War is Coming! Nigel Shirazi, the Speaker of the Merc Guild, knows that war is coming and he’s not ready. He needs to build up the mercenary forces after years of war, and he’s proclaimed the Phoenix Initiative to give people who want to start new companies the opportunity to do so. CASPers are cheaper and financed at lower rates, and the government of Earth is offering bounties to take the mercs from alien races off the planet. Now is the time! Hearing the call to arms, a diverse group of startups, including a number of non-conventional ones and ones that originated on some of the colony worlds, have just taken their first missions. These are some of their stories. Welcome back to the Four Horsemen universe, where only a willingness to fight and die for money separates Humans from the majority of the other races. Edited by bestselling authors and universe creators Mark Wandrey and Chris Kennedy, “The Phoenix First Missions” includes seventeen all-new stories in the Four Horsemen universe by a variety of bestselling authors—and some you may not have heard of…yet. Are you ready to strap on a CASPer and go out to make your fortune? Then it’s time to read the stories of these mercs and learn the lessons they’ve already figured out for you!
Authors
Casey Moores was a USAF rescue/special ops C-130 pilot for over 17 years- airdropping, air refueling, and flying into tiny blacked-out dirt airstrips in bad places using night vision goggles. He’s been to those places and done those things with those people. Now he lives a quieter life, translating those experiences to fiction. He has written in the Four Horsemen universe with stories in numerous anthologies, his debut novel, These Things We Do, and much more to come. In the near future he will be expanding in the Salvage System and Fallen World universes as well. He was also a finalist in the FantaSci fantasy story contest with his short story “A Quaint Pastime”. A Colorado native and Air Force Academy graduate, he is now a naturalized Burqueño, retired in New Mexico.
Kevin’s head has been in the clouds since he was old enough to read. Ask him and he’ll tell you that he still wants to be an astronaut. Kevin has a diverse background in space and space science education. As an adult, he's managed the world-renowned U.S. Space Camp program and operated two Challenger Learning Centers. A retired Army officer, Kevin continues to work with space every day. Kevin is the author of the science fiction novel SLEEPER PROTOCOL (2016) which Publisher's Weekly called "an emotionally powerful debut." His military science fiction novel RUNS IN THE FAMILY (2016) has gained a growing legion of fans. He continues to work on sequels for both novels as well as short fiction and an alternate history novel.
A Webster Award winner and three-time Dragon Award finalist, Chris Kennedy is a Science Fiction/Fantasy author, speaker, and small-press publisher who has written over 50 books and published more than 400 others. Get his free book, “Shattered Crucible,” at his website, https://chriskennedypublishing.com. Called “fantastic” and “a great speaker,” he has coached hundreds of beginning authors and budding novelists on how to self-publish their stories at a variety of conferences, conventions, and writing guild presentations. He is the author of the award-winning #1 bestseller, “Self-Publishing for Profit: How to Get Your Book Out of Your Head and Into the Stores.” Chris lives in Coinjock, North Carolina, with his wife. Follow Chris on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ckpublishing/.
