On My Way to Paradise
Dave Wolverton
 Osic is a morphogenic pharmacologist who tended in a booth in a feria in Gatun city, Panama. He is approached by a stranger, the woman Tamara Marian de la Garza, who requires him to regrow her right hand. The bloody stump on the end of her arm, signifying a traumatic amputation. It transpires that she is on the run from powerful political forces, the assassins of which attempt to kill her and Osic. He flees from the Earth with Tamara who is in an incapacitated state. On board the orbital shuttle, he attempts to get employment with a Japanese company, Motoki Corporation, as a Pharmacologist, but his application is rejected. Instead he is offered to fight as a mercenary for Motoki, who are attempting to gain control of the planet Baker, a satellite of the Delta Pavonis system. The story describes Osic's reaction to the intense battle training that takes place on board the starship Chaeron and his interaction with the mostly South American refugiados, and chimeras, genetically upgraded humans, who are also escaping their uncertain future on Earth. Their arrival on Baker highlights the vast cultural differences between the mercenary's and their Japanese employers, who have trained them to fight a rival Japanese company of settlers, the Yabajin. These differences culminate in rebellion, with the mercenaries (now self described as Conquistadors) seizing the Motoki city, after a bloody battle and then setting out to attack the Yabajin settlement which lay 3000 kilometers away. across forbidding deserts, encountering the wildlife of Baker.