Tanya sees someone from her past in a chance encounter—that chance encounter triggering a flash of memory from her forgotten childhood. Amnesia they had told her. That chance encounter—and the face of the one she hated more than any other—released the floodgate of her suppressed memories. Tanya begins to remember everything... and to realize her entire life had been a living lie. She wasn't who she had been told she was... and someone was going to pay for it! Sci-Fi Action. Thanks and enjoy. New re-edit in place. Tanya was a main protagonist in Chronicles of a Space Mercenary but the book 'Tanya' is a stand alone novel. This is Tanya's story.

The story of human evolution is a long and convoluted one, yet men are aware of little of it that is actual fact. Human myth is steeped in ignorance, incomplete science, supposition and religious credo to help themselves account for their absence of hard fact. To help them deal with the unknown. And the known. Arrogantly man's scientists, historians, philosophers and others of learning proclaim a body of knowledge as fact. Mostly they are correct. Life evolved on Earth in the same manner as it must evolve everywhere else. It started with simple protein combinations and, over billions of years, from single celled organisms into complex, through reptiles, into mammals and finally, man's tool using predecessors. That is where man's story gets a little fuzzy. How men made the leap from tool using apes to modern men, in an evolutionary blink of the eye. The truth is not as men see it. They cannot see it. They would be destroyed. Men would not be able to face it if it were cried from every street corner. If they faced the truth of it, the tenuous fabric of their nebulous make believe reality would unravel around them, and they would be left with nothing but the stark, unbearable horror of their own futility. Of their doomed place in destiny. The oblivion Fate had decreed them. I have watched humanities transformation with my own eyes. Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I know that even I would have had a hard time facing the truth of it, so foreign is it to nature and common sense. So abrupt and radical has been the transformation. Once very much different than they are now, men have been made to evolve, metamorphosis, into beings much like myself. An induced evolution. We were once very much different, Vampires and Humans, one from the other. I was the evolutionary advancement, they the half formed beasts only barely cognizant of the differences between them and the other animals within the forests, jungles and savannahs of their primitive world. That was then and this is now. Men have changed radically. They have been induced to evolve. They have had no more say in what has happened to them than I have had in the life I have lived, except that their change occurred gradually, over long eons, the transformation more controlled, more scientific, while my own was . . . a mistake. Yet men are still ruled by those basest of animal needs. Induced into an accelerated evolution on the one hand, but too quickly for their instinctual requirements to compensate, form an equitable balance between new and old, on the other. Like myself and all Vampires, Humans are mix of contradictions. All men are not ignorant, however. There are many enlightened souls who see through the fog of misinformation the unequivocal truth that lays in front of all mankind, but that most yet refuse to acknowledge. The truth too ugly, too vicious. There can be nothing that can be done. The Other's technological advantages too great. To acknowledge man's own frailties and weakness. To maintain mass sanity, men unconsciously accept the inescapable certainty of the inevitableness of their circumstances. What other choice have they had? The sun would soon be up and I would have to retreat indoors. The old myths of Vampires and sunlight are true. We cannot tolerate it. Not Sol, anyway. Not Earth's life giving star. We Vampires suppose there is a star somewhere more tolerable to our divided natures. To our half which is not Human. The Others must have evolved under a star somewhere, but a star in some way intrinsically different from Sol. Or possibly it is that they have traveled so long within the black depths of space, or have not lived on the surface of any world, under any star at all, for so long, that they may not be longer able to tolerate any such emissions as Sol gives. It is my belief that the Others travel across the vast gulfs of interstellar space at will, I presume at many multiples of the speed of light, but yet is not the Universe so vast that even at these velocities it may take generations to make crossings. Why else would they spend such time and resources trying to steal what is man's? In either case, or if neither is true, all that matters is that the Others have passed on to Vampires their inability to tolerate the sun. This the entire point of their interaction with humanity. Their genetic manipulations. Slowly infuse humanity with their DNA, to acquire man's tolerance to Sol, and when entirely infused, slowly remove mankind from the picture, one snip of deoxribonucleic acid at a time, until the final result is a population one hundred percent the Others, yet tolerant of Sol. That's what Vampires are. We are Breeds. Half Human. Half the Others. Except without the slow indoctrination which has occurred with humanity. Mayhap the very first experiment, I am unable to tolerate the sun any more than the Others. Given too much....

