The Comm Guild Maelstrom's Edge

What did any of us really know about our taciturn, black clad client? Not more than we ever needed to know. If they could pay a portion of the fee up front, I was generally satisfied. Sometimes the jobs were complicated, or of questionable legality. The fewer the questions asked, often the better.

The Boscile job had seemed simple enough. It might not be wise to go against the flow of the evacuation effort, going back to a world that had already been cleared out, but it certainly wasn't forbidden. If Garran Boscile was into some sort of extralegal activity – something akin to looting, maybe – then nothing about his demeanour fitted that picture. In the few conversations I'd had with him, I'd formed the idea that our client was closer to a scholar than a criminal. There was an obsessive, driven look in his eyes – the mad glint of a man looking for the final part in a puzzle that had consumed a lifetime, or a large part of it.

If the man wanted answers, and could pay, who was I to say no?

I stood up. I'd had enough of following progress on a screen, not after we'd come all this way. I worked my way back through the ship, bumping into one or two other members of the crew, until I was standing at the top of the ramp, one hand on a hydraulic ram.

Boscile was already at the base of the ramp, ready to step off. One hand was empty. The other clutched the handle of a large metal case, one that almost seemed too bulky – and presumably heavy – for the ease with which it was carried.

'I hope this is worth it,' I called down to him.

'You've done very well, Captain. In a little while you'll understand how vital this contract has been. You'll have assisted me in righting a great wrong.'

'Thing is, I'm not really in the wrong righting business.'

'You are now,' he answered.

Boscile moved to the edge of the deck. A short descending flight of steps connected it to the main part of the building. The roof of the main structure was a square, perfectly flat except for a low service building set in the middle. There was an open doorway in the side of that building, and a stairwell leading down into unlit darkness. There were no walls anywhere around the outside, so it had presumably been uncommon for visitors to come up here, unless they were using the landing deck.

Boscile walked to the edge of the building. He knelt down with the case on the ground, flipped its lid and took out a stubby cylinder. He did something to the end of the cylinder and it began to flare a bright pink, giving off billowing wafts of thick, chemically dyed smoke. Boscile waved the object over the side of the building, then set it down on the very edge, so that the flare's brightness would have been visible from the ground. He then took a second cylinder from the case, locked the case, and carried it and the cylinder back to the central stairwell. He activated the second flare and threw it into the stairwell.

Pink light flickered away down into unseen depths.

Boscile walked back to the base of the boarding ramp. 'I have summoned them,' he said. 'They will be here before too long.'

'Them?' I asked, barely having to raise my voice since the air was so still.

'Remainers. Groups of people who chose not to be evacuated. They have their reasons; ours is not to argue with them.'

'Karist crackpots, you mean.'

'Not all, Captain. Some remain out of a deep personal attachment to the soil they were born on. They would rather die here, than live somewhere else. You cannot blame them for that. Others remain purely as a point of principle: if the evacuation program forbids them from remaining, then they will do their utmost to disobey it. Near the end, on this world as on many others, it was not too difficult. It was hard enough coordinating the effort to evacuate the willing, let alone those who would rather stay behind.' 'No one stayed behind.'

'No one was officially left behind. That's not entirely the same thing. By my reckoning around a million souls remain on Calexis, organised into a dozen or so semi-independent communities. We would say that they were regressing to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, except there'll never be time for that.'

'Fine,' I said, only slightly rattled by this information. 'If they've chosen to stay here, that's their stupid choice. What the hell do they want with you?'

'The basic human necessities, Captain.' He knelt down and opened another layer of the case. It folded out to reveal ranks of small glass vials, with colour-coded stoppers. 'Medical supplies have become scarce since the hospitals were abandoned. You'd think it would be the opposite, but the authorities were very careful to make sure the major stocks were destroyed or contaminated. Given that the drugs had already been paid for, it was an act of pure spite. They gained nothing by doing that, except to make life more difficult for those who stayed behind.'

'If life's difficult now, wait until the Maelstrom arrives.'

'The Remainers know that,' Boscile said curtly. 'Do you think them fools? To see out the Maelstrom is their choice. But they need not suffer needlessly until then.' He patted the case. 'It isn't much, not given how many people stayed behind. They will need to be sparing with their usage. But it was all I could afford on the open market, and if I had tried to bring in more, questions would have been asked.'

'You paid for the drugs yourself?'

He looked up sharply. 'Of course. Who else was going to do it?'
v Against my instincts, I stepped off the ship and walked across the short connecting stairs between the pad and the main part of the building. The air was still breezeless, and the yellow sky made it feel oppressively still and lifeless. I stood next to Boscile and his case, hands on my hips as I looked down. 'What do they need with medicines, anyway? They're going to die!'

'Months or years from now. You know as well as I do that the advancement of the Maelstrom isn't predictable on a short timescale. It surges, slows … sometimes almost stops advancing completely. They may have decades … and you're saying they shouldn't be spared from the worst consequences of illness, age, pregnancy?' Boscile closed one layer of the case and opened another, containing just as many colour-coded vials 'It won't do much – I know that. But a tiny reduction in human misery is still a reduction. You see that, don't you?'

'I suppose.'

'Money would be useless to these people,' Boscile said. 'Which is just as well, as I have little enough to offer. My quest has made me a poor man, not a rich one. Between these drugs, the cost of your services, the expense of reaching the station where you were docked … well, never mind. I will soon have something that makes all such considerations moot.'

'This little trip is going to make you rich?'

'Far from it. In fact I expect it to make me deeply unpopular. But the truth must out, and there will be those willing to pay for it. If I can ensure the truth reaches the right hands, then I will consider that ample repayment for my efforts.' He closed the case, and stood up until he was level with me, his eyes swimming behind his spectacles. 'Terrible crimes have happened, Captain – worse than the abandonment of these people. Those misdeeds would not only go unpunished, all evidence of them would be lost.
But we are here now.'

'What crimes?' I asked.

'Captain!'

I turned around. It was Drago, calling down from the top of the boarding ramp.

I had a good view of the Grey Ghost now, since she was level with the surface of the landing pad. The deck was a delicate projection, and the ship squatting down on it, straining low on its own undercarriage, looked much too heavy for such a thing, like a fat book buckling a thin shelf.

'What?'

'You'd better come see.'

I nodded at Boscile. 'Give me a moment. I guess you're not going anywhere.'

