Showing results by author "Steven M. Silver" in All Categories

A cry for help comes from a colony in the Frontier as it is swept by disease. As Kodomir responds by sending a medical team, guarded by its Wild Geese battalion, no one realizes the Black Fire epidemic is an act of terrorism. As they try to help the colony, tragedy strikes Alisti Mahmud al-Kheyntamenti, the Geese’s commanding officer; he and his friend Gwielgi find themselves returning to a world of their shared past, a world of slavery that has made a deal with a devil, a devil who unleashes Black Fire across the stars. To keep him from doing worse, Kheyntamenti, struggling with grief, ...

Mercenary’s Courage, the eighth Wild Geese science fiction novel by Steven M. Silver, sees Kodomir attacked by Raiders – the generic title for thieves, pirates, slavers – using a nuclear weapon. Pretending to be guns for hire, the Wild Geese are sent covertly into the Frontier but discover the Raiders they search for may be partners with a Settled Worlds power bloc and the reality is far grimmer than simple raiding. Something very dark is happening in the Frontier and the Geese find its heart is found on Jeppesen, a place where the morning’s rising sun can bring incredible horror ...

It is 1994; Ellen Parker, a thirteen-year-old rural Ohio girl, is mourning the death of her cousin Eileen, killed by a wild bullet from a fight between the Steel Riders and a rival outlaw motorcycle gang, both struggling to control the methamphetamine trade out of Butler County. As Ellen and her family try to comfort one another, county Deputy Sheriff JJ Jeffers works with a federal task force to break up the trade but is becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress and his minor role. The summer stretches on and Ellen finds a sanctuary on the farm of her grandfather Tom. Then...

With his world of Kodomir overrun by brutal conquerors, Stevar Polrany makes a desperate escape to find allies who can help. But in the 29th Century, the Settled Worlds have plunged into war and few care about the fate of a backwater farming world. Against his own best judgment, he finds the only help he can find is by hiring a small mercenary unit called the Wild Geese. As the Kodomiri form an underground, interstellar maneuvers try to make Kodomir into a pawn on a board measured in light years. In the face of murderous occupation, desperately the fuse of rebellion is ignited. With time ...

Victor Echo Zero Five is the poetry journal of Steven M. Silver, written during his years as a Marine officer and the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Silver became a Naval Flight Officer and flew in the backseat of F4 Phantom IIs. In Vietnam, he had 316 combat missions in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. After leaving the Marines, he eventually found himself a psychologist working with other combat veterans. Sometimes raw, always personal, Victor Echo zero Five captures the experiences of a young man during a unique, exciting, demanding, and sometimes painful time. Within the literature of the ...

Someone keeps sending small mercenary groups to perform hit and run raids on the backwater farming world of Kodomir. As tensions rise following attack after attack, Kodomir, still trying to determine who is attacking them and why, suddenly finds itself the target of two imperialist powers, both of whom want Kodomir as a stepping stone towards the other. As foreign fleets in orbit overhead eye one another, diplomats and intelligence officers race to find the key to the lock that will save Kodomir from being ground to dust between the two powers. Part of the solution may be a disgraced ...

The Wild Geese, once a homeless and wandering mercenary group, were made citizens of Kodomir in thanks for that world’s liberation. Since then, the Geese had fought and many had died to keep Kodomir free. But, with the external threats defeated, they are stunned to find themselves vilified by a side in a political struggle uses them as pawns to discredit the existing Kodomir government. Cast out, embittered and feeling betrayed, they return to their trade as mercenaries. But the time comes when they can return to Kodomir and decide the fate of what had been their home. More than one ...

It is 2003: Ellen Parker, now a journalism intern and trying to deal with her demons from violence of a decade ago, watches while in the countryside and small towns of eastern Pennsylvania, someone is stalking and killing women. The killer is not a fool and appears to be quite knowledgeable of police procedures. Disciplined, intelligent, his motives carefully hidden, the killer’s violence is escalating. The task force hunting him, including county Deputy Sheriff Craig Morgan, knows they are running out of time. Ellen has an idea for her paper that is both exciting and terrifying: explore ...

In the spring of 2016, someone kidnapped the young step-daughter of John Allen Douglas, a very dangerous figure in the Philadelphia criminal world. Is this the opening move in a gang war, one designed to distract Douglas from his business, or is it something more personal? Ellen is drawn into the hunt for the child when Robert Blasingame reappears in her life. Ellen first met him during what was supposed to be a vacation but turned into a life and death struggle. She cut off her feelings for Blasingame when she discovered he was a very dangerous man operating outside the law. Nowadays, ...

In the third of the Ellen Parker novels, it is 2013. From the Carolinas to southern Pennsylvania, someone is killing women and leaving many hanging on barbed wire fences. While the unknown killer is pursued by a multi-agency task force led by the FBI, Ellen Parker, a Philadelphia journalist, is contacted by Iraq veteran Elizabeth Chernov, who has encountered a young girl fleeing from the drug-related killings of her guardians. Chernov believes the girl is pursued by the murderers perhaps aided by the police; she trusts Ellen only because she did a story on her and others dealing with the ...

