Showing results by author "S. H. Jucha" in All Categories

The conclave continually pressures the Imperium Empire by ousting peacekeepers and Radag mercenaries from imperial territories. This interdicts resources bound for Krackus worlds from the suborned races and exacerbates Imperium distribution protocols. On Jegstrat, a populous Krackus world, declining grain shipments lead to favoring distribution to large companies. Saboteurs plan to slow production at Imperial Grains, the largest processing plant. The goal is to rebalance grain distribution, but the attack goes terribly awry, causing death and great damage.

Opportunity is presented to Admiral Cordelia. Imperium’s Presiding Executor Gaketork sends emissaries to establish communications with her, and she responds by installing a comm system aboard the executor’s transport. The Imperium governor, who has become sentient, uses the new comm system to send her critical data. Cordelia shares the governor’s information with newly assembled Trident squadron commanders. She directs the commanders to scour another executor’s territory and free suborned worlds of mercenary Radags and Krackus overseers.

Captain Jessie Cinders faces a hazardous choice. The murderer of the governor's nephew stands before him. But, the frightened teenager, Aurelia Garmenti, doesn't resemble the commandant's description of the vicious, hardened killer his security forces seek.

An explorer tug captain, Alex Racine detects a damaged alien craft drifting into the system. Recognizing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make first contact, Alex pulls off a daring maneuver to latch on to the derelict. Alex discovers the ship was attacked by an unknown craft, the first of its kind ever encountered. The mysterious silver ship's attack was both instant and deadly.

Dangerous forces are at work across galactic space that the Omnians are attempting to stabilize, but their resources are severely strained. The SADEs, self-aware digital entities, express to Alex Racine and Renée de Guirnon their desire to know the method of their creation. Alex and Renée, the Omnian co-leaders, want to obtain the knowledge for the SADEs, who are humans’ closest allies. Alex, Renée, and Julien, a friend and a SADE, board the giant city-ship, Freedom, which sails for Méridien, the home world of the far-reaching human colonies of the Confederation.

The great spheres and probes of Artifice, humankind's enemy, haunt every inhabited world near and far. The Omnians' long and arduous search for Artifice has ended. They've located Artifice's lair in the Talus system.

The Omnian expeditionary fleet sails for the faraway place they call "the wall". The worlds of humankind have consolidated their resources to create a powerful armada to confront the alien federation. During the Omnians' previous encounter with an alien fleet at the wall, the Nua'll comm sphere spoke to them in multiple languages. When the messages were deciphered by SADEs, the humans' digital friends, the Omnians realized two things. One, they would face a vast empire composed of hundreds of races, and, two, the Nua'll were not the leaders of the federacy. They had spoken of masters.

Escalation is the watchword for the dangerous contest between the Imperium and the conclave. Executors seek the means to push the conclave out of the empire, and desperate measures are taken to design and construct new ships, which are armed with a terrible weapon.

Pyre is a volatile planet. Its surface belches heat and noxious gases, forcing downsiders to inhabit domes. But Pyre's instability isn't limited to its geology. The colonists, who were marooned in the system hundreds of years ago, have endured a tumultuous history. Exploring Triton, Pyre's third moon, spacers inadvertently activate an alien dome. Nearly a year later, the Belle's bridge crew, who monitors the alien site, is alarmed, when they witness a bright blue light shoot from the dome's platform and merge with the shield.

After Sol’s construction of Tridents - Omnian-designed warships - Earthers possess the ability to transit quickly among the stars. The desire to know what happened to Earth’s colony ship, the Honora Belle, sent to the stars a millennium ago is resurrected. An Omnian Trident and the vessel Rêveur accompany three Sol Enclave Tridents in search of the Belle’s colonists. Swiftly, the Omnians and the Earthers become enmeshed in a centuries-old conflict enveloping a vast area of space inhabited by alliance races. The enemy is the Colony: a giant insectoid species.

The surviving Méridiens have returned to Confederation space, aided by their recently discovered cousins, the New Terrans. They expect a celebration after their 71-year absence. Instead, they're shocked to find the silver ships have destroyed half the Confederation. The Méridiens are fleeing in advance of the horde of alien ships. But Alex Racine and his crew didn't come this far to run away from humanity's enemy.

Trouble infiltrated the Harakens' capital city of Espero, in the form of New Terra criminal gangs who grew wealthy and powerful on the moons of Ganymede, hiding behind the cover of an ill-conceived mining charter. The gangs brought stims and addictive hallucinogenic drugs to Espero, distributing them to the young on the planet.

Artifice, the great enemy, has been defeated. The sister SADEs, Omnian sentient digital entities, are free from their boxes. Most humans are unaware that the sisters have duplicated themselves many more times than suspected. They now constitute a sizable, powerful group, calling themselves the Sisterhood. The elimination of Artifice’s rule should be a time of relief and recovery for Alex Racine’s Omnian fleet and for the Toralians, whose home world was Artifice’s lair. Instead, it’s a chaotic period.

The Veklocks require the Pyreans to explore the extent of the Colony's usurpation of domes. The Colony is composed of two insectoid species, the grays and the reds. They're aggressive three- and five-meter long insectoids with venomous pincers that live for the expansion of their race. The Pyreans already lost one member of their team on their first exploration and are hesitant to meet the Colony again, unless they're better prepared.

Pyre's humans suffer multiple cultural shocks. They discovered the Messinants dome, an ancient construction that houses a quantum-coupled gate. More shocking, they find that sentient alien races utilize a network of these domes to journey between their far distant worlds in pursuit of alliance matters. If humans wish to join this elite collection of sentients, they must contribute significantly in trade, tech, or something of equal value.

Nine years of tranquility came to an abrupt end when a Méridien starship entered the Hellébore system, sounding a dire warning for Alex Racine, the Haraken president. Unwanted visitors had arrived again. But this time, they're not alien; they're human. Claiming to have followed the course of a colony ship launched a millennium ago when Earth wrestled with resource wars and climate change, the mission commander, Antonio García, requests a meeting with the planet's leaders.

Sol's warships paid the ultimate price for threatening the Haraken and New Terran worlds. Now, Haraken president Alex Racine and his Méridien partner, Renée de Guirnon, are engaged in a desperate gamble to stop a war between their worlds and United Earth's (UE) massive forces before it starts. What's Alex's grand plan? He hasn't a clue, but his people believe in him and hope he will find a way to protect them.

The descendants of a fourth Earth colony ship, Destiny, successfully establish a foothold in unoccupied space. Naiad, the home world, is a frozen ball, but the colonists persevere and expand through wormholes to remote systems. Navigating the time-space anomalies requires Axis-ships. The expensive vessels are constructed by corporations, and remote worlds are claimed by the companies for their valuable ores and gases.

Omnians, Earthers, and alliance members are fighting the Colony, the horde of sentient insectoids that threaten alliance space. The Colony has had centuries to expand through the network of domes built by the Messinants, an ancient race. The domes’ Q-gates allow the insectoids to invade planets through their inventive use of rings, which extends the power of the domes. It’s Omnian superior technology that gives a temporary advantage to the peaceful alliance members who lead the fight to retake their planets.

The Méridiens are fleeing to their far colonies - and they have reason to run. Over the course of decades, they have lost hundreds of ships, billions of people, and seven Confederation colonies to an alien enemy: an advancing swarm of silver ships transported in the bowels of a gigantic, spherical vessel. Alex Racine, who once enjoyed the solitary life of an explorer-tug captain, is now an admiral and responsible for the lives of a quarter million Librans.