Search Worlds Without End

Two engineers hijack a spaceship to join some space pirates--only to discover the pirates are hiding from a malevolent AI. Now they have to outwit the AI if they want to join the pirate crew--and survive long enough to enjoy it.

Adda and Iridian are newly minted engineers, but aren't able to find any work in a solar system ruined by economic collapse after an interplanetary war. Desperate for employment, they hijack a colony ship and plan to join a famed pirate crew living in luxury at Barbary Station, an abandoned shipbreaking station in deep space.

But when they arrive there, nothing is as expected. The pirates aren't living in luxury--they're hiding in a makeshift base welded onto the station's exterior hull. The artificial intelligence controlling the station's security system has gone mad, trying to kill all station residents and shooting down any ship that attempts to leave--so there's no way out.

Adda and Iridian have one chance to earn a place on the pirate crew: destroy the artificial intelligence. The last engineer who went up against the AI met an untimely end, and the pirates are taking bets on how the newcomers will die. But Adda and Iridian plan to beat the odds.

There's a glorious future in piracy... if only they can survive long enough.

Adda Karpe and Iridian Nassir have escaped the murderous AI that was trapping them on Barbary Station, and earned themselves a place on Captain Sloane's fabled pirate crew. And now that they've arrived at Vesta, Sloane's home base, they can finally start making a living stealing from well-off megacorporations.

Unfortunately, the political situation has deteriorated in Captain Sloane's absence. Adda and Iridian find themselves trapped in a contract with Oxia Corp., one of the very megacorporations they'd hoped to prey on, forced to rob and intimidate targets they'd never have chosen on their own. If they're ever going to have the independent life together that they've always wanted, they'll have to free themselves from Oxia Corp. first. Meanwhile, the inhuman allies who followed Adda and Iridian from Barbary Station have plans of their own, which may be more dangerous than the humans involved could imagine. It will take not one but five heists, and every bit of ingenuity Adda and Iridian have to escape from Oxia and find the life they've always dreamed of... if they can survive.

Adda Karpe and Iridian Nassir are on the run -- both from the authorities who want to imprison them and the artificial intelligence that want to control their minds. Trapped on a desolate black-market space station on the edge of Jupiter, they're nearly out of allies -- and out of luck.

Now, they have one last shot to find a safe haven where they can live together in peace -- across the interstellar bridge to another galaxy. Getting onto that mission will take everything they've got and more. But on the other side of that bridge lies the life they've always dreamed of... if they can survive long enough to reach it.