Search Worlds Without End

Six Billion Dead--And One Man Intent on Putting a Stop to the Killing

For more than fifty years, the Terran Republic and the Terran League have been killing one another. The death toll has climbed ever higher, year after year, with no end in sight. But the members of the Five Hundred, the social elite of the Republic's Heart Worlds, don't care.

Their star systems are light-years from any threat of attack. Their children are sheltered from the "mandatory service" that falls so heavily on the Fringe Worlds' backs. Their trade connections with the Rishathan Sphere bring them wealth and influence. And their contracts to build ships, fighters, missiles, and all the other sinews of war have made them the wealthiest human beings in the history of the galaxy.

Rear Admiral Terrence Murphy is a Heart Worlder. His family is part of the Five Hundred. His wife is the daughter of one of the Five Hundred's wealthiest, most powerful industrialists. His sons and his daughter can easily avoid military service, and political power is his for the taking. There is no end to how high he can rise in the Republic's power structure.

All he has to do is successfully complete a risk-free military "governorship" in the backwater Fringe System of New Dublin without rocking the boat. Without dredging up any lunatic Fringe conspiracy theories. Without undercutting the Five Hundred's stranglehold on wealth and power.

But the people sending him to New Dublin have miscalculated, because Terrence Murphy is a man who believes in honor. Who believes in duty--in common decency and responsibility. Who believes there are dark and dangerous secrets behind the façade of what "everyone knows."

Terrence Murphy intends to meet those responsibilities and unearth those secrets, and he doesn't much care what the Five Hundred want.

He intends to put a stop to the killing.

Wherever that takes him, he will go. Whatever that costs him, he will pay. And whatever that requires, he will do.

Terrence Murphy is coming for whoever has orchestrated fifty-six years of bloodshed and slaughter, and Hell itself is coming with him.

A new novel in the world of In Fury Born, one of David Weber's most celebrated novels.

There he was in his sailboat in the middle of the Atlantic, all alone and loving it. Well, there was a US Navy carrier group on his southern horizon, but he was a Navy guy himself, so he didn't mind. Then came the UFOs, hurtling in from the Outer Black to overfly the carriers at Mach 17. Their impossible aerobatics were bad enough--but then they started shooting at each other. And at the Navy. With nukes. Little ones at first, but winding up with a 500 megatonner at 90 miles that fried every piece of electronics within line-of-sight.

Richard Ashton thought he was just a ringside observer to these now over-the-horizon events. Until the crippled alien lifeboat came drifting down and homed in on his sailboat; suddenly he has his hands full of an unconscious, critically wounded and impossibly human alien warrior who also happens to be a gorgeous female.

That's when things got interesting.

Three Masters of Military Science Fiction
Three Great Science Fiction Series:

• Honor Harrinqton
• Hammer's Slammers
• Belisarius

Three Short Novels in One Volume

Before she saved the galaxy, she was "Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington"-- New York Times bestselling author David Weber reveals how Honor Harrington's long and brilliant career began with an encounter with "pirates" who turned out to be much more than they seemed....

Another day, another planet at war. But in David Drake's "Choosing Sides," Lieutenant Huber stepped off the starship right into an ambush. The attackers didn't survive, but neither did far too many of Huber's troops--and Slammers aren't supposed to get caught in ambushes. Now, to redeem himself, Huber is being sent on a special mission that may be his last. But even so, the enemy will learn the cost of killing even a single one of Colonel Hammer's Slammers....

If the enemy thought General Belisarius was tough, wait until they meet the wife of one of his soldiers in Eric Flint's "Island." She was wed just before her husband left with Belisarius to fight an evil from beyond time. Now her husband is wounded, and she is going to travel a thousand miles to reach his side--and few who get in her way will live to regret it....

Contents:

• 1 - Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington - [Honor Harrington Universe Short Fiction] - (2001) - novella by David Weber
• 145 - Islands - [Belisarius] - novella by Eric Flint
• 215 - Choosing Sides - [Hammer's Slammers] - novella by David Drake

Treecats, starships, dragons, alternate history, self-aware Bolo supertanks, wizards, sailing ships, ironclads....

Open the door and peep inside, but be careful! Once you step into the worlds of Weber, you may not want to go home again.

Table of Contents:

• 9 Introduction - [Honor Harrington Universe Nonfiction]
• 13 A Certain Talent
• 29 In the Navy - [1632 Fiction]
• 81 The Captain from Kirkbean
• 101 Sir George and the Dragon - [Ranks of Bronze]
• 169 Swordbrother - [Bahzell]
• 297 A Beautiful Friendship - [Star Kingdom]
• 361 Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington - [Honor Harrington Universe Short Fiction]
• 475 Miles to Go - [Bolo]
• 589 The Traitor - [Bolo]

AMERICAN FREEDOM AND JUSTICE
VS. THE TYRANNIES OF
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

The new government in central Europe, called the Confederated Principalities of Europe, was formed by an alliance between Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, and the West Virginians led by Mike Stearns who were transplanted into 17th-century Germany by a mysterious cosmic accident. The new regime is shaky. Outside its borders, the Thirty Years War continues to rage. Within, it is beset by financial crisis as well as the political and social tensions between the democratic ideals of the 20th-century Americans and the aristocracy which continues to rule the roost in the CPE as everywhere in Europe.

Worst of all, the CPE has aroused the implacable hostility of Cardinal Richelieu, the effective ruler of France. Richelieu has created the League of Ostend in order to strike at the weakest link in the CPE's armor--its dependence on the Baltic as the lifeline between Gustav Adolf's Sweden and the rest of his realm.

The greatest naval war in European history is about to erupt. Like it or not, Gustavus Adolphus will have to rely on Mike Stearns and the technical wizardry of his obstreperous Americans to save the King of Sweden from ruin.

Caught in the conflagration are two American diplomatic missions abroad: Rebecca Stearns' mission to France and Holland, and the embassy which Mike Stearns sent to King Charles of England headed by his sister Rita and Melissa Mailey. Rebecca finds herself trapped in war-torn Amsterdam; Rita and Melissa, imprisoned in the Tower of London.

And much as Mike wants to transport 20th-century values into war-torn 17th-century Europe by Sweet Reason, still he finds comfort in the fact that Julie, who once trained to be an Olympic marksman, still has her rifle...

Fight for Freedom in a Dark and Bloody Age!

After a cosmic accident sets the modern West Virginia town of Grantsville down in war-torn seventeenth century Europe, the United States of Europe is forged in the fire of battle. The Baltic War reaches a climax as France, Spain, England, and Denmark besiege the U.S.E. in the Prussian stronghold of Lubeck. The invention of ironclads, the introduction of special force tactics during a spectacular rescue operation at the Tower of London – the up-timers plan to use every trick in the time traveler's book to avoid a defeat that will send Europe back to a new Dark Age!

VENGEANCE IS A DISH BEST SERVED HOT

Imperial Intelligence couldn't find them, the Imperial Fleet couldn't catch them, and local defenses couldn't stop them. It seemed the planet-wrecking pirates were invincible. But the pirates made a big mistake when they raided ex-commando leader Alicia DeVries' quiet home world, tortured and murdered her family, and then left her for dead.

Since the Imperial forces seem hog-tied, Alicia decides to turn "pirate" herself, and steals a cutting-edge AI ship from the Empire to start her vendetta. Her fellow veterans think she's crazy, the Imperial Fleet has shoot-on-sight orders. And of course the pirates want her dead, too. But Alicia DeVries has two allies nobody knows about, allies as implacable as she is: a self-aware computer, and a creature from the mists of Old Earth's most ancient legends. And this trio of furies won't rest until vengeance is served.

Unleash the Fury!

Zhikotse. Shallingsport. Louvain. Sacred fields of battle on far-flung worlds where warriors of the Imperial Cadre spent blood and lives defending human civilization. Alicia DeVries was there; she led the charge. Her reward Betrayal by a deceitful empire. Retirement to obscurity.

Now Alicia is the only survivor of a brutal attack on her frontier-world family. Not since the mighty Achilles has the ancient spirit of the Fury Tisiphone taken up residence inside a human being. But not since Achilles has a warrior so skilled, so implacable, and possessing so much battle sense sprung up among the mass of humankind. Hero of the Empire. Holder of the Banner of Terra.

There is a blood price to be paid. The Fury has awakened.

An elite warrior in a line stretching to the U.S. Marines of old Earth is born and comes into her power in a mega-novel of heroism and adventure by multiple New York Times best-seller David Weber, creator of the Honor Harrington saga!

Controlled by their tireless electronic brains which were programmed to admit no possibility of defeat, the gigantic robot tanks known as Bolos were almost indestructible, and nearly unstoppable. Their artificial intelligences were designed to make them selflessly serve and protect humans throughout the galaxy and made each Bolo the epitome of the knight sans peur et sans reproche, and often far more noble than the humans who gave them their orders.

Now, David Weber, New York Times best-selling author of the Honor Harrington series, continues the history of the Bolo, in four short novels, one of them published here for the first time. One Bolo is driven over the edge by the very humans it is pledged to protect. Another Bolo must decide whether or not to disobey when it is given an order that constitutes genocide. A third must hunt one of its own kind whose robot brain is damaged and rescue two children which the deranged Bolo thinks it is protecting from a nonexistent enemy. And more, including as a bonus, David Weber's own authoritative technical history of the Bolo, all in a volume that will be irresistible both for David Weber's huge readership and Bolo fans everywhere.

Captain Maneka Trevor was the sole human survivor of the Dinochrome Brigade's 39th Battalion... but she hadn't wanted to be one.

The Bolo known as "Lazarus" -- Unit 28/G-179-LAZ -- was the 39th's sole surviving Bolo... but he hadn't been hers.

The doctors and the Bolo techs have put them both back together again, yet there are wounds no doctor or technician can heal.

And now Maneka and Lazarus must serve together once again, in a war whose stakes are literally the survival or extermination of the human race. They are all that stand between a desperate, secret colony of humanity and destruction: a Bolo commander torn by survivor's guilt and a Bolo whose very existence reminds her of all she has lost.

The odds against them are heavy, the stakes are huge, and surrender is not an option. The Dinochrome Brigade is used to that, but can Maneka and Lazarus survive their own shared past to defend the present?

Table of Contents:

• The Farmer's Wife - novelette by Linda Evans
• Little Red Horn - novella by Linda Evans and Robert R. Hollingsworth
• Little Dog Gone - novella by Linda Evans
• Miles to Go - novel by David Weber
• Technical Notes (The Triumphant) - short fiction by David Weber

The Royal Brat is in Trouble

Roger Ramius Sergei Chiang MacClintock didn't understand.

He was young, handsome, athletic, an excellent dresser, and third in line for the Throne of Man...so why wouldn't anyone at Court trust him?

Why wouldn't even his own mother, the Empress, explain why they didn't trust him? Or why the very mention of his father's name was forbidden at Court? Or why his mother had decided to pack him off to a backwater planet aboard what was little more than a tramp freighter to represent her at a local political event better suited to a third assistant undersecretarv of state?

