Swords and Saddles is a must-listen collection of three novellas from New York Times bestselling writer Jack Campbell.

The Rift: Answering a distress call from a colonized planet, a combat team finds themselves ambushed. They have the ability to scrabble their method to a remote research facility in the countryside, signing up for a group of schoolchildren that have holed up with the researchers-three groups united in dread that their lives will last only so long as they can avoid discovery with the aliens that have about Swords and Saddles arrive to their planet.

Swords and Saddles: When lightning attacks Captain Ulysses Benton and his U.S. Cavalry Fifth Regiment, they recover to discover an ancient framework in the desert that they’ve hardly ever seen before-and writing in a vocabulary none of these recognize. It shortly becomes clear that wherever it really is they are, it isn’t 1870s Kansas.

Failure to Obey: When Lieutenant Jen Shen saves the day after a terrorist attack on a space place, she gets a medal, but Ivan Sharpe, a fellow officer and Paul’s past master-at-arms, gets a courtroom martial. Within a traditional court martial scene that rivals the best in American books, Paul must function behind the scenes to save Ivan’s military profession.