Hot on the trail of yet a fourth ancient artifact the Aeolus team has taken to referring to as the Horseman of the Apocalyse, Lexi is captured by the the six-fingered Gadtons. Now, the Gadton's technology is inferior to the Accord's with one notable exception. They've solved time travel. Join Lexi, along with her new team, as they journey through space and time to save the future. And where's her old team, you ask? Well, Geena is on Earth making a baby. Both Ron and Urania are dead. Killing Ron, and Urania, for that matter, proved to be a really, really bad decision for the Gadtons.

In Guardian, the prior episode in the Aeolus Investigations series, Lexi and Ron are supposedly lost to us forever, sealed inside a pocket universe from which there can be no possibility of escape. The Accord, for which Lexi has been responsible for the last thirty years, goes on, with her younger sister, Allie Stevens, as the Marshal. If you ask Allie, she’s just keeping the position warm until Lexi gets back. The others are pretty sure that can never happen. Allie, had it right! Admittedly, it took magic to get them out. *** The Aeolus Investigations books have always been “soft” science fiction. They’re stories that take place in a portion of the galaxy very near Earth. We have starships, hyperspace drives, aliens, sentient computers, time travel, and rayguns. If you’ve read any of the prior episodes, you know this. What they’re really about is the evolution of the main character, Lexi Stevens, an Earth-woman who in the year 2026 stows away on a small starship. She becomes the leader of the Aeolus Investigative team. She becomes the leader of the world known as Ostrieachia. By the end of the fifth episode, she is pretty much running the advanced civilizations of the socio-political entity known as the Accord. In Witch, Lexi Stevens and her husband, Ron Samue, cut off from everything and everyone they ever knew, take on the job of saving a small girl, a planet named Eloisa, and, just possibly, all life everywhere. For the first time in her life, uber-scientist Lexi Stevens has no technology to work with. They didn’t come to Eloisa on a starship — they’re not even sure how they got there. In Witch, we mention starships but don’t have any. The most advanced technology we encounter on Eloisa is indoor plumbing. Witch is the eleventh episode in the story of Lexi’s growth. As the author, I do not consider this to be science fiction. Honestly, it comes closer to fantasy — although, for what it’s worth, there are no elves, trolls, or other mystical creatures. Still, some of what happens in eleven has an impact on what you will find in later episodes. I hope you give it a chance and at least don’t hate it. Episode twelve returns us fully to the science fiction genre, so hang in there. Aeolus Investigations is a light-hearted space opera series.

Lexi and the team gamble they can save a planet.

The Aeolus Investigations team embarks on there first mission together, the rescue of three kidnapped members of the Borgolian Royal family.

Apocalypse (noun); An event involving destruction or damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale. MC Jones, now Admiral MC Jones — still the galaxy’s premier assassin — rewrote the assassin’s rulebook. She breaks the very rules that she wrote. Which means there are no rules. She once remarked that one of her was enough for humanity and its allied races to cope with. She had been quite positive about it at the time. With the galaxy inching closer to war, she’s having to rethink that statement. *** How we got here: No one was ever more surprised than Mary Christmas that she has become the de-facto champion of humanity. She’s not sure she might not need to throw up. Without any intention of ever, well, of ever helping people, MC now finds herself increasingly with that self-imposed obligation. She had been bred with a genetically enhanced body. She had been forced to endure surgery after painful surgery to make her stronger, to make her faster, to make her practically indestructible. That had all been her father’s doing. He wanted to own the premier assassin in the galaxy. He may have actually succeeded. She killed him before he had the chance to realize his folly. No longer indentured to anyone, with no master, with enough wealth to do whatever she pleases, MC rewrote the rule book — at least the portion concerning the job of an assassin. Then she broke the rules. Now she’s doing her best to keep an assorted group of people she accidentally became responsible for alive. Escaping with her people, in a relatively flimsy shuttle subsequent to being caught between two large battling warships, she crashed the shuttle on a barren planet. Prior to the Big War with the Uvaloothi hundreds of years ago, the planet had been a salvage and reclamation center for old starships. MC set her crew to resurrecting a derelict starship found in a long abandoned junkyard. The ship she chose was bright purple. It looked more like a giant insect than a starship. It was a Karabreesh Mantis — the workhorse of the Uvaloothi war fleet. MC has an odd crew — a priest, a doctor, a runaway princess, an ex-diplomat, a brilliant engineer, two marines, an assassin, and two bridge officers she rescued from the junkyard planet. They all know that the unlikely ship MC came across in the junkyard is their only chance of ever leaving the planet. Without the help of the ship’s long-dormant AI, they would have never got it into space. The technology was more advanced than that of humanity. Labels, where there were any, were in an unknown language. She named her ship — the purple alien ship resurrected from a junkyard — Mantis. *** Champion? Can’t be: At this point, MC has been acquiring friends and allies for years. Without ever intending for it to happen, she now has a mismatched fleet of warships. Many throughout Human-occupied space suspect that the alien Uvaloothi will be back someday, in the distant future, to finish what they started — the total subjugation of the human race. MC knows they are coming back and that their reprise visit is imminent. Which means that the worlds of Human-occupied space need a champion, dammit! The alternative? Apocalypse…

