Hard Space Opera

You can't militarize space. This one rule has led to decades of peaceful development of space programs worldwide. However, increasing resource scarcity and a changing climate on Earth's surface is causing some interested parties - namely India, the North American Union, and the Sinese Federation - to militarize. The discovery of a strange artifact by Dr. Alayna Wong precipitates a crisis. What appears to be a hitherto undiscovered comet is soon revealed to be an alien structure on a cometary trajectory toward the sun.

The Battle for Europa is a tale of revolution in the 23rd century. Earth and colonies in the solar system are ruled by The Council of Economic Unions on Earth. The council rules with an iron fist. When Shawn Gallagher, an ice miner on Europa, launches a miner's strike, it is a ruse for rebellion. The ice on the surface of Europa will turn red with blood in The Battle for Europa. When Shawn Gallagher, second shift lead man at mining site A on Europa, launches his bid for independence, little does he know that it will pit him against his little brother David.

Captain Sass Collier steers her motley crew across the treacherous planetary rings, seeking solutions to the steady health decline of Mahina Colony. Tantalizing clues point to Sagamore, Mahina’s sister moon. To get there, Sass needs to upgrade her vintage skyship to a spaceship. Her crew's would-be heroes need to earn their space legs. And ex-cop Sass is probably the wrong person for the job.

In the distant Heracles system, at the edge of explored space, the last remaining crew of the infamous Crimson Star pirates have found themselves trapped. Civil war has broken out, and the jumpgates that supply interstellar travel have been shut down to all but official traffic. Their leader, ex-math professor Tybalt, is desperate to escape the system and attempt an experimental cure for the degenerative nervous condition that got him fired in the first place.

Nikaela Vreekande joins Kristdokar's clandestine operation to identify those responsible for the tragedy on Novalis III and the incident on Reisenar. Lieutenant Colonel Katrine Primatov meets with Thordahl and Brynjar on Norandyne to establish covert lines of communication between the Kelk Supremacy and the Commonwealth. John Mathius travels to Trafalgar to attend O-School. All seems well, but there are those in the Commonwealth and the Supremacy who would prefer that John and Nikaela fail, or barring that, they would see them dead.

Fifteen years ago, Guard Four stood by and watched her friend, Atalant, be jettisoned into space for questioning their planet's religion. Atalant should have died. Instead, she disappeared. Consumed by guilt, Guard Four trawls space, hopping from spaceport to spaceport, hoping to find and bring Atalant home with exonerating evidence that Ardulum, the traveling planet her people worship, is no mystic deity. At the edges of the known galaxy, Guard Four finds the shattered remains of a murdered world...

Bearing Earth's hopes for deliverance from the alien threat, Jack Kildare and his fellow astronauts successfully complete the long journey to Jupiter. But someone on board is trying to sabotage the mission. As they approach the mysterious alien spaceship orbiting Europa, the crew fractures into rival factions. Without warning, a long-range attack cripples the human ship. Now the broken crew is the least of Jack's worries. The alien spaceship isn't a wreck, after all. And whoever is on board wants the humans dead.

Captain Sass Collier got her crew to Denali. Can she bring them home again? Marooned 35 million miles from their home moon. Not enough fuel to reach orbit again, let alone Mahina. The locals seem friendly. But the planet Denali itself is hostile, from volcanoes to microbes. Thrive has 6 months until their launch window opens - and closes. The prizes Denali offers are jewels beyond price. An actual starship awaits on the sea bottom. The greatest nanite scientist of the system can finally tell Sass how she came to be immortal. Be careful what you ask for.

Five months there. Five months back. And seven months waiting for the planets to align. In a tiny ship never meant for deep space. Denali is one hell of a trip. But the leading mind in nanite medicine is stranded there. Captain Sass Collier wants him back, to cure failure to thrive syndrome in her own colony. Each of the crew has a motive to embrace the risk. The lucky ones wish for adventure. Adventure is assured. But Denali holds another prize beyond their wildest dreams. Can Sass hold her fractious crew together, get the goods, and meet her launch window home?

Mahina's terraformers built a high-tech urban paradise. Then Earth flooded the colony with desperate refugees, cop Sass Collier among them. The settlers who arrived with Sass died decades ago. Outside the citadel, their descendants die weak and young. Sass fought a rebellion against the city once. She won concessions to give the settlers a chance at health. She paid with 20 years in prison. Now she’s out, a reformed character. She assembles an oddball crew doing odd jobs. She intends to mind her own business. But her fellow settlers are still failing.

What you don’t know can kill you. Captain Greg Daniels is being treated like a pawn in a game he didn’t know he was playing. Being a spectator to events has never been in his nature and he is ready to take action. He must fight for the future of his ship, his crew, and his family. David Rivera sees the big picture and understands that sacrifices must be made in order for the greater good to be realized. His frustration at small minds getting in his way will lead him to push his plans forward, and he pities those that get in his way.

The crew of the DSM Boone are still reeling from being the target of a saboteur and the loss of a friend, but Captain Greg Daniels pushes them back out to lasso another asteroid. Will this break their spirit and cause a mutiny? Computer specialist Zayna Watson doesn’t know who she can trust. Her world is being thrown into a roller-coaster ride of adventure, betrayal, and self-discovery.

The most wanted salvage marine in the universe thought he was done fighting. For Samuel Hyst the nightmare was over, left behind upon dead worlds and within the derelict ships drifting through space, he and his family having fled to the edges of the frontier to begin a new life of peace. In the aftermath of a violent raid by slave traders, the long-suffering marine discovers that a relic of the ancient machine civilization has been left at the doorstep of his pristine forest homestead. He feels the menace radiating from it, and knows that the various powers and factions that rule necrospace will soon come for all of them.

For First Trooper Erik and his comrades the eternal war against the Helos is the only life they know. Across a hundred worlds and against a dozen alien species they have fought and been victorious. Now Erik's past threatens to destroy everything he believes in. Leading his squad into a war-torn Hell, the living legend faces his greatest battle. Victory or extinction is the only outcome because Erik and his squad are Hard Corps.

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.

Commanders from six Star Trek crews are faced with the ultimate gamble, as they hurl themselves through a Gateway without any knowledge of what lay beyond. Each faces a personally unique challenge, struggling to find a way back to the ships and homes they left behind. Waiting behind at least one of the Gateways are the ageless Iconians, the primordial architects of the mysterious portals causing chaos throughout the Milky Way galaxy.

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.

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.

Chon Ko Gonin, Captain of the Green Jinn, ventured into unexplored territory in search of a wanted interplanetary criminal with the best of intentions. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Right from the start, the Green Jinn found itself dragged into battle to save an ancient people from Merc invaders. Ancient forces of good, and evil fought for control of Sibyl's Orb and dragged Chon ko Gonin into the middle of it.

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.