Ever since the Founding, Colonial settlers whispered of ghost ships; silent, empty vessels drifting between the stars, steel tombs for their crew. Ships that set out from Earth and, for whatever reason, never made it to the stars.The causes were innumerable. A leaking reactor. A pathogen. An unstable passenger who took a knife and obeyed the voices in her head.Or worse.Recruited into the mysterious Synapse Foundation, Nicholas Caddy-still bearing...

Pro tip: Never volunteer for anything. That's the first thing they told me in flight school. It's 2037. I'm Mike Williams, but you can call me 'Magnet', and I'm a fighter pilot on the TFR Sydney. Our flight leader, Iron, has a mission: Volunteer only. It's the usual gig. High risk, lots of unknowns, an opportunity to make history or die trying. Hopefully the former, but sometimes it's a little of column A, a little of column B, you know? The mission's...

Broken and crippled from an interstellar war, Nicholas Caddy is augmented and specially trained to pilot the Immortal Armour, an engine of war arriving just in time to face down a threat much more devastating than anything the Colonized Worlds could ever conceive of. A prequel to the novel Symphony of War and featuring many of the same characters, this novel-length collection features four stories of Caddy's war, with a bonus short story at the end....

Lieutenant Marcus Servus, officer and prisoner of the Penal Legion, serves on the desert world of Polema, the final bastion of the outer colonies. He and his soldiers, scum of the colonies, stand against insectoid boogeymen from another galaxy.Marcus has a gift. A curse. An edge against the Myriad: he hears music. Songs in his head guide him, granting him knowledge and foresight, a weapon against the alien hordes.The music is his ally, but who plucks...

Kwame Bahati donated his body to science. Pieces of him were removed for this and that; his kidneys were used to test a new medicine, his torso for training surgeons, and various other organs were designated as transplants for those who refused synthetic body parts for religious reasons.But his brain was sent to somewhere else entirely.A short story set in the Universe of War, twenty four years before the events of Symphony of War: The Polema Campaign....

Peace in our time.The Toralii guns are silent. Humanity's home of Velsharn is secure. There are no more battles. No more wars. The machinations of a dying man have traded a single life for a species; Captain Melissa Liao's world is four iron walls and pain, but her suffering buys life for mankind. Her legacy is one of struggle, selflessness, and sacrifice.Held in the grasp of the Toralii Alliance, she takes little comfort in this. Is this the swansong...

Humanity has rebuilt on the world of Velsharn, forging the colony of Eden from the ashes of Earth. On Velsharn's verdant soil children are born, alliances are made and for a time, peace reigns. In high orbit, the debris of an entire Toralii fleet stands as mute testament to humanity's sovereignty; their right to this planet is unquestioned.Above the TFR Beijing, now the centrepiece in a flourishing city, the inky void of space is eerily silent. As...

"Never again attempt to develop this kind of technology."It is with these words that an unknown alien attacker destroys the Earth cities of Tehran, Sydney and Beijing. Fifty million people die... and nothing is ever the same again.Some call them Demons, some call them Aliens, but to Chinese Naval Captain Melissa Liao they are the enemy. She is given command of one of three great warships built to fight the "demons", the TFR Beijing.Her task is simple....

My name is Mike Magnet" Williams. I've come a long way. These days I have my own ship, the Rubens. We stole it from the Toralii Alliance. For the last year the Rubens has been tasked with 'counter-logistical privateering' against the Toralii Alliance, attacking their military supply network. We hit them hard, we get out, we do it all over again. Modern day buccaneers given total autonomy. We're alone, without another Human within a thousand light...

It's 2037. I'm Mike Williams, but you can call me 'Magnet'. Everyone else does. It's short for 'Chick Magnet', which is good old-fashioned military humour at its finest. At age fifteen, my face picked a fight with the propeller of my family's boat, on a shoal near Broome, off Western Australia. It was an accident, but, needless to say, the propeller won.Twelve years later, I was a not-so-ruggedly-handsome fighter pilot assigned to the TFR Sydney....