Starbird - Robert James Schultz

Gunnar Conrad and Audra Atlanta have made a wonderful life together as husband and wife serving with the Kalamar Flight Ministry.  But Gunnar’s high risk profession as the Ministry’s top fighter ace has long troubled Audra.   Her hopes of getting Gunnar out of the cockpit are finally realized when Gunnar’s life-long friend and wingman, Rick Niker, recommends him for a command chair of one of Kalamar’s new Assault Corsairs, the Starbird.

Tough, compact and powerful, the Starbird is a radical new breakthrough in Corsair design.  But even new technology has its limits.  On one of their first mission assignments, Gunnar and Rick are dispatched to rescue several Kalamarion freighters caught in the expansive gravitational fields of a class four Black Hole, the Oneida Cauldron.  Caught in the same gravitational fields, they find themselves in a no win scenario where only theoretical Worm Hole travel can help them escape.  Somehow, a miscalculation sends their two ships across time and space to another galaxy where they are thrown into the middle of a conflict as unforgiving as the one they came from.

Enduring personal tragedy, Gunnar and Rick find new friends in unlikely places as they are relentlessly pursued by the warring factions of Hadrian for the vastly advanced technology that is, the Starbird.