It is time to take the battle to the aliens, and a weapon to pluck them out of the sky is on the agenda. With a grasp of the situation and a weapon that can reach a descending ship required, the engineers get to go back to doing what they do best. Those who aren’t designing have the past coming up to bite them, the pilots are getting tired of the run to the city. Learning that alien hostages were held in stasis under the city seems to be just one more thorn in the sides of the pilots, but what they discover opens everything that they thought they knew into complete and shocking light. The future may be interesting, but the honest past will shock them to their cores.

A woman with vision finds a man who can help her reach heights she never imagined. Riasa has been working with the resistance to warn talents of the scanning bots flying overhead on schedules. The warning of eyes in the sky saved lives and families. Rescued before she could be caught, Riasa begins life at Citadel Teklan, but she knows something is very wrong. Confronting her suspicions, she calls in help and destroys the only home she has been offered before getting assigned to a flyer with wings of stone. Natu was disgruntled to be picking up a farmer’s daughter on Resicor, but once he met Riasa and saw her talent in action, he had to admit that he had been in the right place at the right time.

Going from researcher to hero is almost easy compared to falling in love with an alien world. Lydra wanted to live a life as a researcher and focus on solving mysteries of genetics. She never intended to become one of those mysteries. Trapped in an experiment gone wrong, she ends up blue and powerless on her own world, so she decides to be a freak amongst freaks elsewhere. Locals populate guardian Base Vidiaro, but Lydra gets by by doing her crime scene analysis until the day that the experiment that started on her own world takes its course. She goes from an anomaly to a hero and isn’t sure which she really wants to be.

Tales of the Citadel Twenty-Three Out of her body and lost in space, Wiyra finds solace and help in the form of a tracker who has his own designs on her physical self.   Wiyra is an astral investigator. She can leave her body and search any specific point in space that she wishes. She merely has to know its location before she leaves herself. A problem arises when she leaves to examine some mineral deposits and returns to the place her body should be, only to find it missing. Her entire home is missing. Her cousins, grandfather and brothers are all gone with no trace. There is only one person she can turn to, and while it makes her grit her astral teeth, she heads to Citadel Reevish. Master Tracker Burin is woken from a sound sleep by an astral hand in his head, and while he is startled, delight soon follows. Wiyra has come to him for help and the Citadel does nothing for free. He has her right where he wants her…as soon as he finds her.

Stealing an ancient artifact is a strange test, but going up against her family and the law adds a new level of difficulty. Imara wants nothing more than to find a different course, but stealth magic gives her the credits she needs to stay on track, and there aren’t any other options rearing their heads. Stealth Magic is not what she thought it would be, and the idea of breaking into a home to rob an ancient artifact for her final exam was a little daunting. Luckily, Imara has friends who are going to help her through training, some old and some new. Through some work with the XIA, she finds a tutor for her training and a place to do it. Ritual Space offers her a welcome, and the inhabitants set themselves to the monumental task of her training. The exam is getting closer and time is a factor. Mr. E just likes chasing the enchanted bunnies of Ritual Space.

Surviving a brutal disaster, Lee finds her calling and passion with a man whose touch can kill. Blown up, healed and grafted were things Lee never expected to see in her medical records. Waking up after a terrorist attack, she finds her father has signed her over to the Volunteer Project as long as they can keep her alive. Grafts, implants and slow regeneration are now her life, and she is assigned to the Guardian emergency response dispatch. Having no base, they travel from world to world and do whatever needs to be done from rescues, small incursions, to escorting treaty brides. Lukar has worked alone for quite some time, but the scientists at the Guardian Project assured him that he and Lee were a good match. He had no idea how right they were.

Terran Life out of her body was fun but when she tangles with a stellar avatar, life inside her own skin holds a lot of appeal. Dina has been going from assignment to assignment, helping out with mediations in hostile environments. Since she leaves her body in safety, her mind walks worlds that would kill her physical form instantly. When an offer from a nearby star gets her attention, she has to choose between a life out of her body, or a passenger in her very soul. Arci, the living star has been searching for a match for his avatar since Zakkar’s species disappeared. When the Terran seems to meet all of his avatar’s needs, Arci senses that she can fulfill some of the things missing is his own existence as well. It will take both of them to convince her to join them, but their threesome will eventually come together, mind, body, souls, and star.

