Books with title Watami: A Serpentine Series Novel

Denizens of Watami are more human than human. Though ‘normal’ citizens hysterically fear them as obscene chimeras, the pastoral Nascosi way of life embraces principles of passivity and altruism to selfless… some would say ‘suicidal’… extremes. When a deviant dictator determines to exploit these deep-seated genocidal animosities for political gain, he finds the peace-loving Nascosi ‘morphs’ to be easy targets and convenient scapegoats in promotion of his sinister designs. This, an ancient conflict writ large in tomes of human history and often inked in blood, if only because such injustice generally resolves in warfare.Since the Nascosi refuse to take up arms to defend themselves, however, they will ultimately disappear into the vaporous anonymity of extinction with the grace of smoke billowing into vast, uncaring heavens. Although the Nascosi must inevitably perish, their canny biological technology will evolve. As with all modern leaps of evolution, Anzian-kind will subsequently rise on a gush of gore, but they will descend upon a galaxy drastically altered – afterward, humankind will be unknown.

In the aftermath of a genocidal galactic invasion by hordes of ravenous aliens, the abandoned inhabitants of Pentax Nine, a remotely isolated colony cut off from all sources of resupply, devise a desperate plan to save themselves from certain annihilation. With their last reserves of fuel and determination, they salvage and resurrect a centuries-outmoded spacecraft named Titan, providing it with a skeleton crew consisting of three novice young men led by two sage combat veterans. Their best hope for success resides in the ship’s volunteer captain, Paladin, a genetically modified warrior descended from an elite race of martial experts. Cold, hard, and heavily experienced, she must lead them on a daring one-way voyage to the outer fringes of the galaxy in search of resources vital to the colony’s survival.When they achieve their destination having expended the last of their fuel, Titan’s crew discover and must confront the profound implications of an evil secret long concealed by the sinister Company, master of all human technology, employment and government within the galaxy. Before they can return home with the supplies vital to salvation of their hopeful families, they must somehow survive the shocking terrors they discover hidden among the planets and moons of mysterious Deadfall.

In the Common Era year 2113, Major Maximillia Brandenburg activated humankind’s first rendition of a differential gravity drive, momentarily exiting the multiverse and consequently cheating the physical barricade prohibiting faster-than-light travel. Thereby, she made possible exploration of the cosmos within the constraints of human timescales. Shortly thereafter, humanity began to fill their empty galaxy, one habitable planet at a time. Of course, nothing is so simple, really, and the one otherwise unmanageable constraint upon this form of travel drastically affected its utility. Differential gravity is found only on the fringes of a galaxy-sized mass. While the journey from one flexure-point to another could be accomplished rather quickly outside the galaxy, the journey from there to a habitable planetary destination within the galaxy often exceeded the length of a single human lifespan. To ease this toll of human aging, where possible, humankind established flexure-points near the orbit of artificially terraformed though otherwise dead orphan-planets – extra-galactic bodies tossed out of their originating solar systems by rogue solar phenomena. Ultimately, through the course of the next three hundred years, the bulk of human travel and interstellar commerce would transpire between these established flexure-points along a cosmic highway called “The Serpentine”.Insatiable as always, humankind's thirst for fuel only expanded with the advent of interstellar travel along this sprawling cosmic highway. To supply its gluttonous demands, the Company long ago dispatched ruthless agents to the galactic frontier with a single focus: procure fuel without regard for consequence or cost. When humanity encountered sentient, spacefaring aliens for the first time, the conflict quickly turned bloody, and now one rogue agent defends the frontier against ravenous alien hordes. Trillions of desperate citizens have come to depend upon him for survival. Unfortunately for them all, the stress and loneliness of his extremely isolated post eventually unraveled his mind. Consequently, he has become psychopathically insane. To restore order, a small troupe of mercenaries must hunt him down amid the galaxy's darkest heart and destroy him, but he has long harbored a deadly secret that threatens the safety of every living human being in the Milky Way.

In pursuit of a naïve, hopeful tradition that once anticipated a cosmos overflowing with advanced civilizations, centuries of continual space exploration ultimately confirmed humankind’s terrible loneliness. Beneath the generations-long shadow of this landmark determination, humanity eventually lost its appetite for further discovery. Commercial and political interests diminished, economies collapsed, and the Serpentine withered to a scarcely navigable web of forgotten frontier stations.Passed from one shattered archive to another during the epoch that followed, recollections of alien slaughters faded into folklore, fiction overwhelmed fact, and antiquities yielded to encroaching mythologies. For the first time in recorded history, technological capabilities receded. Ignorant generations followed.A thousand years later, a new breed of adventurer has returned to the Serpentine’s abandoned frontiers, rising curious and enlightened from a dark age of internecine warfare, social isolation and grudging interstellar commerce. Forsaking material greed, these altruistic investigators come seeking only truth. Ultimately, they will resolve many long-standing mysteries while making fabulous discoveries, but the fatal costs and disturbing consequences of their success will drive them all past the limits of extremity.

Denizens of Watami are more human than human. Though ‘normal’ citizens hysterically fear them as obscene chimeras, the pastoral Nascosi way of life embraces principles of passivity and altruism to selfless… some would say ‘suicidal’… extremes. When a deviant dictator determines to exploit these deep-seated genocidal animosities for political gain, he finds the peace-loving Nascosi ‘morphs’ to be easy targets and convenient scapegoats in promotion of his sinister designs. This, an ancient conflict writ large in tomes of human history and often inked in blood, if only because such injustice generally resolves in warfare.Since the Nascosi refuse to take up arms to defend themselves, however, they will ultimately disappear into the vaporous anonymity of extinction with the grace of smoke billowing into vast, uncaring heavens. Although the Nascosi must inevitably perish, their canny biological technology will evolve. As with all modern leaps of evolution, Anzian-kind will subsequently rise on a gush of gore, but they will descend upon a galaxy drastically altered – afterward, humankind will be unknown.

In pursuit of a naïve, hopeful tradition that once anticipated a cosmos overflowing with advanced civilizations, centuries of continual space exploration ultimately confirmed humankind’s terrible loneliness. Beneath the generations-long shadow of this landmark determination, humanity eventually lost its appetite for further discovery. Commercial and political interests diminished, economies collapsed, and the Serpentine withered to a scarcely navigable web of forgotten frontier stations.Passed from one shattered archive to another during the epoch that followed, recollections of alien slaughters faded into folklore, fiction overwhelmed fact, and antiquities yielded to encroaching mythologies. For the first time in recorded history, technological capabilities receded. Ignorant generations followed.A thousand years later, a new breed of adventurer has returned to the Serpentine’s abandoned frontiers, rising curious and enlightened from a dark age of internecine warfare, social isolation and grudging interstellar commerce. Forsaking material greed, these altruistic investigators come seeking only truth. Ultimately, they will resolve many long-standing mysteries while making fabulous discoveries, but the fatal costs and disturbing consequences of their success will drive them all past the limits of extremity.