Steven Landry - The Maids of Chateau Vernet

“Look, a road.” Deborah pointed to a north-south track off to the west.

“Too narrow. Let’s try for that area a little farther west, looks like a meadow. I think we can make it.” Hiram tugged on the left riser, steering the chute toward the small glen. They continued falling at an uncomfortable rate.

They passed over the road. Rows of men marched south.

“Hiram, where are we?”

“I don’t know,” he shouted. But we probably shouldn’t have dropped the weapons. He looked a little closer as they passed over the marching columns. A thousand identical faces turned toward them. They weren’t the faces of men. Alien, yet familiar. Optics glinted in the sun.

“What the hell are they?” Deborah yelled, horror in her voice.

Hiram couldn’t take his eyes off of the mechanical things. The faces reminded him of combat robots. He closed his eyes, squeezed them tight for a few second before opening them. The optics caught the light of the morning sun and threw it back at him. “Robots,” Hiram said. The ground was coming up too fast to speculate more on the subject.

“They look like mutilated relatives of the combat robots,” she said.

“We’ll find out what they are soon enough.” Hiram wrapped both arms around Deborah. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, preparing for another rough landing on his bad ankle. “Remember to bend your knees and roll when we hit.”

At least I’m not alone this time.

Steven Landry is a husband, father, soldier, engineer, and consultant. He is a retired U.S. Army officer, a former FEMA training and exercise planner, and a risk management consultant specializing in weapons of mass destruction. He holds degrees in Chemical Engineering and Business Administration from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University. Steven lives with his family in Maryland. His first novel, The Legend of Indian Stream , a science-fiction based alternative history novel of the Civil War, is available on Kindle and in print at:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1545487561

Steven is also the editor and co-writer (with Kate Lashley, Dan Cassenti, and Larry Garnett among others) of the comic science fiction anthology Old Farts in Space which is available on Kindle and in print at:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0692187790

Steven is on Facebook and The Legend of Indian Stream has its own Facebook page.

Katie Rae Sank lives with her husband and daughter in Maryland and works as an IT project manager in the Finance industry. She focuses her creative energy on reading and writing science fiction and wrestling with the characters living in her head that all think they deserve the lead role in her next literary project.

Copyright © 2018 Steven Landry and Katherine R. Sank

Published by Pine Ridge Technical Risk Management, L.L.C.

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9781731098122