'No,' he answered, reasonably enough. 'I do not suppose I am.'

Excerpt from the short story 'Remainers', by Alastair Reynolds.

Find the rest in 'Tales from the Edge: Escalation', available in paperback from the Maelstrom's Edge Webstore, or grab the digital version on Amazon.

We're pleased to announce the release of a new audiobook, Bolt!

Bolt is the latest chapter in the story begun in Transit, about a young boy named Kelvin who discovers a frightening truth about the Maelstrom and what it means for his world. In the second installment, Fracture, Kelvin and his family start working on a plan to escape. And in this latest chapter, they head to a remote scrapyard to secure their transport, where things don't go quite to plan.

This hour long audiobook, written by Stephen Gaskell and narrated by Paul Ansdell, can be found along with the previous chapters in the Maelstrom's Edge webstore here.

When creating the Maelstrom's Edge game, we wanted a universe that felt real and 'lived in', and that people would want to revisit and build in their games. With that in mind, we set about creating a wealth of background material to guide the creation of the game, and then expanded on that by approaching various authors to flesh out the Maelstrom's Edge setting. The end result of that is a slowly growing collection of fiction that we're extremely proud of.

Our first releases were our novels, 'Faith' and 'Sacrifice', which tell the story of two of the factions battling it out for control of Zycanthus, a planet a few tens of lightyears from the Maelstrom's Edge. The corporate Epirian Foundation owners of the world are trying to extract what resources they can in the last few decades before Zycanthus is destroyed by the Maelstrom. The secretive religious extremists of the Karist Enclave however, have identified Zycanthus as a key world for conversion to their beliefs - that the Maelstrom is not the end of everything, but the beginning of a new age for mankind - that if they prepare their souls for the Maelstrom's embrace, they will ascend to a new plane of existence.

In the first novel, 'Faith', Epirian Sheriff Kyle Wynn is ambushed in the desert by a Karist landing party and left for dead. He begins to uncover just how deep and wide the Karist infiltration of Zycanthus goes - and how dangerous it might be. Meanwhile Karist priestess Zafah has travelled to the world to try and teach people of the salvation that Ascension can bring - but the reaction of the Epirian security forces to her missionary work forces her to consider more direct methods of teaching the people the Karist Way. With both sides adamant that their way is best, the stakes are raised for a cataclysmic battle for control of the Zycanthus star system in the second book, 'Sacrifice'.



Our short story compilations, 'Tales from the Edge: Emergence' and 'Tales from the Edge: Escalation' take a closer look at an assortment of different settings along the Edge.

'Emergence' includes eight short stories stories by Tomas Martin, Stephen Gaskell and Andrew Everett, which explore the conflict and intrigue amongst the stars near the Maelstrom's Edge.

Stephen Gaskell's novelette 'Transit' tells of a young boy discovering the Maelstrom is coming to his world, whilst 'The Kaddar Nova' depicts the devotion and fanaticism of the most dedicated of the Karist Enclave's apocalyptic priesthood.

Tomas L. Martin's stories 'The Shipyard', 'The Scarecrow' and 'The Hunter' delve into the background of the corporate Epirian Foundation and their robotic guardians.

'Scraps' by Andrew Everett, 'Crisis Point' by Stephen Gaskell and 'Static Prevails' by Thomas L.Martin explore the conflict and intrigue amongst the stars near the Maelstrom's Edge.

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'Escalation' is the second short story collection, and goes even deeper into the chaos of the Edge with stories by Alastair Reynolds, Aliette de Bodard, Liz Williams, and other accomplished scif-fi authors.

'Remainers', by Alastair Reynolds follows the return of a starship captain to a world doomed by the Maelstrom on the behest of a mysterious client.

In Rob Ziegler's 'Little Bots', a group of orphans scheme and sneak their way into a plot to escape their dying world, whilst Jeff Carlson's 'The Spaces Between Us' looks at the challenge of the Maelstrom's approach from another direction - if a world is lost, do we have a duty to save what makes it unique?

Jaine Fenn's 'Over You' and Tomas L. Martin's 'Fleet Champion' explore the honour-bound existence of the Remnant Fleet's Champions. The Remnant is all that's left of the Artarian civilisation fleeing the destruction of their homeworlds by the Maelstrom, and rely on their exo-suited Champions to secure the resources they need to survive - by force if necessary.

Nebula, Locus and SFWA award-winning author Aliette de Bodard tells a tale of the aftermath of an attack by the Karist Enclave on an Epirian Foundation world in 'Losses We Bear'. The topic of the Karist Enclave is also explored in Stephen Gaskell's 'A Keeper's Duty', where a young apprentice must learn to control the power of the unpredictable aliens known as the Angels.

Jonathan Cooper's 'The Daughter of Arin' presents a challenge when a Comm Guild courier arrives with an unexpected package, whilst stories from Philip K. Dick Award nominated authors Karin Lowachee and Liz Williams explore the ragtag rebels of the Broken and the challenges confronted by those who have nothing but the clothes on their backs in 'The Flesh of the World' and 'Moon Desert'.

The stories within this volume explore the tangled and desperate politics of the civilisations on the Maelstrom's Edge, from passionate revolutionaries to devout missionaries. The array of bestselling and award-winning writing talent will take you on journeys to planets where every decision can be the difference between survival and destruction.

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These four books are all available in print through the Maelstrom's Edge webstore here, or you can find eBook versions on Amazon here.

The Maelstrom's Edge webstore also has available Audiobook versions of a selection of the short stories from 'Tales from the Edge: Emergence', with two more chapters in the story started in 'Transit' to come in the near future.

With so much more of the Edge still to explore, we hope you enjoy diving into our galaxy as much as we did creating it!

Prowler APV

Prowler is the group term used to refer to the armoured personnel vehicles used by Epirian Contractors and security forces. Six or eight wheeled, the prowler is sturdy enough to clamber over rough terrain or suffer small arms fire, and its sealed compartments are large enough to house five to ten men. Prowlers are utilised for different functions, with some having an empty rear for transport of goods or men, whilst others have banks of computer interfaces to control drones or even act as a mobile command vehicle in battle. Prowlers are fitted with a drone rack allowing for rapid launch of airborne drones, and military vehicles sport a roof-mounted turret with a surface to air rocket battery or machine gun.

by Tomas L. Martin

When I joined the team designing Maelstrom’s Edge in 2011, it was a small team with a great vision. We wanted to create not just a fun and challenging wargame with a bunch of cool-looking multipart plastic models to go with it, but to also design a new science fiction universe that the game and models would fit into. We wanted to bring a broad and complex world to life, somewhere deep and exciting where the tabletop battles would feel like a natural extension to the stories we told in the background fluff and fiction.

