The Gaia Gambit

Trust is the most dangerous gamble of all.


For generations, Gaians and Stacians have circled each other in an uneasy cold war, so when Stacian starship commander Rast sen Drenthan opens a private channel to Captain Lira Jannholm, she knows better than to trust a word he says. Their peoples are enemies. Their fleets are one incident away from open war over Chlorae II, a colony world sitting atop the richest deposit of the galaxy’s most coveted resource.


Then Rast makes his offer: his fleet will withdraw and leave the prize to the Gaians — if Lira will spend a single night with him.


She takes the wager to protect her people. It costs her everything. Within days she's stripped of her rank, discharged in disgrace, and cast out to survive in the lawless deserts of Iradia — while Rast is rewarded with a promotion he never asked for. Only slowly does the truth surface: they were both played. The wager was a trap, and someone at the highest levels of two governments wanted Chlorae II — and Lira Jannholm — to burn.


Now the disgraced captain and the enemy who ruined her have one move left: an uneasy alliance, a ship stolen from one of the sector’s deadliest crime lords, and a race to expose a conspiracy that could topple the balance of power across the galaxy — if the pursuit doesn’t kill them first.


But the most dangerous gamble isn’t the one that cost Lira her command. It’s the one neither she nor Rast will admit they’ve already made…on each other.