The Starfighters of Scattered Stars and Castle Federation

What do the worlds of the Castle Federation and Scattered Stars have in common? Starfighters and exciting ship combat!

While both series have ship combat and fully-realized universes with exciting tales, Glynn’s two fighter-jets-in-space series have a few key differences, mainly when it comes to the ships themselves.

Falcon Starfighter – 7th Generation

“He’d spent his trip babying six entire squadrons – forty-eight ships – of brand new, barely out of prototype, Falcon-type starfighters. The new ships strapped mass manipulators and engines rated for five hundred gravities to four three-shot launchers firing short-range missiles with gigaton antimatter warheads and a positron lance rated for fifty kilotons per second.”

The Falcon starfighter is the ship that Kyle Roberts flies at the beginning of Castle Federation. These are quite large ships, with amenities for longer flights and with a crew of three. Fighter pilots connect directly to the ships through a neural interface – an interface that only a select few can handle. 

“For the first time in months, Michelle took her seat at the center of the small cockpit of a starfighter. Behind her, Deveraux sat on her right and Garnet was on her left. All three of the seats were recliners, easily set to whatever was most comfortable – once jacked into the neural interface, you weren’t very aware of your body. While the starfighter had a small bunkroom and kitchenette for long flights, combat could require as many as five or six hours jacked in – and completely unmoving.”

Falcon Starfighter Stats:

• Matter-antimatter reaction thrusters
• Smooth hull, 30m long
• Three person crew
• Single main gun and 4 missile launchers

Hoplite IV – Scattered Stars

The Hoplite-IV was a deadly-looking wedge of metal with edges that were only smooth at close range. It averaged three meters thick across its length, tapering from an only barely flattened tip to a ten-meter-wide base fifteen meters back.

The access hatch to the fighter itself was covered by the storage matrix, but Kira still laid her hands on the familiar white metal.

In contrast to the Falcon, the nova fighters in the world of Scattered Stars are much smaller and not designed for long haul flights. They utilize FTL nova jumps for dynamic and exciting ship combat, but require a carrier for longer distances. In that way, they are more akin to modern fighter jets – but in space.

• Reactionless engine
• Multiple hatches on exterior, 15m long
• Single torpedo mountings, guns along the wing
• Single pilot

Fans of either series would find much to enjoy in the other. Castle Federation is a complete six-book arc with a new arc, the Dakotan Confederacy, launched with Admiral’s Oath in January of 2022. 

Scattered Stars: Conviction follows the adventures of Kira Demirici and her exiled crew of nova pilots who carve out their niche in the far reaches of the known human universe. The series starts with Conviction and concludes with book 6, Prodigal.

Castle Federation’s original six-book series follows Kyle Roberts, the Stellar Fox. Kyle Roberts didn’t expect that a job on the decommissioned Avalon would result in both the end of peacetime and his career as a starfighter. Now he has a new position in the Navy, impossible expectations to live up to, and finds himself on the losing side of a war. 

The new series, the Dakotan Confederacy, picks up with Admiral James Tecumseh – a man on the other side of the line from Kyle Roberts, but with as much honor as his enemy.