Showing results by author "Eric Thomson" in All Categories

Humanity's thousand-year-old interstellar empire has been rotting from the inside for over a century, thanks to venal, corrupt, and power-hungry sovereigns from a dynasty many consider illegitimate. The latest in that lineage, an increasingly psychotic empress, is pushing her realm toward collapse as admirals and generals rebel against her rule. That rebellion quickly drags the once mighty Imperial Fleet into a devastating fratricidal conflict between factions.

Two men with widely divergent visions are on a mission to save civilization in at least one sector, far from the imperial capital where a demented ruler holds sway. The first, Jonas Morane, wants to create an impregnable vault containing humanity's accumulated knowledge so those who survive the coming darkness can rebuild in decades instead of millennia.

Captain Siobhan Dunmoore wanted to believe the long war against the invading Shrehari Empire had finally banished the ghosts of her past. But when her ship Iolanthe, a heavily armed man-of-war masked as a bulk freighter, finds itself in need of replenishment after a long patrol spent stalking human and alien foes, she is confronted with events eerily reminiscent of a past she thought buried.

Humanity's interstellar empire died in fire and blood, leaving wrecked star systems to face the long night of barbarism. One tiny spark of civilization remains: The Republic of Lyonesse, tucked away at the end of a wormhole cul-de-sac. Yet that last bastion could suffer the same dire fate.

Tiny Lyonesse, the self-appointed guardian of all human knowledge tucked away in its wormhole cul-de-sac, has spent generations preparing to carry out Jonas Morane's plan of reuniting humanity.

Yet her appointment to the headquarters of the Third Fleet, responsible for humanity's most restive frontier, is no accident. Things aren't quite right in what was once the most ferocious and effective formation in the Navy, and its control over the Rim Sector's outer edges is failing.

Life hasn't been easy for Siobhan Dunmoore and many of her fellow veterans since the Shrehari War ended. The Fleet's quick return to a mundane peacetime footing left them unmoored and incapable of fully readapting after years engulfed in an existential struggle. Meanwhile, the memories of all those hard-won lessons, paid for with humanity's dearest blood, are fading as careerists, bureaucrats, and politicians in uniform replace the leaders who brought about the war's end.

A distress signal draws Siobhan Dunmoore's Q-ship Iolanthe, a battlecruiser disguised as a bulk freighter, away from her devastatingly successful hunt through Shrehari occupied space, plunging Dunmoore into a dark, merciless universe of competing government organizations, undercover warfare, and organized crime on a galactic scale.

Special Operations Command has assigned her to Task Force Luckner, whose mission is replicating Iolanthe's success on a larger scale. Unfortunately, neither her new superior, Rear Admiral Kell Petras, nor any other captain in the task force understands successful commerce raiding requires a different mindset. Instead of sheepdogs, they must become wolves in sheep's clothing, and Dunmoore is just the right officer to teach them. Yet Petras and his flag captain are not interested.

Forced into early retirement, the former sergeant crawled into a bottle and stayed there, moving from planet to planet, looking for some reason to keep on living. Until, that is, he wandered into a bar owned by an old marine buddy who offered to help. Curiosity was Decker's other major failing and in short order he was on the run, hunted by a shadowy government organization, and in possession of a secret that could destroy the Commonwealth. It was a secret to die for, and the people on his trail wanted to make sure he did.

When Command Sergeant Hal Tarra, one of Decker's oldest friends, vanishes on the Commonwealth frontier shortly after taking early retirement from the Corps, Zack knows what memories are driving the former Pathfinder, because he sees the same face in his worst nightmares.

Zack Decker just wanted to be left alone so he could live a quiet life with the woman he loved and make up for lost time, but his enemies simply couldn’t resist the temptation to pursue their vendetta. One moment, he was hauling cargo across the depths of interstellar space, the next he was in the hands of pirates and headed for the barbaric worlds beyond the Coalsack nebula, to be sold into captivity. Marines don’t make good slaves and Zack was more than happy to show everyone why he should have been killed straight away, because he was coming back, looking for blood.

Terrorists working for traitors intent on transforming the Commonwealth into a brutal empire are preparing to spread mayhem across the vulnerable and increasingly unstable Rim Sector. Their aim: replace sovereign star system governments with satraps under the direct control of Earth, thereby undoing generations of civil peace between humanity's many fractious branches.

The Marines of Ghost Squadron are humanity's foremost black ops specialists who strike without warning and vanish without a trace. They will do whatever is necessary to protect humanity anywhere in the known galaxy. With the Commonwealth increasingly unstable thanks to venal politicians, greedy financiers, and power-hungry revolutionaries, they don't lack for missions. When an undercover Constabulary officer vanishes after uncovering a massive cartel-run human trafficking operation, the Commonwealth's interstellar police force calls for help from Naval Intelligence.

Wanted by their enemies for exposing the Black Sword cabal and faced with the difficult task of rebuilding the Special Operations Division while treason remains rampant, Major Zack Decker and Commander Hera Talyn are stuck in desk jobs. Until, that is, the Coalition and its minions decide to make things very personal. Forced back into the role of field operatives, they discover a plot to destabilize an entire sector and bring it under the iron-fisted control of a Commonwealth government eager to abandon democracy in favor of imperial dreams.

After Zack Decker and Hera Talyn, the Special Operations Section's deadliest agents, narrowly escape betrayal for the third time in a row, the marine suspects something more than bad luck is in play. For years, the Fleet has been fighting a shadowy cold war against factions in the Commonwealth determined to strangle democracy and give birth to an empire. Has that war turned hot without warning? In a quest for answers, Zack Decker volunteers to undertake his riskiest mission yet.

Someone was setting fire to the Commonwealth Rim, nurturing a storm to drag humanity through the horrors of colonial warfare and thereby hasten the rise of Empire. Their plan had just one fatal flaw: It didn't count on an ex-Marine pathfinder with a grudge, a dagger, and a deadly partner.