Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Semper Audacia
    Semper Audacia
    Semper Audacia
    Ebook69 pages51 minutes

    Semper Audacia

    By M. Pax

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The last soldier's last stand.

    Alone. Leda is the last living member of the brigade, the sole defender of her world. War took everyone she knew, leaving her in the company of memories and ghosts. Or is it madness? The siren blares. The enemy is coming. Or is it? The approaching vessel isn’t a friendly design, but it answers with the correct code. Leda must figure out whether the arrival is reinforcements or the final assault. In an aging flyer, she ventures out to meet her world’s fate, the last stand.

    Space opera. Short story.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherM. Pax
    Release dateApr 28, 2017
    ISBN9781386495123
    Semper Audacia
    Author

    M. Pax

    Author for those who love to leave this world, M. Pax is the author of the space opera adventure series, The Backworlds, and the weird-western, steampunk series, The Rifters. Fantasy, science fiction, and the weird beckons to her. She blames Oregon, a source of endless inspiration. She enjoys exploring its quirky corners in her Jeep.

    Read more from M. Pax

    Related to Semper Audacia

    Related ebooks

    Science Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Forfeit

      Jan 1, 2021

      Forfeit
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Dragon’s Perspective

      Jun 10, 2022

      There once lived a dragon named Deathwing. Well, at least that’s what they called him. Deathwing was growing old, far too old for his liking. The joints of his claws ached and groaned under his ever-growing weight and his scales were beginning to los

      18 min read

    • Article

      In Search Of . . .

      Feb 1, 2019

      In Search Of . . .
      7 min read

    • Article

      Paper Princess

      Apr 1, 2023

      Paper Princess
      3 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Jul 11, 2022

      One of the great joys of reading fiction is getting an insight into cultures and countries different from your own. Broadening your horizons through novels is a simple and easy way to increase empathy for others, and this week we have a couple of bri

      2 min read

    • Article

      10 Literary Witches To Hex Trump

      Mar 24, 2017

      In case you hadn’t heard, witches across America—including Lana Del Rey—are uniting to take down Trump via a binding spell, which calls on the spirits to keep the President from doing harm (it already seems to be working). Covens, communities, and so

      5 min read

    • Article

      Crescent City

      Dec 1, 2021

      Crescent City
      5 min read

    • Article

      Hope Springs

      Feb 22, 2021

      The Thin Places in the title of Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s intense memoir-cum-nature book are “places where a veil is lifted away and light streams in”. They are pools of stillness in a “broken, burning and bleeding world”. They are remote havens where t

      2 min read

    • Article

      To Save Arrhinsal

      Nov 1, 2021

      Tolin lives on Arrhinsal, an island that floats in the sky two miles above the land below. One day, while hunting in the maze of tunnels that run through the island’s thick hedges, he encounters a girl who, her sword raised, has turned to face a huge

      6 min read

    • Article

      Concerning The Future Of Souls

      Mar 19, 2024

      As a toddler she had caused a sensation in her family when she announced she wanted to live in a little hole like the ant. Not an ant, the ant. This might have been misheard. She was an easygoing child, not particularly thoughtful and stubbornly inar

      13 min read

    • Article

      The Bridle

      Oct 10, 2021

      Saliva pooled on her tongue beneath the rusty depressor. She endured a constant urge to swallow, afraid of choking on her own fluids. The taste of metal and blood are so akin, it is easy to mistake one for the other. This early in the day, blood was

      11 min read

    • Article

      Diablo IV

      May 2, 2023

      Diablo IV
      4 min read

    • Article

      Dark Dweller

      Jan 25, 2023

      Dark Dweller
      6 min read

    • Article

      Roll Up, Roll Up!

