The Vallis Defense: Cold Human
The Vallis Defense: Cold Human is tribute fiction that braids three beloved universes into a single shared timeline: Refusenik's Island Mine and his Human series (Human Phoenix and Human Man), and Cold Creek's Defenceman series.
Three extraordinary men live in separate worlds. Waylon Eckermann, a Navy veteran bonded to a four-billion-year-old artificial intelligence, has lost nearly everything on Earth and is building something new in a Martian canyon under a mourning flag. Scott MacIntyre, an honorably discharged Marine, is putting a life together in Levall, Texas, with a dog who is more than a dog and questions he has not yet learned to ask. Michael Stewart, recovering in Ann Arbor from an injury that ended one future, is quietly assembling another one that may matter to the whole planet.
Their stories run side by side from the spring of 2011 through the summer of 2014. First their worlds touch. Then they braid. And as Free Vallis rises on Mars and the men who anchor these three universes find each other, the story turns toward the question none of their creators ever answered: what humanity does when it stops looking inward and starts looking up.
Written with respect and gratitude for the original authors. Reading the source novels first is rewarding but not required; a companion guide inside the story brings new readers up to speed.
Three extraordinary men live in separate worlds. Waylon Eckermann, a Navy veteran bonded to a four-billion-year-old artificial intelligence, has lost nearly everything on Earth and is building something new in a Martian canyon under a mourning flag. Scott MacIntyre, an honorably discharged Marine, is putting a life together in Levall, Texas, with a dog who is more than a dog and questions he has not yet learned to ask. Michael Stewart, recovering in Ann Arbor from an injury that ended one future, is quietly assembling another one that may matter to the whole planet.
Their stories run side by side from the spring of 2011 through the summer of 2014. First their worlds touch. Then they braid. And as Free Vallis rises on Mars and the men who anchor these three universes find each other, the story turns toward the question none of their creators ever answered: what humanity does when it stops looking inward and starts looking up.
Written with respect and gratitude for the original authors. Reading the source novels first is rewarding but not required; a companion guide inside the story brings new readers up to speed.