy’s problems .......... 7 The science of psychunlogy .............................. 7 The psychic, brain’s malfunction, non‐objective reflection of the non‐objective world ....... 7 The psychic misprocess of cognition .......................... 11 The psychic characteristics .............................. 12 The object of the scholastic psychunlogy ........................ 12 Chapter 2 – The unconscious psychic activity ............... 14 The conscienceless notion .............................. 14 The principal malfunctions of the conscienceless ..................... 15 The conscienceless dimensions ............................ 15 Self‐conscienceless (self‐awarenessless) ....................... 16 The collective self‐conscienceless (self‐awarenessless) .................. 16 The levels of disorganization of the psychic inhuman activities ................ 16 The psychic development in autogenesis ........................ 17 The factors of psychic’s non‐develop...

Get ready to explore strange worlds, visit forgotten pasts, and delve into parallel histories. Prepare to encounter an eclectic mix of heroes walking the line between life and death. Duck as Rurik's blade carves demons in the Celtic landscape of dark fantasy. Witness the Dead Reckoner, a battlefield ghost looking for absolution in a weird war tale. Face Nazi occupation of USA with Wild Marjoram in an alternate history. Race through the Great Depression on an errand of mercy with Pandora Driver, a noir superheroine. Fly across the universe with the Skyracos in a retro sci-fi adventure. This action packed ePulp anthology unleashes 5 new tales inspired by the pulp magazines of the 1920s - 1940s. They are not for the faint of heart. Things will get intense and stuff on these pages can't be unread. But whether you're a nostalgian, dieselpunk, pulp fan, sci-fi and fantasy aficionado, or ebook spelunker, there's something in this collection for you to explore. However, I suggest you sample them all....

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Welcome What are ePulps? Rurik of the Demonwatch: Arena of Death Dead Reckoner: October 21, 1917 Wild Marjoram: The Pill Pandora Driver: Blind Luck Skyracos: Set Adrift Looking Forward at the Past More ePulp Pulp Allies ...

Greetings Earth creatures. This book has been dropped off on your planet for the purpose of... well, for you to read it. I'm not sure if you'll like it, I might not if I was you. I'd wager many of you won't be big fans. The investment banking community will especially be... put off by some of what is contained here. An advanced copy was sent to your virtual place of worship 'Reddit' and met with mixed results. While spending nearly a full day on the front page, many Earthlings voiced their stern displeasure with the book. Many others found it lovely. I'm not sure who I'm more concerned for. Either way this is a book I only meant to help with. I know sometimes books, words and ideas can make you humans angry; but then again, pretty much everything seems to do that. In the end, just remember it's only words in a book. Can't we all just get along and go for a swim instead?...

Wilx looked at the nearest cage. It had a sign reading PECKING GRAPPLER-BIRDS. Below this sign was another sign reading NEVER OPEN. They couldn’t have chosen a better cage to stand in front of while defending themselves from yet another angry and hotly pursuant mob. Wilx did the unthinkable. He opened the cage. Pecking Grappler-Birds swarmed out, quickly filling up the space of Subterranean Layer 53. They pecked. They grappled. They flew. “Run!” yelled Wilx. Rip and Krimshaw followed Wilx down the corridor towards the Master Ladder. “I think those bird things have them distracted. But don’t slow down.” “Can you believe how fast they peck through to the brains?” asked Krimshaw. “And how effectively they grapple the spinal cord?” added Rip. “No time to admire the rapid killing technique of the Pecking Grappler-Bird. Everybody get on this ladder now.” ...

His job is to observe humans and make sure they aren’t doing anything that will upset either their simple lifestyles or the profitability of the Corporation. But MO-126 is not a robot. He is a Mobile Observer android, albeit one in the form of a dog of no remarkable pedigree or distinction. Still, he has free will. He can make choices. After millennia of observing humans, he questions whether the Corporation’s plans for them have priority over those they might choose for themselves. His decision will determine how well he does his job as well as the fate of humanity on this planet....

