The Last Hurrah

"The Last Hurrah" Quantum Series: Book 9

Action! Adventure! Karma!

Whoever said 'the pen is mightier than the sword' had obviously never encountered high-powered energy weapons. All General Albert McIntyre-Smythe (recently re-un-retired) knew for certain about that was, it wasn't him.

The Deannan Uncivil war was in full swing, and for most of it so far, the fascists appeared to be holding all the aces. With some sort of quantum field isolating the system from the rest of the physical universe, the Terran Empire was effectively powerless to intervene. All that stood in their way now, was the Loyalist Militia: a lot of angry locals, including retired military veterans with more patina than you'd find in a museum - folks who just wanted their abducted friends and relatives back, didn't like tin-pot wannabe dictators telling them how to live their lives, and most importantly - could handle a blaster a little.

Most were men and women who'd already tried to forget most of the things they were now determined to teach the young, well-equipped and smartly drilled fascists as a life-lesson. And, most importantly, they were no longer alone - among the Militia's allies, he counted the Vampire Underground, Deanna's criminal underworld, Beck the Badfeller - Deanna's most famous bounty hunter (and some super-secret device that allowed him to slip through time), the incredibly useful loderunner Celeste and its motley crew, and a weird secret weapon developed by an odd-looking feller with wild hair and no eyebrows who was supposed to be a quantum physicist.

As the time came at last for the forces of good and evil to face each other in a climatic final battle, if Smythe ever felt any amount of pity for his foe, then the sobering memories of the sights and sounds that greeted him at the liberation of Xanadu concentration camp rendered the impulse still-born.

It was time to end it.

There was no question that Deanna wasn't going to be torn to shreds in the process.

The only open question left was: could it be put back together again?