Without any intention of ever, well, of ever helping people, Captain MC Jones now finds herself increasingly with that self-imposed obligation. She had been bred with a genetically enhanced body. She had been forced to endure surgery after painful surgery to make her stronger, to make her faster, to make her practically undefeatable. That had all been her father’s doing. He wanted to own the premier assassin in the galaxy. He may have actually succeeded. She killed him before he had a chance to realize his folly. No longer indentured to anyone, with no master, with enough wealth to do whatever she pleases, MC rewrote the rule book — at least the portion concerning the job of an assassin. Then she moved on to breaking the rules. Now she’s doing her best to keep an assorted group of people she accidentally became responsible for alive. Escaping with her people in a relatively flimsy shuttle subsequent to being caught between two battling warships, she was forced to make a crash landing on a barren planet. Prior to the Big War with Uvaloothi hundreds of years ago, the planet had been a salvage and reclamation center for old starships. MC set her crew to resurrecting a derelict starship found in a long-abandoned junkyard. The ship she chose was bright purple. It looked more like a giant insect than a starship. It was a Karabreesh Mantis — the workhorse of the Uvaloothi war fleet. And it was largely intact. MC has an odd crew — a priest, a doctor, a runaway princess, an ex-diplomat, a brilliant engineer, two marines, an assassin, and two bridge officers she rescued from the junkyard planet. They all know that the unlikely ship MC came across in the junkyard is their only chance of ever leaving the planet. Without the help of the ship’s long-dormant AI, they would have never got it into space. The technology was more advanced than that of humanity. Labels, where there were any, were in an unknown language. She named her ship — the purple alien ship resurrected from a junkyard — Mantis. Now she's ready to take on the galaxy.

In the prior episode, Lexi Stevens and the Aeolus team saved Earth as well as the Accord from the Kreesh swarm. Next on her crisis management list is dealing with the Unity pirates we first learned of in Gambler. In will be years before the Aeolus fleet can be rebuilt to the level necessary to confront Unity. She’s got people for that. She and her husband, Ron Samue, take a long-needed vacation, exploring beyond the fringes of Accord space. It’s just the two of them and their sentient starship, Urania. Urania is very considerate when it comes to giving the newlyweds alone time. Things are just peachy until they approach the Forerunner-seeded world of Satt. While on approach, a weapon of unknown design lashes out, cutting Urania into two pieces, both of which crash to the surface. Lexi survived the crash. Now she has to reunite with Ron and figure out how and why a primitive planet has a planetary defense weapon capable of destroying shielded starships. In the process, they encounter the Xan’katka’ublan, another race of stranded aliens, an alien plant trying to overgrow the entire planet, and a two hundred fifty thousand year old being who believes he is a god. With Lexi captured by the primitive humans on Satt, Ron missing and possibly dead, Urania’s fate unknown, what can Lexi do? Stupid question. She takes charge, of course.

The Aeolus Investigations team has suspected since almost the beginning that they were being prepared by somebody for something. This may be it.

