
Andrej Koscuisko is a former Fleet Medical Officer for the enormous totalitarian star empire the Jurisdiction But when he served in the Fleet Andrej’s real job was not medicine at least not primarily medicine but to act as a torturer of prisoners whether they had information to give or not To help him in his duties Andrej was attended by “bond involuntaries”—slaves—men he’d come to look upon as friends & family Finally enough was enough Andrej absconded with six of his Fleet-provided security slaves & sent them into the no-man’s land of Gonebeyond Space—beyond the reach of the Jurisdiction’s tyrannical Bench Now The Angel of Death a savage terrorist organization from Andrej’s system of origin means to make Gonebeyond its own But its ancestral enemy – the secret service of the Dolgorukij church the Malcontent – has planted a double agent on the inside of the Angel of Death Finally this interstellar menace might be destroyed forever But there is trouble Andrej Koscuisko wasn’t expected to escape from protective custody at Safehaven Medical Center & come looking for his freed bond involuntaries & now the Malcontent faces Andrej’s unplanned intervention at the worst possible time Now the only way to save the mission & bring down an organization that has slain whole systems of men women & children is for Andrej to embrace the savagery in his own heart & once again take on the role of Judicial torturer—a role that he had fought long & hard to escape He must deploy every dirty trick & brutal stratagem he knows against the Malcontent agent whose secret he has unwittingly betrayed Meet the Author Susan R Matthews was raised in a military family & spent her younger years living around the globe in a myriad of places including Germany both coasts of the US & India Often cut off from television & other media she read voraciously Her first encounters with science fiction came via classics such as I Robot & Stranger in a Strange Land Matthews& debut novel An Exchange of Hostages the first entry in her critically acclaimed Under Jurisdiction series was nominated for the Philip K Dick Award Matthews was also a finalist for the John W Campbell award for best new writer There are now seven novels in the Under Jurisdiction series The first six are collected in two omnibus editions Fleet Inquisitor & Fleet Renegade The newest entry in the series is Blood Enemies published by Baen Books Matthews lives in Seattle with her wife Maggie & two delightful dogs She is a veteran of the US Army where she served as operations & security officer of a combat support hospital She is also an avid HAM radio operator