Chronicles of a Space Mercenary - VengeanceThis book isn't the epic the first Chronicles was but at least I hope I have created the book that you the reader simply cannot put down. Follow the further adventures of the most dysfunctional crew of misfits the Universe has ever seen.Straightforward non-stop arguing, bickering and blaster fire as they wend their way through one misadventure after another in their quest to rule the Universe. Thanks so much to you the reader. Ronald Wintrick

Lan Carter hated these windowless Troop Transports more than he hated anything else in life. It was true that he hated war in general, with every gram of his being, but yet he hated these windowless Troop Transports even more. A soldier couldn't see what he was being dropped into, was the whole issue! The Brass didn't want the Infantry Soldier to see what he, or she, was being dropped into, of course, because it only gave them time to become terrified. Terror was nonproductive.That was fine for the fresh green newjacks, but he would have liked to be able to see in advance what he was being dumped into, so as to be able to formulate some kind of plan of action.This was old business for Lan Carter, nor had he been unduly worried the first time the Space Corps had dropped him into hostile alien territory. This was like a slow Sunday afternoon back home on Calafga, a newly Reunified Prison Planet Colony World, and the place of his birth and youth.Any Prison Colony World could petition for Reunification when they proved to the Federation that they had gained and could maintain a free, Democratic and, nearly, crime free society. It had taken Calafga seven hundred and fifty six years, Standards, to gain that stability, and now, Reunified, she was becoming nearly as modern and civilized as some of her oldest brethren.It had been a rocky road for Calafga, with near constant warfare and barbarian warlords the main form of government for most of that time. Communications with the Federation, when communications technology was finally reinvented, brought hope and purpose and the mobilization of the people.The Army of Liberation, as they had called themselves in their early years, and of whom Lan Carter had become a member, had slowly marched across the planet, annihilating all who stood before them in their grand purpose of Democracy and Reunification. It was the bloodiest and worst time in all of Calafga's bloody years of existence, but it had ended in Reunification and the restoration of civilization for the beleaguered world.So warfare was all Lan Carter knew. Calafga had no need of him once the last of the resistance was crushed. It often happened that way, that those who had been so necessary so recently were now a liability and a danger to the new, evolved society. Service in the Space Corps, who certainly did need men and women with Lan's particular qualities, was his ticket off Calafga.A man of Carter's characteristics would have only found troubles in the new society. Under Calafga's new laws, trouble meant a one way ride to a new Prison Planet, one that had not yet been Reunified! That was the last thing Carter wanted, after having fought so hard already on Calafga.So Carter signed for a 10 year hitch in the Space Corps Infantry Division. He was just beginning his fifth year.The war here on Barcene would be no more than a minor skirmish. The indigenous race which called this place home were a spacefaring race, or had been before the Navy Division of the Space Corps had annihilated their small armada, but their technology was thousands of years behind man's. The fight would be very one-sided!One-sided did not mean there would be few or no casualties. It did not mean that at all. The planet would be pacified one alien at a time, until there were no aliens, and then it would become another home for mankind. The Corps did not destroy perfectly viable planets. There would be a lot of casualties! There always were. Always.The concussion of antiaircraft batteries, though they were firing at vessels which weren't specifically aircraft, rocked the Troop Transport as they flew in. We were traveling at many times the speed of sound. The AGP, Anti-Gravity Propulsion, of these small ships were capable of propelling them at extraordinary speeds, near Light Speed given the room to accelerate, but they were not equipped with Worm Whole Jump capacity, so you did not want to get stranded in one a long way from home, if for instance all the Jump capable ships were destroyed! The Speed of Light is abysmally slow when real Galactic distances are considered, much less Universal distances, as from one Galaxy to another, but for the purposes at hand, in use against a race who had just barely gotten off the surface of their own planet, it was more than sufficient.The Troop Transport was full of fresh green newjacks, Lan's term for new recruits on their way into their first battles. They would maintain their freshness for many battles, however many of them survived, that is. This particular Troop Transport held forty, but there were various other sized ships. Smaller was better as far as Lan Carter was concerned; it created more confusion for the enemy and kept the losses of each individual Transport to a manageable minimum.Despite the speed at which the Transports were flown, or how well they were flown, there were usually the occasional loss, depending...

