Military Opera

The Force is strong in 12-year-old Anakin Skywalker - so strong that the Jedi Council, despite misgivings, entrusted young Obi-Wan Kenobi with the mission of training him to become a Jedi Knight. Obi-Wan - like his slain master, Qui-Gon - believes Anakin may be the chosen one, the Jedi destined to bring balance to the Force. But first Obi-Wan must help his undisciplined apprentice, who still bears the scars of slavery, to find his own balance.

Leia Organa Solo, estranged from her husband, Han, oversees the evacuation of refugees on planets in the path of the merciless Yuuzhan Vong. Luke Skywalker struggles to hold the fractious Jedi Knights together, even while one of them undertakes a bold but reckless undercover mission. And Han Solo stumbles into the dark heart of a raging battle.

The Galactic Alliance's hard-won success in countering the Yuuzhan Vong onslaught has proven all too brief, and the tide has turned once more to the invaders' advantage. Having overcome the sabotage strategies of the Jedi and their allies, the marauding aliens have pushed deeper into the galaxy and subjugated more worlds in their ruthless quest for domination.

For someone who has died and come back as many times as Conrad Harris, the nickname Lazarus is well deserved. His elite military teams are specialists in death - running suicide missions in simulant bodies to combat the alien race known as the Krell. But now the Krell Empire has wreaked such devastation that military command is desperate for a new strategy. And Harris and his team are being sent on a mission that could finally turn the tide of the war.

The Praxis, the empire of now extinct Shaa, has again fallen into civil war, with desperate and outnumbered humans battling alien species for survival. Leading the human forces are star-crossed lovers Gareth Martinez and Caroline Sula, who must find a way to overcome their own personal history to defeat the aliens and assure humanity’s survival. But even if the human fleet is victorious, the divisions fracturing the empire may be too wide to repair, as battles between politicians, the military, and fanatics who want to kill every alien threaten to further tear the empire apart.

In the end, the only political systems that seem to work are those based on freedom. The Inner World leaders of the Terran Federation seem to have forgotten this simple truth. After fighting the Khanate - with the Fringe Worlds to supply the raw material and the fighting men - the Inner Worlds found it hard to give up the powers they had seized during the war.

Blending fast-paced military science fiction and space opera, the third and final volume in a dynamic trilogy from the New York Times bestselling author of The Praxis, set in the universe of his popular and critically acclaimed Dread Empire’s Fall series, comes a tale of blood, courage, adventure, and battle in which the fate of an empire rests in the hands of two lovers.

Ties that bind...Danai Liao-Centrella is many things: Solaris gladiator; proud military commander; successful diplomat. All of those roles pale beneath perhaps the heaviest responsibility of anyone in the Capellan Confederation: To speak the truth to its ruler, Chancellor Daoshen Liao. He is the undeniable dictator of hundreds of worlds. Mighty armies move at his command. Billions of lives hang on his every decision. Against that, she must speak the truth. And the truth is, the war with House Davion must end. Because there is a greater danger looming.

Under threat of destruction or servitude to the Empire, facing the fleets of the Ragnar, Finth, and Thack Delos, and the larger force of the Thandol, Mirikami prepares the Federation for all-out war. The Planetary Union, allied with the Federation, receives a squadron of new technology Federation Scouts equipped with gravity controlled weapons. They conduct a preemptive strike on a Thandol base. The emperor blames it on the Federation, unaware of the PU's existence, and orders simultaneous attacks.

Captain Kyle Roberts delivered one of the Castle Federation's few victories in the early days of the war. Even losing his ship in the process didn't prevent him from being elevated as the hero - the "Stellar Fox" - his country desperately needed. His status with the public demands a worthy command, and he finds himself on the bridge of the federation's latest supercarrier and headed to the front lines of the war. But the navy sees his promotion as a public relations stunt.

In the final days of the empire, Cyborg Corps Colonel Leonidas Adler plans to die in a manner befitting of an imperial officer. He will fight until his last breath, giving his life to defend Emperor Markus, as it was meant to be. But when the emperor himself summons him for a final special mission, how can he refuse?

The Emperor's daughter Mercedes is the first woman ever admitted to The High Ground, the elite training academy of the Solar League's Star Command, and she must graduate if she is to have any hope of taking the throne. Her classmate Thracius has more modest goals - to defy his humble beginnings and rise to the rank of captain. But in a system rocked by political division, where women are governed by their husbands and fathers, the poor are kept in their place by a rigid class system, and the alien races have been conquered and subjugated, there are many who want them to fail.

The Korsan have declared themselves an empire, and have their sights set on the destruction of the Free Fleet. Now, Nathan Scott must figure out how to hold the Korsan fleet at bay while they repair their ships and get their newly acquired battle platforms out of danger.

Long ago, the Cyberat left Earth to co-evolve with machines. Now, led by the powerful dictator Castron, the Old Guard believe that machines should replace the physical body. But these beliefs are upended with the arrival of the human Polity and their presence ignites rebellion. Piper was raised as a weapon against the Cyberat, implanted with secretive hardware. When his parents are captured by the Old Guard, the Polity offer him unexpected aid. Piper knows the Polity want more from him, but at what cost? The rebellion also attracts the deadly prador, placing an entire world in peril.

Recovering from their first mission, the crew of the Vorpal Blade - humankind's first interstellar craft - is called into emergency action when an alliance gate colony is attacked. Who was the lethal alien enemy? What exactly happened at the colony? And dare the Vorpal Blade's battle-weary misfits engage a potentially superior force?

A new killer is cutting a bloody swath through the frontier worlds. Rumors of its exploits are spreading and, like a ghost, nobody even knows what it looks like. Captain Jason Burke and his crew watch this growing menace with a mix of unease...and guilt. They know who this killer is. He used to be one of them.

Kylara Vatta is the only daughter in a family full of sons, and her father's only child to buck tradition by choosing a military career instead of joining the family business. For Ky, it's no contest: Even running the prestigious Vatta Transport Ltd. shipping concern can't hold a candle to shipping out as an officer aboard an interstellar cruiser. It's adventure, not commerce, that stirs her soul. And despite her family's misgivings, there can be no doubt that a Vatta in the service will prove a valuable asset. But with a single error in judgment, it all comes crumbling down.

The quadrant is on the brink of all-out civil war, but almost nobody knows it. Now that he knows a malevolent AI that calls itself the Machine has seized much of the ConFed's military apparatus and even controls the Grand Adjudicators themselves, Jason Burke must decide if he risks picking a fight with such an overmatched enemy, or if he runs to hide and fight another day. Omega Force needs allies, and needs them quickly.

The Xaros Masters destroyed Bastion, the Alliance against the alien invaders has failed. Earth stands against the full force of the enemy's unending drone fleets.

There's guerrilla warfare in the main asteroid belt. The Red Houzi pirates have launched a deadly campaign, sacking defenseless mining colonies and then vanishing into the deep dark of space. No one can predict where or when they will show up next, not even the great Mars Protectorate Navy.