Siobhan Dunmoore

Siobhan Dunmoore was not having a good war. She's had more ships shot out from under her by the invading Shrehari Empire than any other officer in the Fleet. Some called her overly aggressive. Others simply called her reckless. What the enemy called her was something else altogether. That she gave the Shrehari a good drubbing along the way didn't matter in the least, because not all her enemies wore an Imperial uniform. A reputation for bad luck was pretty much the only reputation she had left. Sailing yet another ruined starship home after a near defeat, she wanted nothing more than a long, long rest, because this time, she had escaped by the thinnest of bluffs. Unfortunately, the Admiralty had other ideas. The frigate Stingray was known as the unluckiest ship in the Fleet and her Captain had just been removed in disgrace for cowardice. Some in the Admiralty would dearly love to retire the old warhorse. After all, she was the last of her type left in service, and perhaps it was time to break up the jinx permanently, along with the crew. But in the midst of an interstellar war, every ship that could fight was needed. In short order, Dunmoore went from staring down the Empire's finest on the bridge of a wrecked battleship to taking on a demoralized, semi-mutinous crew, scheming Admirals and a deadly mystery. The Stingray's bad luck wasn't just superstition gone rampant. Between a crew that won't talk, political enemies who want her gone, and her personal demons, she's got her hands full. Taking the frigate into battle under those conditions would seem foolish to anyone else, but Dunmoore was never one to shrink from a good fight. Failure was not an option, and defeat not an acceptable alternative, for there was no honor in death, only in victory. She would redeem herself and her ship or be damned for all eternity.

Duty, honor, loyalty. What meaning did those words still hold in the midst of a stalemated interstellar war where the difference between the enemy and one's own leadership was sometimes paper thin? Unfairly relegated to punishment duty far from the battle lines and still pursued by her past, Siobhan Dunmoore was ordered to sail her ship deep into pirate-infested space on a quest to restore the Navy's reputation after she failed to stop an attack that destroyed a civilian freighter. There, she hoped to find clues that might absolve Stingray's crew from blame but instead, she was sucked into a vortex of intrigue and treachery that threatened not only all of their lives, but the future of the embattled Commonwealth. In the midst of competing schemes for supremacy, fending off marauders, mercenaries and spies, Dunmoore had to find a way to get her people home safe and beyond the reach of powerful cabals that had burrowed their way deep into the heart of the Admiralty. If her ship was to survive, she had to find the path of duty, no matter the personal cost, even if the price she had to pay was her own existence.

One last mission. One mysterious passenger. One baffling destination. After centuries of travel, an ancient log buoy finally reaches human-controlled space. In the midst of a stalemated interstellar war, the Admiralty has little interest in wasting resources on what would likely be a fruitless search for the truth, but someone was able to convince them they could afford to send an old, obsolete frigate soon destined for the scrapyard, on this quest. Pulled from her patrol route, Siobhan Dunmoore is ordered to take an envoy aboard Stingray and sail into a poorly charted and virtually unexplored region of the galaxy hidden behind interstellar dust clouds. Along the way, she'll come to the attention of an old enemy, now also relegated to the fringes of the war, turning a voyage of discovery into a race against time and against each other. Though her troubles quickly multiply, Dunmoore has faced worse odds. She's determined to bring Stingray home with its honor intact, and few are brave enough to bet against her, not even their old Shrehari foes.

Captain Siobhan Dunmoore wanted to believe the long war against the invading Shrehari Empire had finally banished the ghosts of her past. But when her ship Iolanthe, a heavily armed man-of-war masked as a bulk freighter, finds itself in need of replenishment after a long patrol spent stalking human and alien foes, she is confronted with events eerily reminiscent of a past she thought buried. When evidence of treason and marauders bold enough to strike a Navy outpost leave her no choice, Dunmoore knows she must finish the cleanup job Fleet Headquarters ordered her to abandon years ago. Fortunately, Iolanthe and her crew are the perfect instruments with which to dispense much-needed retribution, despite General Orders and the Fleet's bureaucracy doing their best to tie a captain's hands. With her ship taking on the guise of a privateer, she sets out on a merciless hunt to eliminate a band of soulless soldiers of fortune and teach the ghosts of her past a lesson they will never forget.

What is the value of one life in an interstellar war that has already claimed millions? And if that single life doesn't matter, are any others worth saving? A distress signal draws Siobhan Dunmoore's Q-ship Iolanthe, a battlecruiser disguised as a bulk freighter, away from her devastatingly successful hunt through Shrehari occupied space and plunges Dunmoore into a dark, merciless universe of competing government organizations, undercover warfare, and organized crime on a galactic scale. Along the way, she crosses paths with an old foe and an uncertain ally as she and her crew race against time and determined opposition to rescue innocent civilians condemned merely because they were in the wrong place at the wrong moment. Powerful forces within the Commonwealth would call a handful of lives collateral damage in humanity's existential struggle against the Shrehari Empire. But Dunmoore won't accept that they aren't worth saving even if it puts her at cross-purposes with her new commanding officer and the Commonwealth's fearsome security bureau. After all, her oath to serve and defend has no limitations and no expiry date.

Captain Siobhan Dunmoore no longer enjoys the freedom to fight the Shrehari Empire on her own terms aboard the Q-ship Iolanthe. Special Operations Command has assigned her to Task Force Luckner, whose mission is replicating Iolanthe's success on a larger scale. Unfortunately, neither her new superior, Rear Admiral Kell Petras, nor any other captain in the task force understands successful commerce raiding requires a different mindset. Instead of sheepdogs, they must become wolves in sheep's clothing, and Dunmoore is just the right officer to teach them. Yet Petras and his flag captain are not interested.But when an unauthorized raid on a Shrehari forward operations base produces surprising results, Dunmoore triggers a cascade of events which could forever change the course of the war. As the old saying goes, fortune favors the bold. Will Dunmoore prove once again that she and Iolanthe's crew are the most daring of them all?

Life hasn't been easy for Siobhan Dunmoore and many of her fellow veterans since the Shrehari War ended. The Fleet's quick return to a mundane peacetime footing left them unmoored and incapable of fully readapting after years engulfed in an existential struggle. Meanwhile, the memories of all those hard-won lessons, paid for with humanity's dearest blood, are fading as careerists, bureaucrats, and politicians in uniform replace the leaders who brought about the war's end. Yet an increasing number of senior officers understand true peace is illusory. Without an external threat to unify them as a species, humans have resumed their favorite activity - fighting each other in dark and dirty wars for power, profit, or glory. And this despite the risk of eroding the Commonwealth's delicate social and political balance and triggering violent unrest. Ironically, those best suited for stopping nasty, albeit minor conflicts before they escalate, are the very veterans on which the Fleet turned its back. Will Siobhan Dunmoore and her comrades find a new role in halting what could become fatal to human unity, or will they fade away, unwanted, while the Commonwealth begins a long slide into civil discord?

The Shrehari War ended over twenty years ago, but a new threat is looming over the Commonwealth, this time from within. Centralists, whose dream is to concentrate power on Earth by stripping sovereign star systems of their autonomy, finally have one of their own as Secretary General, the highest office in human space. And she wants to do it as fast as possible. But for that, she needs the Commonwealth Armed Forces, and they're not playing her game. On the contrary. The Armed Forces also have an agenda, one that's been two decades in the making, and it's about to be unveiled with Admiral Siobhan Dunmoore playing the principal role. And as she steps on the stage, Dunmoore becomes the target of everyone who wants to stop the Fleet from preventing a Centralist victory. Will she survive to reach the final shore?