In a future when resource shortages, crime and corruption are crippling world economies, terrorism is becoming strangely sophisticated. When Lt Colonel John Maxwell refuses to cover up his commanding General's failure, he is put in charge of an antiterrorist operation that is clearly designed to kill or discredit him. Maxwell forms a dysfunctional relationship with Tamsyn Farish, and to everybody's surprise, they seem to have success. The question is, why? That question is answered when the Puppeteer shows them how, under his guidance, terrorists have placed three nuclear bombs behind major dams, using stolen submersibles previously used for undersea minerals exploration at Kerguelen. Maxwell must then protect Tamsyn, deal with a corrupt immediate commanding officer, and avoid being killed both by terrorists and by men sent by the General, and then persuade the Puppeteer to give him the disarming code. What neither realize is that terrorists, suspecting the Puppeteer, have invaded Kerguelen to prevent anyone from sending the disarming signal. All depends on Maxwell being able to obtain the code, and two young scientists and their guide to secure the equipment, and they do not realize what they have to do.

The invention of fusion power in 2151 permits economic recovery from decades of anarchy where law and order has been privatized and either totally corrupted, or, as happened in the Green Zone, locally enforced by an expert sniper, Lawrence Foster. David Sheldon sees this as an opportunity to acquire wealth and power by any means. Lawrence's daughter, Suzie, leaves the Green Zone and becomes part of a movement to have all the economy incorporated in a few giant corporations, and she uses a machine pistol to help her. Henry Adams had an ill-fated crush on Suzie, and when Lawrence dies, he has become a capable sniper, but he remains in the Green Zone and attempts to return it to free enterprise and proper law and order. When David and Suzie focus their attention on the Green Zone, only one can survive.

David Gill has trouble selling food to the hungry, but when, in the early summer of 2075, he arrives in Los Angeles to seal a deal with Robbie Newall, he realizes his troubles are getting very much worse, very quickly. His business associates, Moonbeam Enterprises, have registered him for the first settlement of Mars, largely to get themselves out of difficulties with a giant corporation, who will finance him. He is shot at more than once, but perhaps his biggest problem involves a mercurial Jacqui Tennant, a Space Corps pilot, who desperately wants to keep the large corporations off Mars. When on Mars, David's troubled marriage disintegrates when his wife takes up with Robbie, encounters with Jacqui become increasingly unpredictable, then David becomes aware that Robbie's objective is to create a Mars bubble through stock floats of little value on Earth. Then, when David makes a totally unexpected discovery that guarantees the settlement will be successful, he also learns that Moonbeam is floating his discovery. David must stop this fraud, but there is a problem: Newall has smuggled the only guns on Mars and men to use them. The story is full of action in unusual environments, but it also shows the anatomy of a particular type of fraud, and shows some of the signs of what to look for. An appendix outlines an alternative theory of planetary formation that explains the discovery in simple language for those interested.

While by 2100 everybody knew the Face of Cydonia was simply a battered butte, on a live TV program the battered butte morphed into the Viking image and winked. A great joke, but nobody could have done it. As a consequence of this, two unexplained heat emanations from the butte, and signals originating from the nearby star Epsilon Eridani, the issue of alien life arose. Grigori Timoshenko, Federation Commissioner for Defence and Science, is forced to form a party and settle for once and for all whether there had been alien activity around this butte. The expedition seems doomed, as there are at least three attempts to murder at least one of the party, which comprises: Fiona Bolton, an expert at sonic imaging and a well-known anti-corporate; Nathan Gill, from Theppot and who owns a registered dome near the Face; Jonathon Munro, a corporate who has been responsible for part-funding the expedition, and who wants to bypass the law and take his Corporation to Mars; and Sharon Galloway, a corporate who has developed the most advanced excavating device known. Each of these has a problem with all of the others, each has some expectation of what they will get from the expedition, and each finds exactly what they do not want to find. This is Book One of a trilogy, "First Contact".