Rooklight
Rooklight
A series by Kory Owen
1944. Seven operatives the war threw away. One fortress that has never fallen. One impossible mission.
The good news: high command has a plan. The bad news: you're it.
Every army keeps its heroes polished for the newsreels. This lot didn't make the cut. A sniper the record books would rather forget. A scout the maps don't mention. An engineer, an actor, a rifleman, a sapper, and a colonel nobody listened to until it was much too late — seven people seven nations agreed they could afford to lose. Which is precisely why they get sent into Schwarzstein: six hundred years old, never taken, and now the safest place in Europe to die. It's a chess problem, really. The kind you solve by sacrificing every piece except the one that matters. High command is very good at chess. The pieces have opinions about that.
Churchill and Eisenhower have word of something in a German castle that could turn the war. Naturally, they send the one unit that officially doesn't exist — seven operatives from seven nations, chosen for the singular qualification that nobody important would notice if they didn't come back. It's a chess game played by cable between falling cities. The men on the board have started to suspect they're pawns. They're not wrong.
Coming soonThe Unit
The World
Six hundred years in one family. Never taken. Now gifted to the SS for reasons that make the men who understand chess very afraid. The endgame square.
A chess game played by cable between battles, moves made as cities fall. The pawns scatter like real soldiers. On this board, they are real soldiers.
Every operative was thrown away by someone — their army, their country, their war. Which is exactly why they can do what no decorated unit could.
The Stalemates World