New revision in place as of 12/23/2011.This full length novel is written in what I consider to be the Old School Style. A book meant purely to entertain. This was a work of love and will probably always be my favorite, no matter how many more I write. But possibly not. I may love the Prequels and Sequels even more. You may look for more Marc Deveroux around the beginning of the year.Thank you and enjoy.The thing I hated most about working for the government, any government, they all seemed to think alike, was that then they invariably thought that they owned you. Patriotism, duty and all those other words that meant they thought they were entitled to what was yours. All meaningless trite to a world-less vagabond like myself. My ship was my home and I needed no other.“They’re waiting for a response, Captain!” Tanya Serensen said, my strong First and the meanest bitch I have ever met.The war was over. We were, had been, part of the Federation forces which had unsuccessfully attempted to unify the four hundred and seventy-two known human worlds. We had been smashed ruthlessly, to put mildly what had been a lost cause from the beginning. I had been paid handsomely with trade goods and supplies; semi-precious metals and fuel rods, to be exact, plus I’d brought my ship, Last Chance, and my crew through without a scratch. So I had not complained when everyone started signing peace treaties.The problem began when I informed my erstwhile employers that with hostilities ended, so too were my obligations. I had fulfilled to the letter our contract. I owed them nothing more. They had not agreed.There were now three of my former allies, positioned in attack formation outside Last Chance’s hull. Not only did they not feel as if I had not completely fulfilled my end of the bargain, but I was getting the distinct impression they would not be satisfied until they had added Last Chance herself to their now depleted arsenal. I guess they felt, that with all the losses they had suffered, that Last Chance would be a welcome addition to their much depleted Navy. I guess they hadn’t quite learned their lesson about attempting to force their wills on unwilling subjects. Some people are simply incapable of understanding. Especially people in positions of power, like governments, for example.“You bastards!” I snarled. I should have known these ungrateful hypocrites would try to back stab me, especially now that every planet was a law unto itself, only answerable to itself, and they angry at the defeat they had suffered. They were quick at jumping on the bandwagon of self governance, now that no unifying government held sway. That was for sure.“Is that your response?” Tanya asked, no inflection in her voice.“No!” I snapped. The crazy bitch would repeat it too, if I didn’t specifically say no! A first impression of Tanya Serensen would never give you the insightful depth that existed behind her innocent appearing, stunningly beautiful face. Blond hair, blue eyes, body and face of a love goddess, barely fifty kilos soaking wet, but as vicious as a Tarnian Bola Raptor when angered, and if you’ve ever been to Tarnia you know there is no living creature meaner nor better able to defend itself. That’s my Tanya, in a nutshell. A very tough, unbreakable nutcase.“What are we going to do?” Demanded David Bren, my Science Engineer, when I didn’t immediately make a decision. Bren is a mathematical genius and quite able to compute our odds, no matter which decision I ultimately made, whether we fought or fled, against the three Class Four Katon Destroyers which were arrayed around us in a roughly triangular formation. Not that it took a mathematical genius to figure these odds. We were fucked, and that was the long and the short of it! To fight would be bad. To flee, worse. To surrender, the worst! They weren’t going to let us survive to go running around telling anyone who would listen how we had been robbed by the honest, law abiding Katons. They had