Green Zone War

Tom Thrush thinks basic officer training is tough until he joins the frigate Kestrel and finds out what tough really means. The crew resents him. The first officer is actively hostile. As the ship hunts pirates in deep space, Tom struggles to fit in and wonders if things can get any worse. They can. A devastating attack leaves the ship crippled with half the crew dead or dying. The senior officers are wiped out, leaving a terrified sublieutenant in the last place he wants to be.

The frigate Kestrel has been shot to pieces. She’s out of fuel, stranded deep behind enemy lines. It looks hopeless. But Tom Thrush, junior lieutenant and acting captain, has sworn he’ll get his people home. Escape means fuel, and that means taking it from the enemy. A daring raid gives the Kestrel a fighting chance - but a rescued prisoner has some disturbing news. A ragtag local militia has put together a fleet. The fleet is gathering - and it’s about to blunder into a trap.

Camp One has one brutal rule: If you attempt to escape, you die - and three random prisoners die with you. Tom Thrush has resigned himself to dying by degrees, doing forced labor while he slowly starves. When he learns that a distant mesa holds a slim chance at freedom, he does nothing. The price of escape is too high. Then fever sweeps through the camp. Surrounded by armed guards and an unforgiving jungle, paralyzed by the threat of reprisals, Tom watches as the men he’s sworn to protect die one by one. If anyone is to survive, Tom will have to do the unthinkable. Escape.

The Dawn Alliance and the United Worlds are locked in a bitter war over the rich worlds of the Green Zone. The colony of New Panama is caught between the giants, and Tom Thrush has the impossible job of leading her rag-tag navy in a desperate struggle for survival. His fleet is a mix of armed freighters and salvaged warships. The crews are former pirates with no military training. His enemy has the most powerful navy the galaxy has ever seen. With no hope of victory, he fights just to postpone annihilation.

The Dawn Alliance holds Novograd in a steel fist, protected by a battle fleet and an armored space station. The factories of Novograd are the key to the war. Whoever controls the planet controls the Green Zone - and that means the station must be destroyed. The station will be a tough nut to crack, but Tom Thrush has a plan. The key to cracking a nut is to bring a big enough hammer. There’s a crippled Dawn Alliance battleship limping home from the Battle of New Panama. His plan is simple.

Captain Tom Thrush is patrolling the Octagon Rift when his ship is attacked by a black destroyer that seems to predict his every move. Outgunned and outmaneuvered, he flees in a crippled ship to the only sanctuary he can reach—a den of thieves and spies called Lotus Station. His ship will be broken up for scrap. Half the crew are casualties. The rest are scattering, leaving Tom stuck on Lotus. As the black destroyer hunts down local freighters, Tom becomes obsessed with tracking it down and taking revenge.