The Janitor of the Starbound Circus
A Postwar Space Opera

About this book:

The war ended five years ago. Jonas Vance buried his uniform, his rank, and his name in the recycling chute of a broken battlecruiser, then took a job sweeping blue cedar sawdust off the gravity rings of the *Starbound Circus*—a patchwork carnival ship limping between the fringe worlds. He's good at being invisible. The bad knee, the radiation burns, the gravel voice from a busted vocal cord: they're perfect cover for a man who once built the defense grids that held the line at Tauri-Prime.

Then his broom strikes a warm cylinder of Aegis-grade stealth alloy hidden in the sawdust. A targeting transponder, still pulsing. Someone is painting the circus—and the station it's docked to—for a strike fleet waiting in the dark. The Regional Authority sends a hunter wearing an inspector's badge. The calliope screams with intercepted military code. And the girl who flies the high wire without a net starts asking questions Jonas can't afford to answer.

Jonas could smash the device and jump ship before the trap closes. But the *Starbound Circus* carries a menagerie of refugees, veterans, and misfits who have nowhere else to go—and the transponder's signal is tied to a unit that was officially disbanded the day he threw away his dog tags. To protect them, he'll have to become the weapon he swore he'd never be again. The show must go on. The war never ended. It just moved to the center ring.