The Deathworlders

EPUB

The Deathworlders

For centuries, the galactic bureaucracy of the Interspecies Dominion considered it impossible for the planets classified as “deathworlds” to produce intelligent civilizations. The daily challenges of simply surviving on those disaster-wracked, plague-ridden, predator-haunted hellholes would surely favour base animals driven by killer instinct rather than thinking sophonts, and so they were ignored by Dominion surveyors and science teams.

The native civilizations of the high-end deathworld known as “Earth,” therefore, came as something of a surprise.

It came as a surprise to humanity as well. Without any other reference point but their own deadly home planet, humans had always considered themselves to be physically unimpressive. Not as strong as a bear, not as fast as a cheetah, not as sharp-eyed as a hawk…But in reality, a human being is one of the most dangerous things ever to evolve in the Milky Way galaxy.

As an ancient and malicious threat slowly turns its attention towards this anomaly, how will the human race be changed by the revelation that the alien life forms we have long dreamed of meeting are vastly inferior to us in every way?

And how will interstellar society react when an ordinary bartender from Texas can tear the worst monsters in the galaxy limb from limb?

“The Deathworlders” is © Philip Richard Johnson, AKA Hambone, Hambone3110 and HamboneHFY. Some rights are reserved: The copyright holder reserves all commercial rights and ownership of this intellectual property. Permission is given for other parties to share, redistribute and copy this work under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This work contains deliberate mentions of real persons, places and trademarks, which are made purely for reasons of verisimilitude under nominative fair use. These mentions have not been endorsed or sponsored by those persons or by the owners or governing bodies of those trademarks or places. All song lyrics, dialog, text or other material from copyrighted media quoted in this work are the property of their respective owners, and their use is intended as respectful homage.

The events and characters portrayed in this story are fictional and any resemblance to actual persons or events is accidental.

The author does not automatically share or endorse the opinions and behaviour of the characters.

Please note that this series has collaborated with other authors, and as such some chapters may be confusing if you have not read those authors’ works.

For essential information to help make sense of this book, check out the Essential Reading. Although the author hopes that the story makes sense on its own, some of the characters and themes introduced later in the story will be clearer and more familiar if you have followed this list.

To get as much JVerse as you can, check out the recommended reading order compiled by Galrock0 and Fourbags.

This story is ongoing and new chapters are written on a monthly basis. If you wish to support the author, then please consider pledging on my Patreon page.

Alternatively, if you’d rather just drop me a one-off then my tip jar is at https://paypal.me/HamboneHFY

Thank you very much for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

—Hambone

2023

2022