Space Conspiracy

Cory Wilson is woken in the middle of the night with a summons to appear in the president of Nations of Earth's office. An aid worker in Djibouti has discovered a shipment of alien guns. As ambassador to gamra, the extraterrestrial organization which controls the Exchange, the FTL wormhole network, Cory has often been critical of Earth's handling of extraterrestrial problems. This is his moment to shine, to apply his knowledge about alien customs, to, in the words of the president, "get those idiots out of there".

Elfrida Goto is a hero and a lifesaver, but as far as the Space Corps is concerned, she's a reminder of the deadly Galapagos incident. Banished to 4 Vesta, the boondocks of the asteroid belt, she's commissioned to work with the University of Vesta to look for more resource-rich asteroids. She's an unwelcome interloper, but when a group of protesters steal the university's data, Elfrida is the only one who can catch the thieves.

"Review a hotel for me," she said. "It'll be easy," she said. I haven't even got started, and there's a body in the bathroom. It was only supposed to be a hotel review. All Miles Goram wants to do is finish up and get off Reevis as quickly as he can. It's an airless planet where everyone lives under a giant dome. Not the sort of place he wants to be stuck on. The body in his bath has really fouled his plans up.

After China announced a space mission to place its own flag next to the one US astronauts planted during the Apollo 11 mission, few people bat an eyelid. Shortly after this statement, Charlie Stephens, an 81-year-old former filmmaker, is murdered. The incident is made to look like an accident, but why?

On Earth, Grover Baines (a NASA scientist) is murdered in 1979 when he stumbles upon a secret third Voyager flight. Unlike the two other probes, Voyager 3 was a small manned craft loaded with reproductive material in hopes of finding a suitable planet for habitation on Alpha Centauri. Years later, in 2001, a fourth Voyager is sent on the same mission. Though technology has advanced dramatically in the 24 years since the first three Voyagers were launched, this mission manages to remain secret amid the attacks on the Twin Towers.

Fun & Games and Hell & Gone come full circle in the Hardie Series' astonishing conclusion. Charlie Hardie finds himself in a steel box, tubes and wires attached to his body, trapped inside a satellite parked in orbit 500 miles above the Earth. He's got a year's supply of food, air, water, and no...