Epic Space Opera

He awoke in a tiny, lightless cell, groping for memory...memory that had been erased. Hope Hubris, Jupiter governor, progressive populist, warrior hero, and presidential candidate...a "mem-washed" tool of the enemy. And if his captors' plan worked, Hope would destroy his own political career, leaving the fate of his planet in the hands of its corrupt presidential incumbent - Tocsin. But Hope Hubris had a destiny to fulfill.

In this sequel to Mechanical Failure, Captain Rogers, despite his best attempts to do otherwise, has become the acting admiral of the 331st Meridan fleet. His first task: worrying. A lot. The rival Thelicosan fleet, under the influence of bad intelligence, a forbidden romance, and a communication officer with an eardrum injury, is about to break a 200-year-old nonaggression pact. They have offered a vague, easily misinterpreted message: "We're invading." Rogers isn't sure, but he thinks that's probably bad.

None of the exiles know it, but they are connected and are about to be unwittingly swept into a heroic adventure spanning many worlds. If these reluctant heroes cannot come together and set aside their differences, a whole star system will be plunged into ruin and mindlessly enslaved to an ancient evil creature bent on destruction.

He was shaping his times as no one before him had dared, mercilessly scouring an entire planet of crime and corruption wherever he found them - and destroying anyone who stood in his way. Absolute dictator of the United States of Jupiter, Hope Hubris was destined to become the most hated and feared man of an era, a tyrant charged with countless heinous acts and sexual cruelties. Yet justice remained his fiercest passion.

He was driven by violent injustice from his home moon of Callisto - and set forth to claim the epic destiny that would blaze across worlds and time. He saw his family destroyed, his sister carried off into sexual slavery, his beautiful lover killed - and he swore revenge against the murderous pirates who held the Jupiter planetoids in a stranglehold of terror. Fired by raw courage, steeled by young might, he rose in the navy of Jupiter to command a personal squadron loyal to the death.

Seventeen-year-old Ana is a scoundrel by nurture and an outlaw by nature. Found as a child drifting through space with a sentient android called D09, Ana was saved by a fearsome space captain and the grizzled crew she now calls family. But D09 - one of the last remaining illegal Metals - has been glitching, and Ana will stop at nothing to find a way to fix him.

This is the fifth in the series Bio of a Space Tyrant, featuring the stages in the life of Hope Hubris, the tyrant of Jupiter, and his beloved sister, Spirit. Child of flame and terror, born and bred to violence, Hope Hubris had ruled the solar system's most powerful empire with a fierce, uncompromising passion. His was a white-hot flame of justice that scarred friend and foe alike. Yet now he left Jupiter as an exile, his autocratic rule overthrown by the one person he could not oppose.

Having obliterated entire civilizations, the Torth Majority is now threatening humanity itself. Barreling through deep space—and hunted every dark mile by armadas, saboteurs, and kamikaze armies—the passengers of a refugee streamship must outrun everything they left behind if they hope to stay alive.

When money trouble forces Clarity and her traveling companion, Irohann, to take on passengers, Irohann worries his secret identity will be revealed. He's a canine alien on the run from an empire of sentient plants, and their queen has a personal vendetta against him. But Clarity believes his fears are unfounded and the Doraspians gave up on him long ago.

The balance of power is shifting in the vicious galactic war against the Torth Majority. The heroes are led by Ariock, a superhuman titan who wins every battle. The secret behind his victories is Thomas, the telepathic renegade supergenius. But resting on their laurels isn't an option. Overconfidence could be fatal, thanks to the enemy supergenius known as the Death Architect. And there may be an intrinsic threat among their ranks as well.

The Xortaag fleet outnumbers the humans’ five to one, and using their mind-control machine, they can use all the Earth’s military forces against their own kind. The Xortaag colony ships are only a few weeks away, and when they arrive, they'll wipe out the human race to have space and resources for their people. And as if all this wasn’t bad enough, General Planetary Genocide Maada has just laid a trap for the Earth fleet and decimated a large chunk of their forces. To make things worse, an even more sinister threat (yeah, more sinister than the Xortaags) is emerging 1500 years in the future.

The Xortaags are back, and they’ve conquered the Akakie homeworld. If they have enough time to reverse-engineer all the advanced technology they can find on Kanoor, they’ll be undefeatable, and they won’t stop until they’ll have colonized the rest of the galaxy, starting with Earth. To make matters worse, an even more sinister threat is looming in the darkness. Unknown to our heroes, a time-travelling alien fleet is on its way to our neck of the galactic woods.

Ariock, a superhuman among men, destroyed the Torth Homeworld. Since then, the massive throng of survivors—refugees, freed slaves, and cave dwellers—have been docked in orbit in an undefended starship, one small war behind them. But when the telepathic Torth, thirty trillion strong, catch a whisper of their location, the greatest of all wars will descend.

He had survived a spaceship crash, alien slave traders, space pirates, and fierce gladiatorial combat. Hell, he’d even faced an actual fire-breathing dragon and lived, but now, he was presented with an even greater challenge. Domestic living, captive on a strange world. Charlie almost had to laugh at his changing circumstances, having seen it all since a wormhole spat him out in a distant galaxy. He learned to fight, he learned to use magic, he even learned to kill - to survive at all costs.

Ariock Dovanack never asked to be a hero, let alone a demigod. But when a prophecy deemed him "The One," he dutifully amassed thousands of messianic followers in the sun-starved civilization beneath the Torth Empire's capital. Now, destined to lead the cave-dwelling Alashani people into the light of other worlds, he and a small army must first annihilate the formidable telepaths who guard the city's spaceport. By Ariock's side is Thomas Hill. A Torth/human hybrid, Thomas may be physically vulnerable, but he's also a telepathic supergenius.

General Maada leads his fleet to the White Republic universe, where the Xenoakakies rule with an iron fist. There, he’s surprised to meet a few old friends as well as some new foes, including the Death Angel, the legendary enemy pilot who’s killed the general’s doppelganger. While Maada has been through his fair share of hopeless battles, this particular conflict is on another level altogether, even for him. The insects’ hold on this universe seems unshakable, and their fleet dwarfs the general’s in both numbers and power by no small margin.

The White Republic’s navy decimates the Federation’s forces in a surprise attack. Now Jim and his friends must unite once more to kick out the invaders and liberate their worlds, but they have only a few thousand ships left. To make matters worse, they’re under a tight deadline, and time’s running out.

Following Jim’s audacious plan, Kurt and a team of Marines traveled to the future to destroy Voltex. However, in doing so, they inadvertently started a chain reaction that ended with the extermination of all life in the universe. Now our heroes must get together one last time to save the universe, before it is too late.

The final installment of the Bio of a Space Tyrant series covers the same period as the first five books but with a twist. The Iron Maiden is told from the point of view of Hope's sister, Spirit. This book fills in the gaps when the two siblings were apart and perfectly wraps up this scintillating series!

In Conquest Born is the monumental science fiction epic that received unprecedented acclaim - and launched C.S. Friedman's phenomenal career. A sweeping story of two interstellar civilizations locked in endless war, it was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award.