Back Alley Angels and Badlands Devils

Two novellas from the world of A Kiss for Damocles, winner of the 2026 Prometheus Award for Best Novel.

Two men. Two centuries. Same old Hesperides Colony.

When hard times come, it takes hard men to keep the embers of civilization lit. They don't have to be inspiring. They don't have to be nice. They just have to refuse to quit.

The Greenline Gambit
Kraitte is a big, amiable brawler who lifts heavy things for a living, because a man needs a visible means of support to keep the law off his back. His real trade is moving cargo that's short a few tax stamps, and handing out blunt-force arbitration when someone he likes gets conned harder than is reasonable. After a lifetime of drifting he has a home in Greenline Town and, for the first time, a family. Then a leggy brunette walks in with a job offer that will fix every problem he has. It's also an offer he can't refuse, and those always come with complications.

El Banquero del Diablo
Centuries earlier, in the first years of the Long Night, Danny Bozeman rides with the newly formed Nuevo Tejas Rangers. Danny likes cantinas he hasn't been banned from yet and a good fight, in that order. He signed up to hunt bandits and deserters, and he was looking forward to it. The bandit chief they call the Devil's Banker is as cold a piece of work as the badlands have ever produced. But his trail leads somewhere bandits don't explain, and Danny is about to meet real, old-time, capital-E Evil. He'll face it the way a Ranger does. With iron and thunder.

One story is back-alley noir in a city built inside old maglev tunnels. The other is a posse ride that goes somewhere no posse should. Both are fast, funny, and mean in the right places.

New to J. Kenton Pierce's Tales from the Long Night? This is a quick way in. Already a reader? You'll want to know what Kraitte was up to in the weeks before The Warlord of Greenline Town.