by amanda.girard
The Kheled / Long Mercy cycle is a political military science-fiction tragedy about the collapse of moral certainty under conditions of war, strategic necessity, technological inheritance, and narrative control. Its central figure is Aria Mai, a desert scavenger from the frontier world of Kheled, the daughter of Sera Mai, a former Republic cybernetics and medical-systems specialist who survived crash, exile, occupation, and loss. Around them gathers a broad cast of soldiers, archivists, engineers, civic witnesses, resistance fighters, bureaucrats, propagandists, and survivors, all caught between the remnants of an old Republic and the Revolutionary Directorate that overthrew it but reproduced many of its habits in a harsher language. This story is named for Saint Chrome, a fortified settlement built into a damaged orbital-defence installation, survives through stubborn compact law, hard engineering, local memory, and Pala Vera Chrome’s severe comic authority.
| # | Title | Words |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Girl Who Sold the Sky | 0 |
| 2 | Saint Chrome | — |
| 3 | South Trench | — |
| 4 | Twenty Years Earlier: The Last Shuttle | — |
| 5 | The Battlecraft in Exile | — |
| 6 |
| The Planet That Did Not Want Them |
| — |
| 7 | The Red Ship | — |
| 8 | Attrition Has Pretty Teeth | — |
| 9 | How the Wake Raised Her | — |
| 10 | The Company of Broken Things | — |
| 11 | Crown Hollow | — |
| 12 | Mai-Line Conflict | — |
| 13 | Engine Weather | — |
| 14 | The Ruin Answers | — |
| 15 | The Price of Crowns | — |
| 16 | The Evacuation Argument | — |
| 17 | The Capital Takes Payment | — |
| 18 | The Voice Under Kheled | — |
| 19 | The Aurelian Mercy Sends a Boat | — |
| 20 | The Terms of Rescue | — |
| 21 | The Weapon That Never Fired | — |
| 22 | Reactor Work | — |
| 23 | Nine Days Is Not Enough | — |
| 24 | The File That Looked Back | — |
| 25 | The Crown Learns to Crawl | — |
| 26 | No Sky Tyrants | — |
| 27 | The Wrong Kind of Mercy | — |
| 28 | The System Says No | — |
| 29 | Now or Never | — |
| 30 | The Capital Listens | — |
| 31 | The March on Prime | — |
| 32 | The City Begins at the Guns | — |
| 33 | The Guns That Looked Up | — |
| 34 | New Ships | — |
| 35 | Decisive Effect | — |
| 36 | The Man in the Signal | — |
| 37 | What Remained Standing | — |
| 38 | Curfew | — |
| 39 | Now or Never | — |
| 40 | The Cost Above | — |
| 41 | Decisive Effect | — |
| 42 | The Outer Dark | — |
| 43 | Government by Exhaustion | — |
| 44 | Sandfall | — |
| 45 | Make Them Learn Empty | — |
| 46 | The Hull Team | — |
| 47 | The Compact Room | — |
| 48 | Paper Keys | — |
| 49 | Remove the Key | — |
| 50 | The People’s Mandate | — |
| 51 | Bad Options | — |
| 52 | Before the Static | — |
| 53 | Quorum | — |
| 54 | The Decision to Lose | — |
| 55 | Correction Verification | — |
| 56 | The City Taken | — |
| 57 | Tribunal | — |
| 58 | The Holding That Remained | — |
| 59 | The Missing Minutes | — |
| 60 | Protected Custody | — |
| 61 | Mission Ascension | — |
| 62 | The Court of Useful Doubt | — |
| 63 | Smaller and Meaner | — |
| 64 | Seven Days of Locks | — |
| 65 | The Men Who Wanted Reckoning | — |
| 66 | Prohibition Failing | — |
| 67 | Common Ledger | — |
| 68 | Return Through Grey-Sixteen | — |
| 69 | Aurelian Receives the Dead | — |
| 70 | Too Many Witnesses | — |
| 71 | The Second Bridge | — |
| 72 | Victory Conditions | — |
| 73 | The Counting | — |
| 74 | Where Kheled Can See | — |
| 75 | No Reserve | — |
| 76 | Coda A — Alone With the List | — |
| 77 | Coda B — The Latter History of the Directorate-Republic War | — |
| 78 | The Man Who Kept the Names | — |
| 79 | A Prequel Event — The Aster Gate Strike | — |
| 80 | Dramatis Personae | — |
| 81 | Saint Chrome - Time Line | — |
| 82 | Saint Chrome - Influences | — |
| 83 | Government by Exhaustion | — |
| 84 | Sandfall | — |
| 85 | Make Them Learn Empty | — |
| 86 | The Hull Team | — |
| 87 | The Compact Room | — |
| 88 | The Men Who Wanted Reckoning | — |
| 89 | Prohibition Failing | — |
| 90 | Common Ledger | — |
| 91 | Return Through Grey-Sixteen | — |
| 92 | Aurelian Receives the Dead | — |
