[Guardians of Peace 01] • The Sirens of Space

The first book-The Sirens of Space-lays out the background for the rest of the series. Commander Cook, a gifted young officer, is promoted to captain and given command of his starship. But, military contractors having changed little over the years, his ship causes him nothing but grief-and it's all he can do to keep everyone's mind focused on getting their ship ready to sail. Meanwhile, politicians and commercial interests are scheming to bring about a change in the Terran Government, hoping for one more amenable to exploiting the riches to be found in the star clouds and planets of the Cosmic East, where the aliens are resisting Terran encroachment. As the book ends, the principals are taking to the skies...toward whatever fate awaits them among the stars.

The second book-The Star Dancers-is where the adventure begins. The reader learns about alien culture, which is suffering from internal divisions. We meet Gal'Shenga, an alien leader anxious to achieve his dream of reforming and modernizing his society, and his nephew Ga'Glish, commander of the alien fleet. But the Terra's Cosmic Guard has problems of its own: pirates and privateers are still infesting their skies, as they have for hundreds of years...a vestige of their history that has led Terra to develop ever-better machines of destruction to protect their lanes of commerce. Meanwhile, a band of ne'er-do-wells, eager to recover riches away deep inside alien skies, confronts an alien scientific outpost just as a peace conference is concluding on an alien world...setting the stage for conflict and tragedy, unless both sides are able to control the hotheads on either side of the border. The book ends with Captain Cook strugglingto find his way back to Terra through uncharted skies, as the galaxy is descending into chaos.