Stephen Gaskell and I signed on as lead writers to write the kind of fun space opera stories we loved reading and watching ourselves. Together with the rest of the design team, we would throw around influences that got us excited. The classic settings of Star Wars, Dune and Alien were all mentioned, as they are for many science fiction creations across the years. But it was the dark, morally grey confrontations of the remade Battlestar Galactica TV show that made the most frequent appearance in those discussions, as well as the wise-cracking, fast-paced action of Firefly.

We loved the idea of a universe where it made sense for there to be the kind of skirmishes and battles that the tabletop game depicted. Somewhere right on the bleeding edge of civilisation, where every day was a fight to survive and get the resources you needed, and where characters would be forced to make hard, morally complex choices, where the readers of our work could see both sides of the coin, and be genuinely torn as to what the right choice would be.

It wasn’t just the science fiction settings and heroes of the screen that inspired us. We also took a lot of inspiration from the great works of science fiction written on the page in the last few decades. Amazing writers like Peter Hamilton, Iain M. Banks, Neal Asher and Alastair Reynolds, who would tell big sweeping stories of interstellar conspiracies and wars, whilst keeping a certain balance between gritty action and scientific realism. Vibrant new writers like Aliette de Bodard, Tobias Buckell, Karin Lowachee and James S.A. Corey, who combined vibrant language and unusual characters with deep and interesting worldbuilding.

Stephen and I took inspiration from many of these great writers when we wrote the first set of short stories to cultivate the universe of Maelstrom’s Edge, stories that later were collected into the short story anthology ‘Tales from the Edge: Emergence’. We kept thinking of the fantastic peers we had in the science fiction realm when we co-wrote what would become the first two Maelstrom’s Edge novels, Faith and Sacrifice. And we continue to think of these influences today as we move forward to design the stories and background of future Maelstrom’s Edge releases.

Which is why it’s an incredible honour that such a large number of the authors we admire greatly agreed to contribute short stories set in the Maelstrom’s Edge anthology, Escalation, which is out now on the Kindle Store. Having the expertise of writers like Nebula and Hugo award winning Aliette de Bodard, or the Philip K. Dick award-nominated Karin Lowachee and Liz Williams, was a huge coup for us and we’re delighted with the stories that they have given us for the anthology. Likewise to have such influential authors as Jeff Carlson and Alastair Reynolds writing in the Maelstrom’s Edge universe has been an incredible pleasure, and we hope that you enjoy their adventures in our creation just as much as we have.

One of the things we were most passionate about when we started working on Maelstrom’s Edge was making a new world. We love games where there are lots of stories and background material to get people excited about the context surrounding the game itself - where are the battles taking place, who is fighting and why is there a conflict between them?

As part of the initial universe design, our lead writers Stephen Gaskell and Tomas L. Martin wrote a number of short stories exploring different parts of the setting. These first insights into the Maelstrom’s Edge universe were released in our first short story collection, ‘Tales from the Edge: Emergence’. In addition, during the runup to the Kickstarter for the Maelstrom’s Edge game, we approached a number of other professional writers to provide their take on our world, including exploring new factions, planets and ideas. Now, a second anthology, ‘Tales from the Edge: Escalation’ has been released, containing a wealth of fantastic new short fiction from award-winning and bestselling authors such as Alastair Reynolds, Aliette de Bodard, Jeff Carlson and Jaine Fenn.



From the beginning we also knew we wanted to launch with a set of stories telling the backstory of our first set, the Battle for Zycanthus, and so following on from those initial short stories, Tomas and Stephen wrote the fiction that would become our first two novels, Faith and Sacrifice, set on the planet of Zycanthus. Zycanthus is a frontier planet a few light years from the Maelstrom’s Edge, halfway through terraforming by the Epirian Foundation and their robots. In the boxed game, there is a conflict between Foundation and the shadowy religious group known as the Karist Enclave, who wish to convert the people of Zycanthus to their beliefs about ascension in the presence of the Maelstrom. To set up the battles that people were going to be playing with their miniatures, our team of writers set out to tell the story of what happened on Zycanthus just before the events portrayed in the box set, when the Karist Enclave first revealed itself and the fighting began.

Initially, the task of telling this story was split into two – Stephen Gaskell wrote a series of stories set from the viewpoint of Zafah, one of the Karist missionaries who lands in secret on Zycanthus, whilst Tomas L. Martin wrote the opposing view of the Epirian Foundation, where a backwater Sheriff called Kyle Wynn uncovers the Enclave’s secret invasion. We wanted to publish the books ourselves to have the freedom of getting it to our players in whatever format worked best, but printing a book of that size is challenging and would have meant needing to charge more than we felt was appropriate, so we made the decision to split the story into two smaller novels, Maelstrom's Edge: Faith and Maelstrom's Edge: Sacrifice. You can find them in the Kindle store right now.

What follows is an excerpt from Chapter Five of the first book, Maelstrom's Edge: Faith, where a pair of Epirian lawmakers encounter the Karist Enclave, including a monstrous alien Angel, for the first time.

Kyle Wynn is an Epirian Sheriff keeping the peace in the small desert town of Venusai on the planet of Zycanthus. When he and his partner Randall get reports of terraforming robots disappearing in the desert, they head out to investigate. When they find a set of footprints and strange markings in the sand, they follow them, never expecting the dangers they are heading into...



Maelstrom's Edge: Faith, Excerpt from Chapter Five

Wynn and Randall tracked the footprints for several hours. They sent the drones a few klicks ahead of the prowler, set them crisscrossing the trail with infrared cameras. The evening had really started to set in now, and only the dull purple glow of the Maelstrom in the east gave any illumination. It cast cruel shadows in its sickly half-light.

“I hate that thing,” Randall said, staring up at the bruised sky. “Just staring down at us like that, so you never forget that it’s coming.”

Wynn wondered if the Maelstrom was all that was coming to Zycanthus. When he had been a prospector, he’d heard stories from worlds close to the Edge. Before their destruction, there had been reports of strange creatures attacking isolated outposts, shadowy coups, riots and public executions. These stories seemed to get more and more intense and confused as the Maelstrom got closer, ending in tales of destruction that Wynn had always written off as a product of the panic that set in as the planets fell apart.

