AGAINST A DARK BACKGROUND (X Rated)

THE HYDROGEN SONATA

Lieutenant Commander Vyr Cossont is suspected of involvement after the Regimental High Command is destroyed, as they prepared to go to a new level of existence called Sublime. Now she must find a nine-thousand-year-old man to clear her name.

LOOK TO WINDWARD

It was one of the less glorious incidents of a long-ago war. It led to the destruction of two suns and the billions of lives they supported. Now, 800 years later, the light from the first of those ancient mistakes has reached the Culture Orbital, Masaq. The light from the second may not.

USE OF WEAPONS

Cheradenine Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances' foremost agents. The woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and pushed him towards his present eminence. The drone Skaffen-Amtiskaw had once saved the woman's life and believed the man to be a lost cause. But not even its machine could see the horrors in his past.