"It was the beginning...of the end." Second Earth, the site of the worst massacre of the Great Galactic War half a decade ago, loomed large before the supercarrier Rhea. A beautiful gemstone against the backdrop of the endless, star-filled void, the planet beckoned the Sector Command carrier and her intrepid crew as a parent would to its long-departed child. But all was not as it seemed. What was expected to be a barren, war-ravaged planet was in fact a life-sustaining body, with far less damage than both the Office of Special Intelligence and the Unified Council had previously reported. Adding to the mystery was the fact that the orbiting defensive satellites-put in place to protect the riddles of the world-were mysteriously missing. Ordered to bring a contingent of Unified Marines down to the surface to investigate, Lieutenant Commander Shawn Kestrel is about to uncover the very secret that the Unified Government tried so desperately to hide. Unfortunately, it may already be too late. When a mysterious and powerful alien vessel appears in orbit around Second Earth, it heralds the one thing Shawn and Melissa Graves hoped they would never experience again... War.

The President of the Unified Collaboration of Systems, along with hundreds of civilians, had been ruthlessly murdered. There was little need to speculate who had done it-for the instigator was quick to take full credit for the act: The renegade Sector Command Admiral, Maros Krador. While Sector Command forces search in vain for the traitor, Krador begins to amass a fleet of warships from a secret base, setting himself on a course that is sure to leave a wake of destruction throughout the entire Beta Sector. The last team of elite covert agents sent in to eliminate Krador was never seen again, yet the Unified Council and the secretive Office of Special Investigations knew what needed to be done. They would need to try again...and there was only one agent they could trust to get the job done. Unfortunately, Angelika Jordan wanted nothing to do with it. In a heart-pounding, world-hopping race against time, Angelika must use all of her training and cunning to stop Krador and his forces before the traitors mighty fleet moves on to their next target. Set several years prior to the events of the Kestrel Saga, Origins: Traitor Winds is a stand-alone novel that chronicles an adventure taking place during the Great Galactic War between the Unified Collaboration of Systems and the Kafaran Alliance in the mid-24th century.

It started with an attack on a research station near the frontier region, the furthest portion of the Outer Sphere of Unified space. Then, one by one, subsequent border systems began to fall victim to the unknown attackers. Months went by before anyone in the Unified Collaboration of Systems realized what was happening. By then, it was too late.

The Kafaran had arrived.

The fighting between the two factions raged on for nearly five years. Hundreds of thousands perished, and millions of innocent beings lost their homes.

Then, nearly as quickly as the war had started, the Kafaran's inexplicably retreated to an unexplored region of space. Even with their once expansive foothold in the Milky Way now lying in ruins, it seemed to the once peaceful UCS that victory was finally theirs. Now, it was time to rebuild.

With the Galactic War now five years in the past, former fighter pilot Shawn Kestrel wasn't nearly as content in his peacetime life as he could have been. Not only was his fledgling cargo business steadily losing customers, his lone interstellar transport was fatally incapacitated, the victim of a now all too common pirate attack.

Without warning, the prudish daughter of his former commanding officer appears, informing Shawn that William has mysteriously disappeared-apparently the victim of foul play. And, as if things weren't difficult enough, a Unified Sector Command carrier quickly arrives to assert the Unified government's own self-guided interests into the disappearance.

As Shawn endeavors to put all of the pieces together, one thing becomes terrifyingly clear: the Kafaran are no longer idle.

With the government suspiciously pressing down on him from one side, and the beautiful and enigmatic daughter driving him on from the other, Shawn Kestrel must search deep within himself to decide where his past and present loyalties lie before the universe once again erupts into all-out war.