Now he wasn’t so sure. The footprints continued to march across the sand for klicks, rarely breaking out of their steady pattern. Wynn thought he could spot at least five different tracks, but he also occasionally saw the imprint of something larger, but always indistinct, as if the thing making the impression was hardly touching the ground at all.

They were nearly at the location of the third terraforming drudge when the signal of one of the patrol drones winked out.

“Huh?” Randall tapped a monitor, on which the drone’s sensor feeds had been replaced by static. “Where did it go?”

Wynn said nothing. He was watching the other patrol drone’s feed. It was hovering above a ravine. In the rocks at the bottom, he could see five figures, clad in frost-white armour. Heavy carbines dangled from their shoulders, and canisters filled with purple energy were strung around their waists. They were the most dangerous looking people Wynn had ever seen on Zycanthus, and they were staring straight back at him.

“Randall,” he said, “We have company!”

Wynn flicked a switch and sent the video feed to Randall’s station. Hidden in a hollow, the group of armoured figures stood, checking heavy looking weapons. From the looks of it, they were military, but Wynn didn’t recognise their markings, two scythe like points either side of a circle, deep black against their white armour.

“Who the hell?” Randall said. “Those are not a bunch of kids. When exactly did we get invaded?”

“Apparently a few days ago,” Wynn murmured, studying the footage. The soldiers held themselves bolt upright, with the discipline of many years of training. Their armour was wickedly curved at the edges, and their helmets had only one eye, with a trio of small lenses where the other eye should have been. “They can see the probe,” Wynn said. “Why aren’t they shooting it down?”

Something flashed across the drone’s camera, blocking the view to the soldiers. Something big. Wynn took in a dark blue body, with a gaping maw above glassy, alien eyes. Below the tortured face, the structure faded away into an amorphous mass of tendrils. Wynn and Randall had one more look at its face before a lithe limb snaked out and snapped into the drone, and the video feed cut out.

“Call for backup,” Wynn said, staring at the screen. “Call for backup right fucking now."

“I’m trying!” Randall said. “There’s no satellite coverage out here, I can’t get a signal.”

“Well, keep trying!” Wynn said. He grimaced as he imagined what that creature would do to the prowler. The vehicle was tough, but it definitely hadn’t been designed to be alien-proof.

“What the fuck was that thing, Kyle?” Randall reached over and locked the prowler’s door. “What did they bring here?”

“I think they called them Angels,” Wynn said slowly, thinking back to the stories he’d heard out in the black. “I heard some spacers talk once about how they show up as the Maelstrom approaches. How the hell did it get here?”

“Sheriff,” Randall said. “How far away was that drone?”

Wynn looked up. In the gloom of the Maelstrom-tinged sky, he could see in the distance the raised silhouette of a pair of recessed cliffs, below which a ravine fell down to the dry riverbed.

“They’re less than a mile away,” Wynn said.

“Who are these people?” Randall said. “And what the hell do they want with us?”

Wynn killed the engine, and reached for his rifle.

“I don’t know,” he said, turning the headlamps and the lights of the cab off. “But I think if we don’t kill them, we’re not going to make it back to Venusai alive.”

“Wait,” Randall said. “Sheriff, what are you doing? Why aren’t we getting out of here?”

Wynn turned and pushed his deputy against his seat, his face close.

“You saw that thing, Randall. That Angel, or whatever you want to call it. Whatever it was, that thing was flying. Do you really think we’d get far?” Randall fell silent. Wynn reached over the seats and grabbed Randall’s shotgun and ammo pack, and shoved them into his deputy’s arms.

“The course they’ve taken,” Wynn told him. “It leads right back to Venusai.”

“What?” Randall’s eyes bulged wildly. Wynn had seen men taken by panic before during the hairier moments of prospecting new worlds. They couldn’t afford for that to happen today. Not if they wanted to get out of here alive.

“Now,” Wynn said as calmly as he could manage, “I don’t intend for that to happen. I intend to stop them before they can go home to Rania, Maggie and the rest of the town. So I’m going to get out of this truck as quietly as I can, move to a defendable position, and take them down. I can’t do it by myself, so I need you to calm down and move with me. Can you do that?” Randall thrashed about for a second, his eyes darting to every possible escape route. Then his body seemed to relax, and he nodded.

“Ok,” he said. “All right. I’m not going to let whoever they are get to Maggie.”

“Then let’s go before they get here,” Wynn said. He pulled his rifle onto his shoulder and cracked open the driver’s door of the prowler.”

“Sheriff, wait.”

Wynn’s heart sunk. If he couldn’t get Randall to overcome his fear, they’d be sitting ducks in the cab of the prowler. But to his surprise, his deputy wasn't cowering. He was clambering over the back seat into the control centre jabbing a finger at the controls. He passed Wynn a headset with a bud microphone curling down from its strap, and then put one on himself.

“We need all the help we can get,” Randall said. “I’m activating all the remaining drones. Even the unarmed ones can provide a distraction.”

“You can’t stay here,” Wynn insisted, pulling on the headset. “You saw what that thing did to the terraformers, we’d be carved apart.”

“I’ll stay long enough to get all the drones moving,” Randall said, stabbing at the control panel, “and then I’ll take the remote headset and move to higher ground. But it’ll take a few minutes to get them all activated, so you should get somewhere you have good line of sight, and I’ll join you later.”

Wynn hesitated for a moment, then nodded and clambered out of the cab. Randall’s plan was about the best they could hope for, and it would do neither of them any good to waste any more time.

He dropped the last few rungs of the ladder to the ground, and set off on a crouching run towards a series of escarpments leading up to a rocky bluff to the right of the prowler. As he left the vehicle he heard the whine of several drones starting up, and a couple sprung up from the rack and began buzzing about the sky, as he pulled himself up onto a prominent cluster of boulders. Wynn dropped to a prone position and unfolded the stock of his rifle, resting it against the edge of the rock, looking down at the prowler some twenty metres away. His rifle, an Ednotech maglock weapon, had been with him since his prospecting days, although he’d upgraded pretty much every component over the years. He cocked the rifle, pulled the butt in against his shoulder and settled his eye at the scope. Just like old times.

