The adventures of a modern man plunged into an alternate-history world of nineteenth century technology, slavery, drugs, and competing human and nonhuman empires.
DONNELLY’S WAR
Rex Knight, an Afghan War vet, is mysteriously teleported from a peaceful surveying job to the semi-lawless frontier of an alternate Appalachia. Slavery and bootleg cocaine from the blue winter-sloe nut finance the murderous warlords. Rex witnesses the oppression and murder inflicted on the indigenous Wapitis by Warlord Donnelly and the not quite human Ichneumons.
The Wapitis, locked in a deadly struggle to avoid slavery and extinction, appeal to Rex, who looks like a Prussian, to help them obtain rifles and ammunition. The world straddling Prussian Empire bans the sale of firearms to all indigenous people and hangs anyone caught selling firearms to them. Rex agrees to help the Wapiti and a ferocious war engulfs the frontier.
BOILERMAKER
Rex Knight is a survivor and intends to make a life for himself in the quasi-civilized Erden where he was mysteriously teleported. Opportunities and hazards exist for a modern man in a nineteenth century world of Civil War era technology, slavery, drugs, cotton, and competing colonial empires. With Rex’s help, the indigenous Wapitis have prevailed in their confrontation with warlord James Donnelly. Unfortunately, that success has earned him the odium of the not-quite-human Ichneumon emperor who has much gold and a predilection for hiring bounty hunters to collect his enemies’ heads.
Rex figured an alien emperor couldn’t be any worse than the Afghanistan Taliban and focused on making a living in an alien world. He believed the new river steamboats and hauling cargos offered an opportunity to build a business, if their boilers would stop exploding. A young female slave claims to have solutions to that problem and Rex’s Ichneumon predicament. She’s willing to barter. He’s not sure either of them can afford her price for helping him.
CAROOM’S RAID
Rex Knight has a contract to deliver the Wapiti’s cargo of prized winter-sloe nuts to Port Delta, a risky voyage of 1000 kilometers down the pirate infested Erie River. East from the port, along the Gulf coast, is Orleans where Rex’s partner, Amy Caroom, an escaped slave, wants to go. She intends to collect a debt owed her by Herr Purnell, her former owner and father. Rex thinks Amy’s idea is reckless since her father has posted a large reward for her capture, dead or alive. Then the Ichneumons arrest Rex while he’s collecting the gold payment for the cargo. He escapes the merciless humanoids’ dungeon, only to have his alluring partner drug him, and find himself, the gold, and his boat in Orleans. Then there’s the matter of the Ichneumon navy waiting on the Erie River to confiscate the gold and his steamboat, the Mischief.
NITRO WILD
The Prussian and Ichneumon Empires are vying for dominance. Endangered by the clashing empires are Rex’s friends, the indigenous Wapiti and an escaped slave, Amy Caroom who is, among other things, his partner in a river steamboat and a machine shop.
The Ichneumon army is poised to ravage the Wapiti homeland when the winter ends. The Prussians are willing to help the Wapiti, but lack to means to stop the Ichneumon armored riverboats with their new exploding shells. Complicating matters for the Prussian army is the threat of rebellion by the slave owners in their territories over the emperor’s edict outlawing slavery. Rumors of a coup d’état in Berlin are rampant. The Mongol Empire of Prussia’s eastern border is mad over the stopping of the slave trade and threaten invasion. The Ichneumons sense opportunity to deal their rival a knockout blow. Their army will help the rebellious plantation owners seize control of the Prussian territories along with the Wapiti homeland.
Rex will need all his wits, shrewdness, audacity, and even duplicity to survive