Military Fantasy Fiction

The elite crew of the pirate ship UNS Flying Dutchman had a simple mission: determining whether the Thuranin are sending another starship to Earth. Along the way, they became sidetracked by securing a future for the UNEF troops on the planet Paradise. When asked whether Earth was now safe, their ancient alien AI responded "Not so much"...now they have to deal with the consequences.

Mark and his brother Tyler survived the slums with a gun in their hand and a blade in their sleeve. While it won't get them hired at a corporation, the Troopers are always looking for trained killers. The EMF offers education, medical care, food, and real pay. They have a chance at a new life, one where they don't have to worry about a rival gang killing them in the street. With a 35-year EMF contract, the Victor brothers might have a new life, but it comes at a hefty cost. Peace doesn't last, and the EMF doesn't care how many troopers die as long as they complete their mission.

Once every four years, the Earth Alliance Naval Academy is included in a war game...or rather, the Wargame: On a distant frontier colony, cadets must repair, recommission, and crew a fleet of old, mothballed warships for a simulated fleet action against a group of seasoned veterans using top-of-the-line warships. After some meddling on the part of the Admiralty, many of the Academy's best are assigned to the oldest, smallest hulk in the Wargame, the unfortunately named corvette, Chihuahua.

Sergeant Richard Stavos was a Technomancer, capable of creating stronger than normal mental links with nanites. But that alone wasn't enough to keep him alive. Not when the Ka Empire wages wars across the galaxy. Death was supposed to be his release...an end to the constant fighting that plagued his life. But gifted beings like Richard are assets, and almost a decade after his death, the Ka overlords bring him back from the grave as a "reward" for his good service.

At the close of the 24th century, a series of revolutions has caused the galaxy to descend into chaos. With the Galactic Union’s army stretched thin, mercenary units have arisen for those who have the need - and the means - to hire them. Captained by former Detached Guerrilla Forces Colonel R. A. "Rags" Cutter, the Cutter Force Initiative is one of the best. A specialized team consisting of both aliens and humans, the Cutters offer services ranging from combat training and protection to extraction and assassination - as long as the target deserves it and their employer makes good on payday.

The first shots of war have been fired, now it's a race against time to stop a headlong rush before someone fires the last shots. The alien probe that created dozens of superhuman weapons and unleashed them on Houston has a new testing site, the city of Hong Kong, and Alexander Hale has been asked to intervene. With no idea who, or how, the experiments on people are being done he slips into the city to try and find out what ever he can, but beyond the skyline of Hong Kong trouble is brewing.

The war will come - it is inevitable. After centuries of struggle, the ISF Intrepid has finally brought its colonists to New Canaan, a star system better than any they imagined. They made landfall and began to build their new home, far from the troubles of Sol and the Inner Stars. Yet no one in the Orion Arm has forgotten that the colonists possess the most valuable technology known to humankind, least of all Tanis Richards - as she secretly prepares to defend New Canaan against any and all aggressors.

When war comes, the Earth is not ready. An immortals war arrives, the only warning a flash of light and energy 660 million kilometers away. A curiosity, passed off to NASA and tucked away in a note to be ignored. Only the flash of light is not the end, it is the beginning. Admiral Zachary Quinn is about to have a very bad day, and he is not alone. The war is here. Our response must be fast, it must be sure, and it must be victorious. Who wants to live forever?

On a planet that was once part of a vast interstellar civilization, humans survive on the edge of barbarism amid the ruins of the once-great empire.

Despite the death of a traitor and key conspirator, the plot to use the GhostWalker experiments to undermine the security of the US by foreign interests still exists. The GhostWalkers themselves must race against the clock to neutralize the danger.

Kylie Rhoads is a junker. She makes her living traveling the stars, salvaging abandoned ships left over from pirate attacks on the edge of the Gedri system. Some of the hulls are legal for the taking, most aren't. When a salvage job goes bad, Kylie finds herself on the wrong end of a gun. The hand holding that gun? The SA Space Force, just the people Kylie wants to avoid. To avoid prison, Kylie makes a deal to go deep into the Gedri System and rescue a simple girl. But out on the fringe, nothing is as it seems.

Fate had made Owen Deathstalker a rebel hero in an empire choked by tyranny. Embracing his warrior lineage for the sake of freedom, he stoked the flames of revolution, gathering the forces that one day must strike against Imperial authority. That day has come. With his valiant compatriots Hazel d'Ark and Jack Random, Owen must now bring the uprising to a fiery conclusion.

As the Alector Colonel of Myrmidons, Dainyl is the fourth highest ranking military officer of the Duarchy. Alectors are a race apart from the normal inhabitants of Corus, from another world. But there is a rebellion brewing against them.

And so it begins.... In the United States, the Department of Defense and the NSA computer networks have been hacked. A nuclear-armed CIA drone has lost all flight control. North Korea...Iran...Russia...and soon the gates of Hell will open. Humanity's most terrifying nightmare has become reality. Bombs are detonated, missiles are launched, counterstrikes are ordered, and within minutes, untold thousands of megatons have left countless millions dead or dying. Devastation of biblical proportions has fallen over the land...and the USA has been hit the hardest.

Captain Rick Galloway and his men had been talked into volunteering for a dangerous mission only to be ruthlessly abandoned when faceless CIA higher-ups pulled the plug on the operation. They were cut off in hostile territory, with local troops and their Cuban “advisors” rapidly closing in - and then the alien spaceship landed. Rescued from certain death, they now must fight another world’s war.

The small island of Malaz and its city gave the great empire its name, but now it is little more than a sleepy, backwater port. Tonight, however, things are different. Tonight the city is on edge, a hive of hurried, sometimes violent activity; its citizens bustle about, barring doors, shuttering windows, avoiding any stranger's stare. Because tonight there is to be a convergence, the once-in-a-generation appearance of a Shadow Moon - an occasion that threatens the good people of Malaz with demon hounds and other, darker things....

Major Jimjoy Earle Wright, secret agent of the Empire, is intelligent and highly trained. But he succeeds all too well in overthrowing a military dictatorship - and the result is a new government inimical to the Empire and disgrace for Jimjoy. After surviving two assassination attempts, Jimjoy realizes that it's his own imperial superiors who want him dead; that, in fact, his worst enemies could become his best friends. He fights his way to safety on the planet Accord, where the Ecolitan Institute wins his loyalty and changes his identity.

Keeping up-to-date with the most buzzworthy and cutting-edge science fiction requires sifting through countless magazines, e-zines, websites, blogs, original anthologies, single-author collections, and more - a task accomplishable by only the most determined and voracious readers. For everyone else, Night Shade Books is proud to introduce the latest volume of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, collecting the finest that the genre has to offer, from the biggest names in the field to the most exciting new writers.

The A!Tol Imperium and their new human subjects have had 15 years of relative peace. New colonies have been founded, new worlds explored, new ships built. Formal and informal alliances have been built with the ancient powers of the Core, leaving humanity and the Imperium seemingly on the brink of a new dawn. The devastation of one of the newly-founded human colonies sends ripples of shock through the Imperium, and a battle fleet under Fleet Lord Harriet Tanaka is dispatched to the edge of the Imperium to find the culprits and bring them to justice.

The galaxy is doomed. Monkeys may be clever and too stubborn to give up, but Skippy The Idiot Who Got Played knows the harsh truth: this is a fight he can’t win. The odds are not only stacked against him, he was designed not to win this fight. Maybe he can salvage some faint memory of the civilizations that inhabit the galaxy, but those beings are doomed. Doomed. Including the Merry Band of Pirates.