It probably wasn't too surprising that someone in his position should react by becoming spoiled, selfcentered and petulant. After all, what else did he have to do with his life?

But that was before a saboteur tried to blow up his transport. Then warships of the Empire of Man's worst rivals shot the crippled vessel out of space. Then Roger found himself shipwrecked on the planet Marduk, whose jungles were full of damnbeasts, killerpillars, carnivorous plants, torrential rain, and barbarian hordes with really bad dispositions. Now all Roger has to do is hike halfway around the entire planet, then capture a spaceport from the Bad Guys, somehow commandeer a starship, and then go home to Mother for explanations.

Fortunately, Roger has an ace in the hole: Bravo Company of Bronze Battalion of The Empress' Own Regiment. If anyone can get him off Marduk alive, it's the Bronze Barbarians.

Assuming that Prince Roger manages to grow up before he gets all of them killed.

A Bad Neighborhood

"Always Faithful." That was the IMC motto, and the Marines of Bravo Company, Bronze Battalion, of the Empress' Own Regiment, lived by it...even if they did occasionally wonder why they bothered. After all, Prince Roger MacClintock, Tertiary Heir to the Throne of Man, was a real piece of work. A spoiled rotten, arrogant, whiny, terminally handsome, thoroughly useless young pain in the butt.

But that was before the Royal Brat and his body guards were marooned on Marduk by an assassination attempt. Before they found themselves facing 120° heat in jungles where it rained five or six hours a day...during the dry season. Before they had to march half way around the entire planet, through damnbeasts, Capetoads, killerpillars, and atul-grak. Before they encountered treacherous local potentates, barbarian migrations, and an ocean full of sea serpents that could swallow a topsail schooner whole.

Under the right circumstances, even the most spoiled brat can grow up fast, and it turns out that under his petulant, spoiled exterior, Prince Roger is a true MacClintock, a scion of the warrior dynasty which created the Empire of Man a thousand years before. The Marines assigned to guard him have discovered a new belief in him -- and in their motto -- and they're determined that they will get him off of Marduk aIive.

Of course, the planet has other ideas...

Prince Roger MacClintock, Heir to the Throne of Man, was a spoiled rotten arrogant, thoroughly useless young pain in the butt.

But that was before the royal Brat and his Marine bodyguards had their starship sabotaged, and all were marooned on the enemy-occupied planet of Marduk. Before they had to march half way around the entire planet, through steaming jungles, damnbeasts, Capetoads, and killerpillars. Before they encountered treacherous local potentates, hostile barbarian armies numbering in the thousands, and an ocean full of creatures that are big, vicious and voracious.

Under the right circumstances, even the most spoiled brat can grow up fast. Now, Roger and his loyal troops have made it to the sea, and on the way, Roger has proven himself to be a true MacClintock and a born leader. Still, the sea has monsters big enough to swallow a ship - and across the water is an enemy spaceport, bristing with heavy artillery, against which Roger's team has only hand weapons with nearly-drained power packs. But neither Roger nor the Marines are about to give up, Marduk, do your worst!

Prince Roger MacClintock was an heir to the galaxy's Throne of Man-and a self-obsessed spoiled young brat . . . until he and the Royal Marines sent to protect him were stranded on Marduk with only their feet to get them half way around the entire planet.

So far, they've crossed a continent, crossed a sea full of ship-eating monsters, taken over an enemy spaceport, and hijacked a starship. But they're not home-free yet, because home is no longer free.

In Roger's absence, a palace coup by enemies of the MacClintock family has seized control of the Empire. His mother the Empress is a captive in the palace and even in her own body, drugged so that her will is not her own. Roger's bother, the heir to the throne, is dead. And Roger himself has been branded an outlaw and traitor. Roger and his faithful band of human marines and native alien warriors have beaten the barbarian planet Marduk, and now they must re-conquer an interstellar empire.

But they aren't about to give up, and with the help of those on the throne planet who are still loyal to the Empress they will infiltrate (under cover of a restaurant specializing in exotic Mardukan dishes, no less), they will make anyone who gets in their way (such as local mobsters who make the mistake of kidnapping Roger's fiancé) very sorry that they did, and they will not rest until the rightful ruler has been restored.

Once again, a lot of power-hungry people are going to learn a hard lesson: You do not, ever, mess with a MacClintock!

Contents:

• Mutineers' Moon
• The Armageddon Inheritance
• Heirs of Empire

For Colin MacIntyre, it began with a routine training flight over the moon. For Dahak, a self-aware Imperial battleship, it began millennia ago, standing guard against an unknown enemy which once devastated the galaxy-and now has returned. So Dahak grabbed MacIntyre's ship and informed him that he was drafted to be its new captain and lead the fight against the ancient enemy.

MacIntyre had doubts that he could handle the job, but Dahak had definitely picked the right man. Before it was all over, MacIntyre would:

Defeat a cadre of mutineers, formerly part of Dahak's crew, kept alive through untold generations by alien technology, who have been secretly manipulating life on earth for thousands of years...

Mobilize the planet into a fighting force that might have a slender chance of stopping the ancient alien menace from eradicating all intelligent life in its path...

And resurrect the ancient galactic empire, which had fallen into chaos and barbarism, with himself as Emperor-which meant that he immediately became the target of a plot to assassinate him, and strand his son and daughter on a planet where their chances of surviving in a superstitious pre-tech society would be zero for the average human...

Fortunately for the galaxy, Colin MacIntyre and his heirs have never even heard of average, and anyone, human or alien, who got in their way was going to be very, very sorry.

For Lt. Commander Colin Maclntyre, it began as a routine training flight over the Moon. For Dahak, a self-aware Imperial battleship, it began millennia ago when that powerful artificial intelligence underwent a mutiny in the face of the enemy. The mutiny was never resolved--Dahak was forced to maroon not just the mutineers but the entire crew on prehistoric Earth. Dahak has been helplessly waiting as the descendants of the loyal crew regressed while the mutineers maintained control of technology that kept them alive as the millennia passed.

But now Dahak's sensors indicate that the enemy that devastated the Imperium so long ago has returned--and Earth is in their path. For the sake of the planet, Dahak must mobilize its defenses. And that it cannot do until the mutineers are put down. So Dahak has picked Colin Maclntyre to be its new captain.

Now Maclntyre must mobilize humanity to destroy the mutineers once and for all--or Earth will become a cinder in the path of galactic conquest.

Colin MacIntyre, a NASA astronaut kidnapped by a starship impersonating Earth's moon, has just suppressed a five-thousand-year-old mutiny, but now he faces an even bigger challenge.

For really tough jobs, Emperor Colin, the first of that name, is your man. The only person in the galaxy ever to stop the genocidal Achuutani, he went on from there to resurrect an empire that died fourty-five thousand years ago. He's still got a few problems - like a traitor out to murder him and three-quarters of a billion of his subjects - but if anyone can handle the job, it's Colin. But the rest of the galaxy better brace itself, because his progeny are on the way. Not that Sean and Harriet aren't nice kids; it's just that they've had a bad day.They're a long way from home, marooned with a blown up starship that's left them stranded on a theocratic world of gun powder and pikes, and Mother Church of that world doesn't like them very much. In fact, she's declared them demons, proclaimed Holy War, marshalled the Holy Host, and ordered them exterminated. You might think that things look pretty bleak for the kids, but in reality it's Mother Church that's in trouble - because Sean and Harry are chips off the old block - and they're about to get angry...

They thought they knew how the universes worked. They were wrong!

In the almost two centuries since the discovery of the first interuniversal portal, Arcana has explored scores of other worlds--all of them duplicates of their own. Multiple Earths, virgin planets with a twist, because the "explorers" already know where to find all of their vast, untapped natural resources. Worlds beyond worlds, effectively infinite living space and mineral wealth. And in all that time, they have never encountered another intelligent species. No cities, no vast empires, no civilizations, and no equivalent of their own dragons, gryphons, spells, and wizards.

But all of that is about to change. It seems there is intelligent life elsewhere in the multiverse. Other human intelligent life, with terrifying new weapons and powers of the mind...and wizards who go by the strange title of "scientist".

It began with two men. They came from very different worlds--entirely different universes, in fact--one using sorcery and the other using mental powers and steam-age technology. They met in a virgin forest on a duplicate planet Earth. Neither side knows who shot first, but each blames the other, and it doesn't really matter, now, because war has begun.

War between the universes is the last thing responsible leaders on either side want. But the fury of their respective populations, xenophobic fear of the unknown, and cries for "justice" (or vengeance), are all driving both sides towards the brink. And unscrupulous, power-hungry men--and Arcana and Sharona alike--have agendas of their own.

The fuse has been lit, and a war stretching across the universes, fought between dragons, spells, and crossbows and repeating rifles, machine guns, and artillery is erupting in white-hot rage and fury. Where it will end--and how--no one knows.

The war between magically gifted Arcana and psionically talented Sharona continues to rage. The dragon-borne Arcanan assault across five universes has been halted at Fort Salby by a desperate defense, but at atrocious cost. One of those costs was the life of Crown Prince Janaki, heir to the newly created Sharonian Empire, who went knowingly to his death in the tradition expected of the House of Calirath. And another price will be the sacrifice of his younger sister, Grand Imperial Princess Andrin, now heir of Sharona, for the accords creating the Sharonian Empire require the marriage of the heir to the Crown to wed a Uromathian prince.

Andrin bears her family's Talent, the Glimpses, which show flashes of events yet to come. She knows the accords must be secured...and, like her brother, she will pay any price, make any sacrifice for her duty to her people.

Sharona's soldiers dig in, facing the Arcanans in a tense standoff that cannot last long. Both sides continue rushing reinforcements toward the front, but how do armies fight wars when they can reach one another only through the portals that join the universes? And far, far behind the front, carried by dragons, a young Voice name Shaylar and her husband, Jathmar, hurtle deeper and deeper into Arcanan captivity, their only protection the fierce personal honor of the Andaran officer whose men massacred all of their companions in the horrendous misunderstanding that began the entire conflict.

Men and women of honor on both sides must grapple with the terrible costs and deadly secrets of the spreading cataclysm, and in the shadows, those who will balk at neither treason nor murder drive the conspiracies that pour fuel into the furnace. The stakes are high, and the pieces are in motion, but there are factors known not even to the conspirators, and not even a Calirath can Glimpse the final outcome.

The ultimate guide and companion to the New York Times best-selling Honor Harrington series.

A new short Honorverse novel, plus a compendium of tech, specs, and history to accompany the blockbuster series.

An all-new David Weber Honorverse short novel, I Will Build a House of Steel, chronicling the early days of the Manticoran Star Kingdom and the reign of King Roger.

Have you ever finished the latest Honor Harrington novel from David Weber and wished you could linger in Weber's Honorverse just a bit longer? Now you can with this treasure trove of tech, specs, and insights on David Weber's mega best-selling Honor Harrington series. Orbital characteristics of key planets, regimental order of the Royal Navy, backstory on the history and drama of the Star Kingdom's birth and early days--you'll find it all here, thoughtfully arranged by the Bureau 9 Weber research group, and overseen by David Weber himself.