Ellen Parker is taking a long overdue vacation in Coalville, Pennsylvania, testing her healing after last year’s brutal events. Coalville is a small town noted, in the summer of 2014, for its antique stores, bed and breakfasts, and – most recently – ugly death. A tragic plane crash the month before has drawn the attention of hunters from both sides of the law, all looking for something hidden on the plane, something now missing. Initially focused on her own healing and an interest in a handsome man from New York, soon Ellen is aware of the growing danger of the hunters willing to kill...

In the 29th Century, the greatest evil in the human settled worlds is slavery, the ultimate expression of wealth and power. While many oppose it, on some worlds it flourishes, restrained only by the slaveholders’ fear of the slaves themselves, for there is no such thing as slave loyalty. However, in the shattered, burned rubble of Torianis, a rebel warlord’s elite soldiers, soldiers who died fighting with an almost inhuman precision and competency, put the Free Union’s intelligence service on the track of what might be programmable slaves. More than mass produced clones, someone has ...

During the summer of 2018, young boys are found in shallow graves scattered across Chester County, Pennsylvania, the sites marked only by a red ribbon. There are few clues in the killings and an FBI task force is only slowly finding links between the boys. The ribbon is the killer’s desire for recognition, a desire so strong he calls reporter Ellen Parker to make sure all the bodies are found. He is not simply trying for notoriety – he wants recognition and he wants it for protecting a terrible secret. Ellen Parker, with the help of Robert Blasingame, tries to solve the puzzle of the ...

In Mercenary’s Redemption, the seventh Wild Geese novel by Steven M. Silver, Free Union President Peter Mavis Carmichael, the cunning and ruthless leader of the most powerful bloc among humanity’s Settled Worlds, struggles to maintain his grip on power. At the same time, on the backwater farming world of Kodomir, a member of the Free Union, the man known as Gwielgi tries to find peace with his demons. His grief and guilt drive him into a desert. As fighting rises within the Free Union, Carmichael is believed dead and chaos rapidly spreads and Kodomir is occupied by a brutal leader of ...

There is a fire in the Frontier, a fire of a growing and dangerous empire. Though light years from the farming world of Kodomir, it burns a former enemy who seeks Kodomir’s assistance. It may be a devil’s bargain, but Kodomir needs allies and feels honor-bound to pay a debt. The Kodomir Militia sends its only unit with off-world experience, the former mercenaries called the Wild Geese. Gwielgi is given the job of devising the plan to pull down the empire but the only chance to do it will put the woman he loves at deadly risk. But no plan can protect the Geese from harm or possible ...

Mercenary’s Justice, the tenth Wild Geese science fiction novel by Steven M. Silver, follows Gwielgi as he flees from his home, a place of painful memories, and. becomes a mercenary again. He hires on as a security advisor to a judicial team representing the Organization of Settled Worlds’ High Court. Sent into the Frontier to resolve conflicts, the team finds itself in increasing danger and it becomes clear powerful interests, for reasons unclear, are keeping the legal team exposed to that danger. While Gwielgi tries to protect the team and deal with ghosts and ex-enemies of the past, ...

Mercenary’s Peace is the ninth Wild Geese science fiction novel by Steven M. Silver. Kodomir, a small world and home of the former mercenaries called the Wild Geese, is attacked during peace negotiations, killing and wounding many. Among them is Gwielgi, who, like many others, has wounds of body more than matched by his damaged heart – among the dead is the woman he loved. As the war moves on, the Kodomiri try to pick up the pieces of their lives. Then the war that almost casually savaged Kodomir turns from its distant battlefields and returns to Kodomir. Still heart broken and ...

The twelfth and final Wild Geese novel, Mercenary’s Promise, follows Alisti Kheyntamenti to his home world of Osiris, a place where his family, he believes, was wiped out in the first of a series of civil wars. Now Osiris is suspected of being at the center of a criminal network that has taken thousands of lives and Kheyntamenti is asked to find the truth. But Kheyntamenti is a soldier, not a spy, and his wanderings attract the attention of those who treat his mind like a plaything and try to weaken him by forcing a confrontation with his deepest fears of loss and failure. Stirred by the ...

The eleventh Wild Geese novel, Mercenary’s Humanity, opens with a cry in space, a cry followed by silence. Disasters visiting new colonies is not rare, especially in the Frontier, and Kodomir sends a relief force. But there are secrets inside of secrets on New Monterey and the first is the colonists are not alone. Something, someone, from the dark past, is rising from the mountains like ghosts of mythology. Into this comes the Wild Geese and Gwielgi has his own secrets revealed, including one that could result in his death. As Gwielgi and the Geese fight to survive, they find an ...