From the Prometheus Award-nominated series—Book 1 is a 2026 Prometheus Award Finalist for Best Novel.
The Long Night is over. The ash is clearing. And the orbital defense AI called Damocles still owns the sky.
Shaifennen Roehe is sixteen years old, five feet nothing, and meaner than a sack of wet roosters when the situation calls for it. She is also Hesperides Colony's most effective corporal, which is either a compliment or a warning depending on how you look at it.
The skizzer swarms—giant predatory insects that are supposed to hibernate through the northern winters—are not hibernating. They are swarming earlier, bigger, and angrier than anything the colony's histories describe. When one of those swarms hits Twelvety Homestead, Shai loses people she cannot replace. The answer to why the swarms have gone wrong is somewhere on the Southern Continent, and Shai is going to find it.
What she finds is larger than anyone guessed.
A thought-extinct alien species—not quite dead, not quite extinct, and not quite what the history vids suggested. A buried Mutual Prosperity artificial intelligence, waking up, very interested in meeting the colonists of New Vermont Prefecture, and extremely willing to help in ways nobody asked for. And enough pre-war hardware buried in the wreck of an assault shuttle to change every equation Shai's people have been working with.
Meanwhile, Greenline Town is building airships. And the orbital AI called Damocles is still up there, waiting for someone to make a mistake big enough to earn a response.
Stormjammer is the second book in the Kiss for Damocles series, set in J. Kenton Pierce's Tales from the Long Night universe. It is military science fiction built the old way: earned action, characters worth caring about, earned victory, and consequences that land. For readers who want their space opera gritty, their libertarian themes embedded in story rather than lecture, and their protagonists capable of punching above their weight class.
The Prometheus Award-nominated series continues. Shai Roehe does not stop. Neither do the problems.
Genre: Science Fiction
The Long Night is over. The ash is clearing. And the orbital defense AI called Damocles still owns the sky.
Shaifennen Roehe is sixteen years old, five feet nothing, and meaner than a sack of wet roosters when the situation calls for it. She is also Hesperides Colony's most effective corporal, which is either a compliment or a warning depending on how you look at it.
The skizzer swarms—giant predatory insects that are supposed to hibernate through the northern winters—are not hibernating. They are swarming earlier, bigger, and angrier than anything the colony's histories describe. When one of those swarms hits Twelvety Homestead, Shai loses people she cannot replace. The answer to why the swarms have gone wrong is somewhere on the Southern Continent, and Shai is going to find it.
What she finds is larger than anyone guessed.
A thought-extinct alien species—not quite dead, not quite extinct, and not quite what the history vids suggested. A buried Mutual Prosperity artificial intelligence, waking up, very interested in meeting the colonists of New Vermont Prefecture, and extremely willing to help in ways nobody asked for. And enough pre-war hardware buried in the wreck of an assault shuttle to change every equation Shai's people have been working with.
Meanwhile, Greenline Town is building airships. And the orbital AI called Damocles is still up there, waiting for someone to make a mistake big enough to earn a response.
Stormjammer is the second book in the Kiss for Damocles series, set in J. Kenton Pierce's Tales from the Long Night universe. It is military science fiction built the old way: earned action, characters worth caring about, earned victory, and consequences that land. For readers who want their space opera gritty, their libertarian themes embedded in story rather than lecture, and their protagonists capable of punching above their weight class.
The Prometheus Award-nominated series continues. Shai Roehe does not stop. Neither do the problems.
Genre: Science Fiction
Used availability for J Kenton Pierce's Stormjammer