The story of the 2164-2165 war with the Squidies from the first engagement to the final detonations.

Hardway - Intelligent life reaches out to humanity using particle beam weapons and masers. The pilots and crew of the privateer carrier Hardway are first to fight in the conflict that quickly escalates from a bloody first contact to a full-scale, interstellar war.

Kamikaze - The carrier Hardway invades Procyon to destroy an alien blockade gun meant to keep the human race confined. Hardway and her pilots meet their match in the Squidies' massive gun and the alien aces that protect it until they discover why the aliens are beating them.

Lancer - Privateer Admiral Harry Cozen needs pilots for an experimental fighter squadron, so he offers the inmates of Bailey Prison a deal. Colt is serving 5-7 and he knows the deal is too good to be true, but he still takes it. He and the rest of the C-Block nuggets learn to fly the new F-151 and prepare to sortie against alien aces on a mission he knows is far more dangerous than anyone's telling them.

Taipan - Hardway is drafted into a force group commanded by Harry Cozen's bitter rival from Staas Company. She stole his fighter program and his thousand new pilots. Now, she's determined to use them as cannon fodder. Nobody can argue with her battle record, but the officers and crew of Hardway and the Lancers of the 133rd Fighter Test Squadron may be all that can keep her pilots alive in a knife fight deep behind enemy lines.

Cozen's War - The Privateers and the UN fleet have brought the fight to the Squidies' home system. The Earth invasion fleet faces off against every ship the Squidies can muster. Harry Cozen is in command and this is his greatest gambit, but alien propaganda threatens to reveal the war's most damaging secret on the day the bloodiest battle of the conflict unfolds.