The Arcturian Confederation

[R.]

For five hundred years the nine-world Arcturian Confederation alone has possessed the "Orthodynamic Drive", the key to faster than light travel. Its merchant and passenger liner operations have enabled the human race to spread out into the galaxy, colonising over five hundred worlds, while the Arcturian Confederate Space Fleet has imposed five centuries of uneasy peace. Yet old emnities still fester, too many planet based wars have been stopped by separating the combatants by interstellar distances.

If the drive fell into the wrong hands this unstable utopia could crash and burn in a devastating series of interstellar wars.

Space Fleet is growing old and inflexible. Five centuries of waiting for the wars that never came have left it appearing easy prey.

Two unscrupulous adventurers believe that they can seize the technology for themselves, and they don't care how many people die or how many wars they start.

One woman stands between them and success. Jane Gould, small, seemingly fragile has carved a position for herself in Space Fleet despite the despair of the senior officers at her creative interpretations of the regulations.

But Jane is a woman with a core of pure steel, and a mind of monumental deviousness. Given a stark choice between A or B she will always find a way of doing F or G instead

(This story concludes in Turn To The Stars which is ready for publication, and will be on Kindle, Kobo and Nook very soon.)