Starways Series

In a spinning city full of intrigue, romance, and dangerous games, the word for everything going wrong is witherspin.   Nia Courant is an interstellar lawyer. Years ago, on the other side of the stars, she made a disastrous decision.  It wrecked her life and ruined her career. She found work at a university in the space-station city called Wendis. But the university is a sheltered bubble in a strange culture built around an interstellar amusement park. She knows she's at a disadvantage in Wendis unless she learns how to play its games of chance and danger. What she doesn't know is that love can be a dangerous game too.    Gyle Martan is an exile in Wendis. For him, the spinning city was an uncomfortable port in a deadly political storm. His façade as a University official conceals a mystery. The core of the mystery is something dark and dangerous. He knows his past will catch him if it can and destroy him if it does. But then he falls in love with Nia and begins to imagine something better than lonely exile.    When everything starts going wrong around them in Wendis, Nia and Martan must cooperate with each other in a danger game they never expected. Now Nia is Martan's best  ally. Martan is Nia's best hope. Unfortunately, he may also be her worst nightmare.

Nia Courant is an interstellar lawyer at Avend University in the space-station city Wendis. Gyle Martan is a university official. Both outsiders here, they are engaged to be married. They'd rather work on their troubled relationship than be caught up in an attack on Wendis by the interstellar empire called the Faxen Union.   But they aren't hapless civilians. Nia can wage a war of legal words. Martan was an anti-terror agent for the Faxen Union before he defected to Wendis. He's ready, willing, and terrifyingly able to defend the city.  But first he has to learn the truth about his past and face his worst adversary: himself.

Nia Courant is an interstellar lawyer with a shadowed past. Gyle Martan is an academic official who is not at all what he seems. Both are outsiders in the space-station city called Wendis. When an outing in the famous Zoned Park of Wendis turns into a dangerous game designed by unknown enemies, Nia and Martan find that they are allies in danger and adversaries in love.  

Daya Tattujayan is the manager of a remote and nearly derelict space mining station. She has plenty of problems to deal with even before the interstellar syndicate that owns the station sends an auditor to check up on her work. Rik Gole is a nomadic interstellar auditor with no roots to tie him down. He is ruthless when he has to be and very good at what he does, but Rik would be the first to admit that a woman like Daya and a place like this station are way outside of his previous experience. Before Daya and Rik can decide whether they are antagonists, allies, or something more, an unexpected enemy attacks the station. To save their lives, they must dare to trust each other. And they need help from a very unconventional defender—Daya's mysterious alien pet, the mascot of Star Corner Station.

These stories first appeared in the  Pets in Space® science fiction romance anthology, so each tale is science fiction with a happily-ending romance—and a faithful and friendly pet that helps the heroine and hero find their way through dangerous adventures, to each other. The pet might be (a) not native to Earth (b) not biological at all, (c) not made of matter at all, (d) not naturally evolved, but instead invented, or (e) invented, but not by humankind.   These are not just pets.   Of course many of our animal friends today aren't just pets either: we have guard dogs, service animals of all kinds, draft animals, elaborately bred varieties of many species, and clones of some. We have animal mascots for good luck, too! Who knows what creatures might walk or run or fly alongside us on the other side of the stars?  Here are five future alien beings, service animals, genetically engineered species, and mascots, along with their human friends and the accidents and enemies that threaten their love and their lives.

The most forbidding enigma of the Star Age . . .   For opposite reasons, Val Savre and Lane Dzimon both want to see what lies beyond the alien artifact called the Halo Gate.   The stakes are very high: it kills intruders.Only by combining their scientific training, intelligence, and resolve can they get through the gate alive.   They have no idea what they'll find there.   They only have each other.