Search Worlds Without End

Skeen is a bandit and a rogue, a master thief wanted throughout myriad solar systems for plundering the rare antiquities of countless alien civilizations while always keeping one rocket ship-length ahead of the intergalactic law. A "rooner" with a dark past, she now finds herself penniless and abandoned on a miserable backwater planet, at the tail end of a string of very bad luck, with no option except to follow unreliable rumors to a supposed fortune in gems hidden among ancient ruins. What she finds instead is a gateway into another world--and a universe of trouble.

Now, trapped in a strange new reality with no way out, Skeen must find the key to reopening the portal, and that will entail making contact with the mysterious aliens who created the interdimensional passageway. But the enigmatic Ykx vanished eons ago, and finding representatives of a highly advanced and possibly extinct extraterrestrial race is not going to be easy for the silver-tongued lone wolf outlaw. It doesn't help that Skeen's entourage keeps expanding by leaps and bounds with unwanted hangers-on whose interference could end up damning her to an eternity in nowhere.

A fugitive "rooner" wanted by law enforcers throughout the known universe, Skeen has grit, cunning, and a closet full of more skeletons than a suburban cemetery. Now, the intergalactic outlaw is stuck in a dimension that is not her own, surrounded by a small mob of new friends and followers representing the eight different races that inadvertently stumbled into Mistommerk over the centuries. Each member of the motley entourage shares the same goal: to find a way out through the elusive Stranger's Gate.

Their road to a possible exit is twisted and dangerous, with all sorts of nastiness waiting around every turn, from hired killers to bizarre ravenous beasts to the terrible shape-shifting Sea Min. Skeen is proving to be a most wily, brave, and determined, if reluctant, leader. But with a confusing plethora of portals leading to numerous strange dimensions and worlds overlapping other worlds, she may be hard pressed to find the right way back--even if she does somehow manage to survive.

After stumbling through a one-way dimensional gate constructed eons earlier by the enigmatic and nearly extinct Ykx, Skeen has finally found her way off Mistommerk. Despite numerous trials and great turmoil, Skeen is at long last free, with a ship and crew that includes her new friends, shapeshifter Timka and Ykx keyholder Lipitero.

But freedom always has a price, and Skeen must pay for her deliverance. She'll have to make her way through a treacherous galaxy to locate the planet Rallen--which may or may not actually exist--gather up any remaining Ykx she happens to find there, and bring them back to Mistommerk before the gate closes permanently.

Their journey is about to take Skeen and her crewmates through some of the nastiest corners of a particularly nasty galaxy and towards an inevitable confrontation with the war vessels of a powerful and distinctly unfriendly Empire. But the biggest threat of all is the solar system itself: Its sun is about to go supernova, which could result in a very explosive finale indeed for Skeen and her space-going misadventures.