Book excerpt: Captain Anderson Grant of the corporate starship Nexus boldly explores alien worlds (and occasionally the alien women, too). Grant and his crew struggle with the company’s version of manifest destiny, as well as its attempt to coerce them into military force. They begin to question whether the largest threat to their mission and their safety will come from outside the Nexus or from the company that respects them more for their genetic possibilities than their individuality. (Keywords: Science Fiction Series, Space Opera, Space Aliens, Space Merchants, Military Scifi, Science Fiction Trilogies, Space Fiction, Space Marine, Science Fiction Romance.)