Ghost Squadron
Humanity's interstellar empire ended in "Ashes of Empire." Witness its birth a thousand years earlier in Eric Thomson's new series "Ghost Squadron."
This series explores the Commonwealth’s death and the empire’s rise through the eyes of the Marines of ‘A’ Squadron, 1st Special Forces Regiment, also known as Ghost Squadron because they strike without warning and vanish without a trace. The unit, made up of humanity’s foremost black operations specialists and commanded by a legendary Special Forces officer will do whatever is necessary to protect humanity anywhere in the known galaxy. And in doing so, they will change the course of history.
WE DARE - GHOST SQUADRON #1
When an undercover Constabulary officer vanishes after uncovering a massive cartel-run human trafficking operation, the Commonwealth’s interstellar police force calls for help from Naval Intelligence. Because the cartel’s operations could upend the delicate political balance between the older core worlds and the more recently colonized outer star systems, Ghost Squadron gets the job. Its mission: find the missing Constabulary officer and choke off the growing slave trade bedeviling humanity’s perilous galactic frontier.
Ghost Squadron’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Zachary Thomas Decker, spent the last ten years as a Naval Intelligence agent. His job was thwarting plots and terminating the Commonwealth’s internal enemies alongside his partner, a trained assassin.
Now, with several hundred of the deadliest Marines ever fielded at his back, Zack Decker will change the course of history and usher in a new era.
Chaos, created by factions determined to end the centuries-old accord between human settled worlds and Earth, is spreading at an alarming rate.
Centralists, aided and abetted by their corporate paymasters, are working hard to destabilize sovereign star systems and strip them of independence. Only the Fleet’s hard-pressed Special Forces can stop those who would foment a series of violent revolutions and trigger a bloody civil conflict capable of destroying humanity’s interstellar civilization. And that means the best of those Special Forces units, Ghost Squadron, doesn’t lack for missions.
Disrupting riots aimed at toppling star system governments, seeking out and destroying the Centralist-owned security and intelligence agency’s assets, eradicating cartels used as Centralist cat’s-paws — no operation is too complex. However, each mission takes them deeper into the heart of darkness, and before the Fleet can declare victory, Ghost Squadron may come to resemble the enemies it fights. Yet not using all the means at its disposal could result in the deaths of billions.
But will the Special Forces’ legendary prowess and valor suffice, both to save humanity and Ghost Squadron’s soul? Or will the Commonwealth experience the horrors of an existential war before the Fleet can arrest the spiral into madness?
History has a habit of reaching out from the grave and reminding us of our species’ greatest failings.
Humanity’s Migration Wars which birthed the Commonwealth of Sovereign Star Systems were the deadliest and most destructive in history. But not everyone draws the same lessons from past atrocities that were burned into the human psyche. For some, our species must do anything to avoid another murderous civil war, including the overthrow of the current political system. For others, a rerun, minus the mistakes made the last time, would once more consolidate power in the hands of the central government on Earth.
When a reconnaissance droid uncovers a lost munitions bunker from the Second Migration War containing the most horrific biological and chemical warheads ever invented, Rear Admiral Hera Talyn of Naval Intelligence immediately grasps the deadly ramifications. She quickly dispatches Ghost Squadron’s Erinye Company to guard the discovery on Keros, an airless, dead planet with nothing more than a mining outpost, until the deadly payloads can be retrieved.
However, those who would use the forbidden weapons to achieve their own goals still have spies inside Fleet Headquarters and are also moving fast. But Major Curtis Delgado, Erinye Company’s commanding officer, uncovers deeper mysteries on Keros than just weapons of mass destruction and must race against time and secret enemies to prepare for an all-out assault. Because he knows that if the warheads fall into the wrong hands, history could repeat itself, this time as an even greater tragedy.
The Commonwealth is teetering on its last legs. But will it go down gently or dissolve into a civil war as brutal as any in human history? That is the dilemma Colonel Zack Decker and Ghost Squadron face as they’re tapped to protect a last-ditch effort to salvage a possibility of peace. And that last ditch effort is being held on Decker’s home planet, a place he left long ago to put as many light years as possible between himself and a family who disapproved of his becoming a Marine. Yet things are not what they seem, and between his family and ardent secessionists wanting to end the Commonwealth, Decker has his hands full. However, he’s sworn an oath and intends to keep it because he’s still one of the Few…
Two years have passed since the OutWorlds seceded from the Commonwealth to form the Federation, and Ghost Squadron has never been busier, thanks to the Commonwealth stirring up trouble wherever it can.
When mayhem erupts on former colonies in the Federation’s Rim Sector, newly promoted Lieutenant Colonel Curtis Delgado takes Ghost Squadron on a covert mission to terminate the troublemakers and restore peace. But with savage deportees, depraved cartel members, and amoral mercenaries thrown into the mix, Delgado has his hands full.
Yet if the mission were easy, it wouldn’t be one for Ghost Squadron.