Showing results by author "Ian J. Malone" in All Categories

It's the 22nd century. Humanity has taken its first steps into the galaxy, and we've found ourselves in a vast playground of alien races and cultures. As the newest players on the universal stage, though, we're at the bottom of the food chain. Welcome back to the Four Horsemen universe, where only a willingness to fight and die for money separates humans from the majority of the other races. While some of the stories deal with mercenaries, others introduce listeners to the other guilds, organizations, and races that make up the landscape of the Four Horsemen universe.

With the Merc Guild opening up contracts again, it’s Zuul eat Zuul to get one, as there are far more companies looking for work than there are contracts to be had. So when Taylor Van Zant gets an inside line on a 30-million-credit contract for Swamp Eagle Security, he races to Karma to throw his hat in the ring. Unfortunately, Taylor arrives to find that the other North Florida mercenary company - the River Hawk Defense Group - is also bidding, and Taylor is forced to watch as they steal the contract out from under the Eagles.

Taylor Van Zant has a lot on his mind. Like everyone in Jacksonville, North Florida, the early-20s bartender from Riverside saw his world upended when his brother, Terry, an interstellar mercenary and local hero, died suddenly in a freak starship accident. Five years later, having been stonewalled for answers, Taylor faced a choice: Honor his mother’s wish that he never go merc or defy it to save her life by resurrecting Terry’s company. That was 13 months ago. Now the newly reformed Eagles stand on the verge of a major milestone: owning their own flagship.

Taylor Van Zant, the owner of Swamp Eagle Security, thought he was doing a good thing when he destroyed the slave ring operating out of Droxis, even though the slavers blew up the red diamond mine there as they tried to escape. Unfortunately, the mine belonged to the synthetic intelligence running the Merchant Guild, and it was…displeased with the mine’s destruction, so it put out a death contract on all the members of Swamp Eagle Security.

In the months since his disappearance, Danny Tucker has retreated to the darkest corners of Alystierian space, seeking intelligence on the Empire’s new chancellor Alec Masterson. Backed by a crew of outcasts and fighting from the shadows as the enigmatic Rogue centurion, Danny will stop at nothing to achieve his mission - vengeance for the brutal murder of Madisyn Reynolds.

Salvage System is a beacon of hope, and a number of other races continue looking toward it as an inspiration for how to live and govern themselves, and - in some cases - for assistance in defending themselves and throwing off oppressive regimes. But the galaxy is a big place, and many of the races in it aren’t friendly. Would these forces like to take over Salvage System and acquire its resources? Absolutely.

Harmon Tomeral and his friends wanted nothing more than to go to space, and they have beaten the odds, time and again, to get there. They developed a mech and won the Top Fleet Marine competition. They brought back a battle cruiser from an unknown system and made it their own. They made allies who helped them achieve great victories, and they, ultimately, founded new colonies in what has become known as the Salvage System.

Five years after the historic Battle of Dulaston, Lee Summerston and the Renegades have settled nicely into life on Aura - and none more so than Danny Tucker. Fueled by a rising career as an ASC staff sergeant and a love unlike any he’s ever known, Danny is in the prime of his life and is at last free from the demons that have stalked him for years. Some demons never die, though, and when an old enemy comes to settle a personal score, Danny soon finds himself - and the woman of his dreams.

It’s just a game...or is it? On the heels of his divorce, down-and-out history professor Lee Summerston doesn’t have a lot going for him - a nowhere job at a third-rate college with kids who don’t care about anything except how to slide through class. All of that changes, though, when Lee leads a team of old friends to virtual glory as the first-ever group to beat Mako Assault, a revolutionary new game that has emerged from nowhere to take the Internet by storm.