Winteroud Sole, psychic, archaeologist, aristocrat adventurer pursues mysterious quantum ghost echoes in the ruins of New Galen Starport. Strangely, his visions include a Transhuman on the high council at Deneb IV many centuries later. Tracing the echoes to a single fleeing ship that made its way deep outspace to the frontier, the mystery unfolds then as a young smuggler makes an astounding discovery that leads him out into the stars with a Trade guild as a mercenary and trader. A cyborg female superspy is awakened and her sentience implanted into a clone by the Transhuman High Council. She is sent on a mission to follow Winteroud, and so the threads of centuries and lives continue to weave as a mad Transhuman Overlord and the super spy seek to unite a Rogue fleet general, a Pirate Lord, the smuggler, and Winteroud as a force of magnificent raiders to make a last stand for humanity.Slithering across the dimensional voidin a swarm, demonic beings, psychic vampires that twist and destroy. They are the secret to the Fermi paradox, having destroyed all sentient life in our Galaxy before.What are they? How can they be fought? These are the tales of a motley crew of rogues in a dark, Pandoran age....As you've done unto my men, thus will be done unto you, sewer slime. Max felt his eyes grow dark. Why couldn't he remember? There was something special about this op, something important that he needed to remember. The targets were-it skirted the edge of his consciousness. Just out of reach.Like someone had tweaked his brain.Could they do that? Out here, deep space? No labs, on board a small fighter, close quarters, hand to hand combat- and then drag in medical equipment to mess with his grey matter? He growled, "rat chewing, worm worshipping, cowards!"How had they gotten on board?Max dropped back into MERGE and set the fighter on a heavy rush into hyper heading back for civilization. He might encounter Marauders when he set over the galactic core. That would be no surfing safari, he'd get through. A good story for next when he hit the taverns. The small fighter streamed into zero space and Max felt the gleaming winds of the hyper-gamma spaces brush his cheeks. He watched for hyper trails like a starving hawk. Somebody was going to give him some sweet red payback tail.He only wished he could remember who.The last of the pig-monkeys was howling as Babayaga ate its face. She dropped its ugly little body back into the flat dimensions, felt the thrill of its fear and then stretched in delight at her superiority. She could see, far into the intergalactic black, the horde coming. A hunt! A feast it would be! A whole galaxy of fearful beings. Ohhh!(she hears in the resonance of high dimension her roar of ecstacy, the kill! The kill!) The fears she had explored in the corners of their flatworld minds. Yes, so good, the electricity running through their mind, coursing through the organic patterns of flatworld flesh. Pathetic creatures. Except for the one pig-monkey. Aghh! Her anger raged around the dimensional curls and she rolled on, over the flows of radiance seething, hating. No matter what corner of its brain she searched, she found no fears to taste. The others, they were strong, and she had to work to find the drug of fear, flashing through the dimensions of their memories, deep into their lives, their past-the things pushed away, the shadow things repressed. That one, he was the strongest. Defeat haunted her. He'd looked her square and kept coming! She remembered the bitter taste of his mind. It had repelled her. She couldn't kill him, nor could she let him live to tell his tale. If the other pig-monkeys figured how he'd eluded death it would be a disaster for the horde.With his primitive scooter craft scuttled into the belly of a gravity well, she'd watched him sink to him doom. She shook a million black tentacles. She felt the curling fronds of her proboscis.pandoranage.com