The Travels of Scout Shannon

Scout Shannon’s whole family died the day the Space Farers dropped an asteroid on their domed city. Now she lives alone, out in the wild with only her dogs for company. She prefers it that way. But Scout finds herself at a crossroads. One road leads back to a quiet life snug under the protective dome of a city. The other road leads to a life in the rebellion, a life of adventure and excitement but also danger. Dare she try to find the rebels hiding in the hills?

After spending the last four days of her life hiding out from a deadly solar particle storm in an underground bunker, trapped with six treacherous women and a trio of girl assassins, Scout Shannon just wants to find the man who conned her mentor and leave her home world for good. Alas, the long-threatened war draws nearer and Scout finds herself caught in the middle, surrounded by rebels and bandits. Worse, she carries a pocketful of dangerous secrets with no one to entrust them to.

Scout Shannon wants nothing more than to leave her home world and its petty squabbling factions behind. Galactic Central with all of its excitement and opportunities awaits her. She makes it as far as her own planet’s orbit before the snares of bureaucracy close around her, trapping her on a space station populated by her people’s oldest foe. Then her rescuer, her only friend in the galaxy, disappears, abducted by a group of strangers the moment he steps off his ship.

Scout Shannon waits for rescue from Galactic Central. Hunted by two sets of enemies, surrounded by an impenetrable barrier maintained by an almost alien class of humans, time runs short. Caught between two factions of a powerful trade dynasty, Scout fights to remain free and to protect her friends. But the people trying to make her their pawn barely seem human to her eyes. Fight them? She can barely understand them. With friends on both sides of the planetary blockade, Scout just needs to find a way to get her friends stuck on the inside to those waiting for them on the outside.

Having escaped yet another closing trap, Scout Shannon finds herself on a snowbound mountaintop far from civilization. With assassins eager to kill her, laying low on an alien world is the smartest play. But wherever Scout goes, trouble follows. And a hamlet in the mountains gets far more remote when girl assassins destroy the only means back to civilization.

Galactic Central, a collection of floating cities in a vast, manmade, planetless cloud. Scout Shannon longed to see it since she first heard of it. This place long represented her shining future. But in her less shiny present, she reaches it by smuggling herself aboard a cargo ship and hides in the lower sewer-like levels of the most opulent of the floating cities. Teams of girl assassins still hunt her. Worse, her friends are in danger and don’t even know.