Hard Space Opera

Chief Warrant Officer Benjamin “Benno” Sanchez has devoted over 20 years of his life to the Alliance of Liberated Systems’ Navy, defending his colony world from the continued encroachment of the Terran Union. His young daughter has been virtually orphaned for years, but his time away is coming to an end. On Adelaide, 14-year-old Mio Sanchez chafes at the limitations placed upon her. With her father away and her mother long since passed, she struggles with an indifferent foster family and yearns to leave her simple life and join her father in the Alliance Navy.

With the planet's fighting men and women deployed across the galaxy - battling in the noble cause of enslaved humanity - the insidious Xul have reached across space to devastate the unsuspecting Earth with asteroid fire. Without warning, a once-majestic world is reduced to near-rubble - and the very future of humankind is in dire jeopardy. Interplanetary leaders are on the brink of abandoning Earth and its colonies to an overwhelming enemy. But Brigadier General Garroway of the Marine Interstellar Expeditionary Unit is unwilling to concede defeat.

The first eight novellas of Blaze Ward's Science Officer series collected together for the first time!

Earth’s first colony ship finally reaches the target world. The excitement of planetfall is indescribable, but quickly transforms into sick disappointment when they find the atmosphere is a roiling mass of hydrochloric acid, carbon dioxide, and other deadly poisons. They fly onward, seeking better planets. They find them, but none are ideal. The search goes on for a century, then longer still. As they move farther from Earth, aliens discover the intruding ship, and they begin to investigate humanity. They find our species unacceptable.

Rebirth (Book 1 of the Rome’s Revolution Saga) chronicles the adventures of Rei Bierak, a young man from the 21st century who wakes up 14 centuries from now only to discover everything he knows about the universe is wrong and that he is nothing but a despised relic from the long-dead past.

Ensign Moore climbed back up in his seat. “Emergency power and life support functioning. We are not holding orbit, Sir.” The captain looked out the broken windscreen. Force fields prevented them from getting sucked out into deep space. Trajous loomed larger every minute. “Who shot my ship? I want a return volley before we crash.” “No bogeys in the area, Captain. We’re the only ones out here. Impact in 35 seconds." The captain strapped himself to a chair. Everyone around him had done likewise.

When the miners on Mars form a trade union and call a planet wide strike, the president of the Council of Economic Unions orders the federal forces on Mars to take a firm hand.

Barcus is a working stiff looking for a good paycheck. When the Ventura and its crew enter orbit for a scheduled planet survey, the ship activates an automated defense system protecting the planet. Although the Ventura is destroyed in the attack, Barcus alone survives the harrowing fall to the remote planet surface. He struggles to remain alive and sane and to discover why everyone he knew and loved on the Ventura was deliberately murdered.

During a classified mission to the ISS, astronaut Jack Kildare picks up an eerie signal. An alien spaceship is orbiting distant, icy Europa. It looks derelict...but is it? As fear sweeps across Earth, NASA spearheads a frenzied effort to build a ship capable of traveling to Jupiter to confront the alien menace. Technology intertwines with espionage and sabotage in a race against the clock. Fighting for his rightful place in the mission, Jack finds himself submerged in a world of secrets, international power games, and cold-blooded murder.

Professor James Lowry didn’t believe in spirits, or witches, or demons. Not until a gentle spring evening when his hat disappeared, and suddenly he couldn’t remember the last four hours of his life. Now, the quiet university town of Atworthy is changing - slightly at first, then faster and more frighteningly each time he tries to remember.

Ghost ship Impris, lost during the War of a Thousand Suns, is the stuff of legend. Her very name conjures the perils of interstellar travel. But no mere legend, she is real - glimpsed on occasion in the hyperdimensional Flux and then gone. Her passengers and crew live on in a strange limbo, their fate hopelessly caught up in quantum defects in space-time, interstellar piracy, and galactic coverup.

Sometimes the few must stand against the many. From the dark, cold void came an unknown force. Their target: a remote planet, the home of a group of people distancing themselves from mankind and pursuing a path of piety and peace. If they have any chance at survival, a disparate group of pilots must come together to fight back any way they can. But the best these aces can do might not be good enough.

En route to a job in the asteroid belt, the transport ship that Jonathan and Gaby are travelling on is required to give assistance to a space station in trouble. Astoria Station stopped responding to everything except automated messages. Jonathan and Gaby, familiar with disease and habitat collapse, offer to help. But not even they are prepared for what they find, or the efforts by some to sweep it under the carpet.

For the past five years, Ruma Nuway has been plotting, planning to leave Doonya, the human planet. Now's her chance. With the Misguided mercenary by her side, she stands guard over the bound Zrivisi crew and the alien ship at her complete disposal. The hard part is done. All she needs now are the launch codes from the Zrivisi captain before the bomb goes off. When the captain refuses, sending her Misguided companion past the edge, Ruma faces impossible choices.

A quarter of a millennium ago, before the nuclear apocalypse forced the inhabitants of earth to flee their home planet, few humans could have imagined the course their path would take. Now, the orbital colonies are the final sanctuary of humanity and life is more dangerous than ever before. The colonists fear the return of their dreaded enemies, the Paratwa – ferocious warriors who are genetically engineered to exist in two bodies which remain telepathically connected.

Years have passed since Earth encountered its first known interstellar object: Oumuamua. Now an even larger one has been discovered, following the exact same trajectory as its predecessor. Scientists around the world theorize that this can no longer be passed off as mere coincidence - the new contact must be an artificial construct of some kind.

Der Raumhafen auf dem Planeten Alvarado ist ein Sprungbrett zu vielen Randplaneten. Entsprechend gut laufen die Geschäfte. Seit Jahren schon streiten zwei Familien um die Kontrolle über diesen Umschlagplatz, und mittlerweile wird die Fehde mit harten Bandagen geführt. In diesen Kleinkrieg geraten John Donovan und seine Crew, als sie nichts weiter als ein paar Rinder verkaufen wollen.

Manche bezeichnen sie als Verbrecher, andere als Helden der Randplaneten. Sie selbst nennen sich Frontiersmen: Furchtlose Männer und Frauen, die Fracht und Flüchtlinge dorthin schmuggeln, wo der Weltraum noch frei und wild ist. John Donovan ist einer von ihnen und chronisch knapp bei Kasse, sodass er auch riskante Jobs übernimmt. Etwa einen Passagiertransport zur rauen Koloniewelt Heaven's Gate.

In the mid-23rd century, Darwin, Australia, stands as the last human city on Earth. The world has succumbed to an alien plague, with most of the population transformed into mindless, savage creatures. The planet’s refugees flock to Darwin, where a space elevator—created by the architects of this apocalypse, the Builders—emits a plague-suppressing aura.

Geoff and his friends live in Phocaea, a distant asteroid colony on the Solar System's frontier. They're your basic high-spirited young adults, enjoying such pastimes as hacking matter compilers to produce dancing skeletons that prance through the low-gee communal areas, using their rocket-bikes to salvage methane ice shrapnel that flies away when the colony brings in a big (and vital) rock of the stuff, and figuring out how to avoid the ubiquitous surveillance motes.