For several minutes, nothing happened, except the occasional flash of movement as a drone left the prowler’s rack. Wynn began to hope that maybe the intruders had not heard the prowler, had assumed the drones were on their own and carried on walking. But then he saw a flash of off-white armour plating at the foot of the valley and all thought of getting out without a fight vanished.

“I see them,” Wynn told Randall through the headset. "At the foot of the valley. Try and keep the drones hidden until I can get a shot off.”

“Gotcha,” Randall replied. “Three more to launch.”

Wynn tapped the microphone in reply, and settled into his position. He watched the soldiers advance, using the cover of the boulders that lined the valley, moving in pairs. There was no hope of Wynn getting all of them in one go, they were too well trained for that. His first shot had to work.

One of the soldiers peeled off the main group and crouched, aiming his weapon at the prowler. It was a larger gun than the others, with a belt that fed canisters of what looked like cybel energy into the magazine. Cybel energy, harvested from the cybel network that linked the stars, was incredibly potent and powered many of the ships and industries of the galaxy, but the stuff was so volatile that only the most foolhardy or brave would use it as a weapon.

The soldier barked a command at the other three and fired a round off. The ball of purple-white energy looped up in the air like a mortar shot, splashing into the ground with a sound like thunder. A crater exploded into being in the sand beside the prowler, rocking the vehicle and spraying it with debris but not harming it. With his range sighted, the soldier shifted position for another shot. He would not get another try. Wynn squeezed the trigger of his rifle, sending a bullet straight down the line of the valley. The shot splintered the soldier’s helmet just below the three lenses that covered the soldier’s eye, spraying most of his head onto the rock behind him. The soldier collapsed to the ground, lifeless.

The others span and aimed their carbines in Wynn’s direction, trying to work out where the shot had come from. Wynn reached forward slowly and capped the lens of his scope, hoping to stay hidden for just a bit longer.

“Ok,” he said quietly into the mic, “They know I’m here. Go crazy with the drones, and then get to cover.”

“You got it,” Randall said. A phalanx of patrol drones rose from the stones, pinging laser shots at the soldiers, sending them diving for cover. While they were distracted, Wynn risked another shot, but the soldier in his sights moved at the last moment and the bullet impacted harmlessly into the sand.

One of the drones found its mark, burning a dark hole in the back of one of the soldiers’ armour, sending him sprawling. The remaining intruders sprayed shots at the drones, sending two robots crashing to earth. Then the soldiers hunkered down out of sight and called out to someone behind them.

A tortured sound filled the air, like the squeal of metal on metal. The desert breeze carried the smell of ozone, reminding him of the workshop’s smell when Rania used her plasma cutter. Then the monster emerged from behind the shadow of the escarpment.

The creature was massive, as tall as the prowler. Its features were squid-like in some ways, and bat-like in others, but attempting to compare it to an animal could only vaguely approximate its strangeness. Its body was an elongated smooth surface, with a number of limbs stabbing out from it. Two of these furled back against its body, thin membranes hanging between them as wings. More indistinct limbs propelled the beast along the ground, while at least four more tendrils dangled in front of it, their tips armed with sharp spikes or pseudopods. It was a deep dark purple, almost but not quite black, that seemed to be eaten up by the Maelstrom-tinged shadows of the escarpment.

Behind the creature was a much smaller figure, a crooked, thin man in a hooded robe, carrying an awkwardly large satchel across his back. He had a large staff held in both hands, a large flask of purple cybel energy at its base. The man used the other end to stroke the skin of the creature, and prod it forward towards the prowler. The creature opened the maw at the centre of its body and screamed that tortured metallic sound, like two spaceships colliding.

“Skyfire,” Randall swore. “Are you seeing this thing, Kyle? Is that really there?”

“An Angel,” Wynn muttered. “It’s real all right. You better get out of there.”

“Are you kidding me?” Randall said. “Against that thing? I think I’d rather take my chances in the prowler. Let’s see how it likes a bit of the Foundation’s finest.”

Randall’s surviving drones rejoined their formation, hovering in one place to let the last few launch from the prowler. Then he sent the five robots flying at the new appearance, buzzing the creature with the lasers and light machine guns mounted on their wings and cupolas.

The Angel screeched and flinched at the impacts on its body. Through the rifle’s scope Wynn could see most of the bullets passing harmlessly through the creature’s body, the holes they made closing behind the slug’s passing like it hadn’t even been hit, as if the drones were firing through water. Then with a sudden movement, the Angel leapt forward, its wings unfolding and tendrils leaping out from its body, further than their original length appeared to allow, the creature’s flesh changing in mid-action. Within seconds the drones had been smashed to the floor, strewing mechanical parts across the sand.

“Well,” Randall said in a breathless voice, “Storms. That could have gone a bit better.”

###

I hope you enjoyed this excerpt from the first novel in the Maelstrom’s Edge universe. You can read more in Maelstrom's Edge: Faith by Tomas L. Martin and Stephen Gaskell - on Kindle now!

In the summer of 2014 several members of the team had the opportunity to attend WorldCon in London and give a sneak-peek of Maelstrom's Edge to some of the world's best science-fiction authors. The aim? To showcase our universe and convince them to lend their awesome storytelling talents to our project. Presenting the backdrop, artwork, and prototype models, many of the authors we pitched to came away impressed with both our vision and our commitment to building a long-lasting IP. We came away from the London Excel centre having signed up a great mix of highly-acclaimed established voices and up-and-coming superstars to contribute to our project.

Tales from the Edge: Escalation is the result of that fruitful few days at science fiction’s biggest convention. The anthology brings together a wealth of talent contributing short fiction work to the Maelstrom's Edge universe:

Alastair Reynolds
With over a decade of experience as a professional astrophysicist to back up his writing chops, Alastair Reynolds is deservedly called the "reigning master of the intergalactic space opera", and brings a compelling edge of hard-SF to his unique brand of galaxy-spanning science fiction. Author of the Inhibitor trilogy that kicked off with the seismic Revelation Space and ended with the chilling Absolution Gap, Alastair's star has only risen over the last twenty years, and has been nominated for the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award three times.
http://www.alastairreynolds.com/
Here's what Alastair said about getting to play in the Maelstrom's Edge universe:

"Maelstrom's Edge is something different: an SF game universe put together with real originality and incorporating some genuinely clever and inventive thinking. There are enough worlds and stories waiting to be explored to last a lifetime..."

