Cirrus@Austlit

'In a place where space and time collide, the future of mankind will be decided.

'On the edge of a region of space so terrible it has long been known as 'Hellgate,' the super-carriers of Earth's DeepSky Fleet play an endless cat-and- mouse game with the starship wreckers, the privateers who, alone, can navigate the wilds of the Rabelais Drift.

'The super-carriers are the most magnificent ships in space, but under the iron control of a corrupt officer corps, unanswerable to any authority, parsecs from the nearest center of civilian or military justice, these leviathans have become hellships where conscripts are used up and discarded. And in an era where enforced conscription is a way of life, anyone — everyone — will serve the DeepSky Fleet. Many will be assigned to carriers.

'It is thirty years since the Confederacy instituted its 'strong Fleet policy,' first taxing the far-flung colonies to build the ships, then conscripting their young people to crew them. Decades ago, Earth's military scientists first became aware of a shadowy nemesis, a faceless enemy so powerful, humankind's closest companion in this region of space was obliterated.

'The same fate awaits Mankind, with only the DeepSky Fleet holding defiance against the dimly perceived foe known simply as the Zunshu. But as the day grows ever-nearer for the DeepSky Fleet to fight this ultimate battle, its infrastructure is rotting at the core.

'The super-carriers can barely keep pace with the wreckers — mere human foes — and their abused crews have no concept of the mission they were recruited and trained to fight.

'Into this arena of misery step two unlikely players. Travers and Marin are from worlds so vastly different, they have only their conscripted military service in common — that, and the desire to survive, to see justice done, and to uncover the truths still hidden by Earth's distant government. Travers is still in the service, but his connections to the privateer fleet would be more than enough to execute him. His current assignment is the super-carrier Intrepid, his field of conflict, the Rabelais Drift ... Hellgate.

'In an age of rampant injustice, often justice must be pursued on a personal level. This mission brings Curtis Marin aboard the carrier as the executor of a sanction purchased by a citizen whose son was murdered by a travesty of justice. Marin has come aboard as an assassin ... if he can stay alive long enough to complete his mission ... and if the carrier herself can survive the corruption of her officer corps, the endless battle with the privateers, and the insuperable forces of nature that churn across the ripped face of the void known as Hellgate.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Six centuries in the future, Mankind faces our darkest struggles for survival, and our only allies are the last, fugitive remnants of the race long believed extinct...

'Neil Travers and Curtis Marin are back in action in the second volume of the HELLGATE series.

'While the Confederacy tries to use the DeepSky Fleet to crush the breakaway colonies, a handful of rebels may be the only force standing between the new human homeworlds and the shadowy enemy which almost exterminated the last race to whom these far-flung stars were home. The Resalq have survived ... but the threat is greater than ever. On one hand, the Zunshu strike out of Rabelais Space, also known as Hellgate. On the other hand, the government of Earth is determined to bring the unruly colonies back into line. Between the two, the humans of the frontier worlds and the last of the Resalq fight to survive, and the odds are against them. Nothing is what it seems, with allies within the Fleet and enemies among the Freespacers. And when Travers and Marin are assigned to the super-carrier Kiev on the Omaru blockade, all bets are off, and it’s every man for himself.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The Colonial Wars have exploded across the face of Omaru ... the unknown, unknowable Zunshu have begun to devour the worlds beyond the storms of the Rabelais Drift ... the Confederacy can only try to tighten its grip on the Deep Sky ... the last of the Resalq fight a covert battle for the survival of all ... and Harrison Shapiro’s war — the desperate struggle for the liberty of the every soul on the ‘deep frontier’ — might die stillborn. Curtis Marin and Neil Travers are at the spearhead of action which will take them from the heights of On’rabi to the deepest pits of city bottom, on a world under siege ... and the future of the new worlds of the Deep Sky will be found in the dark heart of Hellgate itself.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Recovering from the events of Cry Liberty, Neil Travers and Curtis Marin are pleased to be mere spectators for a time ... but the scenes at which they are on the sidelines are beyond their imagination.

