Peace Dividend: Abner Fortis, ISMC, Book 9 (Unabridged‪)‬

After the President declared the Maduro Sector off-limits, a peace craze swept the United Nations of Terra, and the government enacted the Budget Realignment Act to reap the dividends of the peace by shifting funds from the defense budget to public services. Thousands of Space Marines and Fleet personnel were summarily dismissed from the service, and their ships and weapons were mothballed.

But when the Kuiper Knights, a fundamentalist cult that existed on the fringes of known space, started recruiting the former military members, also known as “divvies,” and transporting them to the Free Sector—an area in space denied to the UNT—the remaining military commands began to get concerned about what their motives might be.

And, as political tensions on Terra Earth rise, a ship full of weapons disappears, threatening the peace in the Free Sector and on Terra Earth. With few active-duty personnel remaining, Abner Fortis and Petr Ystremski are dispatched to deal with the crisis and prevent full-scale hostilities… but will they get there in time to prevent all-out war and the employment of a super weapon nicknamed, “The Planet Killer?”