Showing results by author "S. H. Jucha" in All Categories

An explorer tug captain, Alex Racine detects a damaged alien craft drifting into the system. Recognizing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make first contact, Alex pulls off a daring maneuver to latch on to the derelict. Alex discovers the ship was attacked by an unknown craft, the first of its kind ever encountered. The mysterious silver ship's attack was both instant and deadly.

Sol's warships paid the ultimate price for threatening the Haraken and New Terran worlds. Now, Haraken president Alex Racine and his Méridien partner, Renée de Guirnon, are engaged in a desperate gamble to stop a war between their worlds and United Earth's (UE) massive forces before it starts. What's Alex's grand plan? He hasn't a clue, but his people believe in him and hope he will find a way to protect them.

After Sol’s construction of Tridents - Omnian-designed warships - Earthers possess the ability to transit quickly among the stars. The desire to know what happened to Earth’s colony ship, the Honora Belle, sent to the stars a millennium ago is resurrected. An Omnian Trident and the vessel Rêveur accompany three Sol Enclave Tridents in search of the Belle’s colonists. Swiftly, the Omnians and the Earthers become enmeshed in a centuries-old conflict enveloping a vast area of space inhabited by alliance races. The enemy is the Colony: a giant insectoid species.

Artifice, the great enemy, has been defeated. The sister SADEs, Omnian sentient digital entities, are free from their boxes. Most humans are unaware that the sisters have duplicated themselves many more times than suspected. They now constitute a sizable, powerful group, calling themselves the Sisterhood. The elimination of Artifice’s rule should be a time of relief and recovery for Alex Racine’s Omnian fleet and for the Toralians, whose home world was Artifice’s lair. Instead, it’s a chaotic period.

SADEs Hector and Trixie discover the world where the colonists of the Terminus, the fifth colony ship, settled. Unfortunately, their Trident squadrons arrive at the worst possible time and catastrophe strikes. The powerful fleets of three races are fighting for possession of a beatific world, Cercia. The Trident squadrons are occupied by SADEs skilled in exploration, astronomy, and data research. They’re unprepared for the onslaught of deadly probes, fighters, and warships directed against them.

The Sisterhood’s dangerous militarist sect finds a foothold in a broad swath of space inhabited by the descendants of Earth’s fourth colony ship, Destiny. They’re welcomed by the mining corporations, whose leaders see unbridled opportunity in the sisters’ advanced tech. Five powerful corporations own six mining planets. One company, CenGas, mines Delhart, an ice-covered body, and struggles against the planet’s natural challenges to deliver timely orders to the other companies.

Dangerous forces are at work across galactic space that the Omnians are attempting to stabilize, but their resources are severely strained. The SADEs, self-aware digital entities, express to Alex Racine and Renée de Guirnon their desire to know the method of their creation. Alex and Renée, the Omnian co-leaders, want to obtain the knowledge for the SADEs, who are humans’ closest allies. Alex, Renée, and Julien, a friend and a SADE, board the giant city-ship, Freedom, which sails for Méridien, the home world of the far-reaching human colonies of the Confederation.

The descendants of a fourth Earth colony ship, Destiny, successfully establish a foothold in unoccupied space. Naiad, the home world, is a frozen ball, but the colonists persevere and expand through wormholes to remote systems. Navigating the time-space anomalies requires Axis-ships. The expensive vessels are constructed by corporations, and remote worlds are claimed by the companies for their valuable ores and gases.

Omnians, Earthers, and alliance members are fighting the Colony, the horde of sentient insectoids that threaten alliance space. The Colony has had centuries to expand through the network of domes built by the Messinants, an ancient race. The domes’ Q-gates allow the insectoids to invade planets through their inventive use of rings, which extends the power of the domes. It’s Omnian superior technology that gives a temporary advantage to the peaceful alliance members who lead the fight to retake their planets.

The time is opportune for Alex Racine. Omnian efforts and sacrifices culminate in a singular opportunity. With good fortune, Alex will bring together the diverse races the Omnians have encountered. Alex selects the human colonies of New Terra, Haraken, Omnia, and Méridien to solicit their attendance. Unknowingly, he sails toward a deadly encounter.

