Showing results by author "David Drake" in All Categories

Roy Olfetrie planned to be an officer in the Republic of Cinnabar Navy, but when his father was unmasked as a white-collar criminal he had to take whatever he was offered. What is offered turns out to be a chance to accompany Captain Daniel Leary and Lady Adele Mundy as they go off to start a war that will put Roy at the sharp end.

In Northern India, the Malwa have created an empire of unexampled evil. Guided or possessed by an intelligence from beyond time, with new weapons, old treachery, and an implacable will to power, the Malwa will sweep over the whole Earth. Only three things stand between the Malwa and their plan of eternal domination: the empire of Rome in the East, Byzantium; a crystal with vision; and a man named Belisarius, the greatest commander Earth has ever known....

On a planet that was once part of a vast interstellar civilization, humans survive on the edge of barbarism amid the ruins of the once-great empire.

In the time of the Ancients the universe was united - but that was so far in the past that not even memory remains, only the broken artifacts that a few Makers can reshape into their original uses. What survives is shattered into enclaves - some tiny, some ruined, some wild. Into the gaps between settlements, and onto the road that connects all human reality and the reality that is not human and may never have been human, have crept monsters.

With the aid of a sentient battle computer, Raj Whitehall and his band of sworn Companions struggle to reunite the entire planet of Bellevue and find their mission impeded by Barholm Clerett.

The truce between Cinnabar and the Alliance is holding, and the Republic of Cinnabar Navy is able to explore regions of the galaxy without the explorers being swept up in great power conflict. The Far Traveller is probing sponge space to open routes for Cinnabar traders - and for RCN warships if war breaks out again. But besides astrogation, the Far Traveller is to survey and catalog life forms on the worlds it touches.

Duisberg is one of thousands of planets plunged into darkness and chaos by the collapse of the galactic republic, but where other worlds have begun to rebuild a star-travelling culture, Duisberg remains in an uneasy balance between mud-brick civilization and bloodthirsty barbarism. The people of Duisberg have a god: Zentrum, a supercomputer from the ancient past. Zentrum has decided to avoid another collapse by preventing civilization from rising from where it is. This is known as the Stasis.

Captain Daniel Leary and his friend, the spy Adele Mundy, have been in the front lines of Cinnabar's struggle against the totalitarian Alliance. Years of war have been hard on Daniel and harder still on Adele, whose life outside information-gathering is a tightrope between despair and deadly violence. Their masters in the RCN and the Republic's intelligence service have sent them to the fringes of human space to relax away from danger. But the barbarians of the outer reaches have their own plans, plans which will bring down both Cinnabar and the Alliance.

They were Roman soldiers - and they were still alive because there were no better killers in the galaxy. The Galactics need fighters who could win battles without the aid of technology. That's why, when Rome's legions suffered disaster at Carrhae, secretive alien traders were waiting to buy them on the Persian slave market. Now, virtually immortal, the Romans fight strange enemies on stranger worlds; and though they win every battle, the spoils of victory never include freedom.

Armed with lancers, breech-loading rifles, steamships, and galleys, General Belisarius, accompanied by his own ally from the future, ventures into the Malwa Empire, a sixth-century kingdom ruled by Link, a horrifying and evil entity from the future.

Captain Daniel Leary thinks that his marriage will allow him to slip into the quiet role of a naval officer in peacetime. His friend, the spy and cybrarian Adele Mundy, is content to be collating data in her library. But high officials of both superpowers are involved! Those who want Daniel and Adele to become involved in the Tarbell Stars claim that only they can prevent a war between the Republic of Cinnabar and its great rival, the Alliance of Free Stars.

Hammer's Slammer Don Slade is coming home to the planet Tethys, to his son and the woman he loves. But the space between is dark and cold. And the stars he must pass shine their light on planets which beckon to the weary traveler, planets which hold hidden dangers. And if Don Slade should ever reach Tethys... that is when the real fighting starts.

Captain Daniel Leary with his friend–and spy–Officer Adele Mundy are sent to a quiet sector to carry out an easy task: helping the local admiral put down a coup before it takes place. But then the jealous admiral gets rid of them by sending them off on a wild goose chase to a sector where commerce is king and business is carried out by extortion and gunfights. With anarchy and rebellion in the air, a rogue intelligence officer plots the war that will destroy civilization and enlists the help of a brute whom even torturers couldn't stomach.

After the collapse of the galactic Web, civilizations crumbled and chaos reigned on thousands of planets. Only on planet Bellevue was there a difference. There, a Fleet Battle Computer named Center had survived from the old civilization. When it found Raj Whitehall, the man who could execute its plan for reviving human civilization, he and Center started Bellevue back on the road leading to the stars; and when Bellevue reached that goal, Center sent copies of itself and Raj to the thousands of worlds still waiting for the light of civilization to dawn.

In the world of the Isles, the elemental forces of magic are rising to a thousand-year peak. A small band of companions has set forth across a world in the process of transformation in search of their destinies. Now their epic adventure continues.

Daniel Leary is Cinnabar's most successful space captain; His friend, Lady Adele Mundy, is its most efficient spy - but they've got their hands full. From palace to reeking jungle, from gunfights in grimy hangars, to the flagship's bridge during a sprawling space battle, Leary and Mundy are in the thick of it again. Watch the galaxy explode In the Stormy Red Sky.

When the Republic of Cinnabar doesn't have enough battleships to deal with all the crises in its war with the Alliance, it sends the next best thing: Commander Daniel Leary and his friend, the spy Adele Mundy. This time they're off to help the Bagarian cluster in its rebellion against the Alliance, but they'll quickly find that the worst threats to the rebels are the treacherous politicians leading them.

After thwarting the Federation's attempt to take over her ship, Captain Sarah Blythe vowed to make President Pleyal himself pay for her cargo losses. Their lone Fed prisoner told them enough of the President's plan: Confiscate all vessels to help equip the fleet he's gathering to end the Venus rebellion once and for all. But the citizens of the Free State of Venus have different ideas. Joining forces with the legendary Piet Ricimer and Stephen Gregg, Captain Blythe plans on making back more than her losses.

Steamboats that launch Greek fire; telegraph lines connecting the battlefront on the Indus to ancient Constantinople, Byzantine palace plots aided by wireless devices: General Belasarius and his battle-hardened troops must advance quickly through the history of technology to stave off a coming age of ultimate darkness. And now - the epic final battle that will either give birth to or destroy Aide, Belasarius' doughty crystalline advisor and humanity's loyal friend!