Military Space Opera Fantasy

Mars has been under Lanky control for more than a year. Since then, the depleted forces of Earth's alliances have rebuilt their fleets, staffing old warships with freshly trained troops. Torn between the need to beat the Lankies to the punch and taking enough time to put together an effective fighting force, command has decided to strike now.

Maddox and the crew are on their own, facing perils inside the ship and terrifying alien dangers outside in one of the remotest regions of the Orion Arm. Then they stumble upon the darkest secret of all. Unless the A.I. Galyan, Meta, Sergeant Riker and the others can help their beleaguered captain, Victory is doomed and Earth will never learn of the terrible threat gathering in the stellar darkness.

The Praxis, the empire of now extinct Shaa, has again fallen into civil war, with desperate and outnumbered humans battling alien species for survival. Leading the human forces are star-crossed lovers Gareth Martinez and Caroline Sula, who must find a way to overcome their own personal history to defeat the aliens and assure humanity’s survival. But even if the human fleet is victorious, the divisions fracturing the empire may be too wide to repair, as battles between politicians, the military, and fanatics who want to kill every alien threaten to further tear the empire apart.

The Machine - a terrifying and relentless enemy - reigns supreme in the galaxy, and the real fight is just beginning. Omega Force keenly feels the weight of responsibility for the Machine's arrival in the quadrant, but even with the resources of the Blazing Sun organized crime syndicate backing them, there's only so much the small mercenary crew can do against the malevolent AI that has already usurped control of most of the government. The Machine is now firmly in control of the ConFed's military.

A novella set in the hard-scrabble world of James S. A. Corey's NYT best-selling Expanse series, Strange Dogs follows a family of colonists on Laconia where a new generation of humanity struggles with the profound changes that come with making a home on an alien world. Like many before them, Cara and her family ventured through the gates as scientists and researchers, driven to carve out a new life and uncover the endless possibilities of the unexplored alien worlds now within reach.

There's guerrilla warfare in the main asteroid belt. The Red Houzi pirates have launched a deadly campaign, sacking defenseless mining colonies and then vanishing into the deep dark of space. No one can predict where or when they will show up next, not even the great Mars Protectorate Navy.

Betrayed by allies. Beset by new foes. Earth faces its darkest hour since the Xaros invasion. The Toth come to the solar system with a fleet of warships, and they demand the only tool that can rekindle the human race. It falls on Marine Lieutenant Hale to negotiate a pact that will save the human race at the cost of its soul - or start a war with a race of alien predators.

When the hexarchate's gifted young captain, Kel Cheris, summoned the ghost of the long-dead General Shuos Jedao to help her put down a rebellion, she didn't reckon on his breaking free of centuries of imprisonment - and possessing her. Even worse, the enemy Hafn are invading, and Jedao takes over General Kel Khiruev's fleet, which was tasked with stopping them.

With the battle for Earth over, Zax and Kalare are forced to deal with the repercussions of its outcome. They enlist their closest allies to take back the Ship from enemies both new and old, and along the way, they discover a most unexpected source of help.

Eighteen years ago the Starship Enterprise thwarted an alien invasion from another universe, and Captain Robert April took possession of the interdimensional transfer device that made it possible. Since then each captain of the Enterprise has guarded this secret with his life. Now Romulan agents have succeeded in stealing the device and are using it to banish Ambassador Sarek and Councillor Gorkon to an unknown realm in the midst of their groundbreaking Federation-Klingon peace negotiations.

The Klingon Empire stands on the precipice. In the wake of violence from the cult known as the Unsung, paranoia threatens to break Chancellor Martok's regime. Klingons increasingly call for a stronger hand to take control...one that Lord Korgh, master manipulator, is only too willing to offer.

The Devil's Heart is a legendary object of unsurpassed power and mystery. Worlds that believe in magic consider it Darkness's mightiest talisman; and worlds of science consider it a lost artifact of some ancient and forgotten race. Some say the Heart enables its possessor to control people's minds and to amass wealth enough for a dozen lifetimes, while others think it capable of raising the dead, perhaps even changing the flow of time itself. But to all, the location of this fabled object has remained a mystery, until now.

As the celebration of the victory at Legatus cools, a shuttle accident claims the lives of the Mage-King of Mars and his heir. The Crown and the Mountain fall to the Mage-King’s daughter, 16-year-old Kiera Alexander. She recalls Damien Montgomery, her father’s First Hand, to stand as her Lord Regent. The pair are unprepared to govern but are thrust into the heart of Protectorate politics. Damien is grimly certain of one thing: when it comes to the deaths of Kings, he doesn’t believe in accidents.

Claws That Catch is the fourth volume from their popular Looking Glass series. Humankind’s only interstellar craft, the Vorpal Blade is dispatched to investigate an ancient civilization that may have left vital technology behind. But when the crew finds more than they bargained for, they’ll have to scramble to survive.

The Light Brigade: it’s what soldiers fighting the war against Mars call the ones who come back...different. Grunts in the corporate corps get busted down into light to travel to and from interplanetary battlefronts. Everyone is changed by what the corps must do in order to break them down into light. Those who survive learn to stick to the mission brief - no matter what actually happens during combat. Dietz, a fresh recruit in the infantry, begins to experience combat drops that don’t sync up with the platoon’s.

The heliopause protected Earth, keeping us safe from a violent galaxy. Or so we thought. Who knew it did more than keep us guarded? Who understood that its integrity was the only thing holding our beginner’s protection in place? If we'd known—if we’d understood, we’d have waited longer, a hell of a lot longer to pierce its veil. But when the USM Arrowheart passed through it and left our solar system, that protection ended and all hell broke loose. The aliens who'd been watching, waiting, and biding their time were ready. We weren’t. But there was hope.

An old leader born anew. A legendary ship at his disposal. A desperate crisis born of chaos. Needed allies out of unforeseen events. Nathan Scott has finally returned to lead the new Karuzari in a rebellion against the Dusahn Empire. But first, he will need to secure a ship to accommodate those who have already joined their cause. The question is: How much of him is now Nathan, and how much is still Connor?

Montezuma was an isolated world of interest to no one—until an interstellar corporation discovered vast resources of rare materials under the surface, just waiting to be extracted and sold. The corporates legally stole the planet, crushed the native dreams of independence, and brought in vast numbers of outsiders to mine the rough-hewn world, leaving poverty, pollution, and deprivation on an unimaginable scale in their wake.

A debt of honor: One brave woman ventures alone into a parallel universe to save her old shipmates exiled there decades earlier by a mysterious device called the Transfer Key. She soon learns the alternate universe harbors not just an alien invasion force but a secret that underpins its very existence. A mission of peace: A long-awaited Klingon-Federation peace conference convenes, led by Ambassador Sarek of Vulcan and Councillor Gorkon of Qo'noS. But both sides have enemies who would prefer the two great powers remain at war.

CDF Lieutenant Harry Wilson has been loaned out to a CDF platoon tasked with secretly removing an unauthorized colony of humans on an alien world. Colonial Ambassador Abumwe has been ordered to participate in final negotiations with an alien race the Union hopes to make allies. Wilson and Abumwe’s missions are fated to cross - and in doing so, place both missions at risk of failure.

We Only Need the Heads is a tale from John Scalzi's The Human Division.