With his gritty blend of dark sci-fi, speculative science, and galaxy-spanning drama he is a perfect match for the Maelstrom's Edge universe and we're delighted to have him on board with our opening story, ‘Remainers’, in which a ship’s captain accepts a client’s dangerous request to return to a world doomed by the Maelstrom.

Rob Ziegler
Author of the spectacular Seed, which Paolo Bacigalupi described as "A hungry beast of a book, rippling with slaughter and sex, powerhouse action, surreal post-human horrors and bigger-than-life heroes", Rob's work combines kinetic action, bleak landscapes, and characters drawn from the grimy underbelly of society. As such we think he is perfect to help us flesh out some of the stories happening at the margins of the Maelstrom's Edge universe, particularly those involving the Broken, our very own faction of survivalists who mix the high-tech and the squalid together with the violent and the tender. ‘Little Bots’, Rob’s story in ‘Escalation’, is a terrific tale of a group of orphans, sneaking and tricking their way to survival.
http://zieglerstories.com/

Jaine Fenn
Described by SFX Magazine as "A major new talent" on the release of her debut novel, Consorts of Heaven, Jaine Fenn has proceeded to flesh out her Hidden Empire series, charting seven-thousand years of future history as humankind adventures among the stars. Known for writing tense and fast-paced stories set in vivid locales, we felt Jaine would create the kind of gripping fiction perfectly suited to the universe of Maelstrom's Edge. For her first story in our universe, Jaine set her sights on two of our future factions – telling the story of a noble Champion of the Artarian Remnant Fleet, amongst the ragtag flotilla of a Broken fleet, in the cracking short story ‘Over You’.
http://www.jainefenn.com/

Jeff Carlson
In the Plague Year trilogy Jeff Carlson unleashed a nanoplague on humanity that killed all warm-blooded life below 10,000 feet. In his Frozen Sky novels humankind discovered a deadly species in the icy waters of Jupiter's ice moon, Europa. Who better than this Philip K. Dick Award Finalist to help bring the Maelstrom's Edge universe to gripping life? When we told him about the Maelstrom's Edge universe and invited him to spread his fictional wings he had the following to say:

"These days I write sci fi and tech thrillers that, I hope, are chock full of monsters and chills and cutting edge science. When I heard about Maelstrom’s Edge, I begged its designers to let me play in their sandbox. An unstoppable wave of hellish energy. Civilizations destroyed. Terraforming corporations, mech, refugees, cults, strange planets. Man, that’s what I do!!!!"

Jeff’s story ‘The Spaces Between Us’ is something both beautiful and brutal, telling a tangled family tragedy on a world with something truly worth saving.
http://www.jverse.com/books/

Aliette de Bodard
Nominated for multiple Hugo, Nebula, and BSFA awards, and winner of the Nebula and Locus awards, Aliette de Bodard is a highly-acclaimed author who will bring brilliant prose allied to poignant characters to the Maelstrom's Edge universe. Subverting the usual tropes for original twists, and substituting by-the-numbers heroes for vivid individuals deeply entwined with familial and cultural shackles, we were really excited to see what Aliette did with the apocalyptic backdrop of Maelstrom's Edge, and her story, ‘Losses We Bear’ is a superb demonstration of her skills.
http://aliettedebodard.com

Tomas L. Martin
Well, that’s me! Together with Stephen Gaskell, I’m one of the lead writers who helped develop the background to the Maelstrom’s Edge universe, as well as together writing the short stories that made up our first collection, ‘Tales from the Edge: Emergence’, and the two Maelstrom’s Edge novels, ‘Faith’ and ‘Sacrifice’. When not writing for Maelstrom’s Edge, I’m a lecturer in materials physics at the University of Bristol, as well as occasionally dabbling in other fiction endeavours! My story, ‘Fleet Champion’ is a little introduction to the tangled politics and heated contests of the Remnant Fleet and the power-suited Champions that compete for the honour and reputation of their noble houses.
http://www.tomaslmartin.com

Jonathan Cooper
Coming via Wolverhampton, Dublin and London, Jonathan Cooper is a novelist and occasional journalist now living in Amsterdam. He has written on film, TV and pop culture for the Mirror and the Independent and has short fiction published in the New London Review and Scrivener Creative Review. He is also the author of Lethbridge Stewart: The Showstoppers, a new novel featuring Doctor Who's very own Brigadier. In this anthology Jonathan gives us ‘The Daughter of Arin’, where a Comm Guild courier delivers a strange package that leads to an increasingly chaotic conspiracy.

Karin Lowachee
Winner of a boatload of awards including Warner Aspect First Novel, Prix Aurora Award 2006, and Spectrum Award 2006, not to mention twice being shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award, Karin Lowachee's Warchild Universe explores the experience of fictionalised child soldiers learning to survive in a war-torn galaxy. When we asked her to expand on what drew her to Maelstrom's Edge universe she had the following to say:

"In a genre that can literally explore anything the imagination envisions, the opportunity to sink my teeth into a doomsday event of galactic proportions was too good to pass. Everything about Maelstrom's Edge speaks to my creative inclinations: high stakes, complex characters, an expansive setting, and a sense of wonder. The possibilities for exploration both external and internal are endless, and my fascination with the human condition—our frailties as well as our strengths—is something I will explore. A psychological close-up of what a random band of survivors on a frontier planet are willing and able to do to reach their destination—and presumably their saving grace to get off-world ahead of the Maelstrom—will take an unflinching look at the nature of selfishness, exploitation, compassion and love."

Karin's tale ‘The Flesh of the World’ explores a lawless, frontier-type world that has been abandoned by the corporations, leaving the population alone to face the coming Maelstrom.
http://www.karinlowachee.com

Stephen Gaskell
The other half of the Maelstrom’s Edge lead writing team, Stephen is a prolific and talented writer both of fiction and for games. When not writing for Maelstrom’s Edge, Stephen works as a Senior Writer for Amplitude Studios, where he recently completed work on the popular 4X strategy title, Endless Space 2. His fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Interzone, Years Best Military SF, and elsewhere, and he is currently seeking representation for his debut novel, The Unborn World, a dystopian eco-thriller set in Lagos, Nigeria. An alumnus of University College, Oxford, he holds degrees in physics and artificial intelligence. Stephen’s contribution to the anthology is the fantastic ‘A Keeper’s Duty’, which explores the moral dilemma of a convert to the Karist Faith, growing up to become one of the Keepers who looks after the otherworldly alien creatures known as Angels.
http://www.stephengaskell.com

