Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat

[Commissar]

Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat

"You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime."

Sir Winston Churchill - Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat
May 13, 1940

Summary

The Empire is crumbling. Battered by Gallic invasion and internal rebellion, the end of days is fast approaching for the once mighty House of Bretonia. For the half million people stranded on the occupied industrial world of Leeds, it has already arrived. Gallic ground forces walk the cratered streets, backed by overwhelming firepower and the ever-present threat of bombardment delivered by massive orbital guns.

Lieutenant Commander Trevor Mason is a Leeds-born officer aboard the HMS Greaves, a Bretonian destroyer tasked with maintaining evacuation routes in the collapsing system. When the ship receives orders to abandon their home-world for safer territories Mason leads a mutiny that threatens to send Greaves to her destruction.

Elizabeth Stirling is looking for an escape. A surgical graduate trapped on Leeds when the planet fell, Elizabeth quickly found her skills pressed into service for the Gallic military. When the Bretonian resistance stages a daring attack on the barracks she calls home to recover a captured escape pod from Greaves, she may just have her chance.

Beset by Gallic divisions, fading supplies and trailed by a shadowy figure in faded red armour, Mason and Stirling must navigate a war-torn world where the very environment is hostile to human life. But, out in the chaos of anarchy, the rules are different and two people can change the fate of a city.

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May you live in interesting times.
| Sarah McFarlen | Jane Hartman |