Jake Elwood

Suicide MissionThe Dawn Alliance holds Novograd in a steel fist, protected by a battle fleet and an armored space station. The factories of Novograd are the key to the war. Whoever controls the planet controls the Green Zone - and that means the station must be destroyed. The station will be a tough nut to crack, but Tom Thrush has a plan. The key to cracking a nut is to bring a big enough hammer. There's a crippled Dawn Alliance battleship limping home from the Battle of New Panama. His plan is simple: board the battleship, take control, and use it as a Trojan horse in a desperate assault on the station.All he has to do is find the battleship in the trackless wastes of hyperspace, fight his way onboard, take over, and set course for Novograd. With a little luck, a lot of courage, and an iron will, the station will fall - and the real battle will begin.

A Galaxy Engulfed by WarThe Dawn Alliance and the United Worlds are locked in a bitter war over the rich worlds of the Green Zone. The colony of New Panama is caught between the giants, and Tom Thrush has the impossible job of leading her rag-tag navy in a desperate struggle for survival. The Burden of CommandHis fleet is a mix of armed freighters and salvaged warships. The crews are former pirates with no military training. His enemy has the most powerful navy the galaxy has ever seen. With no hope of victory, he fights just to postpone annihilation. But these are the famed rebels of the Free Planets, tough and resourceful and hard as rats to kill. They might not count for much in a straight fight, but they know a thing or two about tackling impossible odds. If Tom can earn their respect, they might just teach him something about survival - or even victory.

A desperate captain. A crippled ship. An impossible choice. The frigate Kestrel has been shot to pieces. She's out of fuel, stranded deep behind enemy lines. It looks hopeless. But Tom Thrush, junior lieutenant and acting captain, has sworn he'll get his people home. Escape means fuel, and that means taking it from the enemy. A daring raid gives the Kestrel a fighting chance - but a rescued prisoner has some disturbing news. A ragtag local militia has put together a fleet. The fleet is gathering - and it's about to blunder into a trap. There's only one way the militia fleet will survive. The battered, exhausted crew of the Kestrel must turn their backs on safety and plunge once more into battle. They're hurt. They're scared. But they have their duty. The Kestrel is a ship of war, and she will not die easy.

An Impossible Choice Camp One has one brutal rule: If you attempt to escape, you die - and three random prisoners die with you. Tom Thrush has resigned himself to dying by degrees, doing forced labor while he slowly starves. When he learns that a distant mesa holds a slim chance at freedom he does nothing. The price of escape is too high. Then fever sweeps through the camp. Surrounded by armed guards and an unforgiving jungle, paralyzed by the threat of reprisals, Tom watches as the men he's sworn to protect die one by one. If anyone is to survive, Tom will have to do the unthinkable. Escape.

Out of the frying pan ...Tom Thrush thinks Basic Officer Training is tough - until he joins the frigate Kestrel and finds out what tough really means. The crew resents him. The First Officer is actively hostile. As the ship hunts pirates in deep space Tom struggles to fit in and wonders if things can get any worse. They can. And into the fire of interstellar warA devastating attack leaves the ship crippled with half the crew dead or dying. The senior officers are wiped out, leaving a terrified sublieutenant in the last place he wants to be. In command.

Interstellar war is just the beginningRichard Hammett is no longer a captain in his beloved Spacecom. He's an admiral in the brand-new Colonial Forces in the Naxos system, tasked with defending the colony from the aliens of the Hive - and from the vengeful ships of Spacecom as well. When a scouting mission in deep space reveals the location of an alien Gate, Hammett finds himself surrounded and trapped. A Spacecom fleet blunders in, looking for Hammett to place him under arrest. With the aliens closing in, the two human fleets set aside their differences to battle a common enemy. A desperate gambit leads to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to strike at the heart of the alien empire - but if the aliens are defeated, Hammett's new allies will turn their attention to him. They see Hammett as a traitor and a mutineer, and if they can get their hands on him, he'll hang.

A WAR IN DEEP SPACEThe Hive has retreated from Earth, and Captain Richard Hammett has been ordered to give chase - in three puny corvettes. He expects to find the colony on Ariadne in ruins, but the colonists are alive, and they're fighting back. LEADS TO A WAR ON THE HOME FRONTThe first battle is ugly. It's only when reinforcements arrive from Earth, though, that things REALLY get bad. There's been a change of government, and the Navy has a new mission - keep the people of Earth under control. As the Hive prepares a doomsday weapon and launches it at Ariadne, Hammett receives new orders. He is to abandon the colony. Now, a man who has built his life around service to the Navy must make an impossible decision - disgrace his uniform, or commit mutiny in the middle of an interstellar war.

A washed-up captain. A worn-out ship. A crew of green cadets. And they're Earth's only hope.The Alexander is the last true warship, a relic from the days of interstellar war. She's destined for the scrapyard, and her captain, Richard Hammett, is about to retire. Their last mission is a training run with a ship full of cadets. It's supposed to be a routine hop through a wormhole Gate. But Gates have been going offline, one after another, and Hammett knows in his bones it means trouble. The kind of trouble only a real warship can handle. Defying orders, he takes the Alexander through another Gate, and puts the ship smack dab in the path of an alien invasion. Now a captain at the end of his career will have to take dozens of terrified cadets and forge them into a crew of warriors, because the Alexander is all that stands between the Earth and the swarming ships of the Hive.