Episode 19: Taco Tuesday

HSS Chasetail: 13:00 — Briefing Room

The briefing for the simulation was about to wrap up.

Klaus:

  • All squadron members and comms personnel other than yourself will be simulated.
  • The simulation will commence in nominal patrol formation.
  • Standard rules of engagement apply.
  • Your objective is to protect the assigned asset.
  • You will not confer before your run with those who have completed.
  • You will make the decision you judge correct.
  • You will each have one run only.

That is all.

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Episode 18: Edge

Hundeerde Space:
Sector 1-Quadrant Delta-4 (S1-QD4)

Greenwatch Squadron streaked across the quadrant in pursuit of their quarry. Another Marauder probe had again entered Hundeerde Space. The probe was fast and agile, clearly equipped with the ability to anticipate, react, and avoid its pursuers. Of all the recorded probe encounters so far, they did not appear to have any ability to fire back or make any other offensive manoeuvres.

Even so—

It was proving decidedly difficult to catch.

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Episode 17: Consequence

HSS Chasetail: Day One, 07:01 Ablution Block — Male

Grounded from flying for one week.

Assigned a cleaning list of all the shared male ablution blocks — shipwide.

10 blocks in total.

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Episode 16: You Carry a Name


Hundeerde: Part 3 — Greenwatch
Proving Ground


HSS Chasetail: High Hundeerde Orbit

Lieutenant Lewis Vale (“Echo”), at just 17, would ordinarily have been too young to have joined the Hundeerde Space Defence and Communications Network; however, he was bright and intelligent. Bright enough to have passed all of the entry requirements by the time he was 15. The one and only requirement that he had not been able to meet was his age, normally set at 18. This had been taken care of by the one and only Hunde who could override the entry rule.

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Hundeerde — A Graphic Novel

Hundeerde: Part 1 —
The Arctic Incident

At a remote Arctic drilling station, a team of scientists and engineers make a discovery deep in the permafrost. What comes up with the drill should have stayed frozen.

Lead scientist James Jarvis sees the pattern first. A closed system. An infection with no source. He gets close to the truth, very close. One glove, one tear.

Not close enough.

The Arctic Incident is the story of a chain of lives, choices, and sacrifices that would echo across the stars for a generation.

Episode 1: Well Preserved
Episode 2: Ancient Biomass
Episode 3: The Storm
Episode 4: Pressure Cooker
Episode 5: Scoop and Run
Episode 6: Nominal
Episode 7: Joining the Dots

Hundeerde: Part 2 —
The Great Collapse

Three years after the virus, the world that remains is not the world that was.

Red is seventeen, streetwise, and harder than he has any right to be. He leads a clan of twelve kids through the ruins of what was once London; scavenging, hiding, surviving. The basement is home. The bucket is everyone’s problem. The Marauders are never far away.

The Great Collapse is the story of one night that changes everything. A flight through the dark. Nine stations walked in the underground. A boy who looked back at the wrong moment, and a choice made in a split second that only one person saw.

What happens when the person keeping everyone alive decides to run the other way?

Episode 8: The Great Collapse
Episode 9: Fleeing by Night
Episode 10: The Station
Episode 11: Walking Underground
Episode 12: Barking Green
Episode 13: The Fox and Hounds
Episode 14: Dog and Bone
Episode 15: Extraction

Hundeerde: Part 3 — Greenwatch, Proving Ground

Seven years after the night that changed everything, three young men serve aboard the HSS Chasetail, one of three capital cruisers patrolling the skies above Hundeerde.

They now have call-signs and ranks. A life built from nothing on a planet with rings.

But something is out there. Probes. Non-organic. Smart and getting closer.

Lieutenant Sebastian Jarvis flies. Lieutenant Raven Cole watches. Lieutenant Lewis Vale, the youngest officer in Greenwatch history, notices things that don’t add up. And when Lewis notices something, it’s usually already too late to ignore it.

Greenwatch: Proving Ground is the story of what the boys from Earth became and the first sign of what’s coming next.

Episode 16: You Carry a Name
Episode 17: Consequence
Episode 18: Edge
Episode 19: Taco Tuesday
Episode 20: Coulda, Shoulda,Woulda
Episode 21: Squish
Episode 22: Split
Episode 23: Debrief
Episode 24: Intelligence
Episode 25: Hold

Hundeerde: Part 4 — Greenwatch, Becoming

When twelve boys from a London basement walked down a shuttle ramp onto an alien planet they looked up at a sky with rings.