Liz Williams
With degrees in philosophy and artificial intelligence, a mother who was a gothic novelist, and a father who was a part-time conjurer, it is no exaggeration to say that Liz William's is one of the most original voices working in science fiction today. Short-listed for the Philip K. Dick Award for her novels no less than four times, Liz is also a master of the short form with her work appearing in many Year's Best anthologies. Writing dark and strange yet utterly compelling fiction, Liz's piece for our Maelstrom's Edge anthology is titled "’Moon Desert’ and is a fantastic read.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Liz-Williams/e/B001HCXOL2

Maelstrom's Edge has a comprehensive long term fiction plan which we give as much attention as the game itself. From day one we've been trying to develop a universe which will grab the interest of anybody who has even a passing interest in Science Fiction, and with some of the best sci-fi authors in the world committing stories into the anthology ‘Tales From The Edge: Escalation’, Maelstrom's Edge is going from strength to strength, with plenty more to come from us in future.

The Epirian foundation is fragmented into many competing franchises. Each maintains control of multiple worlds, and technology and people must be interchanged frequently. Ensuring security on these worlds requires each adult Epirian citizen to be issued with a MATS number. This unique number allows an Epirian citizen to rise to high status on one world, and have that status recognised throughout the galaxy, granting a galactic mobility that would not otherwise be possible without immense personal wealth.

MATS numbers are controlled at the system level, and as such represent an extremely juicy target for infiltrating agents. Getting some fake individuals in to the MATS system is an easy way to gain unfettered access to key Epirian institutions and facilities, and for those desperate to escape a world, can lead to a significant bump in their position on passenger manifests.

Na-cybel is the type of cybel energy discovered by the Enclave's founders during their escape from a Maelstrom-infected collapsing cybel tunnel, and later reproduced via their Commune reactors. The Fourteen survivors began to experiment with cybel energy, fascinated by the strange new form that had flooded their ship. Eventually they managed to recreate what they called na-cybel energy, a metastable form that seemed not to harm flesh in the same way. Whilst cybel energy had been used often in ship engines, few people directly exposed themselves to cybel energy because of the health risks. The Fourteen survivors decided that the benefits of na-cybel energy outweighed its dangers.

When a commune reactor is used to produce na-cybel, it mixes highly disrupted, almost Maelstrom-like energy with calm, refined cybel energy. At the interface between the two, a hybrid of cybel and Maelstrom energies forms, with the more placid, wispy qualities of cybel combined with the colouring of Maelstrom energy. Unlike either though, na-cybel does not annihilate with conventional energy and matter, instead sparking tiny purple and magenta lightning strikes that topically burn objects. It has been observed that na-cybel has powerful effects on the human nervous system, producing a sense of euphoria and sometimes visions. The Enclave use this as a religious experience and also as a means of controlling their population. The scarring that results from na-cybel exposure is superficial in general, but only to a point, as heavy users such as the Kaddar Nova will eventually be crippled and killed by the cumulative effects.

The na-cybel is only used as a narcotic. Karist weapons do not use or fire na-cybel, they fire refined cybel. The technology in the communes, enhanced with further understanding and insights by studying angels, can be militarized to control and channel natural cybel with peerless performance to all other human civilizations, surpassed and dwarfed only by the angels themselves. It is this deeper understanding, derived from the need to re-produce na-cybel, but re-purposed to weaponising natural cybel, that gives the Enclave their unique weaponry and abilities.

The Karist Enclave are unable to take huge manufacturing facilities with them when they secret themselves away upon a remote world and capturing large facilities is immediately noticeable as well. As a result, more than any other faction, the Karists use complex refineries and nanoforges. A nanoforge is a molecular level assembly system, which allows almost all Karist equipment to be assembled at a near-molecular level. While organics remain too complex to replicate, armour, weaponry, furniture, electronics and extremely basic foodstuffs can all be produced from a wide array of input resources.

The most common output material is Metalloceramic - the material from which Karist plate armour, spacecraft and day to day tools are built from. As the name implies, the material mixes properties from input metals with the benefits of a ceramic, giving the best of both worlds in terms of conductivity, protection and strength.

Nanoforges are not exclusive to the Karist Enclave, but the energy requirements for operating them are immense, and only the Karists are content enough to sit on top of such large volumes of cybel energy. Most other groups in the galaxy appreciate that human power is a lot cheaper than cybel energy, so tend to vie away from such high levels of automated production for all but the most complex and critical equipment.

The origin of the Karist Enclave dates back to the eruption of the Maelstrom itself. When the disturbance first exploded into being near the galactic core, hundreds of worlds in the dense centre of the galaxy were quickly wiped out, before many knew what was happening. Few escaped that initial violent expansion, as cybel tunnels ruptured and sublight craft were overtaken by the Maelstrom’s first wave.

A fraction ahead of the event horizon, a small spacecraft named Kariman's Breath succeeded in escaping from the galactic core worlds. Carrying a few hundred people, the ship was in transit through one of the cybel tunnels at the edge of the core when the Maelstrom erupted. Although they were just outside the destroyed region, the tunnel they were in ruptured, throwing the ship into deep space between worlds. Their shields were overloaded by the energy storm, flooding the decks with a strange energy.

Exposure to the energy of the cybel tunnels ordinarily causes burns and ultimately death, but the Fourteen survivors of the Kariman’s Breath didn't die when this energy washed over them. Instead the surviving crew and passengers reported a religious, transcendent experience. Some say that there was a difference of opinion between the ship’s inhabitants, that the experience was just a hallucination and that the early Enclave members killed those who disagreed with their interpretation. Whatever occurred in that moment, upon the re-emergence of the Kariman’s Breath into civilisation, all aboard had converted to the idea that becoming one with the Maelstrom would lead to their ascension to a higher plane of existence.

Isolated and unable to contact the rest of humanity, and suffering from their exposure to the energy, the ship’s inhabitants struggled to keep the ship going. Determined to pass on their revelations to others, they kept the ship limping through the tattered remains of the near-core. Desperate for supplies, they happened upon a small planet far from the plane of the galaxy - Schar's World. Because of the vast quantities of precious metals in the star system, it had been settled despite its distance from the main cybel trade routes, but the scattered population of the mining world was poor and downtrodden, kept under the control of a corporate dictatorship terrified by the Maelstrom's destruction of their superiors.

