DANGEROUS QUESTIONS!
"Have you got Warhammer's papers?" he asked.
"Yes," Beka said. She reached into the right-side pocket of
her jacket for the miniature blaster that always lived there, and put the
business end of the little weapon against the back of his neck.
He froze. Then, with infinite caution, he lifted both hands and placed
them flat against Amsroto's hull.
Beka started breathing again. "Now," she said. "It's time
you told me what your name really is, and how you wound up with a Mageworld
scoutcraft parked in your docking bay..."
THE PRICE OF THE STARS
SNEAK ATTACK!
Elimax raised his blaster. The ugly snarl of the weapon filled the
cramped space as he sent two high-power beams on tight focus into the heads of
the sleepers. In the silence that followed, another sound erupted—the buzz
of a single-shot needler, fired at close range. Elimax crumpled forward; his
blaster fell to the deck. Beka stepped out of the shadowed corner where she'd
stood watching...
STARPILOT'S GRAVE
EMERGENCY LIFTOFF!
"Portmaster, this is Warhammer. Request permission to lift
ship."
"Negative, Warhammer. Permission to lift denied. Report with your
entire crew to the Portmaster's office."
"Unable to comply. Request permis—" The sudden tug of a
tractor beam cut him off midword. The 'Hammer began to lurch and sway as
the beam kept on pulling the ship downward. LeSoit could feel the strength
members of the 'Hammer's frame vibrating. He reached for the console and
pulled on the forward nullgravs. Nothing happened—only the steady throb of
overstressed metal.
LeSoit hit the console again. With a tremendous deep-throated roar, the
heavy realspace engines came on. Power that should have driven
Warhammer's mass up to near-lightspeed poured out of the ship's engines,
turning the deckplates of the bay to slag beneath them. All over the console,
warning lights burned red. "This is it—either we shake apart fighting
their beam, or we break free..."
BY HONOR BETRAY'D
DANGEROUS LIAISON!
"You've made a name for yourself, Captain Metadi, and not merely on
Gyffer and Innish-Kyl—the newsreaders on Galcen talk about you as well.
They say you are something more than a successful pirate—"
"Privateer," he corrected. "I bear letters of marque and
reprisal."
"My apologies, Captain," Perada said, her expression
unruffled. "Privateer. If the newsreaders don't lie you have proven
yourself able to meld independent raiders into a fleet and carry the war to the
enemy."
"Enemy?" Jos Metadi shook his head. "No. Enemies are
personal. I take prizes—rich ones—and I take them for the goods and
merchandise they carry. If your sources are any good, they should have
mentioned that I don't fight warships if I can help it."
"You fight when you must, and you win when you fight." Her
voice remained composed. "I have decided. You are the man who will return
with me to Entibor and, once there, make a warfleet for me."
"You've decided, have you?"
THE GATHERING FLAME
TWO AGAINST THE GALAXY!
They were dragging him now to a parked hovercar. One of them -- Kolpag,
the blaster man -- slid into the driver's position and switched the machine on.
It rose, humming, on its nullgravs, and hung there vibrating gently.
The other man shoved Jens onto the front seat beside the driver. Jens
fell heavily backward onto his bound wrists, and the man who had dumped him --
Ruhn, if the blaster man/driver was Kolpag -- started to walk back to the rear
passenger compartment, where he would sit behind Jens.
Time to go out with style, Jens thought; now or never--
and smashed his foot sideways into the driver's ribs.
Kolpag lost his breath in an explosive whuff and half-fell from his
still-open door -- twisting the hovercar's control yoke to the left and
dragging it all the way out to reverse as he went down. The car spun backward
and to the right with startling speed, increasing its angular velocity as it
pivoted. The side of the vehicle took the second gunman in the midsection,
crushing him between its metal mass and the unyielding granite of the wall. An
explosion of blood flew from his mouth and spattered the window above Jens'
head.
THE LONG HUNT
A NOVEL OF THE MAGEWORLDS
The star systems of the Mageworlds are linked by magic. Only when
trained Mages have found a Way to a new world can the great colonizing and
trading starships follow. But beyond the furthest worlds is the great gap,
beyond which, hint the legends, lie vast, rich human worlds long lost to the
Mages' trade.
Now the most powerful Mage-circle ever is determined to walk to those
worlds, to reunite humanity's sundered branches and make a fortune in the
process. And young Arekhon sus-Khalgath, scion of the most powerful of the
clans of starship builders, has left his inheritance to join them.
But immense forces are arrayed against them. Blood will be spilled, and
dynasties thrown down, before the worlds of mankind are again united. For the
first time in living memory, the Mages will go to war--with themselves.
THE STARS ASUNDER
A NOVEL OF THE MAGEWORLDS
Ten years ago, Arekhon sus-Khalgath sus-Peledaen abandoned this native planet for a new life
on the far side of the Gap Between -- the starless rift separating the Eraasian worlds from the rest of the
galaxy. On the planet Entibor, he found shelter and domestic tranquilty with his old love,
Elaeli Inadi, at the price of what he had left behind: a dispersed and shattered Mage-Circle, an estranged
brother who had tried to kill him, and a homeworld on the cusp of massive cultural upheaveal.
Now the bill is coming due, and Arekhon finds himself impelled homeward by strange dreams and
prophetic visions. The Great Working -- the effort to do the unthinkable and reunite the galaxy
long sundered by the Gap Between -- remains incomplete, left unfinished in the aftermath of the
dissolution of Arekhon's Mage-Circle. But too much energy and too many lives have been poured
into the Working already, and it cannot end so long as any of the Circle members remain alive
and bound to it.
Home, unfortunately, isn't a safe place for Arekhon to be at the moment. For Eraasi has changed
-- and the great fleet-families at the center of Eraasian culture are girding for war.
A WORKING OF STARS