Siobhan Dunmoore Series

Duty, honour, 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.

Siobhan Dunmoore was losing the war one ship at a time. The Shrehari Empire had burned more hulls out from under her than any other officer in the Fleet. Some said she was too aggressive. Others said too reckless. The enemy called her something else—something they spat with fear. None of it mattered. Not all her enemies wore Imperial uniforms. And the only reputation she had left was for bad luck. She was dragging another wreck home, crew half‑dead, systems failing. This time she'd bluffed her way out by the skin of her teeth. She wanted rest. The Admiralty wanted her back in the fight. They gave her Stingray. The Fleet's cursed frigate. Captain disgraced, crew broken, ship rotting. The last of her kind still limping through the war. Admirals whispered about scrapping her, breaking up the jinx. But the war was bleeding ships, and anything that could still fire had to fight. So Dunmoore went from staring down the Empire's finest on a battleship's burning bridge to commanding a crew ready to mutiny, admirals sharpening knives, and a mystery that stank of death. Stingray's curse wasn't just sailor's talk. Something was wrong. The crew kept their mouths shut. Politics pressed in. Her own demons clawed at her. Taking that frigate into battle was suicide. But Dunmoore had never walked away from a fight. Failure wasn't an option. Defeat wasn't acceptable. Death was just a hole in the ground. Victory was the only honor left. She'd drag Stingray back from hell—or go down damned forever.

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.

All good things must end, and a reluctant Siobhan Dunmoore trades command of her battle group for a staff job ashore.   Yet her appointment to the headquarters of the 3rd Fleet, responsible for humanity's most restive frontier, is no accident. Things aren't quite right in what was once the most ferocious and effective formation in the Navy, and its control over the Rim Sector's outer edges is failing.   When Dunmoore investigates, she finds herself adrift on stormy seas with few allies and all too many foes, facing treachery, backstabbing, and corruption instead of guns and missiles. Will the Commonwealth's once victorious Navy revert to what it was before the Shrehari invasion, a politicized, ineffective force commanded by venal admirals? Or will Dunmoore and her friends arrest the decline as they fight for the honor of the Fleet and a future without war?

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?

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?

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?