When evidence emerges hinting that a long lost starship wasn’t destroyed after all, Ishir Jha has to investigate. His father sent the last desperate message from the ship before it was lost in a battle with pirates. Ish must learn the truth, even if he has to do it alone. But his husband Finn Moran isn’t going to let him run off alone and get killed in the outer system, where the influence of the Li pirate empire is spreading again. This time under the command of the daughter of the warlord who once terrorized the colonies and the ships that plied their trade there. But Li Xhing doesn’t want to terrorize. She wants to rule.

When Finn and Ishir end up as prisoners at Li’s stronghold, The Red Palace, Finn appears ready to accept a recruitment offer to join their captor’s ranks, since the other alternative is a life of slavery. Ishir can only wonder if his husband is losing his mind. But thanks to Finn, plans are being laid elsewhere, to breach the Red Palace’s impenetrable defensive barrier. One that only a few people can navigate, all of them ready to die before giving up the secret. The plans that will change the destiny of the whole outer system and set Finn and Ishir onto a whole new path.

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Months after the liberation of the Red Palace, freed prisoner Max Murphy is still there, hoping for the return of his stolen ship and trying to forget the day he lost everything. Meanwhile, ex-Li pilot Jiang Tai is keeping his head down and wishing he could forget the secrets he carries. Or just forget anything at all. When the station is blockaded Max and Tai are sent off on a desperate mission to end the siege.

Spending weeks on an awkwardly small ship with a weird, sleep-obsessed, former pirate of the most fanatical sort is not Max’s idea of a good time—even if Tai is kind of cute. Tai never reckoned on a long trip with a hot mess like Max, who doesn’t even maintain a regular bed time. But the time they spend together helps both of them start to put their bad memories in the past. In the end they’ll lay the ghosts of their memories by doing something worth remembering together. 

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Bad choices by overconfident maverick, Dani Novak, left a fellow marine dead and Dani cooling her heels in jail for five years. Now she’s out, with few prospects and fewer friends. Dani’s ex-commanding officer, Petra Hawkins, leader of the military contractor the Hawkins Free Company, offers Dani a job on her ship, the Persephone, after a chance meeting on the Red Palace space station. Petra still believes Dani has the potential to regain some of what she lost, still believes she let Dani down before, and now believes she has a duty to help her.

As the lowest ranking crewperson on the Persephone, with her history of a court-martial and jail, Dani faces distrust and suspicion from the company’s squad of marines and the ship’s officers. But after seeing the squad in action, Dani knows she wants to become a marine again, and Petra agrees to train her. What looks like an easy escort mission gives Dani and Petra lot of time to work together on Dani’s fitness, and to wrestle with feelings they’ve repressed for a long time.

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