The Basilisk System was a place to sweep incompetents, fools, and failures under the rug . . . or to punish officers with enemies in high places.

Commander Honor Harrington has enemies, and she's about to make more of them--because the people out to get her have made one mistake: They've made her mad.

On the planet Grayson to participate in diplomatic talks between the Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven, Honor Harrington discovers that she is stuck on a fiercely patriarchal, misogynist planet.

Banking on a short, victorious war to replenish their depleted treasury, the ruling class of the People's Republic of Haven do not count on coming up against Captain Honor Harrington and the Royal Manticoran Navy.

After boldly defeating the People's Republic of Haven, the Royal Manticoran Navy stands victorious, but a new political crisis and an old enemy once vanquished bring a new challenge for Honor Harrington.

Struggling to deal with her lover's murder and a forced retirement, Captain Honor Harrington assumes the role of Steadholder on the planet Grayson, but a threatening uprising calls her back into duty as head of the Grayson Navy.

Offered a chance to recover her commission as an officer in the Royal Manticoran Navy, Captain Honor Harrington must assume command of a ""squadron"" of jury-rigged armed merchantmen to stop the pirates who are plundering the Star Kingdom's commercial trade.

Outnumbered and outgunned, Honor Harrington has just two options: see the people under her command slaughtered in hopeless battle or surrender them--and herself--to the Peeps.

For eight years, Commodore Honor Harrington was in the forefront of the battle between the Star Kingdom of Manticore and the powerful People's Republic of Haven. Then she was captured and publicly executed. But Honor is far from dead, what's more, she's going home and taking her people with her.

Proclaimed a dead woman by the People's Republic of Haven, Honor Harrington has escaped her prison with half a million others and will tip the balance in favor of the Allies.

No one wanted another war. Thomas Theisman didn't. Baron High Ridge didn't. His Imperial Majesty Gustav didn't. Honor Harrington didn't. The Andermani Emperor has plans for Silesia. And the Prime Minister of Manticore is happy with the war he has. Unfortunately, what they want doesn't matter.

What price victory?

The war with the Republic of Haven has resumed . . . disastrously for the Star Kingdom of Manticore.

Admiral Lady Dame Honor Harrington, Steadholder and Duchess Harrington, the single victorious Allied commander of the opening phase of the new war, has been recalled from the Sidemore System to command Eighth Fleet. Everyone knows Eighth Fleet is the Alliance's primary offensive command, which makes it the natural assignment for the woman the media calls "the Salamander."

But what most of the public DOESN'T know is that not only are the Star Kingdom and its Allies badly outnumbered by the Republic's new fleet, but that the odds are going to get steadily worse. Eighth Fleet's job is to somehow prevent those odds from crushing the Alliance before the Star Kingdom can regain its strategic balance. It's a job which won't be done cheaply.

Honor Harrington must meet her formidable responsibilities with inferior forces even as she copes with tumultuous changes in her personal and public life. The alternative to victory is total defeat, yet this time the COST of victory will be agonizingly high.

The Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven have been enemies for Honor Harrington's entire life, and she has paid a price for the victories she's achieved in that conflict. And now the unstoppable juggernaut of the mighty Solarian League is on a collision course with Manticore. The millions who have already died may have been only a foretaste of the billions of casualties just over the horizon, and Honor sees it coming.

She's prepared to do anything, risk anything, to stop it, and she has a plan that may finally bring an end to the Havenite Wars and give even the Solarian League pause. But there are things not even Honor knows about. There are forces in play, hidden enemies in motion, all converging on the Star Kingdom of Manticore to crush the very life out of it, and Honor's worst nightmares fall short of the oncoming reality.

But Manticore's enemies may not have thought of everything after all. Because if everything Honor Harrington loves is going down to destruction, it won't be going alone.

Peril and strife strike on a double front for Honor Harrington and company. After a brutal attack on the Manticoran home system, Honor Harrington and the Star Kingdom she serves battle back against a new, technologically powerful, and utterly nefarious enemy. And as if that weren't task enough, Honor must also face down a centuries-old nemesis in the crumbling, but still mighty, Solarian League.

The war between the People's Republic of Haven and the Star Kingdom is finally won and peace established, but grave danger looms -- for there is a plan well on its way to completion designed to enslave the entire human species. Behind that plan lies the shadowy organization known as the Mesan Alignment.

Task number one for Honor is to defend against another devastating Mesan strike -- a strike that may well spell the doom of the Star Kingdom in one fell blow. It is time to shut down and secure the wormhole network that is the source of the Star Kingdom's wealth and power -- but also its greatest vulnerability. Yet this is an act that the Earth-based Solarian League inevitably will take as a declaration of war.

The thunder of battle rolls as the Solarian League directs its massive power against the Star Kingdom. And once again, Honor Harrington is thrust into a desperate battle that she must win if she is to survive to take the fight to the real enemy of galactic freedom -- the insidious puppetmasters of war who lurk behind the Mesan Alignment!

HONOR'S FINISHING WHAT SHE STARTED

The Solarian League's navy counts its superdreadnoughts by the thousands. Not even its own government knows how enormous its economy truly is. And for hundreds of years, the League has borne the banner of human civilization, been the ideal to which humanity aspires in its diaspora across the galaxy.

But the bureaucrats known as the "Mandarins," who rule today's League, are not the men and women who founded it so long ago. They are corrupt, venal, accountable to no one... and they've decided the upstart Star Kingdom of Manticore must be destroyed.

Honor Harrington has worn the Star Kingdom's uniform for half a century and served her monarch and her people well. In the course of those years, the woman the newsies call the Salamander has grown from a tactically brilliant but politically naïve junior officer to supreme fleet command and a seat on the highest military and political councils of the Grand Alliance.

Very few people know war the way Honor Harrington does. Very few have lost as many men and women, as many friends, as much family, as she has. Yet despite that, hers has been a voice of caution. She knows the Mandarins and the Solarian League Navy are growing increasingly desperate as the truth of their technological inferiority sinks home, but she also knows the sheer size of the League. And she knows how its citizens will react if the Grand Alliance takes the war to the League, attacks its star systems, destroys its infrastructure... kills its civilians. Today's victory, bought on those terms, can only guarantee a future war of revenge against a resurgent Solarian League and its navy.

Honor knows the Grand Alliance must find a victory that doesn't require incursions deep into Solarian space, doesn't leave a legacy of bottomless hatred, and the strategy she supports has been working.

The League is sliding towards inglorious defeat as it steadily loses ground in the Protectorates and the Verge. As its central government teeters towards bankruptcy and even some of its core systems opt to secede in the face of the Mandarins' corruption. As the Solarian Navy finally realizes it cannot face an Alliance battle fleet and win.

But the Mandarins have embraced a desperate new strategy, and in pursuit of that strategy, the SLN has committed atrocities such as the galaxy has not known in a thousand years. The League have violated its own Eridani Edict against mass civilian casualties, violated the Deneb Accords prohibition on war crimes.

And they have finally killed too many of the people Honor Harrington loves.

Hers is the voice of caution and compromise no longer, and the galaxy is about to see something it has never imagined.

The Salamander is coming for the Solarian League, and Hell is coming in her wake.

"It is our duty to pay for our liberty with our own blood. The freedom that we shall win through our sacrifice and exertions, we shall be able to preserve with our own strength."--Subhas Chandra Bose

Lieutenant Brandy Bolgeo has come home from the Battle of Hancock station wounded in both body and spirit. She will need months to regenerate her lost leg, but how long will it take to heal her heart?

She's come home to find that her wounds, her ship's brutal damage, the deaths of so many friends, were the fault of an arrogant, aristocratic coward who broke and ran in the face of the enemy. Who left her ship to pay the price for his craven desertion under fire. And whose powerful political allies are determined to protect and preserve him at any price.

They have held hostage the declaration of war until Lord Pavel Young escaped the consequences of his cowardice. They didn't care what it cost the Navy. They didn't care what it cost the entire Star Kingdom of Manticore. Their tactics have cost the Royal Navy the priceless initiative as revolution and military purges wrack the People's Republic of Haven, and that lost window of opportunity will cost the Star Kingdom seventeen years of bloody warfare and hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Now Young is free to seek vengeance on the people he feels have "wronged" him. People like Paul Tankersley and Honor Harrington. Paid duelists, smear tactics, hired assassins in public restaurants... nothing is beneath Pavel Young. But Captain Harrington can look after herself, and Pavel Young is about to face the fury of the woman the newsies call the "Salamander." Yet who will save the Star Kingdom from the repercussions of his actions?

Women and men like Brandy Bolgeo are about to pay the toll for the Star Kingdom of Manticore's honor.

Growing up, Travis Uriah Long yearned for order and discipline in his life... the two things his neglectful mother couldn't or wouldn't provide. So when Travis enlisted in the Royal Manticoran Navy, he thought he'd finally found the structure he'd always wanted so desperately.

But life in the RMN isn't exactly what he expected. Boot camp is rough and frustrating; his first ship assignment lax and disorderly; and with the Star Kingdom of Manticore still recovering from a devastating plague, the Navy is possibly on the edge of extinction.

Lieutenant Travis Long of the Royal Manticoran Navy is the sort of person who likes an orderly universe. One where people follow the rules.

Unfortunately, he lives in the real universe.

The good news is that Travis is one of those rare people who may like rules but has a talent for thinking outside them when everything starts coming apart. That talent has stood him -- and the Star Kingdom -- in good stead in the past, and it's one reason he's now a "mustang," an ex-enlisted man who's been given a commission as a King's officer.

The bad news is that two of the best ways of making enemies ever invented are insisting on enforcing the rules... and thinking outside them when other people don't. Travis learned that lesson the hard way as a young volunteer in basic training, and he knows that if he could just keep his head down, turn a blind eye to violations of the rules, and avoid stepping on senior officers' toes, he'd do just fine. But the one rule Travis Long absolutely can't break is the one that says an officer in the Royal Navy does his duty, whatever the consequences.

At the moment, there are powerful forces in the young Star Kingdom of Manticore's Parliament which don't think they need him. For that matter, they're pretty sure they don't need the Royal Manticoran Navy, either. After all, what does a sleepy little single-system star nation on the outer edge of the explored galaxy need with a navy?

Unhappily for them, the edge of the explored galaxy can be a far more dangerous place than they think it is. They're about to find out why they need the Navy... and how very, very fortunate they are that Travis Long is in it.

After the disastrous attack on the Manticoran home system by forces unknown, the Royal Manticoran Navy stands on the brink of collapse. A shadowy enemy with the resources to hurl warships across hundreds of light years seeks to conquer the Star Kingdom for reasons unknown, while forces from within Manticore's own government seek to discredit and weaken the Navy for reasons very much known: their own political gain.