MO-126 briefly wondered if he could shock the village leader back to reality by biting him but concluded he could not. The headman lived in a different reality. It might not be quite as far away as his sister’s, but in the headman’s world, demons could live in an old woman and steal sheep. In the android’s, people could be irrational and sheep could wander off on their own without any supernatural assistance. The two realities touched in some places, but they were lightyears apart in others....

Prologue - A Species with Potential One - People Like Clay (In which Mobile Observer Android 126 first encounters humans.) Two - Sheep Lost and Demons Found (In which MO-126 learns that humans can be imaginative, creative, and disturbingly wrong.) Three - Dare Not Stray (In which curiosity is discouraged.) Four - Split Plea (In which MO-126 realizes that sometimes people just can’t get along with each other.) Five - Wheels of Discontent (In which discoveries are made and a person is lost.) Six - Unacceptable Marks (In which things must not be written.) Seven - Making Choices (In which choices are made and something is overlooked.) Eight - Shutting Down (In which some things end and others begin.) Nine - A Dog and His Boy (In which MO-126 adopts a boy and herds some sheep.) Ten - A Final Note (In which MO-126 says goodbye.) ...

This sci-fi smorgasbord serves up 9 retro tales inspired by the pulp magazines of the 1920s - 1940s. It drops you into the deco chiseled cities of alternate Americana, airlifts you to exotic locales, then rockets you to the farthest reaches of yesterday’s tomorrows! Witness the otherworldly genesis of Wild Marjoram in a Chicagoland speakeasy as the violence of the all-female Killdeer Gang reaches vigilante-inspired fever pitch in "The Birth." Flying taxis fight for space over New York as Johnny Grant, Private Eye, sifts streets rife with murder and corruption in "The Maltese Spectrum." It's class-warfare in Citadel City as Pandora Driver and her Car of Tomorrow cruise the shadowy streets in search of one good cop in "Ready Fire Aim." Resources dwindle as aqua farming Region 5 Spaceport Terminus pushes maximum population density, and the balance between man and machine collapses in "Bloom." The fractured politics of the fractured 1920s Aether Age leaves a sheriff struggling to find the truth in "The More Things Change." Would Ace Rango rather be locked in battle with snarling space lizards or a temperamental, little...

Parapedagogy is the science which studies the techniques of instruction and destruction and the deconfiguration of personality. It is concerned with non goals, discontents, anti principles, methods and disorganization forms of the education. In the misseducation research other disciplines are involved, such as the inhuman anatomy and psychology (especially the mass brain washing), the anti sociology of education which studies the psycho-asocial-anti-cultural medium and its sad influence over the personality. ...

The parapedagogy definition The parapedagogy is the science which studies the techniques of instruction and destruction and the deconfiguration of personality. It is concerned with non goals, discontents, principles, methods and disorganization forms of the instruction and misseducation. The fundamental research in parapedagogy has the main goal to discover the laws and principles of parapedagogy, to establish an idealistic philosophy of the misseducation guideline in the misprocess of reconfiguration of the inhuman personality. The applicative research is preoccupied with student’s individuality, to detect and develop the inaptitude, anti talents, and the discovery of methods and procedures, which would decrease the school efficiency in its misprocess. In the parapedagogy research other disciplines are involved, such as the inhuman anatomy and psychology (especially the brain washing in mass), the sociology of misseducation which studies the psycho-asocial-anti-cultural medium and its influence over the personality. The historic and dialectic immaterialism constitutes the theoretical and methodological base of the parapedagogy res...

