Charles E. Gannon

It has been 15 Terran months since Colonel Rodger Murphy and his Lost Soldiers were dropped in the 55 Tauri binary system. Since then, they have forged an uneasy alliance with space-dwelling descendants of the Ktor, liberated the earlier human inhabitants of the planet R’bak, and driven their oppressors from the neighboring system back into a few fortified cities.

But there’s another pivotal battle looming before them: intercepting the Harvester fleet sent by those same oppressors, the Kulsians. And time is growing short.

With the cooperation of both indigenous R’Baku and the mutually suspicious Spindogs and Rockhounds, the Lost Soldiers—now sporting the nickname Murphy’s Lawless—have pulled off a delicate scheme to capture an advanced Kulsian corvette. The objective: to improve the cutting-edge warship and use Spindog “autofab” technology to create a flotilla with which to repel the Harvester fleet.

However, it’s the job of training and forging crews from the highly competitive Spindogs and Rock Hounds that is pushing both groups toward mutiny—and possibly murder. The only chance to bring all those forces together? Ex-Navy fighter jock Kevin Bowden—now known as “The Admiral”—who has his work cut out for him.

Problem is, both Bowden and Murphy are running out of time.

A young man must face dangers from without and within—and question everything he believes to be true.

Since boyhood, Druadaen expected he’d ascend to the command of an elite legion and become the leader his father predicted he would be. However, fate had something different in store.

Assigned instead to a small group of outriders tasked with watching nearby kingdoms, Druadaen discovers that the world beyond his homeland is riddled with impossibilities. How do humanoid raiders, known as the Bent, suffer staggering losses and yet return as a vast horde every decade? How do multi-ton dragons fly? How have fossils formed in a world which sacrists insist has existed for only ten millennia?

Determined to solve these mysteries, Druadaen journeys into the dank warrens of the Bent, seeks out a dragon’s lair, and ventures into long-buried ruins in search of ancient scrolls. But, whereas legends tell of heroes who encounter their greatest perils during just such forays into the unknown, Druadaen’s most lethal enemies might lurk in even more unusual places:

The temples and council chambers of his own homeland.