      May 30, 2023

      Roll Up, Roll Up!
      5 min read

    • Article

      Exploring The Boundaries

      May 31, 2018

      The human body: a horse gliding through a field. A monkey skipping between branches. A comet hurtling through the black moors of space. The human body can be these things, or anything, without pain. Sontag famously declared that “everyone who is born

      16 min read

    • Article

      Perfect Prose II

      May 15, 2020

      Perfect Prose II
      4 min read

    • Article

      CIRCLING The DRAGONS

      Jan 25, 2022

      CIRCLING The DRAGONS
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Primeval Comic Book

      Aug 1, 2017

      The Primeval Comic Book
      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Semper Audacia

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Semper Audacia - M. Pax

      Semper Audacia

      © 2011 M. Pax

      All rights reserved

      Book trailer by TruNeVaR. http://www.angelfire.com/scifi2/trunevar/ email: TrueRaven@lycos.com

      Semper Audacia edited by: Unbridled Editor, http://unbridlededitor.com/

      An Untethered Realms World

      This ebook is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are fictional. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons is entirely coincidental.

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment, and may not be re-sold or given away without express written permission from the author.

      Your FREE ebook is waiting. Enter my dimension and become an M. Pax Reader.

      Click here to get started:

      http://mpaxauthor.com/newsletter/

      Semper Audacia

      by M. Pax

      Rrr. Rrrrrr. RrrrRrrrrr. The claxon blasted through the outpost. Leda vaulted onto her feet, reaching for the rings hanging above her bunk. Empty berths above, below and beside hers lined the sloping walls of the dome, their hollow echoes adding to the siren’s cries pulsing over her nerves. Urgent. She readied for duty, the only one answering Baird Defense Station’s call to post, the last soldier standing.

      One at a time, she plucked off the rings and activated them. When snapped into place, the circlets formed pieces of armor. Feet. Legs. Hips. Torso. Shoulders. Arms. Hands. She held off on the neck piece and helmet, and attached her weaponry next, the holster clicking in a lonely ricochet against the appropriate plates where magnets held it firm. The blaster powered up, priming.

      Not yet fully awake, Leda stretched, cracking her neck one way then the other, not needing coherent thought to respond as the alarm demanded, grabbing onto things to transform her from guardian caretaker into consummate warrior. She snarled, ready to hit feral and fast, with an unbridled force she had sworn oath to when joining the brigade. A brigade which had contracted to one. To her.

      Onto the protections shielding her legs and waist she affixed hand grenades, acid gums and cutter arrays. When fully armed, she moved her thick, shoulder-length braid, dark as the depths of space, out of the way and clacked on the band of neck armor. She slung the helmet ring over her holster and whirled toward the stairway to discover what danger threatened her and her world.

      The air crackled with a buzz of baritone sound and sensation, prickles which strummed in Leda’s ears then along her spine, biting into her wrist and winding their way into her veins. Her head spun and suddenly the station roared with the bluster of the entire brigade springing up. Inert gears freed from an eternal sleep, their phantom boots thundered through the utilitarian corridors.

      Ducts striped the walls horizontally and energy lines banded them vertically. Stairwells spiraled down into tubular passageways. Very few windows let in the raw sunlight illuminating the defensive outpost every twenty-nine hours. The march of Leda’s fallen unit burst past her. Rugar. Dris. All of the others.

      The claxon blared louder. Leda blinked. She stood alone, tall and imposing, unspilled tears brightening her sometimes green, sometimes blue eyes, mourning once ago times.

      Once ago, the brigade packed into all the spaces, jostling Leda and her rings as she struggled into her armor, drumming past her, limbs and shoulders knocking into hers. Her comrades carelessly aimed blasters and hurled insults, attempting to distill the trepidation of meeting a foe armed with overwhelming power and numbers, an enemy none of them had ever seen. The missiles and flyers hurled at Leda and her regiment were known well enough, but not the beings who launched them.

      Posterior Cava section, Leda.

      The protective armor around her neck made it impossible to nod, so she tapped on the helmet near her ear, but not hard enough to give herself a headache. I heard, Rugar.

      Call formations. You take Squadron Elseviar. See you when it’s all over.

      Her sometimes blue eyes stared at his armor-clad back burdened with weaponry, knowing she would lose him, but she hoped not today.

      Dris, Leda called to a fellow female warrior, back us up with that cannon. Leda’s plated hand gestured at the weapon hoisted in a cavalier

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1