It's up to officers like Travis Long and Lisa Donnelly to defend the Star Kingdom and the Royal Manticoran Navy from these threats, but the challenge is greater than any they have faced before. Weakened but not defeated, the mercenary forces and their mysterious employer could return at any time, and the anti-Navy faction within Parliament is growing. The situation becomes even more dire when fresh tragedy strikes the Star Kingdom.

While the House of Winton faces their enemies at home, Travis, Lisa, and the other officers of the Royal Manticoran Navy must reunite with old friends and join new allies to hunt down and eliminate the forces arrayed against them in a galaxy-spanning conspiracy.

Manticore has learned that the universe is not a safe place, but the Star Kingdom's enemies are about to learn it's dangerous to mess with the Manticore!

Yesterday, the Star Kingdom of Manticore was a small, unimportant interstellar backwater. A quiet little star nation, only recently recovered from the devastating blow of the Plague Years. More affluent than some, perhaps, but with little to attract trade or interstellar commerce, it had little need for a navy... and even less interest in paying for one.

But Manticore has now become a target. The Star Kingdom isn't certain who is attacking it, or why, or what its mysterious foe can possibly want, but Queen Elizabeth I knows she has to find out. And she knows that whatever some of her subjects think, Manticore does need a navy. And it needs allies, friends like the dynamic Republic of Haven and the Andermani Empire. It needs their trade... and to learn from their more experienced and powerful navies.

It is the job of officers like Travis Long and his wife, Lisa, to acquire that experience. Of utterly inexperienced diplomats like Travis's brother Gavin, Earl Winterfall, to build those alliances.

They have been sent to the powerful Andermani Empire to do just that, for the Imperial Navy is one of the most potent and experienced fleets in the galaxy. But the Andermani have problems of their own. Their Emperor's death is the trigger for insurrection, and now that powerful and experienced navy is locked in civil war.

The Manticoran visitors find themselves squarely in the path of the storm, and before Travis, Lisa, and Gavin can accomplish anything else, they first have to survive.

The Galactic Hegemony has been around a long time, and it likes stability--the kind of stability that member species like the aggressive, carnivorous Shongairi tend to disturb. So when the Hegemony Survey Force encountered a world whose so-called "sentients"-"humans," they called themselves-were almost as bad as the Shongairi themselves, it seemed reasonable to use the Shongairi to neutralize them before they could become a second threat to galactic peace. And if the Shongairi took a few knocks in the process, all the better.

Now, Earth is conquered. The Shongairi have arrived in force, and humanity's cities lie in radioactive ruins. In mere minutes, more than half the human race has died.

Master Sergeant Stephen Buchevsky, who thought he was being rotated home from his latest tour in Afghanistan, finds himself instead prowling the back country of the Balkans, dodging alien patrols and trying to organize scattered survivors without getting killed. And in the southeastern US, firearms instructor and former Marine Dave Dvorak finds himself at the center of a growing network of resistance-putting his extended family at lethal risk, but what else can you do?

On the face of it, Buchevsky's and Dvorak's chances look bleak, as do prospects for the rest of the surviving human race. But it may well be that Shongairi and the Hegemony alike have underestimated the inhabitants of that strange planet called Earth...

The Shongairi conquered Earth. In mere minutes, half the human race died, and our cities lay in shattered ruins.

But the Shongairi didn't expect the survivors' tenacity. And, crucially, they didn't know that Earth harbored two species of intelligent, tool-using bipeds. One of them was us. The other, long-lived and lethal, was hiding in the mountains of eastern Europe, the subject of fantasy and legend. When they emerged and made alliance with humankind, the invading aliens didn't stand a chance.

Now Earth is once again ours. Aided by the advanced tech the aliens left behind, we're rebuilding as fast as we can.

Meanwhile, a select few of our blood-drinking immortals are on their way to the Shongairi homeworld, having commandeered one of the alien starships...the planet-busting kind.

In a universe teeming with predators, humanity needs friends. And fast...

We've come a long way in the forty years since the Shongairi attacked Earth, killed half its people, and then were driven away by an alliance of humans with the other sentient bipeds who inhabit our planet.

We took the technology they left behind, and rapidly built ourselves into a starfaring civilization. Because we haven't got a moment to lose. Because it's clear that there are even more powerful, more hostile aliens out there, and Earth needs allies.

But it also transpires that the Shongairi expedition that nearly destroyed our home planet... wasn't an official one. That, indeed, its commander may have been acting as an unwitting cats-paw for the Founders, the ancient alliance of very old, very evil aliens who run the Hegemony that dominates our galaxy, and who hold the Shongairi, as they hold most non-Founder species, in not-so-benign contempt.

Indeed, it may turn out to be possible to turn the Shongairi into our allies against the Hegemony. There's just the small matter of the Shongairi honor code, which makes bushido look like a child's game. We might be able to make them our friends -- if we can crush their planetary defenses in the greatest battle we, or they, have ever seen...

HE WHO LIVES BY THE SWORD...

The races which ruled the Galactic Federation knew they were vastly superior to the inferior species restricted to the narrow confines of their own star systems by the crudity of their technology... and they had every intention of keeping things that way.

It was a neat little scam, a rigged game in which only the House could win, which the Federation had played for over a hundred thousand years, and no one had ever managed to challenge it.

Yet all good things come to an end, and the Galactics made one mistake. It didn't seem all that terrible at first, only a single merchant guild which bought itself a Roman legion to use as enslaved sepoys on the primitive worlds where they weren't permitted to use their own weapons to force trading concessions. But the Romans were too good at what they did, and a desperate competing guild decided that the only way it could continue to compete was if it had Romans of its own.

Unfortunately, Roman legions were no longer available, so the competing guild had to settle for something else: English longbowmen on their way to the Battle of Crecy.

Roman legions make dangerous pets... but English longbowmen are even worse.

It may take a century or so, but the Galactics are about to discover what happens when the sword finally comes out of the stone.

Humanity pushed its way to the stars - and encountered the Gbaba, a ruthless alien race that nearly wiped us out.

Earth and her colonies are now smoldering ruins, and the few survivors have fled to distant, Earth-like Safehold, to try to rebuild. But the Gbaba can detect the emissions of an industrial civilization, so the human rulers of Safehold have taken extraordinary measures: with mind control and hidden high technology, they've built a religion in which every Safeholdian believes, a religion designed to keep Safehold society medieval forever.

800 years pass. In a hidden chamber on Safehold, an android from the far human past awakens. This "rebirth" was set in motion centuries before, by a faction that opposed shackling humanity with a concocted religion. Via automated recordings, "Nimue" - or, rather, the android with the memories of Lieutenant Commander Nimue Alban - is told her fate: she will emerge into Safeholdian society, suitably disguised, and begin the process of provoking the technological progress which the Church of God Awaiting has worked for centuries to prevent.

Nothing about this will be easy. To better deal with a medieval society, "Nimue" takes a new gender and a new name, "Merlin." His formidable powers and access to caches of hidden high technology will need to be carefully concealed. And he'll need to find a base of operations, a Safeholdian country that's just a little more freewheeling, a little less orthodox, a little more open to the new.

And thus Merlin comes to Charis, a mid-sized kingdom with a talent for naval warfare. He plans to make the acquaintance of King Haarahld and Crown Prince Cayleb, and maybe, just maybe, kick off a new era of invention. Which is bound to draw the attention of the Church... and, inevitably, lead to war.

It's going to be a long, long process. And it's going to be the can't-miss SF epic of the decade.

The world has changed. The mercantile kingdom of Charis has prevailed over the alliance designed to exterminate it. Armed with better sailing vessels, better guns and better devices of all sorts, Charis faced the combined navies of the rest of the world at Darcos Sound and Armageddon Reef, and broke them. Despite the implacable hostility of the Church of God Awaiting, Charis still stands, still free, still tolerant, still an island of innovation in a world in which the Church has worked for centuries to keep humanity locked at a medieval level of existence.

But the powerful men who run the Church aren't going to take their defeat lying down. Charis may control the world's seas, but it barely has an army worthy of the name. And as King Cayleb knows, far too much of the kingdom's recent good fortune is due to the secret manipulations of the being that calls himself Merlin-a being that, the world must not find out too soon, is more than human. A being on whose shoulders rests the last chance for humanity's freedom.

Now, as Charis and its archbishop make the rift with Mother Church explicit, the storm gathers. Schism has come to the world of Safehold. Nothing will ever be the same.

Now the battle for the soul of the planet Safehold has begun.

The Kingdom of Charis and the Kingdom of Chisholm have joined together, pledged to stand against the tyranny of a corrupt Church. The youthful Queen Sharleyan of Chisholm has wed King Cayleb of Charis, forging a single dynasty, a single empire, dedicated to the defense of human freedom. Crowned Empress of that empire, Sharleyan has found in Cayleb's arms the love she never dared hope for in a "marriage of state." In Cayleb's cause, his defiance of the ruthless Group of Four who govern mother Church, she has found the task to which she can commit her mind and her courage. It is a cause for which she was born.

Yet there are things Sharleyan still does not know. Secrets Cayleb has not been permitted to share, even with her. Secrets like the true story of humanity on Safehold. Like the intricate web of lies, deception, and fabricated "religion" which have chained humanity for almost a thousand years. Like the existence of the genocidal alien Gbaba, waiting to complete mankind's destruction should humans ever attract their attention once more. Like the existence of a young woman, Nimue Alban, nine hundred years dead, whose heart, mind, and memories live on within the android body of the warrior-monk she knows as Merlin.

And so Empress Sharleyan faces the the great challenge of her life unaware of all that task truly entails...or of how the secrets the man who loves her cannot share may threaten all they have achieved between them... and her own life.

Young Cayleb Ahrmahk has accomplished things few people could even dream of. Not yet even thirty years old, he's won the most crushing naval victories in human history. He's smashed a hostile alliance of no less than five princedoms and won the hand of the beautiful young Queen Sharleyan of Chisholm. Cayleb and Sharleyan have created the Charisian Empire, the greatest naval power in the history of Safehold, and they've turned Charis into a place of refuge for all who treasure freedom.

Their success may prove short-lived. The Church of God Awaiting, which controls most of Safehold, has decreed their destruction. Mother Church's entire purpose is to prevent the very things to which Charis is committed. Since the first attempt to crush the heretics failed, the Church has no choice but to adopt some of the hated Charisian innovations for themselves. Soon a mighty fleet will sail against Cayleb, destroying everything in its path.

But there are still matters about which the Church knows nothing, including Cayleb and Sharleyan's adviser, friend, and guardian- the mystic warrior-monk named Merlin Athrawes. Merlin knows all about battles against impossible odds, because he is in fact the cybernetic avatar of a young woman named Nimue Alban, who died a thousand years before. As Nimue, Merlin saw the entire Terran Federation go down in fire and slaughter at the hands of a foe it could not defeat. He knows that Safehold is the last human planet in existence, and that the stasis the Church was created to enforce will be the human race's death sentence if it is allowed to stand.

The juggernaut is rumbling down on Charis, but Merlin Athrawes and a handful of extraordinary human beings stand in its path. The Church is about to discover just how potent the power of human freedom truly is.

