Military Science Fiction & Space Opera
Stories from the frontier
Book One · The Dust Runners Series
On sale August 11, 2026 · Pre-order now
The Swarm doesn't negotiate. It doesn't retreat. It just keeps coming, until something worse gets in its way.
When the colony of Gideon's Gate comes under siege, the Dust Runners are the last line standing between the settlers and annihilation. They're outnumbered, outgunned, and losing ground, until they find him. Half a ton of alien-human hybrid, covered in battle-scarred armor plating, with claws built for tearing and eyes that burn gold when something deep inside him finally wakes up. Someone built him to be a weapon. Someone else buried that secret under a hundred and twenty-six graves. The Dust Runners call him Scraps.
He was never supposed to choose a side. But sometimes it takes a monster to kill a bigger monster.
Red Dust is a hard-charging science fiction adventure about found family, buried truth, and what it means to fight for people who were never supposed to matter to you.
An Excerpt from Red Dust
Reader Advisory
What follows is one of the hardest passages in the book. It deals with the death of a wife and an unborn child, and it does not flinch. Consider this the clearly marked exit, and fair warning to the faint of heart. Everyone else, read on.
Captain Reeve remembers what the Swarm took from him.
It took me fourteen hours to reach Lagos. Judging by what I found, I was about three days too late.
The Swarm had landed on the beaches. The same beaches where I’d learned to swim. The same waters where my father taught me to fish. They came out of the waves, nightmares given flesh. Moved through the town in hours. Killed everything that breathed.
There was no defense. No warning. No time. Just monsters pouring up from the shore while people tried to run. Tried to hide. Tried to survive.
They didn’t survive.
I found Maya in our house. What was left of her. She’d barricaded herself in the bedroom and pushed furniture against the door. She found my old service pistol in the closet.
She’d fired it. Four shots. I counted the casings on the floor.
It wasn’t enough. It was never going to be enough. But she’d tried. My Maya had tried.
The surprise she’d wanted to tell me about was still in the bathroom. A pregnancy test on the counter. Two pink lines.
I don’t remember what I did after that. I’m told I didn’t speak for three days. They found me sitting in the rubble of my house, holding her hand. I had to be sedated before they could evacuate me.
I just remember waking up in a military hospital in Madrid and feeling something inside me go quiet. Go still. Go cold.
I haven’t felt warm since.
The Swarm killed my wife. The Swarm killed my unborn child. The Swarm erased my future while my family died.
I would kill Swarm until there are no more Swarm left to kill.
And nothing else mattered.
Red Dust · On sale August 11, 2026
Pre-order on AmazonAlso In Development
The Atlantis Chronicles · Book One
Fifty thousand years ago, one man murdered a civilization to make it perfect. Now the last Atlantean warship runs for a half-mythical world that calls its sleeping makers gods, with the fleet that ended Atlantis right behind it.
New military sci-fi trilogy · Coming soon
Burn Before Reading
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STATUS: ACTIVE
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Published By
Red Dust is proudly published by Aethon Books, one of the fastest-growing science fiction and fantasy publishers in the United States and home to standout series including He Who Fights With Monsters, The Primal Hunter, and Drop Trooper. Fittingly, the name Aethon comes from the ancient Greek for "blazing," which suits a story set on the burning frontier of Mars.
Visit Aethon BooksGet in Touch
info@dustrunnerspublishing.com