The Age of Scorpio

1987, THE HEIGHT OF THE COLD WAR. For Captain Vadim Scorlenski and the rest of the 15th Brigade, being scrambled to unfamiliar territory at no notice, without a brief or proper equipment, is more or less expected; but even by his standards, their mission to one of the United States’ busiest cities stinks…

World War III was over in a matter of hours, and Vadim and most of his squad are dead, but not done. What’s happened to them, and to millions of civilians around the world, goes beyond any war crime; and Vadim and his team—Skull, Mongol, Farm Boy, Princess, Gulag, the Fräulein and New Boy—won’t rest until they’ve seen justice done.

2020. First contact with the alien Ceph. A team of nanosuited soldiers led by Major Barnes, codename Prophet, were sent in to the Lingshan Islands. Few survived. But the alien menace was held back.

2023. The Ceph took New York. A dying Prophet passed on his nanosuit to a Marine named Alcatraz. Once again the suit’s powerful technology saved the day.

Now death has returned to the ruins of New York. Enclosed by the massive Liberty Dome, controlled by the powerful and corrupt company CELL, the city is a battleground. CELL troopers, resistance fighters and deadly Ceph stalk the streets. And hidden in the city is a secret that will destroy the world.

Set between CRYSIS 2 and CRYSIS 3, these hard-hitting stories tell of the world’s decline into a corporate nightmare and the beginnings of the resistance. Perfect as an introduction to the world of CRYSIS, they also provide fascinating background and detail for existing players. Featuring fan-favourite characters such as Prophet, Psycho, Alcatraz and more, the linked stories build up into one shattering narrative.

Three hundred years in our future, in a world of alien infiltrators, religious hackers, a vast convoying nation of Nomads, city sized orbital elevators, and a cyborg pirate king who believes himself to be a mythological demon Jakob is having a bad day:

“Nothing gets in the way of a hangover like being reactivated by your old C.O and told to track down an alien killing machine. The same kind of killing machine that wiped out my entire squad. And now it’s in my hometown.

My name is Jakob Douglas, ex-special forces. I fought Them. Just like we’ve all been doing for 60 bloody years. But I thought my part in that was done with.

My boss has other ideas. If I didn’t find the infiltrator then he’d let the Grey Lady loose on me. And believe me; even They’ve got nothing on her. So I took the job. It went to shit even faster than normal.

And now I’m on the run with this teenage hacker who’s had enough of prostitution. The only people I can rely on want to turn the internet into God. And now it turns out that They aren’t quite what we’d all thought.

I’ve been to the bottom of the sea and the top of the sky and beyond trying to get to the truth.

And I still can’t get far enough away from the Grey Lady.

All things considered I’d rather be back at home deep in a whiskey bottle.”

Veteran is a fast paced, intricately plotted violent SF Thriller set in a dark future against the backdrop of a seemingly never ending war against an unknowable and implacable alien enemy.