The Charisian Empire, born in war, has always known it must fight for its very survival. What most of its subjects don't know even now, however, is how much more it's fighting for. Emperor Cayleb, Empress Sharleyan, Merlin Athrawes, and their innermost circle of most trusted advisers do know. And because they do, they know the penalty if they lose will be far worse than their own deaths and the destruction of all they know and love.

For five years, Charis has survived all the Church of God Awaiting and the corrupt men who control it have thrown at the island empire. The price has been high and paid in blood. Despite its chain of hard-fought naval victories, Charis is still on the defensive. It can hold its own at sea, but if it is to survive, it must defeat the Church upon its own ground. Yet how does it invade the mainland and take the war to a foe whose population outnumbers its own fifteen to one? How does it prevent that massive opponent from rebuilding its fleets and attacking yet again?

Charis has no answer to those questions, but needs to find one... quickly. The Inquisition's brutal torture and hideous executions are claiming more and more innocent lives. Its agents are fomenting rebellion against the only mainland realms sympathetic to Charis. Religious terrorists have been dispatched to wreak havoc against the Empire's subjects. Assassins stalk the Emperor and Empress, their allies and advisers, and an innocent young boy, not yet eleven years old, whose father has already been murdered. And Merlin Athrawes, the cybernetic avatar of a young woman a thousand years dead, has finally learned what sleeps beneath the far-off Temple in the Church of God Awaiting's city of Zion.

The men and women fighting for human freedom and tolerance have built a foundation for their struggle in the Empire of Charis with their own blood.

WAR AND FAMINE

Once the Church of God Awaiting dominated all the kingdoms of Safehold. Then, after centuries of stasis, the island kingdom of Charis began to defy the edicts of Mother Church-egged on, some say, by the mysterious warrior-monk Merlin Athrawes, who enjoys the Charisian royal family's absolute trust.

What vanishingly few people know is that Merlin is the cybernetic avatar of a young woman a thousand years dead, felled in the war in which aliens destroyed Earth...and that since awakening, his task has been to restart the history of the long-hidden human race.

Now, reeling from the wars and intrigues that have cascaded from Charis's declaration of independence, the Republic of Siddermark slides into chaos. The Church has engineered a rebellion, and Siddermark's all-important harvest is at risk. King Cayleb and Queen Sharleyan struggle to stabilize their ally, which will mean sending troops-but, even more importantly, preventing famine. For mass starvation in Safehold's breadbasket is a threat even more ominous than civil war...

For centuries, the world of Safehold, last redoubt of the human race, lay under the unchallenged rule of the Church of God Awaiting. The Church permitted nothing new-no new inventions, no new understandings of the world.

What no one knew was that the Church was an elaborate fraud-a high-tech system established by a rebel faction of Safehold's founders, meant to keep humanity hidden from the powerful alien race that had destroyed old Earth.

Then awoke Merlyn Athrawes, cybernetic avatar of a warrior a thousand years dead, felled in the war in which Earth was lost. Monk, warrior, counselor to princes and kings, Merlyn has one purpose: to restart the history of the too-long-hidden human race.

And now the fight is thoroughly underway. The island empire of Charis has declared its independence from the Church, and with Merlyn's help has vaulted forward into a new age of steam-powered efficiency. Fending off the wounded Church, Charis has drawn more and more of the countries of Safehold to the cause of independence and self-determination. But at a heavy cost in bloodshed and loss-a cost felt by nobody more keenly that Merlyn Athrawes.

The wounded Church is regrouping. Its armies and resources are vast. The fight for humanity's future isn't over, and won't be over soon...

Centuries ago, the human race fought its first great war against an alien race -- and lost. A tiny population of human beings fled to distant Safehold. Centuries later, their descendants have forgotten their history; for them, life has been an eternal Middle Ages, ruled by the Church of God Awaiting, whose secret purpose is to prevent the re-emergence of industrial civilization.

But not all of Safehold's founders were on board with this plan. Those dissidents left behind their own secret legacies. One of those is Merlyn Athrawes, cybernetic avatar of one of Earth's long-dead defenders, now reawakened after a thousand years to restart human progress and reclaim our place in the universe. Merlyn has intervened in the small Safeholdian realm of Charis, seeding it with ideas and innovations and helping it to rise to challenge the hegemony of the Church.

It's been a long and bloody fight, but aided by a stream of inventions -- breech-loading rifles, signal rockets, claymore mines, new approaches to manufacturing and supply -- Charis and its few allies seem to have finally gained the upper hand. Now major realms have begun to consider switching sides.

To all these ends, Merlyn Athrawes has been everywhere, under multiple disguises and wielding hidden powers. The secret of who and what he is has been closely held. But a new player has arrived, one who knows many secrets-including Merlyn's own.

The Church of God Awaiting's triumph over Charis was inevitable. Despite its prosperity, the Charis was a single, small island realm. lt boasted less than two percent of the total population of Safehold. How could it possibly resist total destruction? The Church had every reason to be confident of a swift, crushing victory, an object lesson to other rebels. But Charis had something far more powerful than simple numbers. It had a king, a crown prince, and a navy prepared to die where they stood in its defence. It had the Brethren of Saint Zherneau, who knew the truth about Safehold's founding. Who knew that the Church of God Awaiting was a monstrous lie. And it had Merlin Athrawes, last survivor of long-vanished Earth.

Merlin, the cybernetic avatar of a woman dead over a thousand years, who was determined to break the Church's grip upon the human mind and soul. So after eight years of war, it is not Charis but the Church that stands upon the brink of defeat. But the Church still commands immense resources, and faced with the unthinkable - it's decided that it, too, must embrace the forbidden technology which has carried Charis so far. In the end, it is simple, for only one can survive.

The lines are drawn, the navies and armies have been raised, and all of Safehold is poised for the final battle between those who believe in freedom and those who would crush it forever.

With new alliances forged and old regimes fractured, Merlin?the cybernetic avatar of Earth's last survivor and immortal beacon to humanity?and the colonies of Safehold have many adventures ahead in Through Fiery Trials, the continuation of David Weber's New York Times bestselling military science fiction series

Those on the side of progressing humanity through advanced technology have finally triumphed over their oppressors. The unholy war between the small but mighty island realm of Charis and the radical, luddite Church of God's Awaiting has come to an end.

However, even though a provisional veil of peace has fallen over human colonies, the quiet will not last. For Safefold is a broken world, and as international alliances shift and Charis charges on with its precarious mission of global industrialization, the shifting plates of the new world order are bound to clash.

Yet, an uncertain future isn't the only danger Safehold faces. Long-thought buried secrets and prophetic promises come to light, proving time is a merciless warden who never forgets.

The Star Kingdom of Manticore is once again at war with the Republic of Haven after a stunning sneak attack. The graduating class from Saganami Island, the Royal Manticoran Navy's academy, are going straight from the classroom to the blazing reality of all-out war.

Except for the midshipmen assigned to the heavy cruiser HMS Hexapuma, that is. They're being assigned to the Talbott Cluster, an out of the way backwater, far from the battle front. The most they can look forward to is the capture of the occasional pirate cruiser and the boring duty of supporting the Cluster's peaceful integration with the Star Kingdom at the freely expressed will of eighty percent of the Cluster's citizens. With a captain who may have seen too much of war and a station commander who isn't precisely noted for his brilliant and insightful command style, it isn't exactly what the students of Honor Harrington, the "Salamander," expected.

But things aren't as simple — or tranquil — as they appear. The "pirates" they encounter aren't what they seem, and the "peaceful integration" they expected turns into something very different. A powerful alliance of corrupt Solarian League bureaucrats and ruthless interstellar corporations is determined to prevent the Cluster's annexation by the Star Kingdom . . . by any means necessary. Pirates, terrorists, genetic slavers, smuggled weapons, long-standing personal hatreds, and a vicious alliance of corporate greed, bureaucratic arrogance, and a corrupt local star nation with a powerful fleet, are all coming together, and only Hexapuma, her war-weary captain, and Honor Harrington's students stand in the path.

They have only one thing to support and guide them: the tradition of Saganami. The tradition that sometimes a Queen's officer's duty is to face impossible odds . . . and die fighting.

The Solarian League Navy has been the premier navy of the galaxy for centuries. Indeed, no one can remember a time when it hasn't been acknowledged as the most powerful fleet in existence.

Until now, that is.

A conference to end the terrible war between the Peeps of Haven and the Manticorean Star Kingdom is slated. Peace is finally within reach.

Yeah, right.

Not with the slaver conspiracy that calls itself Manpower, Inc. pulling intergalactic strings. The plan To plunge the Star Kingdom into a two-front war with Peeps and Sollies—a process calculated to blast Honor Harrington's home system to smoking ruin!

Assassination's afoot. And out on the galactic frontier known as the Verge, big trouble boils over as Solarian League arrogance butts up against the steely resolve of Harrington protégé Michelle Henke, aka Admiral Gold Peak.

Too bad for the Sollies. For Harrington's officers have a habit of coming through in the clutch and finding a way to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. But most of all—whatever the odds—they never, ever give up the fight!

Wrong number? There are two sides to any quarrel . . . unless there are more.

Queen Elizabeth of Manticore's first cousin and Honor Harrington's best friend, Michelle Henke, has just handed the ""invincible"" Solarian League Navy the most humiliating, one sided defeat in its entire almost thousand year history in defense of the people of the Star Empire's Talbott Quadrant. But the League is the most powerful star nation in the history of humanity. Its navy is going to be back—and this time with thousands of superdreadnoughts.

Yet she also knows scores of other star systems—some independent, some controlled by puppet regimes, and some simply conquered outright by the Solarian Office of Frontier Security—lie in the League's grip along its frontier with the Talbott Quadrant. As combat spreads from the initial confrontation,the entire frontier has begun to seethe with unrest, and Michelle sympathizes with the oppressed populations wanting only to be free of their hated masters.

And that puts her in something of a quandary when a messenger from Mobius arrives, because someone's obviously gotten a wrong number. According to him, the Mobians' uprising has been carefully planned to coordinate with a powerful outside ally: the Star Empire of Manticore. Only Manticore—and Mike Henke—have never even heard of the Mobius Liberation Front.

It's a set up . . . and Michelle knows who's behind it. The shadowy Mesan Alignment has launched a bold move to destroy Manticore's reputation as the champion of freedom. And when the RMN doesn't arrive, when the MLF is brutally and bloodily crushed, no independent star system will ever trust Manticore again.

Mike Henke knows she has no orders from her government to assist any rebellions or liberation movements, that she has only so many ships, which can be in only so many places at a time . . . and that she can't possibly justify diverting any of her limited, outnumbered strength to missions of liberation the Star Empire never signed on for. She knows that . . . and she doesn't care.

No one is going to send thousands of patriots to their deaths, trusting in Manticoran help that will never come.

Not on Mike Henke's watch.

The Mesan Alignment is revealed, and, for Honor Harrington and the Manticoran Star Kingdom, this means war!

