Follow Samael as he rises the new Imperium of Earth. Journey with him as he finds friends, meets new enemies and tries to cope with everything that the lines of Fate have in store for him. -Throw away your lances, guns and ships. As they come so shall I - Gul Rukkus the Seventh Meet the new order of humanity.
This story is a birthday request. Chris and Janet, Brits in their 50's, take a holiday in the Balkans during the off season to take advantage of great rates and see some areas they had not visited before. A wrong turn takes them into a war zone where the Russian army is preparing to invade Ukraine. The sanctions have not made British tourists popular with the Russians and they believe they are spies.
This story is not true, but sort of an amalgamation of a number of stories told to me by several members of the military. I don't know how factual the basic premise might be, but when you hear similar stories from a number of unrelated sources, you tend to believe there is more than a grain of truth to it.
This one's an alternative-future-history SF story and it's more than a little downbeat and way grim, with no sex -- so if you're after a stroke story, this isn't it. For any of you that've read S. M. Stirling's Draka series, that was partly an inspiration for this, as was Jerry Pournelle's "Future History" to some extent. George Robert Elford's "Devil's Guard" was also something of an inspiration, as were a few books on the Spanish Civil War.
A Swarm Cycle Story
Franco and Giulio Varizzi are brothers, friends, roommates, and fellow volunteers for the Confederacy. Will they do as well in choosing their concubines as they did in other things? For Franco, will he be luckier with his harem than with his ex-wife? And what favor does his boss have for the security guard? What will their uncle think of it all?