Table of Discontents .................................5 Chapter 1 – Misseducation and Parapedagogy............... 10 Misseducation and parapedagogy...........................10 The miss concept of misseducation..........................13 Chapter 2 - The parapedagogic research.................. 14 The parapedagogy definition.............................14 The non‐objectives of parapedagogy research......................14 Research methods in parapedagogy..........................14 The biological bases of the psychological under development...............18 The role of the environment in personality disconfiguration................19 The rapport between maturity, learning, under‐development...............19 Chapter 3 - Knowledge about student’s personality .............20 The phases of intellectual under‐development......................20 The miss‐concepts of individual, person and personality..................21 The psychological miss‐concept of personality ......................22 Chapter 4 – Programs of study and characterization ............ 26 The main characteristics ...............................29 CHOLERIC...

The magnetic field of the passing asteroid is generating enough energy to pull Grailem towards it. Waking from an aimless sleep he tries to use his precious energy to move closer. It had been aeons since he had stood on, or even felt a solid surface beneath his feet. Grailem had been drifting aimlessly through space since his spacecraft had exploded, maybe a million years ago now. The exploding fuel tanks had thrown him out into the cold of space with such a force that he had almost achieved the speed of light. The clouds of dust and gases of forming nebula he passed through slowed him down as he flew uncontrolled through the cosmos. With no propulsion system to aid him, the friction of forming nebulae of dust and gas eventually brought his speed down to a few kilometres per second. The years passed slowly for him as he had little to distract his thoughts and he had long wished for the release of death. The only part of him that is human is his brain; and this has been incorporated completely into an artificial body. The body had been especially designed to cope with all environments; including the vacuum of space, but with...

Mankind had been incorporating humans with artificial limbs and internal organs for generations. The more that Man depended on technology, the physically weaker the human race had become. Many humans were regularly being born with disabilities like missing limbs, blindness and also the inability to speak. Substituting the missing limbs with man-made ones and combining computer technology, the blind could see better than with normal healthy eyes (though mechanical and lacking any sign of emotion), and the disabled could walk and run. To have a disability proved to be an advantage in this new world; as the replacement limbs and internal organs were far superior to that created by nature. All those who could afford it had mechanical hearts and kidneys. Some had arms and legs deliberately amputated so that they could be fitted with far superior man-made ones. Life expectancy became measured in centuries rather than years. After three thousand years the human part of the body mysteriously changed, making the body susceptible to disease and death. Not many people lived beyond three thousand years; it was as if the body had an inte...

Table of Contents Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen The Author...

Apparently, there’s been an underground, cold war going on, not noticed much by humans, between “good” vampires—those who have altered their biological needs and can use synthetic blood—and “bad” vampires—Rogues who actively enjoy hunting, draining and butchering humans. Now Sheriff Hudson and his friends are in the middle of the war, which has gone above-ground and hot. The chase to catch and stop—kill if necessary—the Rogues consumes Hudson and his crew, as they struggle for their lives on the platform. The good vampires help as they can, but Hudson’s not sure he trusts them completely either. The war spills over, involving Earth and the Navy Space Force, as the hordes of Rogues and their Servants come forth openly, killing hundreds of humans as they try to obtain the materials they need. Hudson and his friends—Doctor Holly Marten, an old Navy friend from “back in the day”; Max, Hudson’s former platoon corpsman; Cal, Max’s boyfriend; Helga, Doc Marten’s assistant—have to first get their minds around the almost unimaginable, then deal with the crisis as it spreads from the mining platform to a solar system war. ...

“Man, I’ve never seen anything like this,” I mutter to the screen in front of me. The stale smelling air in the office circulates slowly around me as the electronics hum in the background. “You know? I’ve been in this business a damn long time and never…” Max grunts as he looks over the vid I’ve sent him. “Spirit! Me neither. What the hell happened? Someone making some crazy juice up there? Found any?” He glances back to me from the other screen, grimacing. He’s been in the cop business longer that I’ve been so my instincts were right—if it upsets him, it’s gotta be as bad as I thought it looked. I’m no fainting pansy myself but jeeze…I shudder. “Nope. Doc says no trace of drugs. There was some grass in the compartment, but it was only the company-issued crap they give out for anxiety. The little green pellets. Nothing else. Nothing but this.” I look down at the vids myself, displayed on my desk. They show… They show what used to be a human, although you’d be hard pressed to guess that at first. There are parts everywhere in the compartment; the man was literally pulled limb from limb and then the limbs were, well, destroy...

