Showing results by author "Joel Shepherd" in All Categories

One thousand years after Earth was destroyed in an unprovoked attack, humanity has emerged victorious from a series of terrible wars to assure its place in the galaxy. But during celebrations on humanity’s new homeworld, the legendary Captain Pantillo of the battle carrier Phoenix is court-martialed then killed, and his deputy, Lieutenant Commander Erik Debogande, the heir to humanity’s most powerful industrial family, is framed for his murder.

The UFS Phoenix is hunting for the long-lost drysine data-core. Within it lie the secrets to saving humanity from the resurgent deepynine machine-race. To recover it, Captain Erik Debogande must work together with the man who holds his sister hostage - the power-hungry parren leader Aristan. Aristan has sworn he will return Lisbeth Debogande once Phoenix grants him equal access to its prize.

The Army of Regent Arrosh advances on the forces loyal to Saalshen, homeland of the serrin people, as the serrins' friends are in full retreat. Their only hope is to reach the city of Jahnd - the serrin word for haven - across the Ipshal River. The Army of Lenayin marches with the Regent, but Sasha, sister of newly crowned King Koenyg, can no longer stomach the awful cause for which her people fight.

Cassandra Kresnov - a highly advanced hunter-killer android - returns to face down a rogue government's plot to eliminate free will. Commander Cassandra Kresnov has her hands full. She must lead an assault against the Federation world of Pyeongwha, where a terrible sociological phenomenon has unleashed hell against the civilian population. Then she faces the threat from a portion of League space known as New Torah, in which a ruthless regime of surviving corporations are building new synthetic soldiers but taking the technology in alarming directions.

Deep within hostile Reeh Empire space, the UFS Phoenix is hunting another AI queen. This one is named Chion, and she has been installed at the heart of Reeh Empire power, enslaved against her will, for the past 8,000 years. Within her vast knowledge lies the most intimate data on Nia, the deepynine queen now threatening humanity's very existence. Freeing Chion could be the key to beating Nia and saving humanity. But Phoenix's allied drysine queen, Styx, and Chion's AI former sidekick, Shali, both want Chion for their own purposes.

Petrodor is a city of alleys and shadows, where life is cheap and the only respected currency is blood. Away from the hills of her Lenayin homeland, Sasha is fighting a new battle in the dark alleys and wealthy houses of Petrodor. An influential trading center, Petrodor holds the key to preventing the coming war between Lenayin and the mighty Bacosh. Together with her mentor Kessligh, Sasha attempts to navigate the political intrigues of the port city and find a new way to stop the war.

Crossover is the first novel in a series which follows the adventures of Cassandra Kresnov, an artificial person, or android, created by the League, one side of an interstellar war against the more powerful, conservative Federation. Cassandra is an experimental design - more intelligent, more creative, and far more dangerous than any that have preceded her. But with her intellect come questions, and a moral awakening. She deserts the League and heads incognito into the space of her former enemy, the Federation, in search of a new life.

Cassandra Kresnov must find the answers that could free her people--or doom her family. A quarter of a million people die in the destruction of the moon Cresta. The League civil war is accelerating out of control, but projections indicate that as their technologically induced sociological dysfunction continues, all of humanity may face a similar fate.

The legendary battle-carrier UFS Phoenix is on the run in Outer Neutral Space. Lieutenant Commander Erik Debogande and Major Trace Thakur are determined to use neutral territory to broker a peace between humanity's warring factions, away from Fleet's strong arm. But as machinations in Fleet Command send a legendary warrior from Trace's past on a sworn path to kill her, there arises in the territory of an insectoid foe an ancient enemy from the nightmares of Spiral history, bent on Phoenix's destruction….

The UFS Phoenix embarks on a dangerous quest for the AI Ceephay Queen who rules at the heart of the Reeh Empire. For cover, Phoenix will use the enormous war being launched by the new rulers of the croma, Croma'Dokran, into reeh space. This war is intended in part to evacuate the corbi homeworld of Rando, thus righting a great wrong of croma history by rescuing 200 million corbi from reeh tyranny. 