Unintended Consequences

Sometimes things don't work out exactly as planned.

The Mesan Alignment has a plan--one it's been working on for centuries. A plan to remake the galaxy and genetically improve the human race--its way.

Until recently, things have gone pretty much as scheduled, but then the Alignment hit a minor bump in the road called the Star Empire of Manticore. So the Alignment engineered a war between the Solarian League, the biggest and most formidable interstellar power in human history. To help push things along, the Alignment launched a devastating sneak attack which destroyed the Royal Manticoran Navy's industrial infrastructure.

And in order to undercut Manticore's galaxy-wide reputation as a star nation of its word, it launched Operation Janus--a false-flag covert operation to encourage rebellions it knows will fail by promising Manticoran support. The twin purposes are to harden Solarian determination to destroy the Star Empire once and for all, and to devastate the Star Empire's reputation with the rest of the galaxy.

But even the best laid plans can have unintended consequences, and one of those consequences in this case may just be a new dawn of freedom for oppressed star nations everywhere.

Stephanie Harrington absolutely hates being confined inside her family's compound on the pioneer planet of Sphinx, a frontier wilderness world populated by dangerous native animals that could easily tear a human to bits and pieces. Yet Stephanie is a young woman determined to make discoveries--and the biggest discovery of all awaits her: an intelligent alien species.

Treecats are creatures that resemble a cross between a bobcat and a lemur (but with six legs and much more deadly claws). Not only are they fully sentient, they are also telepathic, and able to bond with certain gifted humans such as the genetically-enhanced Stephanie. But Stephanie's find, and her first-of-its-kind bond with a treecat, brings on a new torrent of danger. An assortment of highly placed enemies with galactic-sized wealth at stake is determined to make sure that the planet of Sphinx remains entirely in human hands--even if this means the extermination of another thinking species.

At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

A lifetime military history buff, David Weber has carried his interest in history into his fiction. In the New York Times best selling Honor Harrington series, the spirit of both C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower and history's Admiral Nelson are evident. With over five million copies of his books in print, David Weber is the fastest rising star in the Science Fiction universe. His Honor Harrington series boasts over 3 million copies in print, and Weber has had over thirteen of his titles on The New York Times Best Seller List. War of Honor, book 10 in the series appeared on over twelve Best Seller lists, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and USA TODAY.

While he is best known for his spirited, modern-minded space operas, he has also developed a fantasy series, of which two books have been published: Oath of Swords and The War God's Own. David's solo work also includes three novels of the "Dahak" series, and the stand alone novels: Path of the Fury and The Excalibur Alternative.

Weber's first published novels grew out of his work as a war game designer for the Task Force game Starfire. With collaborator Steve White, Weber has written four novels set in that universe: Insurrection, Crusade, In Death Ground, and The Shiva Option.

Recent bestsellers in planetary adventures also include the teamwork of John Ringo in the best selling Empire of Man series where the titles March Upcountry, March to the Sea, March to the Stars and We Few have made appearances on The New York Times List.

Weber's proliferation continues with author Eric Flint, where they joined forces in the Best Selling "Ring of Fire" alternate history series, for 1634: The Baltic War, coming in May.

A popular guest at science fiction conventions, Weber makes his home in South Carolina with his wife Sharon, three children and a passel of dogs.

Second entry in a new young adult series by New York Times best seller David Weber, and the prequel to the hugely popular Honor Harrington adult science fiction saga.

Fire in the forest--and a cry for help from a trapped and desperate alien mother! Unfortunately, this is one cry no human can hear. Stephanie Harrington, precocious fourteen-year-old Provisional Forest Ranger on the planet Sphinx, knows something is wrong from the uneasy emotion that is flooding into her from her treecat friend, Climbs Quickly. But though Stephanie's alien comrade shares a tight bond with his two legs, he cannot communicate directly to her the anguished call from one of his people.

Still, their strong and direct bond of feeling may be enough. Stephanie and fellow ranger Karl Zivonik respond to Climbs Quickly's rising waves of distress. Fire season on the pioneer world of Sphinx has begun. But there are those who want to use the natural cycle of the planet for personal gain--and to get rid of the one obstacle that stands in the way of acquiring even greater land and power on Sphinx: the native treecats.

Now it's up to Stephanie and Climbs Quickly, along with their friends, family, and allies to prevent disaster and injustice from befalling a treecat clan. But in the process Stephanie must be certain to preserve the greatest secret of all. It is the knowledge that the treecats of Sphinx are not merely pets or servants, but are highly intelligent in their own right--that they are a species fully deserving of rights, respect, and freedom. And keeping the secret that will allow the treecats time to develop a mutually beneficial relationship with humankind.

It all begins with the friendship of a girl and her treecat.

The fires are out, but the trouble's just beginning for the treecats.

On pioneer planet Sphinx, ruined lands and the approach of winter force the now Landless Clan to seek new territory. They have one big problem--there's nowhere to go. Worse, their efforts to find a new home awaken the enmity of the closest treecat clan--a stronger group who's not giving up a single branch without a fight.

Stephanie Harrington, the treecats' greatest advocate, is off to Manticore for extensive training--and up to her ears in challenges there. That leaves only Stephanie's best friends, Jessica and Anders, to save the treecats from themselves. And now a group of xenoanthropologists is once again after the great secret of the treecats--that they are intelligent, empathic telepaths--and their agenda will lead to nothing less that treecat exploitation.

Finally, Jessica and Anders face problems of their own, including their growing attraction to one another. It is an attraction that seems a betrayal of Stephanie Harrington, the best friend either of them have ever had.

Freshly home from an internship on Manticore, teenaged Stephanie Harrington is up to her eyebrows in trouble.

There's the new treecat adoptee who needs to be kept from becoming a risk to the carefully guarded secret of just how smart the arboreal inhabitants of Sphinx really are.

There's the overeager journalist whose campaign to protect the treecats from exploitation as the newest, coolest pet on any planet could threaten the very creatures he seeks to defend.

And there's the mysterious rash of weird accidents that are plaguing Sphinx's younger inhabitants--including some of those nearest and dearest to Stephanie.

In trying to get enough proof to get the understaffed authorities of her pioneer planet to act, Stephanie will be called upon to attempt things she never imaged doing--including going undercover into the wilds of the late-night club scene, a realm where her faithful treecat guardian, Lionheart, cannot follow....

Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death

In the end, the only political systems that seem to work are those based on freedom. The Inner World leaders of the Terran Federation seem to have forgotten this simple truth. After fighting the Khanate--with the Fringe Worlds to supply the raw material and the fighting men--the Inner Worlds found it hard to give up the powers they had seized during the war. So they decided not to--rather than allow the rapidly expanding Fringe Worlds representation in the Federation, they are inviting the Khanate in, to keep the colonial upstarts in their place. The Fringers have only one answer to that:

INSURRECTION

Spacers call the warp point Charon's Ferry.

No star ship has ever entered it and returned since a vengeful Orion task force pursued a doomed Terran colonization fleet into it in 2206.

Almost a century has passed. The fiery hatreds of a quarter-century of warfare between the Terran Federation and the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieeee, the cat-like species humans called the "Orions," have eased at least a little. The "Grand Alliance" forged by the need to fight side-by-side against the genocidal Rigelians remains, but there are those on either side who continue to hate, continue to distrust.

Now the strength of that war-forged alliance is about to be tested. For Charon's Ferry is about to give up the secret of its dead. A ship has emerged from the deadly warp point at last. A ship which responds to the challenge of an Orion star ship using ancient human communications codes... then opens fire.

The holocaust of interstellar warfare has been ignited anew, in a bloody crusade to free Holy Mother Terra.

Five thousand years after Sun Tzu writes The Art of War, his advice is followed during the Fourth Interstellar War between the terrible Bugs and the humans, who are aided by their catlike Orion allies.

The bugs have overrun planet after planet and they regard all sentient species as convenient protein sources. The Grand Alliance of Humans has been driven to the wall. When the only possible outcomes are victory or racial extermination, only one option is acceptable - The Shiva Option.

Doctor Benjamin Schröder was far from a man of action. In fact, he was a history teacher--Chairman of the Castle Rock University history department--and if his life wasn't perfect, it was close. Until, that is the discussion of his star student Elzbietá Abramowski's dissertation on Operation Oz, the Pacific Allies' invasion of Vladivostok, staged through occupied Japan to meet their Imperial German allies, was brutally interrupted.

The psychotic episode that turned his entire world upside down struck with absolutely no warning, and it was more terrifying than anything he should have been able to imagine, leaving him with a complete, incredibly detailed set of false, nightmare memories. Not just of his own life, but of an entire, ghastly world in which Operation Oz had never happened. In which millions of helpless civilians had been systematically slaughtered in extermination camps that were horrific beyond belief. In which there was still a Soviet Union. In which the Chinese Communists had succeeded, the Korean Peninsula had been permanently divided, thousands of nuclear warheads had spread their deadly threat across the entire Earth, and the Middle East was a festering sore of bloodshed, fanaticism, and terrorism.

The knowledge that those false memories had come from somewhere inside his own psyche was terrible, but with the help of Commander Abramowski, a highly decorated Navy fighter pilot who'd been forced to deal with her own PTSD after crippling combat wounds invalided her out of service, he's put his life back together. With Elzbietá's support, he's learned to deal with the nightmares, to recognize that they are onlynightmares that can't--and won't--be permitted to rule his life.

Until, that is, a lunatic named Raibert Kaminski knocks on his door one afternoon with an impossible and horrifying story about alternate realities, time travel, temporal knots, and more than a dozen doomed universes which must inevitably die if the temporal storm front rushing towards the distant future isn't stopped. He has to be lying, of course. Or completely insane. But what if he's not a madman after all? What if he's actually telling the truth?

That possibility is the most terrifying thing of all. Because if he is, the false memories aren't false after all, and that other world is just as real as the one Schröder has always known. And if that's true, Benjamin Schröder is about to become the greatest mass murderer in human history, because he has to choose. Whether he acts or refuses to act, Benjamin Schröder is the one man who will decide which universe lives and which dies, along with every star system, every galaxy--and every single human being--in it.

Including the woman he's discovered he loves more than life itself.

UNTANGLE THE PAST TO SAVE THE FUTURE.

TIME IS RUNNING OUT

Agent Raibert Kaminski and the crew of the Transtemporal Vehicle Kleio have stumbled across a temporal implosion that has claimed two whole universes, and neither Raibert nor his crew can figure out what caused this calamity, or how to stop its spread. Meanwhile, old colleagues of Raibert's from the Antiquities Rescue Trust, together with a version of Samuel Pepys transplanted from the 17th century into the 30th, have proposed an expedition into the past. The goal? To branch the timeline by preventing the Plague of Justinian, one of the worst pandemics in human history. And on a multidimensional level, governmental entity SysGov's multiverse neighbor, the xenophobic Admin, is stirring. While their ambassadors put on a friendly show, the Admin is amassing a fleet of advanced, heavily armed time machines--with SysGov firmly in the crosshairs.