A few hundred million souls lived on the planet, fearful of the future and grief stricken at leaving their old lives in the past. When they realised the source of the small spacecraft, all were eager to talk to the survivors about their experience in an attempt to calm their own fears. The fourteen survivors of the Kariman incident were unified by their experience, both in the moment the Kariman's Breath was tossed on the crest of the Maelstrom and their long months of isolation afterward. The Fourteen came out with a fervent belief that the Maelstrom was a tool for ascendance rather than destruction. They committed their lives to promoting their miraculous discovery, and showing people how they too could reach enlightenment. As their new religion spread on Schar's World, the Fourteen grew to become the revered leaders of the movement. As the believers shared their philosophy throughout the planet they gained a name - The Karist Enclave.

The Kasmenai originally came from a barren world long lost to mankind's expansion. Bipedal with elongated limbs, the Kasmenai are radiation resistant and so often find work on human-owned worlds where radiation levels are high. Typically they can be found on mining colonies, and on highly radioactive worlds. Their service is cheaper than robots, especially when the robots need radiation shielding.

When the Maelstrom threatened many of these worlds, the Kasmenai were shown to be the subclass they are amongst humanity, as even those they thought friends fled the catastrophe, leaving the vast majority of the aliens behind. With much greater numbers than human populations on some harsh worlds, the Kasmenai have been driven to rise up and overthrow governments, but besides those in space already, very few find transport to escape. Most are happy to join the Broken given the chance.

Kasmenai bodies are very different from human. Their hardened skin is made of radiation-proof scales, but the absorption of radiation is also how Kasmenai feed, transferring the energy from alpha, beta and gamma decay into the chemical batteries that make up much of their internal organs. Due to this strange electrical sustenance they do not have blood or a digestion system, and their insides are much more radiation resistant, however if they do absorb too much radiation on their outer skin they can shed it like snake-skin, sloughing off the most dangerous contamination. Their bodies are lined with aluminium capillaries that transfer power and thought alike.

Although Kasmenai do not eat like most organisms, getting their energy from radiation, they still need a supply of metals and silicates to build their bodies, and Kasmenai can often be found sucking metallic lozenges to replenish the elements they need to grow and repair. Although their skin is designed to produce energy from radioactive decay, it can also feed off the photons from light and heat, albeit much more slowly due to the vastly lower energies involved. Their dependence on sources of energy can often make them prone to enslavement to work in dangerous locations, and the pallid grey colour of an energy-depleted Kasmenai's scales is a sign of danger, as their normally benign temperament becomes angry and unpredictable when they have not fed properly.

The Epirian Foundation is most famous for the variety of robots it employs, but the vast organisation made its fortune in the business of finding and cultivating new worlds. There are six stages to the terraforming process that the Epirian Foundation uses to take a planet from a barren wasteland to a verdant paradise. Taking a planet all the way from stage 1 to stage 6 can take thousands of years and huge investments. Frequently a planet is taken to stage 4 and the process is halted, for the cost of reaching garden world status is not deemed worthwhile for all but the richest or geographically blessed planets.

The six stages are:

1. In stage one, a planet is barren, inhospitable and even overtly hostile to human occupation, due to extreme temperatures, atmospheric conditions, weather or seismologica phenomena. Even colonists in armoured vehicles or space suits are not safe. The goal of stage one terraforming is to stabilise the world, removing or mitigating the biggest threats to survival so that the terraforming process can begin in earnest. Stage one is dangerous, risky work and can take hundreds or even thousands of years, and in many cases might be too expensive to complete.
   
   
2. In stage two, the planet is still unsuitable for sustaining life, but is no longer dangerous on a day to day basis. The next phase of terraforming is about removing big impediments to cultivating a viable habitat, such as the removal of toxic materials, protection against cosmic rays and the beginnings of atmospheric tweaking to provide breathable air and survivable temperatures. By the end of stage two, a colonist might be able to survive unprotected for a few minutes, but life still remains under protective domes. The transition between stage 2 and stage 3 typically begins the true colonisation age, as settlers flock to the world in search of their fortunes.
   
   
3. A stage 3 world is marginally habitable. There might be a thin atmosphere that requires rebreathers, or substantial areas of the planet might be too hot or too cold to survive for more than a few hours. The third stage aims to begin moving more of the world's surface to a habitable state through atmospheric processing, temperature control using greenhouse gases or space-based mirrors, the seeding of a water cycle using comets of ice and the introduction of thousands of variants of nanoorganism that digest the soil or purify the air. It is at stage 3 that colonists begin to settle the planet in earnest, and much of the resource extraction is also performed at this stage. The planet of Zycanthus is around halfway through stage 3 of the terraforming process.
   
   
4. Stage four begins to move a planet from a marginal world into a more comfortable home for humanity. The air is close to human-standard by now, and extremes of temperature are limited to the poles and equator. Following purification of planetside bodies of water or the introduction of water from ice comets, a truly self-sufficient ecosystem is cultivated, and agriculture moves from a desperate struggle against the elements to a profitable enterprise. Cities grow and the world ceases to be considered a backwater, sustaining a bustling economy and trade network with nearby planets.
   
   
5. Stage five is where a world truly becomes a desirable place to live. Most of the planet is fertile and verdant, although differences in temperature and ecosystem can still vary widely depending on latitude and longitude. Agriculture is by now a key export, and tourism may even become a factor as outsiders flock to experience the natural world that has been created. Extraction of resources begins to be limited by environmental constraints, as a world of this quality is too rare and costs too much to be sullied by mining and industry.
   
   
6. Stage six is a status achieved by relatively few planets across the Spiral Arm. Garden worlds or paradises, as they are often known, are blessed by fortunate geography or huge expense to be close to perfect for sustaining human life. Ecologies thrive, with vibrant habitats teeming with plant and animal life. Living on such a world becomes a status symbol in itself, and the rich and powerful flock to holiday in its lush forests and shining beaches. There is no greater prize than a garden world, and their loss to the Maelstrom is viewed as more tragic than almost anything else.

The processes and methodologies of terraforming vary widely between different human and alien cultures, and even within the varying franchises of the Epirian Foundation. The complexities of the process mean that each planet must be treated in a bespoke manner, with the terraforming tools used tailored to maximise the world's strengths and mitigate its weaknesses. When a world blessed with a few of the former but none of the latter is found, the battles to control it can be fiercer than any other.