Ahira's Hangar

The Hooded Swan is probably the most impressive space craft ever built in her galaxy. She is built like a massive bird, can maneuver at twenty times the speed of light, and can cruise at fifty times the speed of light. She is beautiful, and when attached to a pilot's neurological implants, she reacts as the pilot's body, and the pilot can see through her sensors like eyes, and can feel her skin as the pilot's own. She is an amazing marriage of human and alien technology, designed by the world of New Alexandria, library and research center for the galaxy.

In The Halcyon Drift we get to meet the Swan's pilot. When we first meet the human Grainger, he is a legendary pilot who has been stranded on a God-forsaken planet at the edge of known space, where he has picked up a mental parasite. He is an extreme smartass, and a loner (other than the permanent guest in his head). He is eventually picked up by another ship, but they get a court judgement against him for the costs of his rescue. He has to become an indentured servant of sorts to pay off the huge debt, and so becomes pilot to the Hooded Swan. he and the ship and crew are sent on a treasure hunt in one of the most dangerous areas of space.

In Rhapsody in Black Grainger and the Swan and her crew are sent to a dark mining world inhabited solely by religious fanatics. They are supposed to find out what has so many wild rumors of a treasure of some sort being found there. Grainger faces great dangers in the tunnels of the ronically named planet Rhapsody.

In Promised Land, Grainger and the Hooded Swan travel to a world called Chao Phrya to track down a little alien girl who has been kidnapped. Neither the world, the aliens, nor the kidnapping are what they appear to be.

In The Paradise Game, the Hooded Swan and her crew travel to a world called Pharos. It genuinely seems to be a Garden of Eden, a world where there is no violence and where carnivores never developed - until people suddenly start to die. Paradise, but at what cost?

There are two additional books, called The Fenris Device and Swan Songs which I have not had time to read yet.

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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
<i>Edited by: Duchess of Malfi at: 7/13/06 10:28 pm
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I have been cruising along with the last two books.

In The Fenris Device, Grainger and the Hooded Swan are forced to travel to a hell world in search of a ship with an extremely powerful weapon that was hidden there by an alien race.

In Swan Songs, Grainger has finally earned his freedom from the indentured servitude. But fate pushes Grainger back to the Hooded Swan for one last very dangerous mission - a rescue operation in another universe! ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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