NEVER MAKE A DEAL YOU CAN'T FINAGLE.
Jon Ryan is sitting at a bar in the least respectable drinking establishment in the galaxy, nursing something that might be whiskey and thinking very carefully. He’s been known to make deals. The question is always whether he can get out of them on his terms. The Adamant Emperor — vain, distracted, and surrounded by incompetent subordinates — is about to have his overconfidence weaponized against him. Jon is the weapon. Fires of Hell is Book 4 of Craig Robertson’s Galaxy on Fire series — politics, negotiation, and the careful art of making promises to people who can kill you.
Jon Ryan is the kind of man who can negotiate with people who want him dead. He considers this a life skill.
The rebellion has grown large enough that Jon can no longer fight it with a laser and an attitude alone. Now he has to be strategic. He has to be political. He has to make deals with species who distrust him, with factions who aren’t sure he’s worth betting on, and — most dangerously — with the Adamant themselves, who have never made a deal they didn’t intend to break.
In Peg’s Bar Nobody, the most reliably terrible drinking establishment in the known galaxy, Jon takes stock. He has Stingray, the ship that’s become his home. He has the Deavoriath. He has allies scattered across the sectors. What he needs is leverage — and the best way to get leverage on an empire is to convince them they have the advantage.
The Adamant Emperor Bestiormax-Jacktus-Swillyforth-Anp is pleasure-obsessed, arrogant, and dangerously surrounded by subordinates who tell him only what he wants to hear. Jon understands incompetent leadership. He’s going to use it.
Fires of Hell is Book 4 of the Galaxy on Fire series. Jon is dealing. The fire is strategic now. And the Adamant are about to learn what happens when they negotiate with someone who always has a finagle ready.
