C.J. Cherryh

Two asteroid miners find a dead, drifting ship-but its pilot, Paul Dekker, is alive, insane from shock, and screaming...screaming clues to a mystery that no one wants solved...
What is MAMA hiding?
Paul Dekker, a kid with a dream, wakes to a nightmare. His ship is stolen, his future destroyed, his beautiful partner missing, his memory gone. The ASTEX mining monopoly, MAMA, accuses him of being negligent, crazy, and foolish, as well as a cold-blooded murderer. And only a renegade miner, Morris Bird, will help Paul learn the truth.
Because somewhere in Dekker's mind lies a dark secret that can change the fate of worlds.
Ben Pollard thinks he's traded the perils of the Belt for security on Earth-until he's shanghaied to the orbital Sol II battle station. There he's forced to help a man Ben never wanted to see again, jinxed pilot Paul Dekker.
Now Dekker's the center of a lethal mystery, while military, political, and corporate rivals on two worlds conspire to use him and Pollard as lab animals in a war for humanity's soul. And to save themselves, Pollard and Dekker must master and wield the awesome power of Earth's most secret weapon...
Pell's Star occupied the central spot in the coming conflict between Earth's tired stellar empire and the thought onslaught of its rebellious colonies. Whoever controlled Pell's Downbelow station held the key to Earth's defensive perimeter - or the jumping off point for a Terrestrial offensive to regain the lost empire.
But Pell had always beem neutral and was determined to remain so.
This is a powerful, complex and enthralling novel of intersellar conflict and ambitions. In its pages you will meet and strive with the many vivid persons, humand and non-human, whose futures would hang on the outcome of that titanic struggle
His name was Sandor and he was the owner and entire crew of a tramp star-freighter that flew the Union planets under false papers and fake names.
Her name was Allison and she was a proud but junior member of the powerful family whose mighty starship, Dublin Again, was the true queen of the spaceways.
They met at Viking Station, she seeking a night's dalliance, he desperately in search of a spacer assistant.
Their fateful meeting was to lead to a record-breaking race to Downbelow Station, thereby catching the calculating eye of the grim commander of the Alliance battlecraft, Norway, and a terrifying showdown at a deadly destination off the cosmic charts.
The great powers are at peace - but private conflicts are eternal: witness the blood feud between the merchanter ships Sprite - crewed by the several hundred-member Hawkins familiy - and Corinthian, a ship suspected of trading with pirates and smugglers. But this rivalry isn't mercantile; it's fueled by Sprite Cargo Chief Marie Hawkins's vendetta against Corinthian Captain Austin Bowe, a burning crusade that has warped Marie's life, driving her half mad. When both ships dock at Mariner space station, Marie vanishes. Fearing that she is bent on vengeance - a vengeance that might jeopardize Sprite's trading status and future - Marie's 23-year-old sun Tom tries to find and stop her, only to be shanghaied aboard Corinthian.
Now Tom is trapped, destination unknown, on a starship speeding him away from all he has known, with no hope of rescue or return... held prisoner by a crew fanatically loyal to Tom's sworn enemy.
The man who, decades before, battered and violently raped Tom's mother.
Austin Bowe.
Tom Hawkins's father...




ARIANE EMORY IS DEAD.
BUT NOT FOR LONG.
WHERE IS ARIANE?
For fifty years, Dr. Ariane Emory has dominated politics on Cyteen Station. Because Dr. Emory controls Reseune, a city sized factory that creates the one item essential to the planet's wealth. Reseune produces people - computertrained azi servants and soldiers.
Then Ariane Emory is assassinated. Yet her rivals and victims, people like Dr. Jordan Warrick, his cloned son Justin, and Justin's azi brother Grant, are not freed by her death. For Emory's murder has turned Reseune into a vast, tyrannical experiment: an attempt to merge nature - and nurture... biotech - and cybernetics ... genetics - and psychology...heredity - and environment. Cyteen's labs can grow clones, but Ariane Emory's followers want more. Much more. They want to re-create Ariane.
ARIANE EMORY IS ALIVE.
PERHAPS.
WHO IS ARIANE?
Little Ari Emory knows her life is Unusual. She knows people around her Disappear, for no reason, and are never seen again. She knows adults like Justin Warrick fear her. She knows she is under constant surveillance and medical testing. But she doesn't know why.
Ari doesn't know that she is the key to a multi-world, century-long power struggle.
Ari desn't know that her home, Reseune, has been warped into a city -sized psychology lab. A conspiracy forcing Ari to relive all the influences that formed a woman born 125 years before. An experiment designed to shape and mold a little girl and make her grow to become a woman who died before Ari was born.
ARIANE EMORY HAS RETURNED.
BEWARE
WHAT IS ARIANE
Fifteen-year-old Ari Emory must grab and wield vast political power. She must prove her existence and identiy to a world that fears her, that thinks her a programmed living puppet - because Ariane Emory is the replicate of the dead tyrant whose name and genes she bears.
Her struggle will rip the social order of planet Cyteen and turn family into foes and enemies into allies, as the possibility of eternal resurrection fuels the lusts of rulers and the terror of the ruled.
Ari alone knows that her predecessor discoverd a "Worm" - a flaw - in the basic fabric of civilization. If not corrected, it will inevitably destroy humanity. And only Ari Emory can hope to stop the Worm, if given centuries of life and unlimited power.
But someone murdered Ariane Emory once. And stands waiting to kill her again...

"Few of the Union-Alliance novels are directly related; rather, they tend to explore different times and places in Union-Alliance history, ranging from the Solar System to Cyteen itself. The best of them is also Cherryh's best work, and one of the best science fiction novels of all time: Cyteen. One of the few novels to take place in the Union itself, it concerns a crisis of leadership at Reseune, the Union city-state responsible for the Union's birthlabs technology. Ariane Emory, the head of Reseune, and one of the most influential people in the entire Union, has been murdered. But what if her clone could be raised to replace her...perfectly? It's an old idea, but Cherryh does a truly outstanding job. This is not the earliest book on how to raise a clone so that her environment exactly matched that of her parent, so that she could replace her parent, but it's by far the best. And on top of that, Cherryh describes the complex politics of Reseune and Union over many decades. Highly recommended."

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