The conclave evicts the mercenary forces surrounding Cercia. It gives Mila Pappas the opportunity to lead the first wave on an offensive against these races in their territories. However, Mila’s strategy quickly evolves from one of offense to persuasion. Sadie and the suits are at the forefront of the new campaign. When the carriers practice their unbalanced trade exchanges with the local populations, Sadie shifts the team aboard the ships. Slowly, information is collected from the carriers’ control centers. A third language, Metter, is added to those of the Zafts and the Ondas.

Attacks against Cercia appear never-ending, and each mercenary fleet escalates the planet’s danger. The conclave desperately feeds resources to the Malia system to aid its defense. In addition, Minimalist, Luther, and Morgoth double the number of EMP platforms above and below Cercia. With controllers embedded in the EMP platforms, Commander Nira Racine of Outpost Fourteen: Colony Five and the fleet’s SADEs possess the capability to target attacking ships and missiles. Cremsylon speaks to Orion, the SADE handling Metter drone production.

Trouble infiltrated the Harakens' capital city of Espero, in the form of New Terra criminal gangs who grew wealthy and powerful on the moons of Ganymede, hiding behind the cover of an ill-conceived mining charter. The gangs brought stims and addictive hallucinogenic drugs to Espero, distributing them to the young on the planet.

Nine years of tranquility came to an abrupt end when a Méridien starship entered the Hellébore system, sounding a dire warning for Alex Racine, the Haraken president. Unwanted visitors had arrived again. But this time, they're not alien; they're human. Claiming to have followed the course of a colony ship launched a millennium ago when Earth wrestled with resource wars and climate change, the mission commander, Antonio García, requests a meeting with the planet's leaders.

The saga of the Rêveur continues in this second novel in The Silver Ships series. The surviving Méridiens have returned to Confederation space, aided by their recently discovered cousins, the New Terrans. They expect a celebration after their 71-year absence. Instead, they're shocked to find the silver ships have destroyed half the Confederation.

Captain Jessie Cinders faces a hazardous choice. The murderer of the governor’s nephew stands before him. But, the frightened teenager, Aurelia Garmenti, doesn’t resemble the commandant’s description of the vicious, hardened killer his security forces seek. To complicate matters, Jessie’s mind has felt Aurelia’s mental powers. The girl is an empath, who escaped the domes below and rode the El car to reach the JOS, Pyre’s orbital station. This shouldn’t be possible. The century-old agreement between topsiders and downsiders forbids the domes to knowingly admit empaths.

Pyre’s humans suffer multiple cultural shocks. They discovered the Messinants dome, an ancient construction that houses a quantum-coupled gate. More shocking, they find that sentient alien races utilize a network of these domes to journey between their far distant worlds in pursuit of alliance matters. If humans wish to join this elite collection of sentients, they must contribute significantly in trade, tech, or something of equal value. Unfortunately, Pyreans are a nascent society, and they possess none of the economic attributes to recommend them to the alliance.

The sisters’ leader, Miriamal, and three mining chairpersons investigate an unexplored wormhole for possible economic expansion. Aboard the Dominance, they exit the wormhole and are stunned to find the nearby system inhabited. More troubling, technologically advanced warships hold station above the system’s exoplanet. SADEs witness the hasty return of the Dominance and the cessation of messages between Miriamal and Lisa Dyehouse. The Truth Matters partners race against time to save Samuel, and they’re not above leveraging an unreliable criminal hacker.

The Veklocks require the Pyreans to explore the extent of the Colony's usurpation of domes. The Colony is composed of two insectoid species, the grays and the reds. They're aggressive three- and five-meter long insectoids with venomous pincers that live for the expansion of their race. The Pyreans already lost one member of their team on their first exploration and are hesitant to meet the Colony again, unless they're better prepared. 

Human descendants of the Earth colony ship Destiny face an incursion into their area of space by a powerful race. The Imperium Empire, which is ruled by the Krackus, is one wormhole away from the humans, and a rim mining planet, Kilmer, would be the alien race’s first contact. Fear rules the company leader. The Krackus represent danger. They sail powerful battleships. Moreover, the Naiad Council reels from the news that an alien race abuts their space. For centuries, humans in the Axis Crossing region thought they were alone.