Green Zone War

Tom Thrush thinks basic officer training is tough - until he joins the frigate Kestrel and finds out what tough really means. The crew resents him. The first officer is actively hostile. As the ship hunts pirates in deep space, Tom struggles to fit in and wonders if things can get any worse. They can. A devastating attack leaves the ship crippled with half the crew dead or dying. The senior officers are wiped out, leaving a terrified sublieutenant in the last place he wants to be. In command.

A desperate captain. A crippled ship. An impossible choice. The frigate Kestrel has been shot to pieces. She's out of fuel, stranded deep behind enemy lines. It looks hopeless. But Tom Thrush, junior lieutenant and acting captain, has sworn he'll get his people home. Escape means fuel, and that means taking it from the enemy. A daring raid gives the Kestrel a fighting chance - but a rescued prisoner has some disturbing news. A ragtag local militia has put together a fleet. The fleet is gathering - and it's about to blunder into a trap. There's only one way the militia fleet will survive. The battered, exhausted crew of the Kestrel must turn their backs on safety and plunge once more into battle. They're hurt. They're scared. But they have their duty. The Kestrel is a ship of war, and she will not die easy.

Camp One has one brutal rule: If you attempt to escape, you die - and three random prisoners die with you. Tom Thrush has resigned himself to dying by degrees, doing forced labor while he slowly starves. When he learns that a distant mesa holds a slim chance at freedom, he does nothing. The price of escape is too high. Then fever sweeps through the camp. Surrounded by armed guards and an unforgiving jungle, paralyzed by the threat of reprisals, Tom watches as the men he's sworn to protect die one by one. If anyone is to survive, Tom will have to do the unthinkable. Escape.

The Dawn Alliance and the United Worlds are locked in a bitter war over the rich worlds of the Green Zone. The colony of New Panama is caught between the giants, and Tom Thrush has the impossible job of leading her rag-tag navy in a desperate struggle for survival. His fleet is a mix of armed freighters and salvaged warships. The crews are former pirates with no military training. His enemy has the most powerful navy the galaxy has ever seen. With no hope of victory, he fights just to postpone annihilation. But these are the famed rebels of the Free Planets, tough and resourceful and hard as rats to kill. They might not count for much in a straight fight, but they know a thing or two about tackling impossible odds. If Tom can earn their respect, they might just teach him something about survival - or even victory.

When a training mission goes wrong, Sublieutenant Tom Thrush finds his brand-new career hanging by a thread. Desperate to redeem himself, he makes a rash wager – he'll lead a squad in a mock attack, boarding and capturing the visiting gunboat Diana in record time. He hasn't got a chance, and to make matters worse, there's a visiting admiral watching the attack from her yacht.Tom, desperate, sneaks aboard the Diana through a gun port – and stumbles into the middle of something much worse than a training exercise. There's a traitor aboard the Diana, planning to blow the admiral's yacht out of the sky.Suddenly Tom is fighting for something much bigger than a foolish bet. If he loses, the admiral dies – and so does Tom.