Search Worlds Without End

Suddenly, staying alive is more than a personal problem...

In a galaxy worn down by generations of war against an implacable foe, a star pilot's mission brings him an unexpected ally and a chance to serve his troop--and mankind.

M. Jela Granthor's Guard is a soldier who was born to be a~ soldier, a solider whose genes were selected before birth, whose life was chosen for him as one of service and dedication.

Cantra yos'Phelium is an ace pilot and a thoroughgoing rogue. She trades the dark and the gray markets along the war-torn Rim, running solo, and with an eye firmly on her own profit.

When chance deals her an ex-soldier, she's inclined to leave him where she found him. That was before mutual trouble arose, and Jela proved himself a good man in a tight spot. Still, she thought to ditch him next planet down the line.

Only he wasn't being easy to ditch. Worse, he had a puzzle going that just naturally drew a pilot's close attention.

So the two of them form an unlikely--and uncomfortable - alliance, the soldier intent on his mission; the pirate intent on her survival.

And neither one, in the face of alien technology, outlaws, and the enemy's renewed assaults, can quite forget a life lesson shared by people who live on the edge of chance:

Sometimes, no matter what, you're just going to lose...

You can't go home again...

What do you do when home is a conspiracy that's been 3 discovered and destroyed? When home is a planet in a star system that's gone missing? When home means working for the destroyers of galaxies When home is a spaceship that's calling out to the enemy? Cantra 'yos Phelium isn't a quitter, but she has more than a little problem: the Enemy has accelerated its attacks and how do you fight an Enemy whose, major form of attack is the de-crystallization of everything around itself? A smuggler with a rogue soldier for a co-pilot, and a tree with an attitude for crew, Cantra's the only one who can get close to the man who holds equations that might, that just might&--thwart the Enemy.

All she has to do is help a young pilot from a missing world, juggle a slippery promise she never quite made to a pair of wizards, and then forget who she is along with everything, and everyone, she's ever known.