Kirjahaku

Li Liang has found a berth to suit her: chief pilot and first officer of the all-female crew of an old space freighter, the Sappho. Then one ordinary, unremarkable morning, Liang retunes the Sappho

Earth's last known colony, Albion, is fighting an alien enemy. In the first of the Taking Shield serial, Shield Captain Bennet is dropped behind the lines to steal priceless intelligence. A dangerous job, and Bennet doesn't need the distractions of changing relationships with his long-term partner, Joss, or with his father-and with Flynn, the new lover who will turn his world upside-down.He expects to risk his life. He expects the data will alter the course of the war.What he doesn't expect is that it will change his life or that Flynn will be impossible to forget.

Returning to duty following his long recovery from the injuries he sustained during the events recounted in Heart Scarab, Shield Captain Bennet accepts a tour of duty in Fleet as flight captain on a dreadnought. The one saving grace is that it isn't his father's ship-bad enough that he can't yet return to the Shield Regiment, at least he doesn't have the added stress of commanding former lover Fleet Lieutenant Flynn, knowing the fraternisation regulations will keep them apart.Working on the material he collected himself on T18 three years before, Bennet decodes enough Maess data to send him behind the lines to Makepeace, once a human colony but under Maess control for more than a century. The mission goes belly up, costing Albion one of her precious, irreplaceable dreadnoughts and bringing political upheaval, acrimony and the threat of public unrest in its wake. But for Bennet, the real nightmare is discovering what the Maess have in store for humanity.It's not good. It's not good at all.

Rafe Lancaster is reluctantly settling into his role as the First Heir of House Stravaigor. Trapped by his father's illness and his new responsibilities, Rafe can't go with lover Ned Winter to Aegypt for the 1902/03 archaeological digging season. Rafe's unease at being left behind intensifies when Ned's fascination with the strange Antikythera mechanism and its intriguing link to the Aegyptian god Thoth has Ned heading south to the remote, unexplored highlands of Abyssinia and the course of the Blue Nile.Searching for Thoth's deadly secrets, Ned is out of contact and far from help. When he doesn't return at Christmas as he promised, everything points to trouble. Rafe is left with a stark choice - abandon his dying father, or risk never seeing Ned again.

In less than a week, Bennet will finally return to the Shield Regiment, leaving behind the Gyrfalcon, his father, his friends... and Flynn. Promotion to Shield Major and being given command of a battle group despite the political fallout from Makepeace the year before is everything he thought he wanted. Everything he's worked towards for the last three years. Except for leaving Flynn. He really doesn't want to leave Flynn.There's time for one last flight together. A routine mission. Nothing too taxing, just savouring every moment with the best wingman, the best friend, he's ever had. That's the plan.Bennet should know better than to trust to routine because what waits for them out there will change their lives forever.