This is the story of what happened in between.

Greenwatch: Becoming follows Seb, Lewis, and Raven through seven years of growing up at Headwall Station, a working farm in the Greyfall Valley. There are chickens to feed, eggs to collect, cows to milk, and an old brass telescope in the attic that belongs to someone who isn’t there.

There is also grief. It doesn’t announce itself. It just shows up, in hands that can’t stay still, drawings in a notebook. In a stone necklace worn around a neck that conveys both memory and hope found.

Hundeerde is not Earth. But it turns out that hope doesn’t need to be from the same place as the people who need it.

The prequel to Greenwatch: Proving Ground.

Episode 26: New Sky
Episode 27: Headwall
Episode 28: Telescope
Episode 29: Orion
Episode 30: Stones
Episode 31: Growl
Episode 32: Red Stone
Episode 33: Uncle Marvin

Episode 34: Veldmeer High School
Episode 35: Pocket Rocket
Episode 36: Snow Day
Episode 37: Planting
Episode 38: Eleven Minutes

Episode 39: Big Sky

New episodes of Part Four: Becoming, are coming soon!

Hundeerde: Greenwatch is a graphic novel published in chapters, accompanied by illustrations. For spoken dialogue, it uses an avatar, the character’s name: dialogue, format. Parts One, Two, and Three are complete. Part Four is ongoing.

AI-Assisted Content — The author has used Claude (Anthropic) for editing and proofreading his original story. The story reflects the author’s voice, creativity, and structure; however, there may be minor incidental phrases generated by AI. Character avatar images and story illustrations are generated by ChatGPT.

© 2012 – 2026 Craig Stanley Nelson
All written and graphic content copyright, Craig Stanley Nelson
Published in prose format on Royal Road by Ddraig Goch

Episode 7: Joining the Dots

❄️ Norðvik High Arctic Research Base: Day 7

The call came through on Rebecca’s phone early, the caller’s name flashing on the screen.

Sanna Korhonen.

Rebecca stepped aside from the main room and into the hall, the door easing shut behind her as she answered. It was the call she had been dreading.

Sanna’s voice was steady.

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Episode 6: Nominal

❄️ Norðvik Hospital — Day 6

Inside Norðvik Hospital, the usual hum of its early morning routine carried through the corridors.

Staff arrived for their morning shifts, stopping by the coffee shop, hot drinks in hand to start their day. Institutional fluorescent lighting ran the length of the corridors as the cleaners mopped the floors, deploying a trail of wet floor signs as they went. Night shift handovers were well underway.

Eugene paused at the doorway, one hand resting briefly on the frame as he adjusted his mask. He pressed quickly at the bridge of his nose.

He took a breath and stepped inside.

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Episode 5: Scoop and Run

❄️ Nearing the summit of Vindskarð Pass — “The Wind Notch”
❄️ The Storm: Day 3

The wind had eased enough that the storm’s mood was a little more contemplative, as if assessing its next move. The climb out of Norðvik had been long and sustained. Visibility had opened enough to travel, but the terrain remained cloaked with fresh snow and deep wind-blown drifts.

The hunde in the lead would need to remain cautious, optimising for speed over safe arrival.

General Jake “Ice-pick” Husky, the Arctic Division Commander, had taken immediate and direct command of the rescue. Huxley was not only a well-respected Arctic expedition commander but he was also a personal friend. The two old war dogs, kriegshunde, shared a long and colourful history.

The sled dogs pulled smoothly, not too fast and not too slow. They had been moving like this for hours. The three teams steadily clocked off each waypoint, bringing them a little closer to their planned rest stop, a bivouac site where they would drop most of their heavier items, a small marked cache of vital supplies: shelter, food, and medical. The supplies would remain ready and waiting for their return to the lee of the pass. Following a brief rest during the darkest hours, the teams would soon crest the pass and then make the shorter, steeper, switchback descent into the glacial valley below.

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Episode 4: Pressure Cooker

Thermal Array – 3: Research Drilling Station, High Arctic
❄️ The Storm: Day Two

The storm did not pass; instead, it strengthened.

Through the second day, severe katabatic winds drove down from the heights, pummelling every surface, every line, and every anchor point.

The tents flexed continuously under the sustained force, snapping back and forth against their anchors as fabric and seams strained to their limits.

Small tears had begun to appear in the outer shells, while snow drifted and built up along the sides and across the roofs, adding further weight and stress.

A sharp, whip-like crack sounded from just outside the main tent.

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