The Patriots novels are a science fiction/humor series by David A. Gatwood.
Set a few hundred years into the future, after humans have ventured out
into the stars, this series explores the lives of politicians, military,
and civilians embroiled in the aftermath of an interstellar war of
independence—a war that left both sides badly broken and distrustful
of one another. They colonized star systems, discovered new technology,
realized that no one else lived within walking distance, and went back to
what they did best: fighting amongst themselves.
This series is entitled Patriots somewhat ironically. Both sides believe
that they are being patriotic, and that the soldiers on the other side are
terrorists. In truth, both sides are being manipulated by outside forces.
The series briefly touches on some of the politics, but focuses
mainly on the human element—the stories of the soldiers, the politicians,
and the civilians as they try to live their lives against the backdrop of
continued skirmishes and terrorist acts devolving into resumed hostilities.
The first three novels in this series are written in parallel. The
first book, Traitors in Waiting, tells the story of soldiers in the Terran
Alliance who are sent on a mission to recover classified technology buried in
a long-abandoned underground research bunker on a dead planet. The second
book, Enemies from Within, tells the story of soldiers in the Colonial Alliance
who are tasked with creating the ultimate doomsday weapon—a bomb
capable of destroying the Terran sun. Our sun. The third book, Beyond the
Veil, retells part of Traitors in Waiting (along with a period of time before
and after) from the perspective of a team of Earth civilians who were in the
wrong place at the wrong time and learned things that no one was meant
to know.
David Gatwood is a musician, writer, and hard-core
geek. In addition to writing the Patriots series of
books, he also did all of the content production and
design, modified various fonts used in these books,
and drew the cover art.
Besides writing books and software, David is
also an avid photographer, videographer, and musical
composer. His choral music has been
performed by the Diocesan Choir of Monterey, California
and the contemporary choir at Holy Cross Catholic Church
in Santa Cruz, CA. He spends much of his spare time
performing with musical ensembles in the greater
Santa Cruz area.
David hangs out on Slashdot, Facebook, MobileRead, and
various other online forums.
In a time of interstellar war between the Terran alliance
and the Colonial Earth Alliance, against a backdrop of
nonstop terrorist attacks against Earth-allied and CEA-
allied colonies, a team of young soldiers enters a secret
facility that unlocks itself only once every twenty-eight
years. But when they get inside, they find more than
they bargained for.
From schizophrenic computers to mechlizards, from
sociopathic terrorists to a device that can stop time
itself, this book spins a tale of adventure, intrigue, and
even horror, peppered with laughs.
“Sic Kend’hara i’michlus’t vi yu grecht. Sic
Kend’erus vi vey inacht. Frecas sol vey grecht.
Oc’flieme, sepra, fliecht ste’gats frecasse. Ic nule
vey carus. Ic Kend’hara fi erust.”
“With open arms for to welcome, we greet you.
With arms closed, we lay ourselves down. Only
darkness greets us. One light, distant, shining
upon darkness’ gate. And nothingness surrounds
us. And open arms forever close.”
–final transmission of the starship
Kend’hara, Terran year 2360 A.D.
This novel is the first in a trilogy of parallel plots that
tell the story of the end of the war between the Terran
alliance and the Colonial Earth Alliance. It tells the
story from the perspective of the victors. The second novel,
Enemies From Within, is a somewhat darker story that describes
the same time period from the perspective of the colonists, and tells
how things got so bad in the first place. The third novel peels away
another layer of the onion.
Every story has two sides. This one is no exception.
This book tells the other side. Beginning almost a
century before Traitors In Waiting, it chronicles the
lives of Mars colonists who joined the rebellion to
liberate Kinji, a colony of political prisoners.
Later, when the newly formed government of Kinji is
taken over by enemies from within, ECIA agent Carlie
Sinclair must infiltrate Mikarta Central Intelligence
(Kinji’s capital city police force) with the aid of a Mars
Central Intelligence agent who is not what he seems.
Finally, as the events of Traitors in Waiting unfold, an
elite team of CEA military scientists work in secret
to develop a weapon that could end the war once
and for all... or destroy humanity in the process.
The rumbling slowly decreased and eventually
subsided. Then suddenly, as quickly as they had
begun, the sirens went silent.
“This is it,” Marc said. “This is how it begins.”
And silence still.
“Oh, yeah,” he added. “It’s January 14th.
Happy thirty-eighth birthday, Kurt.”
