Chapter 1: How We Got Here

Introduction

This book would not exist without the writers who pulled me into this genre. My journey began with Greg Younger’s Stupid Boy — now continuing under the banner Better Man — which led me to SmokinDriver’s Nick series, then to Cold Creek’s The Defenceman, and from there to Refusenik’s Island Mine and the Human series. I enjoyed all of it. And then, one by one, most of those stories ended, or stopped, leaving threads that never got tied off. Cold Creek left Michael Stewart’s story unfinished. Refusenik wrapped his novels by 2013 and went silent. They were, in their own way, begging for a continuation that never came.

So I did something silly. I write Defenceman: Parallel Ice as a non-canonical continuation of Cold Creek’s series, to give Michael Stewart the ending I feel the story deserves. That book closes his collegiate chapter. This one opens something bigger, a novel that blends Cold Creek’s and Refusenik’s worlds and asks what happens when those universes collide.

The Vallis Defense: Cold Human is an original work. Michael Stewart, inherited from Cold Creek’s universe, appears in my original story. The narrative intertwines his story with Waylon Eckermann, a sovereign building a Martian civilization, and Scott MacIntyre, a quiet, decent West Texan destined for a greater purpose than his chosen life. These three men do not know each other at the start of this book. By the end, they will.

The three storylines run on overlapping calendars, anchored by real-world dates and aligned with writer’s license so the reader can feel what each man is doing while the others are in motion.

This is a story about decent people whose lives are about to get much bigger than they planned for, with sport and science fiction as the backdrop, and loyalty and community as the engine. Not a spy thriller. Not an action franchise. Threats and conflict exist, but they do not define the world. Personal growth still occurs, but it involves individuals already possessing self-awareness, uncovering their potential. The story writes toward the light.