'The super-carrier Shanghai has driven into the Deep Sky, poised for the invasion of Ulrand ... on Kjorin, Dario Sherratt believes he has discovered the key to the Zunshu stasis chamber ... in the storms of the Rabelais Drift, the Wastrel plays pool with cosmic forces ... in Marak ‘city bottom’, Vaurien and Jazinsky pit themselves against old enemies.

'And Michael Vidal prepares to fly the mission of his life, into the dark heart of Hellgate. A place the Resalq call El’arne ... ‘The stormy side of the sky.’ Into this void, the explorer Ernst Rabelais vanished many years ago; and out of it, the Zunshu strike at the new human worlds as they once destroyed the Resalq...

'For Travers and Marin, these are strange, bittersweet days, on one hand filled with self-discovery, on the other, shadowed by fear. They long for the so-called ‘Colonial Wars’ to be over, yet find themselves at the very crux of the danger, politics and intrigue as General Harrison Shapiro makes his gambit.

'The stakes are the liberty and the survival of the Deep Sky.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'With the frontier worlds going down before the Zunshu and the DeepSky Fleet headed out with orders to use any means necessary to extinguish the Colonial Wars, the board is set, the pieces are positioned – and Neil Travers and Curtis Marin find themselves in Freespace, hunting for old enemies.

'The rogue industrialist behind the event that almost destroyed Omaru is hiding out on Halfway – surrounded by a regiment of bodyguards, in the fortified heights of a lawless space city where anything goes, from the dark, virulent, violent underbelly to a dazzling place called Xanadu. Sergei van Donne is also gunning for Boden Zwerner, but even he can’t get close, and an unlikely pact is made between sometime enemies.

'The data trail leading to Zwerner takes Richard Vaurien’s crew through the muck trodden by slave dealers. They’re after the survivors of the super-carrier Shanghai – soldiers, pilots, techs, who made it through the Battle of Ulrand alive, only to be snatched by unscrupulous Freespacers and sold in hellish colonies on the wrong side of the frontier. Harrison Shapiro wants them back, and the trail sends the Wastrel to an open-pit mine of a world. The slaves are just part of the treasure that might be seized – and perhaps another clue to the secrets of the Zunshu will be uncovered.

'The ancient Resalq have emerged from stasis to discover a harsh new reality … the Zunshu are too close, no world is safe, and Mark Sherratt’s people will become fugitives once again, while Lai’a launches into the incredible realm of transspace, which the Resalq called Elarne … ‘the stormy side of the sky.’ Its mission was simply to test the hyper-Weimann engine. Its reality is stunningly different.

'For Travers and Marin, the day of reckoning has arrived. The super-carrier Chicago has brought Earth’s war to Velcastra. The colonial republic is proclaimed, and peace reigns for a matter of hours, while worlds like Jagreth and Borushek watch shrewdly, and chart their own future. Harrison Shapiro’s bridges are burned – the only way back is victory.

'And at a place called Alshien’ya, a very different drama explodes with the return of Lai’a … the heroes of the modern frontier and the icons of other centuries are players, pawns, in a vast game of statecraft and survival – winner take all.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'With the worlds of the Deep Sky declaring their independence and the super-carrier battle groups assigned to quell the Colonial War by any means, Neil Travers and Curtis Marin find themselves in an explosive situation.

'On the one hand, the London and the Avenger are poised to move against Jagreth and Borushek ... on the other, the Zunshu continue to strike out of the massive Hellgate storms ... and caught between them are the most powerful ships on either side of the frontier. Richard Vaurien’s Wastrel – a salvage tug designed to work the fragmented space on the edge of Hellgate. And Mark Sherratt’s Lai’a – with the body of a warship and the mind of a Resalq super-AI.

'A Freespacer crew pledged to fight for the freedom of the Deep Sky ... a unique artificial intelligence bred and born for the region beyond Hellgate – the realm that has become known to a handful of pilots as transspace.

'From a searing battle fought in the shadow of Oberon to the depths of Zunshu space beyond The Blood Gate ... from the cool, green forests of Jagreth to the most alien worlds Marin and Travers could never imagine, and a first contact that will change the future ... this is Event Horizon.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.