The UFS Phoenix is on a mission to find a lost data-core that may contain the secret to defeating the alo-deepynine alliance. But the means to find the data-core is hidden deep in tavalai space, in a highest-security vault where the tavalai's manipulative State Department keep all their most treacherous secrets. To recover it, Phoenix must pull off the most daring heist the Spiral has ever seen.

Separated from her ship, Major Trace Thakur is stranded on the reeh-occupied world of Rando. The native corbi have suffered beneath reeh tyranny for 800 years, and many have given up hope. But Trace needs the data stored in the reeh’s genetic technology and command center - the Rando Splicer - if she’s to learn how to save humanity from impending disaster, and is planning an assault against overwhelming odds. She’ll need help from the UFS Phoenix, though, which is caught in a ritual medieval battle to change the croma leadership.

Sasha is a fighter, the likes of which the highland country of Lenayin has never seen. Spurning her royal heritage to be raised by the great warrior Kessligh, Sasha's exquisite swordplay astonishes all who see it. But she is young, untested in battle, and often led by her rash temper. In the complex world of Lenayin loyalties, her willfulness is attracting the wrong kind of attention. Lenin is a land divided by its beliefs: the Verenthane of the ruling class, and the pagan Goeren-yai, amongst whom Sasha now lives.

For 200 years Tracato has been the center of enlightenment, as the serrin have occupied human lands and sought to remake humanity anew. But the serrin have not destroyed Rhodaan's feudal families entirely, and as Tracato faces the greatest threat to its survival in two centuries, old rivalries are stirring. Sasha must assist her mentor Kessligh to strengthen the Tracato Nasi-Keth, yet with one royal sister siding with the feudalists and another to be married to Tracato's most powerful foe, her loyalties are divided.

Upon the ancient drysine moon/city of Defiance, the UFS Phoenix is being rebuilt, but her crew cannot do so in peace. Parren factions jostle for control of not only Defiance, but of the drysine data-core that Phoenix won at such an awful price. But the parren do not lay sole claim to that ancient knowledge, and within the bowels of the machine-city, something long-dead is awakening. While aliens battle, Captain Debogande struggles to decide his next step. Human emissaries beckon him home, while a terrible new threat drives him toward the far edge of Spiral space. 

Two years after the un-hatching of Callayan President Neiland’s plot to make the capital city of Tanusha the center of the Federation, Callay is under siege. So begins the third installment of this gripping trilogy from an exciting new sci-fi author. A powerful faction of conservative Fleet captains has surrounded Callay, at Earth’s behest, and is threatening a blockade - or worse. A fearful Earth does not wish to lose direct control of its precious war machine, and there are fears of civil war.

Cassandra Kresnov is a highly advanced hunter-killer android. She has escaped the League and fled to Callay, a member of the Federation. Because of her fighting skills she was able to save the president's life and is now a trusted member of the security forces. However, not all Tanushans are happy to have her on their turf and Cassandra has to tread carefully. As Callay moves towards a vote on whether to break away from the Federation, confusion reigns and terrorist groups plot their own agendas.

In 23 Years on Fire, Cassandra discovered that the technology that created her has been misused in her former home and now threatens all humanity with catastrophe. Returning home to Callay, she finds that Federation member worlds, exhausted by the previous thirty-year-war against the League, are unwilling to risk the confrontation that a solution may require. More frighteningly for Sandy, she has brought back to Callay three young children, whom she met on the mean streets of Droze, discovering maternal feelings she had not known she possessed.

Somewhere in the depths of a cold Maine winter, Angelina Donati is hiding. Her mission is simple—don't get found by the murderous Mayor Riley, who is hunting all of Eli Leventhal's remaining allies across New England, and make sure that a baby dragon egg is hatched, bearing the child of her dead best friend. But then a young girl moves in to a neighbouring cabin across the lake. Her name is Natalie, a child from a broken home, in custody of an abusive uncle and protected only by her absent father's dog. 

Angelina Donati has come to New York to kill a man. She holds the magician Eli Leventhal responsible for killing her friend. As the gifted problem child of a house of magical assassins, she does not expect that Leventhal's vast age, wealth, and power will save him. But Eli Leventhal is gathering great forces to fight a far larger war against his longtime magician foe—Riley, the mayor of New York, whose real name is something far older and more frightening.