The Sandcastle, on a water world on the fringe of Earth’s expanding empire, houses the Fifth Foreign Legion, troops sent there to protect the interests of Seafarms Interstellar, a powerful Terran corporation. Captain Fraser thought his biggest problem would be keeping the Legionnaires from getting too bored, but that was before the Free Swimmers, nomadic ocean clans, attacked and nearly overran the Sandcastle. The Fifth Foreign Legion is facing a seemingly unstoppable alien army that just might spell the end for the Fifth, as well as, the Seafarms civilians they have sworn to protect.

Wolfgang Hauser was an aristocrat - right, privileged, pampered...until the day alien invaders overwhelmed his world and stripped him of everything he held dear. Now he was an outcast, without a family or a home, his honor tainted by accusations of cowardice and murder. He was a man on the run, and sooner or later his enemies would find him and destroy what was left of his shattered life. There was only one safe haven in the far-flung Terran Commonwealth. He joined the Fifth Foreign Legion. But Wolfgang Hauser soon discovered that the Legion demanded a high price....

All Cam Alvarez has known is war. For three years, he’s fought the marauding alien Tahni on one God-forsaken planet after another, leading a squad of armored Drop Troopers. But the war is about to change. Cam is an officer now, fresh out of OCS and taking charge of his old platoon, and things have reached a tipping point. Instead of fighting a desperate holding action against the enemy, the Commonwealth is finally ready to take back the human colonies the Tahni seized early in the war. To free the people the enemy have kept as human shields.

From street criminal to war hero. From outcast to Marine officer. The journey has been a long one, but now it’s reaching the end. Cam Alvarez leads his platoon of Drop-Troopers into the Tahni Imperium, into the final days of the war and the bloodiest battles yet. The Tahni will throw everything they have into the defense of their core worlds, and when that includes using their own civilians as shields, Lt. Cam Alvarez will have to decide whether to follow orders and fire on civilians or follow his conscience and risk his caree...

Thirty meters tall, 70 tons of quick-striding death and destruction, the armored war machines called BattleMechs are the frontline forces of the crumbling star empire locked in the horror of the endless Succession Wars. Their pilots are MechWarriors, 31st-century knights riding armored machines powerful enough to take a city apart. Grayson Death Carlyle had been training to be a MechWarrior since he was 10 years old, but his graduation came sooner than expected.