Hard Contact

Rick and his crew live on the edge of Earth Corps space, where the law is what you make it and the taxman doth fear to tread. While a war rages, he salvages its wreckage, profiteering from the misery of others. Despite his plan to sit it out from the sidelines and fill his pockets, Rick is drawn into a galactic conflict. When an alien armada is set to crash down upon Sol, he has to choose between cold hard cash or his conscience.

This boxed set contains 3 complete science-fiction novels. This is science-fiction at its best - future engineering, intrigue, first contact. It’s a space opera like none you’ve experienced before. The audiobooks will keep you listening late into the night, and you won't be able to stop....

Valentinian and Dave have escaped the Dominion’s Internal Security Bureau. Now they’re fleeing for their lives, heading for systems outside of Dominion control, looking for a place where they can rebuild their lives. Figure out what comes next. Who they want to be, or to become. Hard Bargain - the second novel in the series, Shadow of the Dominion - takes you even further into Wildspace, human variants, and maybe even a crooked card game or two.

A troubled young woman is recruited by a race of ancient alien explorers to be their emissary to save the human race from extinction. The problem is that not everyone believes the world is doomed, and not everyone trusts the aliens' motives. Holly Burton will have to overcome opposition from world leaders, attacks by religious zealots, assassination attempts, intractable bureaucracies, and her own fears and doubts if she is to save the human race, not just from the coming apocalypse, but from itself.

Attention all you Salvage-5 and Colonel Tucker Petersen fans!! Hold on to your seat. The swashbuckling, cigar chomping, whiskey drinking, no-nonsense hero is back. Tucker goes on a personal quest to rescue Captain Cassandra Phillips. It’s been a long six months for the Colonel, but now the time has come for him to steal the SSV-5 and embark on their most dangerous mission yet: Return to asteroid 52 Europa.

Jack Kildare and the survivors of the Spirit of Destiny are stranded on Europa, while an alien planet-killer sets its deadly sights on Earth. But Jack's not done fighting. Not yet. Abandoned by mission control, the astronauts embark on a life-or-death pursuit of the alien behemoth that now has Earth in its crosshairs. The 400-million-mile running battle will test Jack and his ship to their limits. Yet the greatest danger lurks closer to hand, on board the Spirit of Destiny itself. Which ship will win the race?

Colonel Tucker Peterson returns to the Kuiper Belt. Their mission: Repair the jump ring at asteroid 253 Mathilde and correct the asteroid's orbit. Along the way, they discover the CSMO is missing from its position. Now, they must find the dredge and its destination before they run out of fuel.

Orson Scott Card, Kevin J. Anderson, and Larry Niven have seen the future. Now you can, too. A constellation of the brightest lights in the science fiction and fantasy firmament have judged these authors to be the best, the brightest, the truest emerging stars in the field.

Jo has no idea what she's getting into as she picks up a hitchhiker on a dark country road. Turns out he's an alien, and he and his friend need help to find a crashed spaceship to escape this planet before a terrible fate catches up with them. When one of the aliens goes into a breeding rut, Jo must decide how far she's willing to go to help her new friends.

Penumbra, a haphazard city of outcasts, rebels, and malcontents, has floated around a dead planet in a backwater system for longer than living memory can recall. Its towers abandoned starships melded to an ancient, mysterious core, Penumbra is the last remnant of chaotic individualism in a galaxy where conformity to the will of the all-powerful Galactic Council is paramount.

As I recall, it all started with a mystical dream. I awoke from that dream only to find that we had a mission the Five Moons could not handle. Can you even believe that? The Five Moons. So it was that my father brought me over the quantum portal to a secret - a whole new ship - the Green Jinn. Everything about the Green Jinn was an illusion, and nobody even knew that she existed. Admiral Dallas Blake made me captain of the Green Jinn. I am Chon ko Gonin.

Before the time of man, according to the ancient legends, the gods walked the earth. The Egyptians had a name for this time. They called it "Zep Tepi" - the first time. That time is where this story began. Five Moons: Zep Tepi picks up the story 10,000 years later.... It all started with an emergency call from a world at the farthest edges of explored space. “You are our only hope,” they tell Dallas Blake and the crew of the Five Moons. A deadly virus will kill them all if the Five Moons doesn’t get the vaccine to them right away.

In our darkest hour, Dallas Blake first stepped foot upon the decks of the Five Moons and changed everything. He didn’t know that evil men had conspired to destroy the ship and its crew when he bought a ship that was never meant for sale. Dallas found the crew they thought was lost and gone forever. He saved the Five Moons.

Five Moons: Convolute drops you right into the middle of the action as the Syndicate's last mobsters hunt down a Special Forces agent in the streets of Habston, the biggest little city on Panara-5. It quickly becomes a running gun battle as Dallas Blake and the crew of the Five Moons try to save him. Special Forces enlists the Five Moons to transport their agents to Daggan-7, but the alien mysteries of this ship are not about to give Dallas any breaks. In the worst of places, Dallas suddenly finds himself embroiled in yet another alien enigma with only a cryptic message.

Robert Baxter once reveled in the intoxicating delights of Atopia - the man-made island where humans lose themselves in a world of boundless virtual realities. Now, Bob has returned to immerse himself in this mind-altering, consciousness-sharing refuge from the eroding Earth. But something is very wrong. Bob feels a tidal wave of doom cresting above the pleasure dome that is Atopia. As alternate universes perish, the salvation of all he loves - and all that exists - rests with Bob alone.

Few writers have successful blended hard science and speculation with fully realized characters as Gregory Benford has in his critically acclaimed novels. Now he draws us into a vortex of mystery and danger at the heart of the galaxy in his dazzling epic drama, Furious Gulf.

Tiger has lost almost everything. Her village. Her community. Her father. But her brother, Tarren, who has been kidnapped by the deadheads that razed her village, still lives. With only the loyal but enigmatic old man, Sai, to guide her into the nightmare-jungle that was once North America, Tiger must face her greatest fears in a race to save her brother before he is lobotomized, even while the world around her is bled dry by Those That Watch.

A charming rogue, Dan Courtney is learning fast that it takes more than a little charm to lay the groundwork for a railroad. Particularly when the plan is to build it across some of the roughest and most dangerous territory on earth. Courtney's been hired to survey the land that would link up the Uganda Railway to the Anglo-Egyptian railroad. Running through desert, jungle and mountains, this is one line—and story—with more twists and turns than the New York City subway system.

An errant encounter with a passing star has flung Earth away from its old Solar System into the dark and cold of deep space. With the entire atmosphere frozen as chemical snow dozens of feet deep, one last family struggles to survive. But what are they to think when they see figures moving in the city ruins? Are Earth's dead coming back to life?