Astral projection is great, but taking possession of a Guardian half a universe away is a job for a hero, not a ghost. Simry enjoyed her escape from a world of shunning and rules that did not apply to her. Life in the Citadel could be difficult, but it had its rewards in the shape of education and friendships. Being asked to seek out a Guardian and keep him sane from dozens of worlds away was one of the hardest assignments she had ever taken on, and it was also the most rewarding. She rescued the Guardian’s soul, kept his spirits up and made sure that he was able to survive until physical help could arrive. N’kad was on the edge of giving up when the ghost entered his mind and took over his situation by lodging herself in his soul. The stranger in his mind was brash, annoying, and yet, she kept his attention every moment that she was with him. He would travel quite a way for a woman like that. She was his hero, after all.

A woman, with a foul temper and her own spaceship, ends up an escort for a stunned ambassador. Her perfect mate. Leo runs her ship with precision and an attitude shaped by pain. Gathering an ambassador in stasis, she is surprised to find his ability to match her innermost desires, and he is surprised to find that she wants him in his own form and not the one she craves. Ambassador Wikkio is a Beholder. Born to a race that can change to match any other species right down to venom or scales, he is an ideal representative for races who are skittish around strangers. Meeting Govern surprises him. He had not thought to meet the woman of his dreams when he woke from cold sleep and never had he imaged that he would enjoy his woman sharpening her wit on his hide. The Gold Fairy brought them together, and now, she is determined to keep them that way.

Tales of the Citadel 8 Naka can use her mind to destroy a world, or she can save it. When nothing seems right, she calls the moon. Naka was adrift with no means to focus, but accidentally starting a tremor in her hometown lets everyone know what she is and sentences her to confinement. The Citadel sends a representative to take her away, but the information that he is given will make sure that she finds no friends off Resicor. Her life is no longer her own, but her talent begs to be used, and on the planet of Piq, she finds something very wrong. The empty world should not be empty. Its mind has been stolen and lodged in the moon. In his efforts to escape, the living mind of the planet has almost ripped his old body apart. With skills she didn’t know she had, Naka steps in to carry one mind back to its home. She hopes she will survive the process.

A runaway bride, a race of crippled giants and a woman whose genes can solve anything. Jill and the Genestalk. Jill has been traded to a consortium that wants to use her empathy for business. She wants nothing to do with their plans and runs away on her wedding day. A shuttle chase, a crash and a surprisingly soft landing begin a new phase of Jill’s life in which she offers her body to a race of giants for room and board. T’los is the man who pulled her out of her wrecked shuttle, and he is with her every step of the way until his people no longer need her. The moment she is free of demands, he makes her an offer and she falls for his charm. Caught in his arms, it is quite the distance to fall.

The final classes have begun, and the only thing standing in Imara’s way is an ancient and deadly enemy... of her kitten. Imara’s life is going according to her plans. She has her boyfriend, her kitten, and is about to earn her degree in Magecraft and graduate. Once she has that degree, she has the right to request an application for a commercial magic license. It is the goal she has been working toward all along. A shadow begins to haunt her during the day and stalk her when she is away from the college. She doesn’t know what it wants, but it follows her with a purpose she can’t fathom until she finds the identity of her stalker. By the time she learns that it is Mr. E the stalker is after and not her, the trap has already closed.

A Terran Times Tale Dreaming of the perfect man takes a strange turn when she is forced to bring him to life.     Cera enjoys acting as a dispatcher for the Guardians. When five strangers come to her, brandishing an imperial writ that demands her transfer to Haloth, she is taken aback. When they transport her there without any kind of vehicle, she suspects that she is in a less-than-usual situation, and when she is handed over to wake an energy being, she knows it. Renn has come to physical form over a hundred times, called by a hundred different women. When Cera calls him, there is something new. She knows what she finds attractive, but gives him enough leeway to add a few bonuses of his own to his appearance. Between her mind and his body, they are going to make a helluva team.

Seeing the future of others is odd but manageable. When her own love life makes an appearance, she has to deal with the hero who wants into her bed. Freddy goes to the Volunteer Centre with the blessing of her family and finds out that an alien bloodline runs in her veins. Somewhere in space, there is a world waiting for a new Oracle to take the position of the original Delphics. Knowing that having a job waiting is a better plan than going out blind; she ends up at a Guardian base with a heavily tattooed Admaryn watching her intently. The moment she touches him, she sees them tangled together far into the future, and the answering knowledge is in his eyes. He wants her and intends to have her, no questions asked.

A talent for melting stone is given a pilot who happens to be a dragon. Let’s hope the shuttle survives. Leyhara is a talent of Resicor and she took full advantage of her new freedom to hold off attackers by grounding their craft, by having the ground under them melt. After the attack, she is given the choice to stay or leave and go somewhere she can use her power. It takes her minutes to make up her mind and she is on the next shuttle out. Bohrvin has been waiting centuries for a woman who answers the call of his mind, and when he finds she has the ability to melt rock, he decides he had better tread carefully while courting a woman standing on burning stone.