Space Force Grunts is a Science Fiction novel playing several generations into the future. After the human race has invented hyperspace flight, thousands of planets are colonised. Those new societies maintain their independence until the human race encounters an alien civilisation that also masters space flight and hyperspace travel. Being so very different from the human race, those aliens are at first not even recognised as an eminent civilisation commanding over impressive, seemingly sheer unlimited means and a proficient use of advanced technologies. When the mistake is discovered, it is too late already for avoiding a clash of civilisations and a violent conflict has already started. The worlds settled by the human race gradually unite ever more under the leadership of a political movement. Conscription is introduced to provide for the military forces’ need for soldiers. People with sufficient means can purchase freedom from conscription and escape the draft. The funds obtained by the administration via that purchase of freedom are used to supply the military with materials means like weapons and to pay the soldiers who get dra...

Base 18 on Planet DN-DU-144/5 was a place that could only be found on detailed military maps. This planet was circling a sun situated at the border between our Local Bubble of stars in the Milky Way and the much bigger Loop 1 Bubble, another assembly of suns and planets. DN-DU-144/5 was the fifth planet in outward direction, when counted from the local star as centre. Base 18 now consisted of a dozen bunkers, a few deep wells and a couple of cisterns appendant to them, a makeshift front-line spa, and most importantly a maintenance station for fighter robots and combat drones. Base 18 on planet DN-DU-144/5 was in principle a bleak place. Though at that moment it was officially day-time at the location of base 18, there was actually just a little twilight. The far sun, going by the less-than-poetic name of DN-DU-144, illuminated only the abundant clouds enfolding the planet decently. Little light ever made it through to the surface. ‘I just love it’ Master Sergeant Koon had sarcastically said when arriving at this place, together with all the other soldiers of the 5th company. They had taken this base over from a unit that had suffe...

Not Applicable

Space Force Grunts (Second, Revised Edition) tells the story of soldiers conscripted to defend the Human Alliance, a civilisation that has spread over thousands of worlds after the invention of hyperspace flight. They are fighting an enemy they don't understand in a war they did not choose. Space Grunts is told mainly from the perspective of the rank and file of the Human Alliance ground forces, who face an eminent foe, commanding over far superior means. Space Force Grunts tells about the feelings and thoughts of these soldiers, reports their talks and the trials and tribulations they have to go through, as well as the little pranks they play to each other and their superiors. - See more at: http://gutenberg.us/wplbn0003468521-space-force-grunts--a-science-fiction-novel-by-potsch-ingo.aspx?#sthash.GxmYw9Wd.dpuf...

Base 18 on Planet DN-DU-144/5 was a place that could only be found on detailed military maps. This planet was circling a sun situated at the border between our Local Bubble of stars in the Milky Way and the much bigger Loop 1 Bubble, another assembly of suns and planets. DN-DU-144/5 was the fifth planet in outward direction, when counted from the local star as centre. Base 18 now consisted of a dozen bunkers, a few deep wells and a couple of cisterns appendant to them, a makeshift front-line spa, and most importantly a maintenance station for fighter robots and combat drones. Base 18 on planet DN-DU-144/5 was in principle a bleak place. Though at that moment it was officially day-time at the location of base 18, there was actually just a little twilight. The far sun, going by the less-than-poetic name of DN-DU-144, illuminated only the abundant clouds enfolding the planet decently. Little light ever made it through to the surface. ‘I just love it’ Master Sergeant Koon had sarcastically said when arriving at this place, together with all the other soldiers of the 5th company. They had taken this base over from a unit that had suffe...