Ascent to Empire
2 primary works
Book 1
Six Billion Dead—And One Man Intent on Putting a Stop to the Killing
For more than fifty years, the Terran Federation and the Terran League have been killing one another. The death toll has climbed ever higher, year after year, with no end in sight. But the members of the Five Hundred, the social elite of the Republic's Heart Worlds, don't care.
Their star systems are light-years from any threat of attack. Their children are sheltered from the “mandatory service” that falls so heavily on the Fringe Worlds' backs. Their trade connections with the Rishathan Sphere bring them wealth and influence. And their contracts to build ships, fighters, missiles, and all the other sinews of war have made them the wealthiest human beings in the history of the galaxy.
Rear Admiral Terrence Murphy is a Heart Worlder. His family is part of the Five Hundred. His wife is the daughter of one of the Five Hundred's wealthiest, most powerful industrialists. His sons and his daughter can easily avoid military service, and political power is his for the taking. There is no end to how high he can rise in the Republic's power structure.
All he has to do is successfully complete a risk-free military "governorship" in the backwater Fringe System of New Dublin without rocking the boat. Without dredging up any lunatic Fringe conspiracy theories. Without undercutting the Five Hundred's stranglehold on wealth and power.
But the people sending him to New Dublin have miscalculated, because Terrence Murphy is a man who believes in honor. Who believes in duty—in common decency and responsibility. Who believes there are dark and dangerous secrets behind the façade of what "everyone knows."
Terrence Murphy intends to meet those responsibilities and unearth those secrets, and he doesn't much care what the Five Hundred want.
He intends to put a stop to the killing.
Wherever that takes him, he will go. Whatever that costs him, he will pay. And whatever that requires, he will do.
Terrence Murphy is coming for whoever has orchestrated fifty-six years of bloodshed and slaughter, and Hell itself is coming with him.
A new novel in the world of In Fury Born, one of David Weber's most celebrated novels.
Book 2
The Five Hundred, the elite families who rule the Terran Federation, control its political power and its wealth, and they've grown steadily wealthier and more powerful, thanks to the war against the Terran League. War may be hard on the people who get caught in its path, but it's very good for business, and the Five Hundred own the shipyards that build the Navy's ships. They own virtually all the industry that produces the weapons and matériel the war consumes so voraciously . . . and they've made damn sure someone else does the dying.
True, there are a few flies in the Five Hundred's ointment.
There's the growing hatred and resentment of the Fringe Worlds, whose children do eighty percent of the dying in the Five Hundred's war. But the Five Hundred have made sure the Fringe knows what will happen to any system that goes "out of compliance."
There are the lunatic conspiracy nuts who insist that the alien Rishathan Sphere is secretly aiding the League's military, but the Five Hundred have forced them to keep their mouths shut where it matters.
And then there's Terrence Murphy, a man of honor who loves the Federation, who springs from the Five Hundred, yet knows it for what it is and is determined to speak for its victims. But the five hundred have dispatched ample force to deal with him and his handful of lunatic followers.
Unfortunately, the Fringe has paid enough of its children's lives, and it no longer cares what may happen if it dares to defy the Five Hundred.
Worse, the lunatic conspiracy nuts were right, and the Rish have planned carefully for the Federation’s destruction.
And, worst of all, the Five Hundred have fatally underestimated Terrence Murphy.