author : Jean Johnson

Enlisting in the modern military of the Terran United Planets, Ia plans to rise through the ranks, meeting and influencing important people and building a reputation that will inspire others for the next three centuries. But she needs to be assigned to the right ship, the right company, and the right place to earn that reputation honestly—all while keeping her psychic abilities hidden from her superiors, who would refuse to risk such a valuable gift in combat,

To save the galaxy, Ia must become someone else: the soldier known as Bloody Mary.

Promoted in the field for courage and leadership under fire, Ia is now poised to become an officer in the Space Force Navy— once she undertakes her Academy training. First, however, she travels back home to Sanctuary, a heavyworld colony being torn apart by religious conflict. Ia must prepare her family and followers for the hardships they will endure in order to secure the galaxy’s survival.

Her assignment is to command a Blockade Patrol ship. Her goal, to save as many lives as she can. But at the Academy, she discovers an unexpected challenge: the one man who could disrupt those plans, the man whose future she cannot foresee. And time is running out for Ia, for the galaxy is on the br|nf< of the Second Salik War…

Ship’s Captain Ia must assemble a crew that can rise to the ultimate challenge of saving the galaxy. The hardest part will be getting them to believe her, to trust in her prophecies. If they don’t, her own crew will end up being the biggest obstacle in her race against time.

The Salik are breaking through the Blockade, plunging the known galaxy into war. Ia cannot stop it this time, nor does she want to. This is the terrible price she has seen all along—that some must pay with their lives so that others might live. Now only time itself can prove whether each member of her crew is merely a soldier or truly one of Ia’s Damned.

Demoralized, and with their ship destroyed, Ia’s Damned must fight their way out of a blockade and back into space. But there is more happening on Dabin than meets even Ia’s inner eye.

Some of the Feyori, energy-based beings of vast power and arrogance, are moving to block her efforts under the direction of her counterfaction foe, Miklinn. The Terran Army Division stationed on Dabin is not cooperating with her battle plans. Events are not happening as Ia has foreseen, and too many people are now in grave danger, thanks to alien Meddling.

All these hardships are threatening to derail Ia’s carefully laid plans. The Meddlers, however, have made one fatal mistake:

They’re just making Bloody Mary mad.

With their new ship claimed and new crew members being collected, Ia’s Damned are ready and willing to resume the battle against the vicious, hungry Salik forces. But shortly after they board the Damnation and reenter the fight, a new threat emerges. After several centuries of silence, the Greys are back, and the Alliance must now combat both a rapacious, sadistic enemy and a terrifying, technologically superior foe.

Ia has asked nothing of her crew that she herself has not been willing to give. But with two wars to bring to an end—and time running out—Ia must make and execute the most terrible choice of all…