Lunar Free State

Someday…is now! It's been ten years since the Lunar Free State established itself as an independent nation on Earth's Moon. Since then, other Earth nations have pushed into space, competing with the LFS for the untapped resources of the Solar System, but-thanks to the advantages provided by its gravity-driven spacecraft-the LFS has continued to grow and prosper, and relations with the Earth nations remain…strained, at best. When the research ship LFS Stephen Hawking encounters an alien probe near Saturn, though, the craft leads Hawking on a merry chase before vanishing into…well, for want of a better term, hyperspace. Now the Lunar Free State must face two undeniable facts: the humans of Earth are not the only intelligent life in the universe and travel to other star systems is possible. The LFS has to figure out how to get to hyperspace, too, and the time they have to do so is limited. Someone else out there now knows humanity exists, and the countdown clock is ticking until whoever sent the alien craft decides to come calling.

The Otuka are hunting a most dangerous game! The alien race Akara have a secret; they've discovered the location of a planet that is home to a primitive human civilization, another ancient "seeding" of the legendary Progenitors. But, this planet lies in the territory of the Otuka, spacefaring alien predators who consider human flesh to be a delicacy and the planet to be their private hunting preserve. Unwilling to confront the Otuka, the Akara have passed the problem on to their human allies, the Lunar Free State. Now, the LFS needs to decide what to do about it. Are the "Moonies" willing to take responsibility for an entire planet's population? One thing seems certain: a favorite food of the Otuka is about to get much more expensive, as the LFS Marines stand ready to teach the Otuka hunters a hard lesson in the perils of hunting the humans in this part of the galaxy. But, no one knows the technology state of the Okuta. Will the Marines be the hunters or find themselves being hunted in turn?

"War" is a dirty word on Ragnarok. For the past hundred years, the planet's human inhabitants have been trying to rebuild their civilization after a self-inflicted nuclear holocaust. The event-which they call the "Great Destruction"-was so traumatic they've destroyed all the records and refuse to talk about it, other than to swear it will never ever happen again. At least, that's what they tell the Lunar Free State's contact team. Unfortunately, not all the inhabitants agree on what that peaceful society should look like, and their disagreement has reached the level of an armed conflict between two groups, one of which is supported by a covert ops team from the Confederated Nations of Earth. The locals may not be willing to call it a war… but the LFS ends up in the middle of it, just the same. When a Confed Navy task force arrives to take over the planet, the LFS is forced to respond, taking the war that was never supposed to happen to the interstellar level.

The Confederated Nations of Earth and the Lunar Free State have fought each other for decades in the Sol system and out among the stars. They've never had an open declaration of war, but there have been battles in space at Odin, Sacagawea, and Rothstein's star. Lunar Marines have clashed with Confed Peacekeepers on Ragnarok and Xanadu. When the British battlecruiser Prince of Wales suddenly shows up at Ragnarok, the LFS and CNE realize there's a new player in the game-not just the Brits, but a consortium of seven previously unaligned Earth nations who are making their presence felt at Xanadu as well. The two major powers adopt a wait-and-see policy toward the newcomers, but a few CNE operatives don't get the word. Will the consortium upset the balance of power between the Moonies and Confeds, or will they simply get caught in the grinder between the two? Time will tell, but for the moment, it's a three player game.

What do you do when one of your deep space survey ships discovers a fertile, Earth-like planet that isn't currently occupied by humans or any other intelligent species? If you're the Lunar Free State, you make plans to put a colony there-and try to keep it secret so the Confederated Nations of Earth don't do the same. Unfortunately, though, the secret gets out, and the CNE scrambles to launch their own colony project, starting a race by both nations to make their claim to the planet. But when exobiologist Kim Jin Li discovers that the planet does, in fact, have native intelligent life-a race of feline predators that communicate telepathically-the discovery sets up a confrontation between LFS and CNE warships in orbit, and the LFS Marines and CNE Peacekeepers on the ground. Is this the beginning of the long-expected final war between the Lunar Free State and the Confederated Nations of Earth?