In the midst of the temporal turmoil, time is running out for Raibert and his team to save the rest of the known universes from ceasing to exist. Navigating the paradoxes of time can be a killer task--especially when dogged by those who seek your destruction at every turn. But this isn't the first Time Rodeo for the crew of the Kleio, and they won't go down without a fight--no matter where--or when--the threat to the multiverse arises!

The fates of universes aren't the only things time travel can impact. Sometimes the effect is a lot more mundane and closer to home. And when that happens, it's up to the cops of Themis Division to make time turn out right.

It was supposed to be a routine trip for the members of the Gordian Division, both human and AI: fly out to Saturn, inspect the construction of their latest time machines, then fly back.

But when the division's top scientist and chief engineer are killed in the same freak accident, suspicions of foul play run deep. Detective Isaac Cho is sent in to investigate, but he has more on his mind than just a new case. His superiors have saddled him with an exchange officer from the neighboring Admin--Special Agent Susan Cantrell--whose notion of proper "law enforcement" involves blowing up criminals first and skipping questions entirely.

Despite his objections, Cho is stuck with an untested partner on a case that increasingly reeks of murder and conspiracy. The unlikely pair must work together to unravel this mystery, and soon they discover their unique combination of skills might just provide the edge they need.

But nothing is ever simple where the Gordian Division is involved.

Not even time itself.

Come for the games. Stay for the murder. A mystery in the Gordian Division universe.

The Weltall Tournament's professional VR games were supposed to be a symbol of cooperation between SysGov and its militaristic neighbor, the Admin. But that was before star Admin player Elly Sako received a death threat, written in blood next to a copy of her own severed head. The Admin's Department of Temporal Investigation swiftly seizes control of the crime scene, and the tournament transforms into a flashpoint of charged politics and conflicting jurisdictions.

SysPol Detective Isaac Cho and DTI Special Agent Susan Cantrell--partners in the officer exchange program--are sent in to take charge of the investigation and bring the situation under control. But solving this mystery won't be easy, and the pair struggles to determine who is telling the truth. A jilted relationship between players soon explodes into signs of a far-reaching conspiracy, and the two detectives find themselves racing against time before the tournament ends.

Because the killer will be the only one who wins, should they fail.

When a ship from an uncharted universe explodes, it soon becomes apparent that someone is building a massive weapon away from the watchful eyes of the Gordian Division. Agent Cho and Detective Cantrell are deployed to get to the bottom of the mystery. If they don't it, means destruction on a universal scale.

A Time Storm is Brewing.

After an industrial ship carrying advanced self-replicating machines explodes on its way to Mercury, analysis of the wreckage reveals it to be forty years too old. Raibert Kaminski, the Gordian Division's top agent, and his crew on the TransTemporal Vehicle Kleio soon discover the ship had been transported to an uncharted universe, one with temporarily accelerated time. Forty years passed for the ship's industrial machines while everyone else experienced only a few short days. Raibert is certain a powerful weapon of some nature has been built out in the unexplored reaches of the multiverse, but where and by whom remains unknown.

The search is on, and the Gordian Division musters its fleet of time machines at Providence, a massive transdimensional station under construction. They call upon their allies from the militaristic Admin for aid in their search--but before plans can be formalized, the leader of the Admin's Department of Temporal Investigation is murdered while visiting Providence, and the joint operation is thrown into chaos.

Accusations fly and tensions mount between the two organizations. Detectives Isaac Cho and Susan Cantrell--both fast becoming experts in transdimensional crime--are dispatched to Providence. But the clock is ticking for the detectives and Raibert's crew. A vast, powerful conspiracy has shuddered into motion, and the two teams may be all that stand between it and destruction on a universal scale.

The Star Kingdom's ally Erewhon is growing increasingly restive in the alliance because the new High Ridge regime ignores its needs. Added to the longstanding problem of a slave labor planet controlled by hostile Mesans in Erewhon's stellar backyard, which High Ridge refuses to deal with, the recent assassination of the Solarian League's most prominent voice of public conscience indicates the growing danger of political instability in the Solarian League—which is also close to Erewhon.

In desperation, Queen Elizabeth tries to defuse the situation by sending a private mission to Erewhon led by Captain Zilwicki, accompanied by one of her nieces. When they arrive on Erewhon, however, Manticore's envoys find themselves in a mess. Not only do they encounter one of the Republic of Haven's most capable agents—Victor Cachat—but they also discover that the Solarian League's military delegation seems up to its neck in skullduggery.

And, just to put the icing on the cake, the radical freed slave organization, the Audubon Ballroom, is also on the scene—led by its notorious and ruthless assassin, Jeremy X.

Someone is assassinating the leaders of both the Star Kingdom of Manticore and the recently liberated former slave planet of Torch. Though most believe the Republic of Haven is behind the murders, Anton Zilwicki and Havenite secret agent Victor Cachat believe there is another sinister player behind the scenes. Queen Berry of Torch narrowly escaped one assassination attempt, and a security officer from Beowulf has been assigned to protect her, a task complicated by the young monarch's resentment of bodyguards, and the officer's growing attachment to her. Meanwhile, powerful forces in the Solarian League are maneuvering against each other to gain the upper hand, not realizing or, perhaps, not caring that their power struggle is threatening the League's very existence and could plunge the galaxy into war.

Once again New York Times best-selling authors David Weber and Eric Flint join forces in an exciting new novel in the Honorverse.

The Mesan Alignment: a centuries-old cabal that seeks to impose its vision of a society dominated by genetic rank onto the human race. Now the conspiracy stands exposed by spies Anton Zilwicki and Victor Cachat--one an agent of Honor Harrington's Star Kingdom of Manticore, the other a Havenite operative. The outing of the Alignment has turned the galaxy's political framework topsy-turvy. Old coalitions have disintegrated. New alliances have been born.

For starters, the long and hard-fought war between the Republic of Haven and the Star Empire of Manticore is not only over, but these bitter enemies have formed a new pact. Their common foe: the Mesan Alignment itself.

But more information is needed to bring the Alignment out of the shadows. Now, defying the odds and relying on genetic wizardry themselves for a disguise, Zilwicki and Cachat return to Mesa--only to discover that even they have underestimated the Alignment's ruthlessness and savagery.

Soon they are on the run in Mesa's underworld, not only hunted by the Alignment but threatened by the exploding conflict on the planet between Mesa's overlords and the brutalized slaves and descendants of slaves who have suffered under their rule for so long. But if Zilwicki and Cachat succeed in rooting out the ancient conspiracy, a great evil may be finally removed from the galaxy--and on a long-oppressed planet, freedom may finally dawn.

The Solarian League lies in defeat, crushed by the Grand Alliance of Manticore, Haven, and Grayson.

Obedient to the Alliance's surrender demands, the League is writing a new Constitution, to prevent the reemergence of out-of-control bureaucrats, like the "Mandarins" who led it to disaster. Frontier Security has been disbanded, the outer worlds have regained control of their own economic destinies, and multiple star systems will soon secede from the League entirely.

Yet the League is--and will remain--the largest, most economically powerful human star nation in existence, and despite the overwhelming evidence that their unelected political leaders were the driving force behind the war, many League citizens deeply resent the fashion in which their star nation--the Solarian League--has been humbled. And those who most resent the Grand Alliance continue to blame Manticore for the nuclear bombardment of the planet Mesa after its surrender. They refuse to accept that the League--and the members of the Grand Alliance--could have been manipulated by a deeply hidden interstellar conspiracy called the Mesan Alignment. The Alignment is only an invention of the Grand Alliance, no more than a mask, a cover, for its own horrific Eridani Violations.

Those Solarians will never accept the war guilt of the League, because they know the Grand Alliance was just as bad. Because they deeply resent the way in which the Grand Alliance pretends to be the innocent "good guys." And in the fullness of time, those Solarians will seek vengeance upon their enemies.

Not all Solarians feel that way, but even some of those who accept that there was an interstellar conspiracy cherish doubts about its origins. But it is still out there, and now defeated Solarians and agents of the victorious Alliance must join forces to find it. Even if they don't believe in it, it believes in them.

They must find it and identify it, to prove to revanchist Solarians that there was a conspiracy.

And they must find it and destroy it to end its evil once and for all.

Whom the gods would recruit, they first tick off...

Our Hero: The unlikely Paladin, Bahzell Bahnakson of the Horse Stealer Hradani. He's no knight in shining armor. He's a hradani, a race known for their uncontrollable rages, bloodthirsty tendencies, and inability to maintain civilized conduct. None of the other Five Races of man like the hradani. Besides his ethnic burden, Bahzell has problems of his own to deal with: a violated hostage bond, a vengeful prince, a price on his head. He doesn't want to mess with anybody else's problems, let alone a god's. Let alone the War God's! So how does he end up a thousand leagues from home, neck-deep in political intrigue, assassins, demons, psionicists, evil sorcery, white sorcery, dark gods, good gods, bad poets, greedy landlords, and most of Bortalik Bay Well, it's all the War God's fault....

THE ROAD HOME

Bahzell Bahnakson of the Horse Stealer hradani never wanted to be a champion of the War God. Unfortunately, Tomandk had insisted. Even more unfortunately, Bahzell's own sense of responsibility hadn't let him say, "No."

Which was how he found himself in the Empire of the Axe, where even people who didn't actively hate hradani regarded them with suspicion and fear. Of course, that was only the start of his problems.

Next, there was the Order of Tomanak, many of whom were horrified by the notion that their deity had chosen a hradani as a champion... and intended to do something about it. And assuming he survived that, he had to go home-across three hundred leagues of bitter winter snow-to face a Dark God who threatened to destroy all hradani. Throw in the odd demon and brigand ambush, and add a powerful neighboring kingdom with no intention of letting Bahzell (or anyone else) save his people, and you have the makings of a really bad day.

But one thing Bahzell has learned: a champion of Tomanak does what needs doing. And the people in his way had better move.

Bahzell of the Hradani is Back! Exciting Fantasy Adventure by the New York Times Best-Selling Author of the Honor Harrington Series. First Time in Paperback.

In The War God's Own, Bahzell had managed to stop a war by convincing Baron Tellian, leader of the Sothoii, to "surrender" to him, the War God's champion. Now, he has journeyed to the Sothoii Wind Plain to oversee the parole he granted to Tellian and his men, to represent the Order of Tomanak, the War God, and to be an ambassador for the hradani. What's more, the flying coursers of the Sothoii have accepted Bahzell as a wind rider-the first hradani wind rider in history. And since the wind riders are the elite of the elite among the Sothoii, Bahzell's ascension is as likely to stir resentment as respect.

That combination of duties would have been enough to keep anyone busy-even a warrior prince like Bahzell-but additional complications are bubbling under the surface. The goddess Shigu, the Queen of Hell, is sowing dissension among the war maids of the Sothoii. The supporters of the deposed Sothoii noble who started the war are plotting to murder their new leige lord and frame Bahzell for the deed. Of course, those problems are all in a day's work for a champion of the War God.

