Showing results by author "David Drake" in All Categories

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.

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.

In a distant galaxy where immense danger threatens, desperate pirates travel to the outer limits of space, doing trade with the star colonies and encountering rivals, aliens, and strange human hybrids.

Heed the Slammers Battle Cry! A warrior's truth: "In the long run, everybody's dead. So screw the long run!" Patriotic hoo-ha may be well and good for recruitment parades, but David Drake's battle-hardened mercenaries know it takes tanks, guns, and grit to win when the real fighting flares. Yet peace brings its own problems to old soldiers - for killing potential enemies in battle is self-limiting, but once the killing starts in peacetime, there may be no end to the madness.

Nils Hansen, Commissioner of Security Forces, must venture into the forbidding environs of Northworld, where previous explorations have mysteriously vanished.

In Northworld, a world of eight warring planes where weaponry is supreme, gods and men battle for control of the Matrix, a high-tech bridge through space and time, and participant Nils Hansen faces a difficult challenge.

The human race had settled more than a hundred worlds before it met the Emerging Planets Fairness Court - six alien species who sit in judgment on all galactic newcomers. Soon the human fleets - even the troubleshooting Harriers - find themselves under the eyes of stern overseers known as the Mromrosii.

Planted by interstellar probes on hundreds of human-occupied worlds, the downloaded personalities of Raj Whitehall and the ancient battle computer known as Center work together for planetary unity. Their goal is to prepare those worlds for membership in the Second Federation of Man. But on one planet they do the opposite: on Visager they work to prevent unity.

The Consensus ruled twelve hundred worlds - but not Northworld. Three fleets had been dispatched to probe the enigma of Northworld. None returned. Now, Commissioner Nils Hansen must face the challenge of this distant planet - a gateway to nine alternate worlds. There, he will confront a world at war, a world of androids, a world of sentient machines - all unique, all lethal. But deadliest of all are the men who would be gods.

The Venus Asteroid Expedition is en route to the "Mirror," an impenetrable membrane to another universe that holds all the riches of the Federation, but the only point of entry is the point through which Landolph and his men traveled long ago - with most of the men never returning.

The powers of magic in the Isles have flooded to a thousand-year peak, and even local magicians can perform powerful spells normally beyond their control. Fantastic forces from all angles threaten, trying to keep Garric and his companions apart to thwart the reunification of the Isles. Now the world itself has suffered a magical upheaval. The ocean has receded and the Isles have become the higher ground of a newly formed continent.

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 five years, little green men are going to invade Earth - and the only man who knows is Professor Emil Vlasov. Is Vlasov crazy? Or is something actually watching the Earth... waiting...

Garric - or Reise - was born the son of an innkeeper in Barca's Hamlet on the Isle of Haft, but through valor and determination became first a prince and then the Regent and successor to the feeble Valence III, King of the Isles

The Isles have been more or less unified under Garric’s rule, but the Change that created the continent has removed the old Gods of the Isles from reality and released other Gods from other planes of existence. Now the servants of the forbidden Gods of Palomir call forth The Worm, an ancient thing that threatens to devour all life in the newly formed kingdom and make way for the reign of dark Gods, newly awakened to ambitions of worship and dominion. Some are bad...and some are worse.

The Fortress of Glass is the first in the Crown of the Isles trilogy, which will conclude the epic Lord of the Isles series. A true trilogy, the action extends over the whole three-book arc. The Fortress of Glass begins the story of how the new kingdom of the Isles is finally brought into being by the group of heroes and heroines who have been central to all the books in the series.

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.

Governor Saxa, of the great city of Carce, a fantasy analog of ancient Rome, is rusticating at his villa. When Saxa's son Varus accompanies Coryluson a visit to the household of his father, Crispus, a retired military commander, Saxa graciously joins the party with his young wife Hedia, daughter Alphena, and a large entourage of his servants, making it a major social triumph for Crispus.

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. 

The corrupt Earth government is sending an army to Greenwood to remove the pioneers who discovered and settled the planet: the potential profits are too great to leave the world to scraggly ne'er-do-wells! Though the rugged individualists of Greenwood may be fractious and disinclined to agree on most things, the greedy politicians of Earth will learn a harsh lesson if they think the settlers won't join together to save their livelihoods and homes!