“I think this might be my best work yet,” — Robert E Colfax, Author. Three years and seventeen novels after my debut series Aeolus Investigations, I’m ready to present a new saga, Mantis. Aeolus was a fun series to write, detailing the adventures of the protagonist, Lexi Stevens as she struggled to understand her place in the interstellar civilization called the Accord. Without her, the Accord would have been wiped out several times over. My second science fiction series I called Beyond the Divide. Trisha and Gordon meet under unlikely circumstances. Then they join forces to defend the star nations of Known-space from the inimical aliens from beyond the divide. I’ll leave it to the imagination of the student to derive where the series title came from. By anybody’s definition, MC Jones — the main character in Mantis — is a special woman. After dealing with her father, she sets herself on a mission of ending the lives of evil beings, be they men, women, or aliens. Her self-assigned purpose in life encounters an encumbrance when she comes into contact with people she actually likes. Her father made a huge mistake when he designed and trained her as a cybernetically enhanced assassin. He died before he learned the full folly of letting a pissed-off assassin loose on the galaxy. In MC’s own words: My father wasn’t pure evil. Yes, he was greedy. And he was definitely cruel. I would go so far as to say he was evil. But pure evil was a level he hadn’t yet attained. I know. I’ve seen it more than once. My name is Mary Christmas Jones and I’m a cybernetically enhanced assassin. I have many last names, none the one I was born with. I disowned that name, and my father, the day he made me kill Celeste, the poor girl I loved more than life itself. I left his employ that same night, leaving behind a small nuclear device as a parting gift. I doubt he had time to enjoy it. Honestly, blowing him up was expedient but it was also letting him off too easily. Celeste had left me a parting gift as well. His account numbers. I was just educated enough to use them without getting caught. There are plenty of other greedy, cruel, evil beings in Human-occupied space. Yes, space is large enough than no one person, even a cybernetic assassin, could make a dent, but I needed a hobby. No more nukes, though. I am more surgical now. I’m sure I took out any number of people with that nuke, people who didn’t really deserve to be vaporized. Sometimes I feel bad about that. Assigning them guilt by association doesn’t really cut it. Now, I just need to buy — or steal — a ship and recruit a crew.

Believe it or not, only fifteen months have elapsed since the formation of Aeolus Investigations. In the first episode of the series, Stowaway, Lexi and the team uncovered a mystical artifact stolen from the Ackalonian’s almost twenty-five years earlier. Episode two, Avenger, sends the team chasing after kidnappers. Their successful conclusion of that second mission leaves several of the Accord worlds in their debt. In episode three, Paladin, they manage to rescue a previously unknown civilization from possible collapse. Too Cool to Lose: The Continuing Evolution of Lexi Stevens A lighthearted space adventure, with overtones of seriousness. Take this opportunity to join Lexi, Ron, Geena, and Urania — the Aeolus Investigations team — in their continuing adventures. Gambler (episode five), is the first episode in the To Cool To Lose collection. Gambler picks up only days after the end of Paladin, with the team joining their friend Jis Boc Seckan on Ackalon for her coronation as Plicora of the planet. They barely made it in time to witness the event. Due to the length of Gladiator, the fifth episode in the series and the second in this set, there are only the two episodes included. Gladiator, when initially plotted out, was intended as three separate novels. It didn’t work that way. I think it turned out alright. I hope you agree. Taken together, these two episodes, more so than any since Stowaway, determine the course of Lexi’s life. You’ll also find Geena’s Story — a short story that relates how Geena meets the man who would one day be Ron’s father.

An enormous alien ship coasts into Accord space broadcasting a distress signal. Lexi Stevens, Marshall of the Accord, along with her life-mate, Ron Samue, take their sentient starship Urania to investigate. The distress signal is legitimate. Let’s ignore the fact that it’s been blaring for centuries. The crew and passengers on the ship are, looked at in a certain way, all liars and cheats. Before Lexi realizes she made a horrible mistake giving them the benefit of the doubt she finds herself in the most remarkable situation. And, she has no clue anything is wrong…

Allie Stevens, Lexi Stevens sister, just celebrated her sixteenth birthday. When you’re a genetically enhance sister of the Marshal of the Accord, one who came into the world with the telepathic and empathic abilities of the adults in Lexi’s circle of friends, you grow up fast. Lexi considers her sister to be as much of an adult as she is, just with a perkier outlook on life. Over the last year, Allie developed a fascination with Mesoamerican cultures. As a birthday present, Lexi buys them both positions on an archaeological dig in Peru. It was supposed to be a vacation. A different and fun thing for the sisters to do while spending time with each other. Then someone blew up the cave they were exploring changing their vacation into a full-scale job for Aeolus Investigations. Now Allie needed to learn what it meant to be the Marshal of the Accord. Allie rocks!

Mary Christmas Jones, genetically-enhanced assassin and captain of the Uvaloothi warship, Mantis, recently received disturbing news. She's been trying to overcome her upbringing by surrounding herself with good people and by leading those good people on missions that more than one of her close associates have called "noble." Maybe... She had dropped a nuke on the last person who had pissed her off to the degree she is now. It would be a stretch of the imagination to call this mission noble. No, this time, she's out for retribution.