The Ghost Brigades are the Special Forces of the Colonial Defense Forces, elite troops created from the DNA of the dead and turned into the perfect soldiers for the CDF's toughest operations. They're young, they're fast and strong, and they're totally without normal human qualms. The universe is a dangerous place for humanity -- and it's about to become far more dangerous. Three races that humans have clashed with before have allied to halt our expansion...

Jack Holloway works alone, for reasons he doesn't care to talk about. Hundreds of miles from ZaraCorp's headquarters on-planet, 178 light-years from the corporation's headquarters on Earth, Jack is content as an independent contractor, prospecting and surveying at his own pace. As for his past, that's not up for discussion. Then, in the wake of an accidental cliff collapse, Jack discovers a seam of unimaginably valuable jewels, to which he manages...

Our universe is ruled by physics. Faster than light travel is impossible ― until the discovery of The Flow, an extradimensional field available at certain points in space-time, which can take us to other planets around other stars. Riding The Flow, humanity spreads to innumerable other worlds. Earth is forgotten. A new empire arises, the Interdependency, based on the doctrine that noT one human outpost can survive without the others. It’s a hedge...

Humans expanded into space... only to find a universe populated with multiple alien species bent on their destruction. Thus was the Colonial Union formed, to help protect us from a hostile universe. The Colonial Union used the Earth and its excess population for colonists and soldiers. It was a good arrangement... for the Colonial Union. Then the Earth said: no more. Now the Colonial Union is living on borrowed time -- a couple of decades at most,...

Retired from his fighting days, John Perry is now village ombudsman for a human colony on distant Huckleberry. With his wife, former Special Forces warrior Jane Sagan, he farms several acres, adjudicates local disputes, and enjoys watching his adopted daughter grow up. That is, until his and Jane's past reaches out to bring them back into the game -- as leaders of a new human colony, to be peopled by settlers from all the major human worlds, for a...

Meet Zoe Boutin-Perry. Daughter. Colonist. Icon. The only hope for the people she loves. Sixteen years old. Zoe thought when her parents were selected to lead a new colony world, that the three of them would begin a new life among that stars but the colony isn't what it seems. Zoe, her family and her fellow colonists are unwilling thrust front and center in a struggle between the human Colonial Union and the alien Conclave, and there's no guarantee...

Hilketa is a frenetic and violent pastime where players attack each other with swords and hammers. The main goal of the game: obtain your opponent's head and carry it through the goalposts. With flesh and bone bodies, a sport like this would be impossible. But all the players are "threeps," robot-like bodies controlled by people with Haden's Syndrome, so anything goes. No one gets hurt, but the brutality is real and the crowds love it. Until a star...