Niall Encardi is ready to graduate after long, intensive years of medical training and go home to the colony world of Sorendaal. His life-long dream has been to become a healer and help the people his uncle, the governor, leads. The revolutionaries who overthrow the current government of the Central Allied Worlds have other plans. When the homeworlds of Niall and his classmates don't immediately give support and approval to the revolutionaries, the medical students are labeled enemies of the state and transported to prison. Despite every effort to stay focused on his first calling, healing and medicine, Niall becomes a leader, first on a prison planet, then on the prison space station known as the Abyss. Every time the government changes hands, he and his friends and then his allies in the prison society are labeled conspirators and sympathizers and condemned to yet more imprisonment. By the time the Abyss is attacked, Niall and his people have become a force to be reckoned with in their goal of freedom...even if it means turning pirate, like the falsely imprisoned nobleman who once sailed the ancient seas, on a ship called the Vendetta.
Niall and his crew are just centimeters away from freedom, escaping in the stolen starship they've christened the Nova Vendetta. Then disaster strikes, paralyzing their ship. Retaken as prisoners, they find themselves traveling on the very ship that should have been their ticket to freedom. Just when they're beginning to despair, the unthinkable happens: Experimental technology and a risky gamble put the ship under their control. The escaped prisoners head for the furthest reaches of known space, determined to stay free at any cost. Labeled rebels and pirates and criminals, they hold to the principles that have let them survive and stay Human during their time in prison. To the outlying colonies slowly being abandoned by the disintegration of the Central Allied Worlds, the crew of the Nova Vendetta and its slowly growing fleet of allies are heroes in the truest sense of the word. The revolution reaches out to threaten Niall's homeworld. Niall knows it's time to go home. He has to protect Sorendaal, even if it means giving himself into the hands of the very people who want him dead.
Before the Commonwealth existed, there was an expanding, multi-galaxy civilization, that disintegrated. This is the story of its downfall, where colony worlds learned to survive by their own strength...or were abandoned to die. Three novellas in one volume explore the birth of the Khybors, whose descendants will impact the Downfall, the rebirth of civilization, the return to the stars, and the Commonwealth far into the future. Khrystalis: Kerin was the youngest child of two powerful, intelligent, gifted research scientists. When the military interfered yet again in her father's research, the resulting lab explosion filled Kerin's body with experimental bio-crystal, long before it was ready for human testing. She was changed. Bio-crystal was meant to aid the body in repairing itself, when medical science was incapable. As it penetrated down to the genetic level, Kerin learned to change herself, and to sense the world in totally new ways. When her gift reached out beyond her own biology, she stood poised between being the bearer of a great gift for humanity, or a threat that would change the universe. Ambush: The twins, Casta and Pol, should never have been born, and there were many enemies who would still try to destroy them as they reached adulthood. Hidden away on a remote colony world with their uncle, they were allowed to explore all their potential, develop all the gifts they could imagine. That potential was put to good use when their home was attacked and their uncle was kidnapped by enemies intent on destroying first their world, then civilization. Their favorite game was called Ambush, and now the game had become reality. The enemy would never know what hit them. When the smoke had cleared, they had regained more than their uncle. Now what they were had a name: Khybors. Wing and Claw: Lor and Jae led the Khybors, training them to be the frontrunners of exploration teams clearing alien worlds for colonization. They had learned young not to trust the powers-that-be when they spoke of peace and cooperation between the emerging groups of augmented Humans and the rest of the Human race. All the signs were there, that the enemies who had been quiet, hiding in the shadows for generations now, were ready to emerge and attack once again. The time had come to reach for the stars, for Khybors to flee to the furthest limits of explored and colonized space, and find a world where they could live in peace and safety. First, they had to rescue the people who dared to stand up for them and speak on their behalf, before their voices were silenced permanently.
Isaac Asimov and other speculative fiction writers have postulated that what seems to be mere technology to modern eyes could be viewed as magic to people of other cultures and times ... and perhaps worlds? In this series of novellas, classic and not-so-familiar faerie tales are placed in futuristic settings. The costumes and props might change, but the Human spirit and the quest for true love will never change. Maia has grown up in the Downbelow, a Borer, born to a life of labor so the arrogant Stocrats can live in luxury in the Above. She's made friends with a Metalman who taught her things the people in the World have forgotten. But even those marvels pale in comparison to what she discovers when she enters the Virtual world and learns the danger that threatens them all.
