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So a reader dropped into my DMs after Chapter 2 with actual JPL ephemeris data. Not "hey, isn't Mars far away," but the Earth-Mars separation for the specific week in April 2011 my scene is set in, cross-referenced against the speed of light, with the round-trip delay calculated out to the minute. I want that on the record, because it is exactly the kind of reader I hope this story finds.
We went back and forth on it, and the conversation ended up covering a lot of ground: FTL comms, inertial dampening, why a technology this old doesn't bother explaining itself. Good questions, the kind that make a story better for having been asked.
The upshot is that Chapter 1 now has a short new section, right after the note on timeline, called "A note on the science." It lays out plainly, that this isn't hard sci-fi like The Expanse, and that a few things in this universe — instant communication, an eighteen-hour trip to Mars, a body that survives that trip — aren't separate hand-waves. They're one very old, very advanced technology, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise or explain it. If the physics and the story disagree, the story wins, and now you'll know that going in.
If you've been wondering about the same things and were too polite to ask, this one's for you too. And if you've got a launch window and a delta-v budget you'd like me to double check, my inbox remains open.
— CCTW
Chapters one and two are posted now on Stories Online under Cold Creek Tribute Writer. New chapters arrive every Sunday, the same weekly rhythm Defenceman: Parallel Ice kept for the past year. Search the title or follow my profile for the direct link.
If you followed Defenceman: Parallel Ice, Michael Stewart's story picks up just weeks after where you left him. If you loved Refusenik's Island Mine or the Human series, Waylon Eckermann and Scott MacIntyre are waiting for you. If you are brand new, start with the Companion Guide — posted last week, with summaries of the source books and a full character and location codex.
One ask. Serial fiction lives on word of mouth. If the opening chapters work for you, leave a comment, score the story when SOL opens voting, and tell one person who loved the originals. That is the whole marketing department.
Thank you for being here. Now I get to tell you the story.
CCTW
Refusenik left two stories open, and he left them open at the worst possible moment, which is to say the best one.
Island Mine ends with a NASA rover on Mars waking up because someone in an unfamiliar spacesuit has cleaned the grit off its cameras and solar panels. That someone plants a flag whose single star is now ringed by eight smaller ones, leans a metal placard against a rock, and walks away toward a shuttle. Back on Earth, an admiral reads the placard, then reads it twice more, and decides the story of Freehold is not over. Then the book ends, and for a long while the story of Freehold was, in fact, over.
Human Man ends with Scott MacIntyre, who wants nothing larger than a good life and Janie's love, driving to her house in a suit that makes him nervous. He drops the ring in the dark. Red finds it. Scott climbs the porch steps and gets down on one knee. The door opens. He waits. That is the last line. We never hear her answer.
I have thought about that door more than I care to admit. Two men worth following, carried to the edge of the rest of their lives, and then silence.
The Vallis Defense: Cold Human picks them both back up, and I will tell you exactly this much. Waylon's story resumes in the stillness after the placard, on the Mars side of that rover's camera, and the people on Earth who read those etched words have no idea what is coming. Scott's story resumes on the near side of that door, and yes, he does, eventually, hear his answer. How both of those things become one story with Michael Stewart's is the book.
The Vallis Defense: Cold Human launches after Defenceman: Parallel Ice concludes, in July 2026.
CCTW
I want to tell you about a coincidence that isn’t one.
If you’re reading Defenceman: Parallel Ice right now, you just watched Michael Stewart’s season come down to St. Paul in April of 2011. Hold that month in your head for a second, because it matters more than it looks.
The Vallis Defense: Cold Human opens in April 2011. The same month. While Michael is doing what Michael does on the ice, a man on Mars is standing in the cold in front of a flag with a single star ringed by eight smaller ones — a mourning flag — reading eight names off a metal placard, one at a time, the way he does every morning before the work begins. Refusenik’s readers will know exactly where that placard came from and who those names belong to. If you don’t yet, you will.
Two men who have never heard of each other, living through the same spring on two different worlds. That’s not a trick of scheduling. It’s the spine of the whole novel. Cold Human is built as a braid — three lives on one shared calendar — and the calendar is the thing quietly pulling them together while none of them is looking.
The Vallis Defense: Cold Human launches after Defenceman: Parallel Ice concludes, in July 2026. Only two more chapters left.
CCTW
Cold Creek built Michael Stewart across three books, and then the story stopped mid-stride. I wrote about that silence in my first post here, and I am not going to relitigate the grief. This post is about what I did with it, and where Michael goes next.
Defenceman: Parallel Ice exists for one purpose: to give Michael's collegiate story a proper close. Not to replace what Cold Creek made, but to carry the character to a finish line the original story never reached, so the next saga could start honestly. It is my own work and it is not canon, and I have been clear about that from the first chapter.
Here is what I can tell you about the handoff. The Vallis Defense: Cold Human picks Michael up within weeks of where Parallel Ice's final season ends. Same city, clan, and circle of people you have spent the past year getting to know. Everything he earned in this book, he carries into the next one. If you have read this far, you do not need the Companion Guide for his chapters. You are the Companion Guide.
And one promise about where his story goes. Early in the new book, AEGIS surfaces something in its own data that even Michael cannot explain. His part of this novel starts with that question, and I am not going to answer it here.
The Vallis Defense: Cold Human launches after Defenceman: Parallel Ice concludes, in July 2026.
CCTW
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