Shadow of Empire

Successfully completing their mission to rescue Marshal Augustin Lucerne's daughter, Astra, the crew of the Wolf's Claw are enjoying some well-deserved rest - all, that is, except Blackhawk. The space gun for hire cannot escape Lucerne's relentless pleas for help against growing imperial control in the Far Stars. While Blackhawk deeply respects his friend, he fears that the power Lucerne offers will lead him back to his old dark ways.

A battle is coming, the greatest the Rim has seen in 10,000, a fight for freedom, for the future, for the very survival of all humanity holds dear. Tyler Barron and his comrades are ready for their greatest test, but even as they prepare to hold the line at Fortress Striker, to turn back the Highborn’s imminent attack, the enemy have opened another front, one far to the rear. 

Tyler Barron is about to lead his fleet into a trap. He is sure the enemy is laying in wait, but he has no choice. After four years of unexpected calm along the front line, the Senate and the Hegemonic Council are demanding action, and the Pact’s commanding admiral has no choice but to set out on a mission to liberate the enemy-held regions of the Hegemony. While Tyler prepares for an offensive he believes can only end in disaster, Andi Lafarge is preparing to continue her quest for the mysterious weapon the doomed empire used to defeat the Highborn centuries before. 

The mysterious enemy has come, and Tyler Barron and his allies prepare for the final battle, the desperate struggle to save the Rim. Barron’s spacers are ready to fight, as always, but this time they know little of the enemy, and they face technology far beyond their own. They will fight to the end if necessary, battle with their final breaths to hold back the deadly enemy. They will stand alongside their old enemies, the Hegemony, united for one massive battle, one all out effort to stop the Highborn.

The Dusahn have been backed into a corner, barely able to hold the worlds of the Pentaurus cluster, let alone the entire sector. Forced to dig in, they may have to resort to drastic measures to save their fledgling empire. Captain Scott must use all his military and diplomatic skills to prepare his forces for the final assault on the Dusahn Empire. But he cannot do it alone. He needs help, and lots of it.

A grim, haunted expanse of space, vast light years filled with dead, empty worlds. A dark place, the graveyard of an empire…and a frontier where vast riches can be had by those with the courage - and the luck - to survive. Andi Lafarge and the crew of Pegasus are among the elite of the strange brotherhood that ventures forth, seeking the remnants of humanity’s lost past. She and her people will face the deadliest challenges, fight constant battles, and plunge forth into the darkest corners of the lost region of space.

An industrial hell. The foulest and most decrepit slum on Parsephon. A nest of human misery, where hope is word long forgotten, and the dead are carted away every day. It is the worst pit in the Confederation’s great industrial machine known as the Iron Belt. Among the millions born into misery, poverty, and despair under the dark and smoky haze that covers the planet, Andromeda Lafarge is unique. One lost soul among billions, she is tough, relentless, determined to get out, to escape, to blaze her own trail, and to make a name for herself across the stars.   

The Hegemony controls Megara, the Confederation’s capital. War has raged for five years. Millions are dead, vast fleets of ships have been destroyed. But in the stronghold where Tyler Barron and his comrades have gathered their allies and the last of their strength, a plan is being devised. Barron and his people have fought bravely, stubbornly, relentlessly, but the Hegemony has been too strong. Now, Barron is relying on the one source of strength that remains to him. Defiance.

Blackhawk: a wanderer, a man running from a dark and sinister past. A genetically-engineered warrior, a capable and accomplished killer, he is also a lost soul, a man who has fled to the deepest reaches of space seeking his true identity. The Far Stars: the farthest extent of human habitation in the galaxy, a sector of a hundred inhabited worlds, it is a dangerous expanse full of pirates, mercenaries, and cutthroats.

The Confederation and its allies have won their first victory, retaking their capital from the forces of the Hegemony. But the enemy is not beaten, far from it, and they are back, with an unstoppable weapon, a vast superbattleship, a deadly hybrid of imperial and Hegemony technology, called the Colossus. The great ship is enormously powerful, nearly unstoppable, and in its armored depths it hides a secret, another Hegemony weapon, one that will change the dynamic of the entire war.

The White Fleet had been an expression of optimism, a grand expedition to explore the vast reaches of the long-dead empire. Tasked to uncover the secrets of the devastating Cataclysm and to seek and recover the advanced ancient technology that humanity had once possessed, it found something else instead. A new enemy. A vast domain, one with advanced technology, massive fleets, and a genetically-ordered society and hierarchy it intends to impose on all humanity everywhere. The Hegemony is like nothing Tyler Barron and his comrades have ever encountered - but the veteran admiral must find a way to fight the far superior enemy....

The Hegemony has launched the invasion Tyler Barron and his Confederation comrades have feared, and all the Rim is ablaze with the fires of war and destruction. The Hegemony has brought its vast fleets, its advanced technology, and its endless legions of grim cyborg warriors to impose its system of rigid genetic hierarchy over all humanity on the Rim. The Confederation fleet is outnumbered and outmatched, but they will fight nevertheless, struggling and dying to hold back the onslaught any way they can.

What would you do if you found a spaceship? Would you call the government, would you pretend you never saw it, or would you keep it a secret? What would you do with it? Use it to gallivant around the galaxy, conquer Earth, get filthy rich, or try to improve life on Earth? Listen along and find out how Marc works to convert Earth into a spacefaring world capable of defending itself and of being united as it meets the other civilizations in the galaxy.

Max Edwards has always felt like something was wrong with the world. Like something was...off. Like his entire life was a lie being told by the people around him. Then, it begins. From his friend’s acreage outside Oklahoma City, he witnesses a giant saucer descend from the sky to hover over the city. Countries all around the world report the same thing - mysterious vessels that refuse all attempts to communicate. As the world comes apart at the seams, Max realizes everything that’s ever happened to him was leading up to this.

After two brutal, bloody struggles for their very existence against implacable alien foes, humanity is victorious, but not at peace. As distrust and accusations consume the political discourse between the two major factions, the Eastern Star Alliance military has already begun executing small raiding missions into United Terran Federation space. The Federation fleet, still reeling from the last war, is in no shape to try and protect its own borders.