August 2021 - AMERICAN PRAETORIANS

Release Day for “The Alliance Rises!”

Chaos spreads across the galaxy… …The Galactic Unity seems unstoppable. How can an unprepared galaxy oppose them? With Valdek behind them, Centurion Scalas and the Caractacan Brotherhood face the Unity’s challenge head-on. But this war has been planned for a long time. And the Unity has more weapons than just their vast clone armies. As brushfires erupt across the galaxy, the Brotherhood and their allies must move quickly to band together before they fall one at a time. But can they stand against this juggernaut? This one turns the scale of things up; the action isn’t limited to just one world or star system this time. The war is spreading, and the action is accordingly widespread. I’ve grumped before that Star Wars lost the sense of scale as soon as they started going back to Tatooine again, and again, and again. I hope you’ll enjoy this massive space war story. The next chapter is coming soon. The Alliance Rises is out on Kindle today

The Alliance Rises Chapter 1

If not for many years of discipline, Centurion Erekan Scalas would have been stifling a yawn behind his visor. The Regonese flock leaders, war chiefs, and politicians had been talking at Brother Legate Dravus Maruks for three hours, while Scalas and his other three brother Centurions had stood by and listened. If not for the climate controls in the Caractacan Brothers’ combat armor, they would have been freezing in the cold, whispering winds that sifted across Kego City’s Peace Plaza. Maruks had his helmet off, and his squarish, sun-blasted face was red with cold and wind-burn. Maruks looked tired. As well he might. Regone was the fifth such system that the Avar Sector Legio of the Caractacan Brotherhood had needed to visit recently. It seemed that every brush fire in the galaxy was flaring up since Valdek had fallen to the so-called “Galactic Unity,” two thousand hours before. The Brother Legate was in the midst of telling the gathered Regonese leaders that the Caractacan Brotherhood was not a mercenary company that they could hire to crush the Exiles on the third planet. The fifty, three-meter-tall avian nashai gathered around him at the base of the towering stone spire that formed

Setting the Stage – China’s Little Blue Men

While Russian “volunteers,” such as those who inexplicably showed up in Crimea in 2014, without insignia and with full Russian Army gear and weapons, are known as “Little Green Men,” the Chinese have their own equivalent at sea. Sometimes called “Little Blue Men,” the People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia have come to provide a “Gray Zone” force multiplier for the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) in the contested areas of the Western Pacific. The backbone of Communist Chinese maritime force has long been the maritime militias, largely out of necessity. The PLAN was hardly a force to be reckoned with in the late ’40s and onward. Much of the PRC’s coastal defense was militia, in keeping with Mao’s emphasis on guerrilla warfare. However, in recent years, with some pointing to Xi Jinping’s visit to the Tanmen Militia in 2013 as an impetus, the PAFMM has become more of a force projection instrument, particularly based around Hainan, Guangdong, and Guangxi. Divided into “primary” and “reserve” units, the maritime militia isn’t as equipped as the PLAN, but it is expected to do a great deal, particularly in the South China Sea. Since the PRC claims a number of islands in the Spratly and