Major Rodger Y. Murphy should have died when his helicopter crashed off the coast of Mogadishu in 1993. Instead, he woke up in 2125, in a binary star system 152 light years from home. Without any memory of the otherworldly abductors who spirited them away in cold sleep, Murphy and 100 other “Lost Soldiers” have been retrieved and awakened by officers of the Consolidated Terran Republic.

Promising to return to the 55 Tauri B system after completing a distant mission, they leave the twentieth-century castaways with a daunting objective: establish a base of operations on the main world, using local allies they have yet to recruit and enemy equipment they have yet to seize.

If that weren’t hard enough, 55 Tauri A, the system’s primary star, is rapidly approaching, and the technologically superior powers from that neighboring system always visit during the close approach . . . to raid, pillage, and cull the locals.

Worse, the Lost Soldiers left behind with Murphy were the losers and ne’er-do-wells deemed “sub-optimal” for inclusion on the rescue mission. Defiant and determined to live down that judgment, they have given themselves a different, more suitable label:

Murphy’s Lawless

Note: this book incorporates six previous novellas and adds 40k of new worldbuilding from Charles E. Gannon that Caine Universe readers won't want to miss!

An outcast of the Eden Academy, physically unfit for military duty and lacking a civil service assignment, Mairin Shields is going nowhere fast. With little hope of leaving the outer rim of the Milky Way, Mairin agrees to participate in a classified experiment offering her genetic perfection and a chance to see the galaxy.

Now, armed with her great-grandfather’s military knowledge and combat-refined instincts, Mairin is tasked with leading inexperienced troops in a war against a shadowy enemy using hauntingly familiar tactics. But the first rule of the military is “Hurry Up and Wait,” and Mairin learns this firsthand.

Without transport to the fight, Mairin spends the downtime on a lush paradise world, getting to know her new body, her imprint, and her heart. Mairin meets Tallenaara, a beautiful Styrahi architect whose mission and past will come to challenge them both. Faced with the most difficult choice of her young life, Mairin Shields can only watch as her world spins out of control.

An offer they couldn’t refuse. A deal that would set them up for life.

Lew Armistead Holmes’ life was about to get better . . . much better. Part of the crew of the salvage ship Remnant, she just got a contract to go further into space than she’s ever been before, to retrieve a satellite that is so big it will take two ships to bring it back. The payday is equally large, and her share is big enough to get her off Remnant and away from her peculiar captain and his secrets.

Unfortunately, the captain of the other ship tasked to the job harbors a grudge against Remnant’s commanding officer from the last time the two worked together on a project. Separately, they are each like dynamite—ready to go off at any time. When they’re together, it’s like lighting the fuse.

But the payoff on the unknown satellite is huge, leading both crews to wonder what the satellite holds, and what they aren’t being told about it.

Both crews must work together to bring the satellite back to Earth, but there are plans within plans, and no one is exactly who the others think they are. Who will come back with the satellite at the end of the mission . . . and who won’t come back at all?

The Price of Survival!

In the six months since the raid that destroyed the makeshift transmitter, the Lost Soldiers have scratched out a permanent base on the world of R’Bak. But life in an often surprising and very alien binary system has not become any easier. Major Mara “Bruce” Lee’s pregnancy becomes a powerful reminder of that: without special indigenous plants, she might lose both her unborn child and her life. And, in the process of securing enough of that rare compound, her friend and crew chief Elroy Frazier will have to risk life, limb, and mind.

Meanwhile, under the guidance of Major Bo Moorefield, the Lost Soldiers are now spearheading the offensive of their indigenous allies throughout the wastelands known as the Hamain, even as the Sear approaches with its seven years of intense radiation and heat. Before it arrives, Colonel Rodger Young Murphy has laid plans for securing the information, weapons, and human capital necessary for the critical spaceside operations that will occur after the Kulsians’ pioneer teams—the surveyors—arrive.

The key to the success of the dirtside operations is to seize and hold Imsurmik, a major J’Stull-allied power center, thereby paving the way for Lieutenant Tyree Cutter and his specially trained team to search for the high value targets—citizens with knowledge of the soon-to-arrive Harvesters—that possess the information that will make it possible for Murphy’s Lawless to surprise and overcome the approaching Kulsian invaders.

Charged with identifying those high-value targets, newly promoted Lieutenant Aliza Turan has been embedded with a group of locals inside Imsurmik’s walls, where the risk of discovery is constant, and trouble lurks around every corner. Her mission—to find the necessary intel without attracting the attention of a fearsome warlord—may be the most dangerous of all.

But all the risks, and all the dangers, facing El, Bo, Aliza, and Tyree are not just the price of success; they are the price of survival. Because if each piece doesn’t fall into place, and at just the right time, there will be no way to survive the onslaught of the Kulsians—who will surely hunt down and exterminate every last one of the time—stranded refugees known as Murphy’s Lawless.