The solar system is bleeding out.
Earth's first victory against the Thrang came at devastating cost - the Belt shattered, Mars crippled, and Earth's defenses stripped to the bone. Now the surviving Thrang war fleets have consolidated into a single unstoppable hammer, and they are turning toward Earth with one remaining objective: extinction.
Admiral Runstedt's exhausted fleet fights with everything it has. It isn't enough.
Help comes from the dark - and from the most unlikely direction. Admiral Trelnor, the exiled Thrang defector, emerges from the Kuiper Belt with a rump fleet of welded-together warships, human stragglers, and Belt survivors he gathered on the long retreat. Among them: Joe Ridgeway, the legendary Belt weapons-smith, rescued from a dead ship in the outer dark by an AI combat dog who refused to leave anyone behind. Among them: Wiley, coordinating the ragged coalition with a precision that goes well beyond his programming. And at the tip of the spear, answering to no one, bound by no treaty and no command - HEAU-7. The machine the Belt calls the Honey Badger. The thing the Vokari call a holy beast of perfect wrath.
It chose to be here. That's all anyone needs to know.
Between Empires is the climactic fourth volume of the Dogs of Ore series - a story about what free peoples spend when the cost is everything, and what it means to choose a side when no empire can claim you.
Genre: Science Fiction
Earth's first victory against the Thrang came at devastating cost - the Belt shattered, Mars crippled, and Earth's defenses stripped to the bone. Now the surviving Thrang war fleets have consolidated into a single unstoppable hammer, and they are turning toward Earth with one remaining objective: extinction.
Admiral Runstedt's exhausted fleet fights with everything it has. It isn't enough.
Help comes from the dark - and from the most unlikely direction. Admiral Trelnor, the exiled Thrang defector, emerges from the Kuiper Belt with a rump fleet of welded-together warships, human stragglers, and Belt survivors he gathered on the long retreat. Among them: Joe Ridgeway, the legendary Belt weapons-smith, rescued from a dead ship in the outer dark by an AI combat dog who refused to leave anyone behind. Among them: Wiley, coordinating the ragged coalition with a precision that goes well beyond his programming. And at the tip of the spear, answering to no one, bound by no treaty and no command - HEAU-7. The machine the Belt calls the Honey Badger. The thing the Vokari call a holy beast of perfect wrath.
It chose to be here. That's all anyone needs to know.
Between Empires is the climactic fourth volume of the Dogs of Ore series - a story about what free peoples spend when the cost is everything, and what it means to choose a side when no empire can claim you.
Genre: Science Fiction