With its ally Erewhon growing restive, the Star Kingdom's Queen Elizabeth sends a mission to Erewhon, but upon arriving at their destination, they find a conspiracy led by the Solarian League's military delegation.

The vast Union of Arcana has expanded its wealth and power by laying claim to one uninhabited planet after another through the portals linking parallel universes, until they discover a new portal that leads to another human society, Sharona.

Two civilizations in different universes blunder closer to war. One is a pre-industrial society whose weapon of choice is magic. The other is a Victorian-style culture whose technology is based on steam and psionics.

In the period of peace following the Human-Orion War, a ship from a half-forgotten history emerges from a warp point notorious for devouring ships and opens fire on the Orions, in Crusade, while five thousand years after Sun Tzu writes The Art of War, his advice is followed during the Fourth Interstellar War between the terrible Bugs and the humans, who are aided by their catlike Orion allies, in In Death Ground.

"The Solarian League lies in defeat, crushed by the Grand Alliance of Manticore, Haven, and Grayson. Obedient to the Alliance's surrender demands, the League is writing a new Constitution, to prevent the reemergence of out-of-control bureaucrats, like the 'Mandarins' who led it to disaster. Frontier Security has been disbanded, the Outworlds' have regained control of their own economic destinies, and multiple star systems will soon secede from the...

"For more than fifty years, the Terran Republic and the Terran League have been killing one another. The death toll has climbed ever higher, year after year, with no end in sight. But the members of the Five Hundred, the social elite of the Republic's Heart Worlds, don't care. Their star systems are light-years from any threat of attack. Their children are sheltered from the "mandatory service" that falls so heavily on the Fringe Worlds' backs. Their...

"Growing up, Travis Uriah Long yearned for order and discipline in his life...two things his neglectful mother couldn't or wouldn't provide. So when Travis enlists in the Royal Manticoran Navy, he thought he'd finally found the structure he'd always wanted so desperately. But life in the RMN isn't exactly as expected. Boot camp is rough; his first ship assignment lax and disorderly; and with the Star Kingdom of Manticore still recovering from a devastating...