Search Worlds Without End

"A planet-stomping space opera that bursts off the page like a tactical nuke."
--John Birmingham, author of Weapons of Choice

The Hammer Worlds--the most brutal and oppressive interstellar government in the universe--have hijacked the Federated Worlds cruise ship Mumtaz, seizing its valuable terraforming cargo and damning its passengers to mining the moons of the prison planet known as Hell.

For Junior Lieutenant Michael Helfort and the crew aboard deep space scout vessel 387, the mission is clear: infiltrate enemy territory, locate the Mumtaz, and rescue the prisoners.

The odds are appalling, and the damage will probably be fatal, but victory is nonnegotiable--especially for Helfort, whose mother and sister were on the Mumtaz.

And Michael Helfort will be damned if he'll let his family rot on the moons of Hell.

He thought Hell was the worst they could throw at him.

He was wrong.

Back from tangling with the Hammer of Kraa, the most brutal, trigger-happy tyrants in humanspace, Junior Lieutenant Michael Helfort is assigned to the Federated Worlds heavy cruiser Ishaq, which is struggling to rise to the threat posed by a newly resurgent Hammer. Aboard the floundering ship, Helfort is coming to grips with a painful injury and the unpleasant truth that nobody likes a young hero--least of all senior officers.

Without warning, the Ishaq and twenty-seven Fed merchant ships are blown apart in a horrific ambush, the first step in the Hammer's master strategy to destroy the hated Federated Worlds. Michael and a pitiful remnant of the Ishaq's crew escape the inferno. The Feds have no idea who's behind the heinous attack, and the Hammer are determined to keep it that way, consigning the Ishaq's survivors to a prison camp deep in the wilderness of the Hammer's home planet.

No one's getting out alive to derail the Hammer's lethal master plan--especially not the FedWorlds hero who so humiliated them on the battlefield. It's payback time, and the Hammers intend to throw their entire space fleet into destroying Michael Helfort and the Federated Worlds.

Too bad it won't be enough.

If he survives, hell just may freeze over.

The savage Hammer Worlds are not only near invincible but almost certain to win their war to crush the Federated Worlds and control humanspace--unless the Feds can find and destroy their secret antimatter warhead facility.

Only dreadnoughts, the lone Federated ships able to withstand antimatter missile attacks, can do the job, and only Lieutenant Michael Helfort has the skill to lead them. But skill may not be enough, because Helfort is more than the newly appointed captain: He's a hero, and this means that his own senior officers want him to fail--and that the enemy's kingpin wants him dead.

Helfort's early victories merely intensify everyone's determination. No action is too low, no price too high, to bring him down--with treachery, or betrayal, or an offer he can't refuse, even if it means selling out his own side.

It was insane, it was suicidal, it was wrong--and by God he was going to do it.

The Hammer Worlds have Helfort exactly where they want him. The ultimatum is brutal and precise. Unless the Federated hero surrenders, the Hammer World's prisoner Anna Cheung--the only woman Helfort has ever loved--will be handed over to a bunch of depraved troopers to be violated, then executed by firing squad.

Helfort can obey, or he can do what the crew proposes: sail his three frontline dreadnoughts into the Hammers' stronghold Commitment Planet, liberate Anna and the rest of the POWs held captive there, and continue the fight in the jaws of the enemy. Helfort's decision? Bring it on!

Cowed into appeasement by the threat to destroy their home planets with antimatter warheads, the Federated Worlds are a spent force. Only a ragtag rebel army stands between the Hammer of Kraa and total victory. The consequences of that triumph are too terrible to contemplate. Thousands of worlds will be subjugated, millions murdered, and billions enslaved by an empire spanning hundreds of light years, an empire fuelled by blood, an empire built on the bones of its enemies.

The rebels need help; without it, they too face annihilation. And their time is running out, fast.

Michael Helfort's mission is simple: persuade the reluctant Feds to give the rebels the support they need to defeat the Hammer of Kraa. And, with the future of all of humanspace at stake, he cannot fail.

But when Michael is betrayed by those he trusts most...