Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Neutral Ground: In Love and War, #5
    Neutral Ground: In Love and War, #5
    Neutral Ground: In Love and War, #5
    Ebook63 pages45 minutes

    Neutral Ground: In Love and War, #5

    By Cora Buhlert

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Two old soldiers share a coffee and fight for their lives

     

    The Republic of United Planets and the Empire of Worlds have been at war for eighty-eight years now. But nonetheless, Colonel Brian Mayhew, deputy commander of the Republican Special Commando Forces, meets with his Imperial counterpart General Roderick Crawford to discuss an incident that's a problem for both of them. For two of their elite soldiers fell in love and ran away with each other, an embarrassment to the Republic and the Empire both.

     

    However, this secret meeting is not as secret as the two men think. And so Mayhew and Crawford are soon fighting for their lives side by side…

     

    This is a novelette of 9500 words or approximately 32 print pages in the In Love and War series by Hugo finalist Cora Buhlert, but may be read as a standalone.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPegasus Pulp Publishing
    Release dateNov 9, 2020
    ISBN9781393430438
    Neutral Ground: In Love and War, #5
    Author

    Cora Buhlert

    Cora Buhlert was born and bred in North Germany, where she still lives today – after time spent in London, Singapore, Rotterdam and Mississippi. Cora holds an MA degree in English from the University of Bremen and is currently working towards her PhD. Cora has been writing, since she was a teenager, and has published stories, articles and poetry in various international magazines. When she is not writing, she works as a translator and teacher.

    Read more from Cora Buhlert

    Related to Neutral Ground

    Titles in the series (18)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Science Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      ‘The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store’ Weaves A Tale Of Love And Community

      Oct 12, 2023

      James McBride, one of today’s great American novelists, cares about his characters. In a recent episode of “The New Yorker Radio Hour” podcast, the award-winning author professed that he’s not someone who “creates characters, and runs them up a tree,

      2 min read

    • Article

      Into The Abyss

      Nov 4, 2022

      Into The Abyss
      3 min read

    • Article

      Michael Henderson on Radio

      Jun 29, 2023

      HOW THE LAUDED ONES FALL from favour is a mystery. It seems only the day before yesterday that Kingsley Amis and Iris Murdoch were accorded an honoured place in our literary life. Now they have dropped off fashion’s cliff, though it’s always wise to

      3 min read

    • Article

      Quotients

      May 7, 2020

      Quotients
      8 min read

    • Article

      Mirth And Mayhem

      Feb 2, 2020

      Tough times call for desperate measures. The Great Depression had Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers because nothing was so bad that it couldn’t be sorted by a vat of Brylcreem and dancing backwards in high heels. As 2020 begins with fire and fury, we ge

      2 min read

    • Article

      Stranger in a Strange Land: Dave Eggers’s ‘The Parade’

      Feb 14, 2019

      Eggers is a master of point of view; you adhere to his protagonist, even if you have little or nothing in common with him, and even when you’re not entirely on his side. The post Stranger in a Strange Land: Dave Eggers’s ‘The Parade’ appeared first o

      5 min read

    • Article

      Readers’ Letters

      Nov 17, 2021

      SIR: I must applaud William Cook (Who was Blackie the donkey?, October issue) in maintaining the tradition of never allowing the facts to mar a good story. Don Mackay arrived at Jarandilla de la Vera first, not in the wake of Hugh Whittow of the Sun.

      5 min read

    • Article

      What Are You Watching? Readers Recommend 'Occupied,' 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel'

      Jun 22, 2018

      WHAT ARE YOU WATCHING?  Write and tell us at whatareyouwatching@csmonitor.com. While there’s plenty to like about HBO’s Silicon Valley – the playful teasing of the ultraliberal, ultrahipster denizens of the San Francisco Bay Area; the perfect repres

      1 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Aug 7, 2019

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      Oubliettes Play

      Jul 23, 2020

      Oubliettes Play
      2 min read

    • Article

      A Potter For Our Times

      Sep 1, 2021

      WHEN perusing this attractively packaged biography of ceramics impresario Josiah Wedgwood (1730–95), your reviewer was prompted to recall one of the few joyous moments of lockdown, Channel 4’s The Great Pottery Throw Down (GPTD): a show that reveals

      5 min read

    • Article

      The William Trevor Reader: “Events at Drimaghleen”

      Jun 6, 2023

      This might actually win the award for the bleakest story in the 'Collected.' The post The William Trevor Reader: “Events at Drimaghleen” appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Fangs To Come

      Dec 20, 2019

      Fangs To Come
      3 min read

    • Article

      Notes From The Isles

      Apr 14, 2023

      Yet again nemesis has smothered my hubris. Having boasted of my expertise in getting the car up our steep, icy track, I awoke to find myself snowed in, near the top of a glacier, totally cut off from all traffic. A nephew and his wife, who were comin

