Excerpt+Giveaway: Cairns of Sainctuarie Science Fiction Series by Hawk MacKinney

Featuring the Cairns of Sainctuarie Science Fiction Series by Hawk MacKinney

From a rocky outcrop a battle-widowed Etkaa, gazed down at the death and upheaval. Rancid green Murian blood stanched the dusklit breezes from the haze-dimmed river marshlands. Nothing has been spared by the Green Dragon forces of Bleikovia. In skirmishes along the Feldon River, Etkaaâ’s mate is fatally wounded with deadly selvon poison. Through a gruesome mountain trek of icy blizzards, they elude the Green Dragon. The battered starving Feldovats reach the coast at Eedov City only to be confronted by their implacable enemy determined to destroy the remaining Klarvkon rabble. Taking passage on crowded Maalon freighters, the refugees escape toward a new life among their Maalon hosts. Enraged Bleikovats move against the Klarvkons, bringing indiscriminate bloodshed. War once again surfaces, as it did in the muddy filth along the Feldon River of Malfesov, and becomes a different kind of war.

Generations after the great Murian upheaval of the Malfesian War against the Bleikovats, the Accords between planets Terato and Myr are signed.

Provisional Outpost Terato is under construction near a farm where Teratoan orphan Eklam a’Qoc lives with his uncle and cousin. Inquisitive strong-minded Eklam, Ek to everyone in the village, is captivated by the off-worlders technology, and becomes an apprentice to the Outpost Terato’s Murian commander, Grand Duke Korvo. Uncle a’Qoc disapproves; wants nothing to do with these outlanders, wants their shimmering doorway portals-of-travel banned from Terato. As Outpost Terato becomes operational it seems to become a harbinger stirring ageless secrets of The Old Ones and their frightful weapons, of ancient Teratoan ruins, mysterious glowing lights, unexplained killings, a sacred book in a language no Teratoan can read, a moon that doesn’t behave like a moon in its wobbly orbit.

The threat of rift invasions seems long passed. Plentiful harvests abound. The Murian first-contact Terato Outpost has grown into the sprawling Terato-Murian Terminus Terato with a hub of relay portals reaching across the vast uncharted galactic expanses and connecting with its eon-extinct Lantaraan prehistory. An exploratory Terato-Murian Jupiterr outpost is established on the gas giant seventh planet, and its quantum and gravitational energies are used to power outpost portals for an archeological survey of the fourth planet, Eorthe. The Lantaraan database aboard Terato’s ancient Downday moon shows that one or more planets of the Solaris planets have apparently been lost. Expanded archeological records on other Lantaraan orbital bodies in the Solaris system show the fourth planet from the star—Eorthe—to be a sterile wasteland. Except it is not. Eorthe’s civilization is not to the level of the Murian Empire, but it is far advanced to those of a pastoral Terato. Terato and Eorthe form the confederated United Terran League under the nominal figurehead leader of League High Judikarr Eklam a’Qoc. Jupiterr outpost expands into a major League stronghold, Jupiterr Base, when civil unrest erupts in the League, the unexpected return of rift intrusions threatens, and the Murian Emperor Klarvko Celo is assassinated. As they prepare for confrontations with an unknown ancient enemy, the internal tensions on Myr and Eorthe push Murians and Teratoans to dangerous discords.

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Excerpt from The Bleikovat Event

The catafalque of the old Dowager Queen rested on the high rostrum of the Temple of the Goddess Myraa.  There was little ceremony to the cremation of dead.  Yet, all that had passed made this requiem for the Dowager Queen Klarvkaa Etkaa Bremanova Celovaa Bremanova symbol of the changes which had swept so many lives.  Long annuals before the ascendancy of The Klarvkon Dynasty, the massive wood and granite Temple to the Goddess Myraa had been destroyed in the firestorm which laid waste Eedov City.  After the close of the Malfesian War the temple was rebuilt, but not the city.  On the ashes of the old temple, immense columns rose above the sanctuary and vaults.  Iridescent alabaster and polished marbles greeted pilgrim supplicants who had come to the shoreline plains washed by the Green Sea.

Dowager Etkaa Klarvkaa…wife, myäat, founding matriarch of the Klarvkon Dynasty, gave hope from a time without hope.  As was her wish, she would be cremated on the soil of her birth, her ashes to mingle with those of her consort, Klarvko Celo.  Their son, His Imperial Majesty Klarvko Celo the Second, decreed it would be.  At the enormous base of the great temple…a spectacle never seen before and seldom since those times, came an undulating ocean of banners.  Some of clans which no longer existed, even the once-hated Green Dragon of Bleikovia.  Murians had taken her to their hearts…and never relinquished her.  Her shadow would reach across the centuries, and measure all who followed.

Buy the Series

• Book 1
• Book 2
• Book 3

About Hawk MacKinney

With postgraduate degrees and faculty positions in several medical universities, Hawk MacKinney has taught graduate courses in both the United States and Jerusalem. His professional writing includes articles on chordate neuroembryology, and aerospace research on muscle metabolic behavior in multi-orbital environments.

In addition, Hawk has authored several works of fiction including a historical romance Moccasin Trace which was nominated for both the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award. His Cairns of Sainctuarie Science Fiction Series and his Moccasin Hollow Mystery Series have received national and international attention.

• Website
• Sage Words Publishing

Giveaway

Hawk MacKinney will be awarding a $20 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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