My name is Caelin Morrow, and I'm one of the most hated cops in the Rim Sector. I work for a branch of the Commonwealth Constabulary, humanity's interstellar police force, called the Professional Compliance Bureau. We're the Commonwealth government's internal affairs division and hunt down bent cops, corrupt officials, and misbehaving military personnel. My fellow Constabulary members neither like nor trust me, but that's okay. I enjoy taking out the trash. When a senior navy officer is accused of murdering an envoy from the Shrehari Empire on Aquilonia Station, a human trading post on an airless moon, everyone fears it might shatter the peace with our restive neighbor. That makes it a case for my unit because we're known by humans and Shrehari alike as the last of the incorruptibles, the ones unafraid of digging up the truth. Since I'm the chief superintendent commanding the Rim Sector PCB Detachment, I only handle...

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. Yet an increasing number of senior officers understand true peace is illusory. Without an external threat to unify them as a species, humans have resumed their favorite activity — fighting each other in dark and dirty wars for power, profit, or glory. And this despite the risk of eroding the Commonwealth's delicate social and political balance and triggering violent unrest. Ironically, those best suited for stopping nasty, albeit minor conflicts before they...

Covert missions are failing, Fleet officers are vanishing, and Naval Intelligence is losing its eyes, ears, and the ability to strike at its foes.  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. With treason rampant at the heart of the Fleet, perhaps even within Naval Intelligence itself, he and Talyn must disappear until they discover the identity of their unseen enemies.Along the way, Decker will come face to face with humanity’s worst impulses and its noblest spirits. And though he can’t trust his colleagues and...

The collapse of humanity’s first interstellar empire is passing into legend, perhaps even myth, now that the ones who could remember those tumultuous years have merged with the Infinite Void. 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. Unbeknown to citizens of a republic cut off from the rest of the galaxy, four star systems at the former empire’s core also survived to preserve that which existed before the Great Scouring. Yet they took a darker path after witnessing firsthand the empire’s demise in a bloodletting without precedent, which left them fearful about the future of what little remained. An uncompromising, hidebound military dictatorship, the Wyvern Hegemony is everything Lyonesse avoided becoming. Backed by a State Security Commission that uses the Void Sisters’ abilities to root out the regime’s enemies, its rule is absolute. Yet the Hegemony also harbors ambitions of reuniting humanity under its own banner, though the government has done little to advance its cause. Neither Lyonesse nor the Hegemony knows about each other. However, thanks to a twist of fate that leads State Security Colonel Crevan Torma and his assigned Void Sister on a voyage of discovery, this will soon change. But can the vanished empire’s heirs meet in peace or will they continue the civil war that almost eradicated humanity across the stars? **

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.During an operation to eliminate a radical revolutionary movement on one of the Rim Sector's most important colonies, Major Decker and Commander Talyn stumble across evidence pointing at a threat more significant than any they've encountered so far, evidence suppressed by Black Sword's remaining moles in Naval Intelligence.With countless lives on the line, Decker and Talyn race against time and enemies ensconced in high places to undo a conspiracy aimed at reshaping an entire sector before irreversible damage propels the Commonwealth down a dark path which can only end in one last, murderous civil war killing billions.This time, they must strike fast, strike hard and strike without orders from Fleet HQ.  But Decker is tired of fighting the same battles over and over again.  He wants this mission to be the last one and is willing to do whatever it takes.  After all, Decker is not only among Naval Intelligence's deadliest operatives, he's also one of the Few…

Captain Siobhan Dunmoore no longer enjoys the freedom to fight the Shrehari Empire on her own terms aboard the Q-ship Iolanthe.  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.But when an unauthorized raid on a Shrehari forward operations base produces surprising results, Dunmoore triggers a cascade of events which could forever change the course of the war.  As the old saying goes, fortune favors the bold.  Will Dunmoore prove once again that she and Iolanthe's crew are the most daring of them all?

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 catastrophic 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.With civil war raging across human space, a Navy torn asunder can no longer protect frontier colonies, and barbarians long confined to the galactic badlands see an opportunity.  After generations of hard existence on worlds beyond the bounds of human civilization, they hold life cheap, especially that of others.  The barbarians will gladly steal everything they find and condemn defenseless star systems to technological and demographic collapse.  That is if they don't wipe...

Covert missions are failing, Fleet officers are vanishing, and Naval Intelligence is losing its eyes, ears, and the ability to strike at its foes.  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. With treason rampant at the heart of the Fleet, perhaps even within Naval Intelligence itself, he and Talyn must disappear until they discover the identity of their unseen enemies.Along the way, Decker will come face to face with humanity’s worst impulses and its noblest spirits. And though he can’t trust his colleagues and superiors, other than his partner Hera, he knows he can always trust his Pathfinder comrades to stand tall against disloyalty. The Marine Corps’ elite will gladly join him in teaching traitors the real meaning of unrestrained covert warfare. After all, spy or not, Zack Decker is still one of the Few.

What is the value of one life in an interstellar war that has already claimed millions?  And if that single life doesn't matter, are any others worth saving?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 and plunges Dunmoore into a dark, merciless universe of competing government organizations, undercover warfare, and organized crime on a galactic scale.  Along the way, she crosses paths with an old foe and an uncertain ally as she and her crew race against time and determined opposition to rescue innocent civilians condemned merely because they were in the wrong place at the wrong moment.  Powerful forces within the Commonwealth would call a handful of lives collateral damage in humanity's existential struggle against the Shrehari Empire.  But Dunmoore won't accept that they aren't worth saving even...