      4 min read

    • Article

      Back to Blackstuff

      Oct 26, 2023

      Back to Blackstuff
      3 min read

    • Article

      Four Of A Kind

      May 3, 2023

      Four Of A Kind
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Old Un's Notes

      Jan 11, 2023

      Just before Christmas, historian Lady Antonia Fraser composed a verse on confronting that age-old companion to faith – doubt – at Farm Street Church, Mayfair. Nick Downes is one of the most treasured cartoonists at Oldie Towers (see above right for a

      4 min read

    • Article

      To The Manure Born

      Jun 1, 2020

      To The Manure Born
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Refusal To Mourn The Deaths, By Gunfire, Of Three Men In Brooklyn

      Jan 1, 2019

      And at times, didn’t the whole countrytry to break his skin?—Tim Seibles You strike your one good match to watch its bloomand jook, a swan song just before a nightwind comes to snuff it. That’s the kind of dayit’s been. Your Black & Mild, now, useles

      7 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Corner

      Oct 18, 2023

      I took my mother-in-law to Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors. One of the attendants said, ‘Keep her moving, sir. We're stock-taking.’ Les Dawson Brevity is the soul of lingerie, as the Petticoat said to the Chemise. Dorothy Parker How different, ho

      1 min read

    • Article

      How White Supremacists Used Mardi Gras to Enforce Racial Division

      Aug 4, 2020

      The stage is arranged, the Ku-Klux pageant begins. On March 4, 1867, a Monday at 10 am, 2,000 firemen jostle left and right into parade columns on Canal Street, near the levee of the river. Their costume is full dress uniform. Marshals from the Firem

      5 min read

    • Article

      When In Rome!

      Nov 17, 2022

      When In Rome!
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Book of Loki

      Mar 12, 2018

      The Book of Loki
      20 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Neutral Ground

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Neutral Ground - Cora Buhlert

      In Love and War

      pinstripe

      For eighty-eight years, the galaxy has been torn apart by the endless war between the Republic of United Planets and the Empire of Worlds.

      Anjali Patel and Mikhail Grikov are soldiers on opposing sides of that war. They meet, fall in love and decide to go on the run together.

      Pursued by both the Empire and the Republic, they struggle to stay alive and free and prove that their love is stronger than the war…

      pinstripe

      Neutral Ground

      pinstripe

      Stecker II was an independent world that had the fortune (or misfortune, depending on your point of view) of being located at roughly equal distance from both the Republic of United Planets and the Empire of Worlds, the two powers that had plunged the entire galaxy into an eighty-eight year war.

      Stecker II was small and unimportant enough that it was able to maintain its independence in spite of two hungry powers sitting on its doorstep. Or maybe, neither of the two dominant powers of the galaxy felt that it was in their best interest to absorb Stecker II, because they had other uses for it.

      Cause due to its strategic location, Stecker II was the perfect venue for occasional diplomatic initiatives to end the war or at least negotiate temporary ceasefires and prisoner exchanges. Furthermore, the planet was a notorious nest of spies, also due to its strategic location.

      The man who strutted briskly through the streets of Rath, capital of Stecker II, had come here for exactly those reasons, though you certainly wouldn’t know it by the looks of him. He was in his fifties, his reddish hair and precisely clipped beard already threaded with grey. His body was stocky, his skin bore the pallor of someone who spent too much time in space or behind a desk, his eyes were a washed-out, watery blue. To the casual observer, he might have been a spacer on shore leave, for he was clad in the standard spacer’s garb of brown synth-leather jacket, grey utility pants and a plain beige shirt.

      However, appearances could be deceiving. And so this man was no mere spacer on leave. He was Colonel Brian Mayhew, deputy commander of the Republican Special Commando Forces, and he had come to Stecker II to commit what many would probably consider treason. Not so Brian Mayhew, however. As far as he was concerned, he was doing everything in his power to bring the eighty-eight year war between the Republic and the Empire to an end and to make sure that the Republic came out on top.

      It was summer in the Southern hemisphere of Stecker II and so the street along which Mayhew was walking was lined with planters full of flowers and trees that rained bright pink petals onto the sidewalk. The buildings on both sides of the street were low-rise, a mix of residential units, restaurants and retail shops. Everything looked calm, peaceful, pleasant. And yet, Mayhew barely spared a glance for his surroundings. After all, he was a man on a mission.

      He spotted the meeting place up ahead. A café with a large patio called the Jasmine Garden. Briefly, Mayhew wondered whether the pink blossoms were jasmine. For he had the vague memory that jasmine was white. Megan would have known for certain. She’d always had a thing for flowers.

      An old hurt made itself known in his heart, bumping up against a much more recent and surprisingly strong pain. Mayhew pushed both ruthlessly down. There was no use in dwelling on the past. Not when he had work to do.

      Mayhew quickly scanned the tables under the brightly coloured parasols of the patio. There were young couples on dates, a gaggle of elderly women exchanging gossip and memories, a group of giggling teenagers, a lone young man clad all

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1