Search Worlds Without End

Five hundred years from now, humankind has found a link to a remarkably Earth-like planet and settled there, dividing –as humans will -- into dozens of nation-states. The Federated States of Columbia has consolidated power and risen against the oppression of Earth's corrupt Caliphate. But when Salafi madmen bent on a new jihad kill FSC Captain Patrick Hennessey's family in a cowardly attack, they create an enemy that will show even less mercy than they do.

A legendary warrior is born: Carrera, the scourge of Salafism. He will forge an army from the decrepit remains of a military in a failing state. He will find those who killed his family. He will destroy them utterly. And he will try like hell to not become exactly like the enemy he is fighting.

Only when he is finished will there be peace: the peace of an empty wind as it blows across a desert strewn with the bones of Carrera's enemies.

Revenge: it won't bring your wife and kids back, but it might help with the nightmares.

Patricio Carrera has been waging what amounts to a private world war to bring to justice the murderers of his family. He's raised an army and air force and used them. He's raised a fleet and he's about to use that. He's suborned one republic and is about to undermine another. He's tracked his enemies across half a world, breaking, in the process, any notion of international law that stood in his way.

Now he's deployed his legions to Pashtia, penultimate hideout of the Salafi Ikhwan who have made him what he has become. But with each step further from his home, revenge seems no closer. And with each step he leaves behind him a little of his dwindling humanity.

Revenge is a dish best served cold. Yet the trail itself grows cold, as cold as the snow-capped, windswept mountains of Pashtia. Only Carrera's hate still burns hot, and that's a fire that is slowly consuming him.

Sometimes paranoia is just a heightened state of awareness.

Carrera's won his war, and inflicted a horrific revenge upon his enemies. But there are wars after wars. The Tauran Union is planning an attack. The criminals of neighboring states are already attacking, and threatening to embroil him in a war with the planet's premier power. His only living son is under fire among the windswept mountains of Pashtia. An enemy fleet is hunting his submarines. His organization has been infiltrated by spies. One of the two governments of his adopted country, Balboa, is trying to destroy everything he's built and reinstitute rule by a corrupt oligarchy. Worst of all, perhaps, he, himself, bearing a crushing burden of guilt, isn't quite the man he once was.

Fortunately, the man he once was, was lucky enough to marry the right woman....

On the colony planet of Terra Nova, Carrera has achieved his revenge, destroying those who had destroyed his life by killing his wife and children in a terrorist strike. And, with this help of his second wife, he has thwarted an attempted coup that would have restored the rule of the oligarchy and undone his hard-won victory. But his fight is not over yet...

The problem of the Tauran Union's control of the Transitway between Terra Nova and Earth remains, as does the problem of the nuclear armed United Earth Peace Fleet, orbiting above the planet. The Taurans will not leave, and the Balboans--a proud people, with much recent success in war – will not tolerate that they should remain.

And yet, with one hundred times the population and three or four hundred times the wealth, the Tauran Union outclasses little Balboa in almost every way, even without the support of Old Earth. Sadly, they have that support. Everything, everyone, will have to be used to finish the job of freeing the country and, if possible, the planet. The children must fight. The old must serve, too. And the women?

This is their story, the story of Balboa's Tercio Amazona, the Amazon Regiment.