Watching the hatching of a great tree-dwelling venomous tentacled land-devil has been field-scientist Aran Romeu's dream for as long as he can remember. And if land-devils are the most dangerous creatures known to humankind, and this whole thing might be a set-up from someone who wants to kill him, and there's a very good chance neither he nor his research assistant and best friend Istvay will come out of this alive … well, he and Istvay have never let something like that stop them before....

The portal that appeared in what was once open space on the edge of the Joias System should be impossible. So should the alien capsule that came through it.What’s inside the capsule is even more unbelievable—proof that the aliens have a cure for a disease that's killed millions. And proof that they want to communicate.Aran Romeu, a field-scientist desperate to save his dying friend, will do anything to reach that cure.Alba Espina, the system's Chief...

A remote resource planet. A mysterious illness. And a rescue team frighteningly out of their depth.It was supposed to have been an easy job: go in, kidnap or kill his mark, get out. Shine's done plenty of jobs like this before, no problem. But when it all goes suddenly wrong, he has only one option left to save his skin.He finds himself an unwilling volunteer on a medical mission to a remote resource planet. It sent in a distress call a week earlier, and th...

Avast, intrepid reader! Behold yon inky treasure!A beautiful airship corsair determined to reveal a government conspiracy. An interstellar outlaw bent on avenging the murders of her fellow crewmates. A pirate captain whose hatred of mer-people endangers his ship and crew. A ghost trapped in the wreckage of a privateering ship.From the early voyages of a young, ambitious Gaius Julius Caesar, to a sorceress hunting buccaneers along the post-Civil War Mississi...

Two hundred human refugees are about to be slaughtered. There’s an assassin on the loose. And an alien leadership war has just broken out, with humans at the centre of it. The day just keeps getting better …Despite all odds, the rag-tag human diplomatic party, led by Chief Justice Alba Espina, has been rescued and granted asylum by the yibo government. But they’re not in the clear yet—with yibo sentiment turning against humans, Alba will have to use every bit of sk...

In May 1997 the Faculty of Surgery from the University of Athens and elsewhere gathered with colleagues in Athens for the third time in 6 years to continue our discussions on the progress, problems, realization, and future of laproscopic surgery. The topics were rather inclusive with regard to the issues that defined the field, and the assembled investigators, educa tors, and clinicians brought a rich experience and clear vision of the field in the coming years. The decision had been made ...

There’s something lurking in the caverns under Blackrock…The pirate settlement of Blackrock depends for oxygen on the vast algae vats set into caverns deep under the surface of the rocky moon. But recently, vat workers have been turning up dead. And not natural deaths—they’re shooting their own friends, walking off 30-metre drops, stepping out into the path of a ghost to be torn to pieces, driven mad with terror. The overworked doctors at the small hospital can’t f...

When the human and alien worlds collide, it’s anyone’s guess if there will be survivors.Chief Justice Alba Espina never expected to see her home system again. But the return of the diplomatic mission survivors to the Joias system may not be as peaceful as they’d hoped. Alba’s political rival, General Cavaco, has used her absence to stoke citizens’ fears and prejudices of an alien invasion - and he’s gunning for a war that Alba knows he can’t win. Between Cavaco’s p...

On a desert settlement on a remote planet, the limited water is as precious as life. Until it starts to kill them…Thaddeus and the rest of the small medical crew have just arrived at their next assignment—a small, drought-ridden settlement, where people are dying in horrific, unnatural ways. They suspect the water source has something to do with it, but how do you live without water?The crew soon realizes the deaths are only part of the problem. The people ...

They've made it behind the portal. Now they have to survive what they find on the other side …After a disaster leaves their diplomatic ship destroyed and the ragged survivors numbering only dozens, Ambassador Alba Espina's mission goes from negotiating a political alliance with a previously uncontacted sapient species, to trying desperately to keep the tiny band of survivors alive in a hostile alien environment.Surviving first contact with the aliens is har...

The Joias System—and all of humanity—is in deadly peril.The only way the motley group of human survivors, led by former diplomat Alba Espina, can prevent a massacre is to destroy the aliens' portal mechanism. But for a rag-tag party more skilled in diplomacy than demolition, stranded in an unfamiliar system, with both human and alien soldiers on their trail after their desperate escape from the aliens' capital—it seems like an impossible task.And those aren...

They’re trapped in the middle of an alien war—and their only hope of salvation is from the most unlikely of sources.With the survivors of the diplomatic ship finally safe, head diplomat and former Chief Justice Alba Espina can at last turn her attention to finding them a way home.Or so she thinks.And then the vicious raiders who hunt the edges of the alien system turn their sights on the alien capital, and once again, human lives are a potential bar...