During the Vietnam war, GIs who managed to survive their tour of duty in one piece - more or less - were flown home in chartered airliners. They called those planes "Freedom Birds." This is the story of three young men - from wildly different backgrounds - who meet on such a plane and make a pact to spend three days together in San Francisco.
Their goal: to spend every cent of their mustering out money in a party of a lifetime. And they'll get more than they bargained for: because when they land, it is July 1967 - in a time that would come to be known as "The Summer Of Love." A place and time where each young man will have to confront the ghosts who followed them home from the jungles of Vietnam and contemplate a future none of them had imagined.
A gripping war story. For the first - and only - time in fiction, A Reckoning For Kings tells the story of the Vietnam Conflict from both sides - Americans, as well as North Vietnamese. In four short months - during the lightning quick, bloody campaign known as the Tet Offensive, two bitterly opposing armies will clash in an epoch-shattering encounter that will alter the course of the war and the shape of the world forever. It was a time when America won the battle, but lost the war.
The once-great Imperial Navy has been shattered in battle and lies burning in space, driven by a civil war that threatens to engulf humanity's future. For the revered Eternal Emperor is not the man his subjects thought him to be-and may not even be human at all. And it is Sten-Imperial bodyguard, spy, assassin, renegade-who now leads humanity's fight for survival. Taking command of the last rebel fleet, he sets out on a desperate quest to seek and destroy the dark source of his former master's power. Denounced as a traitor, hunted by forces loyal to the Emperor, Sten must risk everything to annihilate the Empire he vowed to protect.
Sten embarks on the ultimate treasure hunt: the search for the source of the Eternal Emperor's power. But his quest uncovers the dark secret of the emperor's past - and Sten finds himself questioning his loyalties - and whether the only way to save the human race is to destroy the Empire he vowed to protect.
Sten had fully expected to die in a blaze of glory, taking his Emperor's greatest foe with him. Instead he was a slave laborer in a P.O.W. camp deep in the heart of enemy territory. But sitting out the action had never been Sten's style. And now that the war was building to a climax, the Eternal Emperor needed him more than ever. Not even the toughest prison in the known universe could keep Sten from his mission .
The Eternal Emperor was dead, and the five members of the Privy Council ruled in his place. But they quickly discovered that their power would collapse around them if they didn't locate the Emperor's secret source of Anti-Matter Two, the economic keystone of the Empire. And so they sent a team of crack commandos to capture Sten, one of their late ruler's few surviving confidantes. But Sten, as usual, had his own agenda. For he knew something about the Eternal Emperor that would shake the Empire to its foundations. And to play his part, all Sten had to do was kill the five most powerful beings in the universe.
THE WARRIOR'S TALE: Captain Rali Emilie Antero came from an illustrious family of traders, wizards, and adventurers. But Rali cared little for magic, and even less for journeying. She was a soldier, captain of the elite Maranon Guard, staunch defenders of the majestic city of Orissa. But her family legacy was about to catch up with her. For the Guard's latest mission was sheer suicide: a sea-going odyssey in search of an evil master wizard-the last Archon of Lycanth-who had fled with a secret doomsday spell that could destroy all of civilization. It would be Rali's greatest challenge: a desperate pursuit, raging across the great Western Sea to the fire reefs that marked the end of the world-and beyond, to places unmarked even in legend. But only in the uncharted territories of her own soul-and the heritage of the Anteros-would Rali find the power to defeat the Archon and return to Orissa in triumph.
The Far Kingdoms...a place of bright sunlight surrounded by dark, deadly wilderness. A place where the princes and magicians were kind and wise beyond all imagination. A place where wine and song were always sweet, every purse was fat with gold, and every heart at ease. The Far Kingdoms...said to lie in the distant east, across the straits of the Narrow Sea, beyond the benighted Pepper Coast, in uncharted territory. The Far Kingdoms...a place no one could reach even if it were real - which surely it wasn\'t. Young, pampered Amalric Antero cared only for real places and possible dreams. The time had come to Find His Tradewind, to make the traditional journey seeking out new lands, new riches, new customers as his merchant father, and his father\'s father, had done before him. He meant only to do as all young traders did: travel to the known lands in the west and return home having proved himself able to deal well with his father\'s customers. Nothing more was expected. But then he met Janos Greycloak, a dashing soldier who dabbled in forbidden magic and who carried on him proof of riches and mysteries beyond imagination. And suddenly Amalric found himself setting out on the adventure of a lifetime, a daring and perilous quest through unknown lands peopled by nightmares, to seek the ultimate in fables...The Far Kingdoms!
The Eternal Emperor's fleets were taking a beating. Had even Sten met his match? Sten's luck seems to have deserted him. He had barely scraped through Imperial flight school when he was assigned a tacdivision in the Fringe Worlds. The enemy couldn't have picked a better time or place to launch their long-planned attack against the Empire. But Sten won't give up without a fight.
Sten had fought his way up from slave labor on a factory world to commander of the Eternal Emperor's bodyguard, the Imperial Gurkhas. But during his first three months on Prime World, the most dangerous weapons Sten had encountered were the well-phrased lies of Court politicians. It seemed no place for an honest fighting man. But when a bomb destroys a local bar, Sten discovers the danger and corruption behind Court intrigue. Only quick work by Sten, Alex Kilgour, and a tough female detective can keep the Empire together and the Emperor alive.
Raised on the factory planet of Vulcan, Sten soon learns about the survival of the toughest. Now he wants more than survival. Sten's destiny is in his own hands.
Vulcan is a factory planet, centuries old, Company run, ugly as sin, and unfeeling as death. Vulcan breeds just two types of native - complacent or tough. Sten is tough.
