Space Noir

When former government agent Frank Compton steps back into his apartment after his tangle with the Modhri - a coral-like group mind - he finds a young woman with his gun in her hands waiting for him. Her little sister's life is in danger and Compton is the only one who can help. After retrieving his gun and kicking her out, he finds himself falsely accused of her murder. With a little help, he posts bail, gets a new identity, and begins the search for the little girl.

The Asterion Dominion government has fallen, its rulers slain - but in the Dominion, the dead rarely stay that way. A doomsday clock rushes headlong toward the day the monstrous alien shape-shifters known as the Rasu will demand their next tribute of lives. When denied it, the Rasu will burn every Dominion world to the ground. Unless they can be stopped.

Nika Tescarav has lived many lives, though she no longer remembers most of them. Chased by agents of a regime that will do anything to protect the secrets of the Rasu Protocol, Nika flees to the stars with her once and future lover on a mission to expose those secrets. A race across alien worlds both exotic and deadly leads them to the bastion of the enemy, but its discovery brings a terrible revelation: sometimes the truth is indeed worse than the lies spun to conceal it.