But what is Bahzell going to do about the fact that Baron Tellian's daughter, and heir to the realm, seems to be thinking that he is the only man-or hradani-for her?

Barbarian Bahzell, originally an outsider to so-called civilization, has become the first hradani wind rider in history--a position that confers elite status within the territories of the powerful Sothoii. But certain very powerful and very nasty sorts are not at all happy about Bahzells' new status, and resentment stirs. Deadly resentment.

To complicate matters even further, Baron Tellian's daughter, the heir to the realm, is convinced that Bahzell is the only man--or hradani--for her. Yet Bahzell is no stranger to entanglements and threats, and his enemies are the ones who had best watch themselves. For they aren't just going up against any hradani barbarian, but a tried and proven champion of the War God Himself.

Know thyself. Its always good to know who you are, but sometimes thats a little difficult.

Kenhodan has no last name, because he has no past... or not one he remembers, anyway. What he does have are a lot of scars and a lot of skills some exhilarating and some terrifying and a purpose. Now if he only knew where he'd gotten them and what that purpose was....

Wencit of Rum, the most powerful wizard in the world, knows the answers to Kenhodan's questions, but he can't or won't share them with him. Except to inform him that he's a critical part of Wencit's millennium-long battle to protect Norfressa from conquest by dark sorcery.

Bahzell Bahnakson, champion of Tomanak, doesnt know those answers and the War God isn't sharing them with him. Except to inform Bahzell that the final confrontation with the Dark Lords of fallen Kontovar is about to begin, and that somehow Kenhodan is one of the keys to its final outcome.

Wulfra of Torfo doesn't know those answers, either, but she does know Wencit of Rm is her implacable foe and that somehow Kenhodan is one of the weapons he intends to use against her... assuming she can't kill both of them first.

But in the far northern port city of Belhadan, an eleven-year-old girl knows the answers to all of Kenhodan's questions...and dares not share them with anyone, even the ancient wild wizard who loves her more dearly than life itself.

It's not easy to face the future when you can't even remember your own past, but if saving an entire world from evil sorcerers, demons, devils, and dark gods was easy, anyone could do it.

This is the first anthology of stories set in the Honorverse. The stories in the anthologies serve to introduce characters, provide deeper, more complete backstory and flesh out the universe of the main series. David Weber, author of the mainline Honor Harrington series, serves as editor for the anthologies, maintaining fidelity to the series' canons.

Table of Contents:

"A Beautiful Friendship" by David Weber: The story of the first meeting between humans (Stephanie Harrington) and treecats (Climbs Quickly). This story was later expanded to a full length young adult novel, published in 2011.

"A Grand Tour" by David Drake: A story with few links to any other in the Honorverse setting. Careful reading may reveal similarities to the first novel in his RCN Series, in the characters, style, and attitude. Both were published in 1998. Indeed Drake confirms that "A Grand Tour" is the conceptual antecedent of With the Lightnings.

"A Whiff of Grapeshot" by S. M. Stirling: This story serves as background to the "Leveler Uprising" mentioned in the early chapters of In Enemy Hands. A radical Havenite faction stages an uprising against the rule of the Committee of Public Safety, wreaking havoc in the Havenite capital city of Nouveau Paris. With the Committee's security forces in complete disarray following an attack on its information network, the only forces able to intervene and restore order are Navy ships under the command of Admiral Esther McQueen, even though the Admiral is not precisely a supporter of the Committee and has an agenda of her own.

"The Universe of Honor Harrington" by David Weber: A "deep background" essay covering such diverse topics as the physics of space travel, the mechanics space colonization and politics of various "star nations", such as Manticore, Haven and the Solarian League.

This is the second anthology of stories set in the Honorverse. The stories in the anthologies serve to introduce characters, provide deeper, more complete backstory and flesh out the universe of the main series. David Weber, author of the mainline Honor Harrington series, serves as editor for the anthologies, maintaining fidelity to the series' canons.

Table of Contents:

"The Stray": this novella by Linda Evans looks at life among the treecats, before Honor.

"What Price Dreams?": this novella by David Weber reveals a chapter in the history of the telepathic treecats when a young human who bonded with a treecat was a Very Important Person -- specifically, she was a Manticoran crown princess and the heir to the throne of the empire.

"Queen's Gambit": this novella by Jane Lindskold tells how Honor's monarch, Elizabeth III, had to learn the hard way what monarchy is all about.

"The Hard Way Home": this novella by David Weber tells how young Honor Harrington and her treecat Nimitz faced the impossible task of rescuing the victims of an avalanche in a sub-zero blizzard.

"Deck Load Strike": this novelette by Roland J. Green offers a hard-hitting account of what happened when Manticore and the People's Republic of Haven went eyeball-to-eyeball over a strategically vital planet.

This is the third anthology of stories set in the Honorverse. The stories in the anthologies serve to introduce characters, provide deeper, more complete backstory and flesh out the universe of the main series. David Weber, author of the mainline Honor Harrington series, serves as editor for the anthologies, maintaining fidelity to the series' canons.

Table of Contents

"Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington": this novella by David Weber shows that it's a big universe, and Honor's actions affect a lot of lives, not all of them human. And their actions affect her -- a lesson "Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington" learns years before rising to command rank, when a desperate battle against "pirates" who aren't quite what they seem begins her brilliant career.

"Changer of Worlds": in this novelette by David Weber, a secret that the alien treecats have kept from their human friends for hundreds of years is about to come out... and completely change the relationship between the two species forever.

"From the Highlands": in this novella by Eric Flint, Honor can't be everywhere, so when the People's Republic of Haven tries to stage a political assassination on Earth, Anton Zilwicki -- husband of one of the Star Kingdom's most revered military martyrs, and father of a young woman who is clearly a chip off the old block -- steps into the breach... and takes the opportunity to settle some old scores along the way.

"Nightfall": in this novella by David Weber Esther McQueen and Oscar Saint-Just square off for their final confrontation in Noveau Paris in "Nightfall."

This is the fourth anthology of stories set in the Honorverse. The stories in the anthologies serve to introduce characters, provide deeper, more complete backstory and flesh out the universe of the main series. David Weber, author of the mainline Honor Harrington series, serves as editor for the anthologies, maintaining fidelity to the series' canons.

Table of Contents:

"Promised Land": this novella by Jane Lindskold gives us the story of a prince on the brink of maturity and an extraordinary young Grayson woman named Judith--a victim of Masadan brutality, who confronts insurmountable odds in a desperate effort to lead her sisters to freedom-- or--death among the stars.

"With One Stone": this novella by Timothy Zahn is a story of the heavy cruiser HMS Fearless; a brilliant young tactical officer on temporarily detached duty; Solarian con men; secret weapons that aren't quite what they seem to be; naval spies, spooks, and dirty tricks; courage and honor; and a surprising glimpse into one of Admiral Sonja Hemphill's most crucial technological innovations.

"A Ship Named Francis": this shortstory by John Ringo and Victor Mitchell answers the question of what an explosively expanding navy does with the personnel who can't quite cut the mustard.

"Let's Go to Prague": in this novella by John Ringo, the Peep planet of Prague and its brutally repressive StateSec regime will never be the same again after the unscheduled, unofficial, and thoroughly catastrophic visit by a pair of Manticoran Marines with a most peculiar taste in their holiday destinations.

"Fanatic": this novella by Eric Flint tells us the story of an idealistic young StateSec officer who finds himself in the right place at the right time following the fall of Oscar Saint-Just. Young Victor Cachat could influence the loyalty of an entire sector... if he's only lucky enough to manage to stay alive long enough to try.

"The Service of the Sword": this novella by David Weber gives us the tale of the first Grayson midshipwoman on her "snotty cruise" at a time when internal tensions threaten the entire future of the Manticoran Alliance and people are about to rediscover the Fact that the Peeps are far from the only predators hiding in the stars.

This is the fifth anthology of stories set in the Honorverse. The stories in the anthologies serve to introduce characters, provide deeper, more complete backstory and flesh out the universe of the main series. David Weber, author of the mainline Honor Harrington series, serves as editor for the anthologies, maintaining fidelity to the series' canons.

Table of Contents:

"Ruthless": this shortfiction by Jane Lindskold continues the story of Michael, Judith and Ruth which started in "Promised Land". While speaking to a woman from Human Services outside her apartment, Judith Newland's daughter disappears -- taken hostage to be used as leverage against Prince Michael Winston.

"An Act of War": this shortfiction by Timothy Zahn is a sequel to "With One Stone" from Service of the Sword. Charles Dozewah, aka Charles Navarre, is on the People's Republic of Haven to arrange a sale of something that could help with the war against Manticore. Before he can complete the deal, Charles is arrested by State Security. As always when Charles is involved, everything isn't as it seems.

"Let's Dance!": this shortfiction by David Weber features a mob of space pirates who make the fatal mistake of taking on a young Manticorean Royal Navy commander who goes by the name Harrington.

"An Introduction to Modern Starship Armor Design": essay by Andy Presby

Appendix: Armor Design Figures - interior artwork by William H. Edwards and Thomas Pope and Thomas Marrone

This is the sixth anthology of stories set in the Honorverse. The stories in the anthologies serve to introduce characters, provide deeper, more complete backstory and flesh out the universe of the main series. David Weber, author of the mainline Honor Harrington series, serves as editor for the anthologies, maintaining fidelity to the series' canons.

Table of Contents:

"By the Book": this novella by Charles E. Gannon opens with young lieutenant Lee Strong leading a rescue for a ship captured by space pirates. After the gripping opening action, the lieutenant plays detective in treacherous politics at the space station where he delivers the rescued ship.

"A Call to Arms": this novella by Timothy Zahn begins with a hiring interview for a mercenary admiral. The story then takes us to a Royal Manticoran Navy ship running simulated space battles.

"Beauty and the Beast": this novella by David Weber features newly promoted lieutenant Alfred Harrington pursuing a medical education on Beowulf, where mutual attraction flares with fellow student Allison Chou. Villains strike, and the action gets tight.

"The Best Laid Plans": in this novelette by David Weber, a 12-year-old Honor Harrington's simple hike turns into a dangerous adventure and an encounter with a tree cat.

"Obligated Service": this novella by Joelle Presby features a young midshipwoman from the patriarchial planet Grayson, and the hardships she endures as a young officer after completing her training at Saganami Island Academy.

The hottest military science fiction series of all time continues. The mission: to boldly explore David Weber's Honorverse; to deliver all the action, courage, derring-do, and pulse-pounding excitement of space naval adventure with tales set in a world touched by the greatness of one epic heroine--Honor Harrington.

Table of Contents:

• 1 - Traitor - novella by Thomas Pope and Timothy Zahn
• 73 - Deception on Gryphon - novelette by Jane Lindskold
• 113 - The Silesian Command - novella by Jan Kotouc
• 179 - If Wishes Were Space Cutters - novella by Joelle Presby
• 243 - First Victory - novella by David Weber