The Outback Stars Series by Sandra McDonald

Lieutenant Jodenny Scott is a hero.  She has the medals and the scars to prove it.   She's cooling her heels on Kookaburra, recovering from injuries sustained during the fiery loss of her last ship, the Yangtze, and she's bored -- so bored, in fact, that she takes a berth on the next ship out.  That's a mistake.  The Aral Sea isn't anyone's idea of a get-well tour.   Jodenny's handed a division full of misfits, incompetents, and criminals.  She's a squared-away officer... moreLieutenant Jodenny Scott is a hero.  She has the medals and the scars to prove it.   She's cooling her heels on Kookaburra, recovering from injuries sustained during the fiery loss of her last ship, the Yangtze, and she's bored -- so bored, in fact, that she takes a berth on the next ship out.  That's a mistake.  The Aral Sea isn't anyone's idea of a get-well tour.   Jodenny's handed a division full of misfits, incompetents, and criminals.  She's a squared-away officer.  She thinks she can handle it all.  She's wrong.   Aral Sea isn't a happy ship.  And it's about to get a lot unhappier.   As Aral Sea enters the Alcheringa -- the alien-constructed space warp that allows giant settler-ships to travel between worlds, away from all help or hope -- Jodenny comes face to face something powerful enough to dwarf even the unknown force that destroyed her last ship and left her with missing memories and bloody nightmares.  Lieutenant Jodenny Scott is about to be introduced to love.   Author Sandra McDonald brings her personal knowledge of the military, and of the subtle interplay between men and women on deployment, to a stirring tale that mixes ancient Australian folklore with the colonization of the stars. less

Chief Terry Myell and Lieutenant Commander Jodenny Scott are in that most precarious of military situations, a mixed marriage. Enlisted and officer. It’s unnatural.   Terry and Jodenny have been assigned to duty on the planet Fortune, away from the huge ships that carry colonists from the wreckage of polluted Earth to clean new worlds across the galaxy.   But there’s another way besides spaceships to travel from world to world... moreChief Terry Myell and Lieutenant Commander Jodenny Scott are in that most precarious of military situations, a mixed marriage. Enlisted and officer. It’s unnatural.   Terry and Jodenny have been assigned to duty on the planet Fortune, away from the huge ships that carry colonists from the wreckage of polluted Earth to clean new worlds across the galaxy.   But there’s another way besides spaceships to travel from world to world. A group within Team Space is exploring the Wondjina Spheres, a set of ancient alien artifacts that link places and times. Now those spheres have shut down and Team Space thinks that Terry and Jodenny are part of the key to make them work again —no matter how the two of them feel about it. They can volunteer, or be “volunteered.”   What the researchers can’t anticipate is that the status quo, in which Team Space holds the monopoly on travel between worlds, is about to change. And as a result, Terry and Jodenny will be tested to their limits and beyond…. less

Chief Terry Myell died and became a god. Now he’s back to life, careening around space and time at the behest of a voice that told him to save all of mankind. Helping and hindering this quest are his elderly wife, his young wife, grandchildren who haven’t been born yet, romantic rivals he hasn’t even met, a descendant from two thousand years in the future, and an alien nemesis who calls itself the Flying Doctor. Life in the military has never been so complicated... moreChief Terry Myell died and became a god. Now he’s back to life, careening around space and time at the behest of a voice that told him to save all of mankind. Helping and hindering this quest are his elderly wife, his young wife, grandchildren who haven’t been born yet, romantic rivals he hasn’t even met, a descendant from two thousand years in the future, and an alien nemesis who calls itself the Flying Doctor. Life in the military has never been so complicated. Commander Jodenny Scott would agree. She’s seven months pregnant and trying to come to peace with her husband’s death. When Myell reappears with tales of time travel, she’s not sure what to believe. But with an invading army bearing down on Earth’s last fleet of spaceships, there’s not much time for debate. When the dust clears Jodenny is stranded in an Australia she never imagined, and Myell’s more desperate than ever to rescue her—from aliens, from treachery, and from history itself. less