“Yeah. Whatever.”
A few minutes passed in silence, and still they heard
no signs of attack. When they walked down the hall and
stepped out onto the balcony, they were greeted by a dark
sky with no signs of any activity whatsoever except for
the normal glow of the city lights in the distance.
“Where’s the kaboom?” Marc joked.
“There was supposed to be a Kinji-shattering kaboom.”
Time travel, portals, terrorist bombings, bioterror
plots, murder, espionage, and attempted suicides are
just the tip of the iceberg.
Sometimes a story has more than two sides—this one, for
example. When both sides in an intergalactic civil war
believe that the other side is committing terrorist acts,
only one thing is certain: both sides are wrong. The truth
lies beyond the veil.
When two civilians and a space station engineer discover
who destroyed the starship Hrabrost, they must find each
other and find help before the killers find them. Only by
working together with Admiral Jenkins and his daughter,
Amanda, can they stop the killers before they destroy the
Terran Alliance from the inside.
From mechlizards to anthropoveils, from political asylum
to the insane asylum, this book peels away another layer
of the onion-like story first told by the first two books in
the series, Traitors In Waiting and Enemies From Within.
Intricately woven around the previous stories, this book
tells a new tale that will leave you reinterpreting
everything you have read so far.
Klern waited in the short hall that led to
a maintenance tube along the outer perimeter
of the landing pad—a tube that, in turn, led to
the port weapons battery.
Klern brandished the machete, running
his finger gently along the length of the blade,
carefully checking its sharpness without
drawing blood. The trap was set and baited,
his breath bated, his bloodlust nearly sated.
It would only be a matter of time before
Pierre came around the corner. Klern could
hear his footsteps in the distance.
Yes. Yes, he thought. Come closer. Closer. It will
all be over soon.
When worlds collide, only two things are certain:
everything you thought you thought you knew is
wrong, and the people you thought you knew are no
longer who they appear to be.
When Tessa (the android) builds a robot Santa Claus and sends him back in time to meet (Saint) Nicholas of Myra, he learns about the spirit of Christmas—mostly by accident. The story is a touching Christmas story, laced with both liturgical and general humor, and peppered with bits of Latin. It's Arius-slapping fun.
“So I realized something. Time travel only causes paradoxes if you change things. If you send a robot back in time, it can observe without changing things, and as long as it doesn’t tell you not to send it back in time, you’ll still send it back, so there’s little chance of a paradox.”
“You’re assuming that paradoxes are even possible,” Joseph replied. “I’ve often suspected that the very fact that you’re sending someone back in time to change the past means that the person your sending back not only has failed, but also will fail. So you don’t need to worry about changing things, because it isn’t even possible to do so.”
“Quite possible,” Tessa said. “Either way, it isn’t as though a robot Saint Nick is going to change the past in any meaningful way. I mean, it isn’t as though he got back in time to slap Arius at the First Council of Nicaea.”
As a computer programmer by trade and education, I view so-called
digital rights management (DRM) as quite possibly the dumbest and most
unworkable idea ever invented by content creators. It can’t possibly work,
and every DRM scheme to date has been thoroughly cracked at this point.
Thus, at best, DRM keeps honest people honest, and at worst, it
imposes artificial limits on your fair use rights—moving content
around between devices you own, copying short snippets to quote in your
blog, and so on. I don’t think that such restrictions are right or
fair, so I won’t subject my readers to such restrictions.
For this reason, all electronic editions of my book are sold without
DRM*. In exchange for the freedom that this gives you, I ask only
one thing in return: don’t pirate my books. I make preview versions of
all of my books available in multiple formats on my website. If you want
to share an electronic copy of my books with someone, please share the preview
versions, and ask them to buy my book if they want to read the rest.
If you’re one of these people who pirates under the mistaken impression
that the creator doesn’t get much of the profit anyway, that just isn’t
true. My books are self-published, and I’ve spent a great deal of effort to
minimize the overhead of all my distribution channels.
That said, if you have received a pirated copy of one of my books and
you want to pay me for it in a way that maximizes the amount of
money that I receive, buy using the affiliate links from this page.
With those links, I get about the same amount of money for each book,
regardless of format or vendor, within ±50 cents or so.
* This sans-DRM policy does not apply to books
distributed through rental-based channels, such as libraries. Those
channels’ policies are outside my control, and I don’t really care
about the DRM that they use because their users know that they
don’t actually own the content.