Elin, a direct descendant of the first Khybor, holds the future of her race on her shoulders. When the Set'ri want to declare them non-Humans and have them exterminated, and other factions in civilization want them as slaves, Elin leads the way to a desert world called Norbra, where Khybors have a chance to live free and to raise their children in peace and safety. But their enemies have followed them...
Dayree was born to a powerful family in the Taksearhe Clan. She was expected to have strong Talents, yet her gifts never emerged. Mocked by some, ignored by others, she took the opportunities offered to her and explored other gifts, becoming a craftsman and then a teacher. In the process, she found her soulmate, Jayx. Years later, when their village was threatened by rebels who wanted to control their world, Dayree's gift awakened, enabling her talented cousin to evacuate the entire village to safety--stepping through the vortex between worlds, to a planet called Earth.
Bree has lived with the burden of knowing she's born to be a Taksearhe, the highest level of strength among all the Talents, with the ability to travel between worlds. Yet childhood trauma has blocked her gifts. She knows she travels to other worlds in her dreams yet can't remember where she went or how when she wakes up. The exiles from Rehdonna are depending on her, and she's willing to do whatever it takes to learn what's going on in her brain and dreams to awaken her gifts. When she joins a dream and sleep study program at Lyndvale University, she's relieved when Dr. Harland, the man her mother is dating, takes her under his wing to protect and guide her. With the help of her roommates and then contacts in other worlds, she learns to awaken and control her gift, but not before she attracts the attention of evil forces that want to use her to open the doorway to Earth. Bree's wishes come true, but the cost if she takes just one wrong step could deprive her of friends, her heritage, and the soulmate who's reached out to her from another world.
The hive-minded insectoid Talroqi have been at war with Humans for generations. Memories of Mallachrom, the colony world where Rover captain Rhianni Day, was born and the boy who was her best friend, are a burden of guilt on her soul. Far from the battle lines, Mallachrom should have been safe...yet after the Rovers left the colony world, the aliens invaded. Rhianni is ordered to return to Mallachrom and investigate what really happened in the Talroqi invasion, especially the strange stories about the children who survived--carried away to safety by the sentient canines called Shadows. Rhianni has only good memories of the Shadows. Even more important: Petroc Ash, her childhood friend, is a Taken. Petroc leads the Taken. His responsibilities to the Taken and their secrets are too great to risk, even for Rhianni. Their childhood bond has grown even stronger, despite her long absence. Loving her will bind her to Mallachrom forever--and could kill her.
Lorien vows to do whatever it takes to serve Reshor and protect her pregnant sister, Andrixine, the Sword Bearer...even if it means making a loveless political marriage. The game of politics and courtly manners turns out to be a far harsher duty than swordplay and battle. Ambassador Lord Arand of Eretia comes to Reshor to make politically astute marriages to protect his kingdom against Sendorland. He's been ordered to win Lorien for his queen's grandson. Arand and Lorien discover they have much in common and their resolve to put duty ahead of their own dreams soon becomes a torment. Arand has a gift for healing and music but has denied both for the sake of following family tradition and serving the throne as an ambassador. When enemies inside Reshor conspire with Sendorland to steal first Lorien's brothers and then Andrixine's newborn sons, Lorien and Arand find themselves in the middle of danger but in exactly the right place to avert total disaster. Their own misery makes them wonder if all their sacrifices mean anything. Doesn't Yomnian want his servants to be happy?
K'reeth and her sister, K'rin, were named for the moonbirds--sister raptor birds who share parenting duties, one the nurturer, the other the hunter and defender. Orphaned by catastrophe and adopted by the High Mistrada of the T'bredi scholars, they're teachers entrusted with all the gathered wisdom of the Ayanlak. Their bond of sisterhood is tested when K'reeth falls in love with the Wind Walker Talon. The relationship is further strained when the new peace with the Colonist invaders includes a promise to send home all the children who have been rescued by and raised among the Ayanlak--and K'reeth is the first. Her forced journey to be reunited with a family she doesn't even remember eventually takes both sisters across the continent and into the nest of political intrigue and contention that may tear their world apart--on the very brink of peace and the fulfillment of ancient prophecy.
