Space First Contact

Clarity's home is her spaceship. Living on the move. Planet to planet. When money trouble forces Clarity and her traveling companion, Irohann, to take on passengers, Irohann worries his secret identity will be revealed. He's a canine alien on the run from an empire of sentient plants, and their queen has a personal vendetta against him. Heartsick at the idea of losing their ship, Clarity accepts an offer that's clearly too good to be true, and they find themselves swept up in the crazy schemes of a rogue AI in a stolen robot body, and her haphazardly assembled team of disparate aliens.

Ava is a human servant aboard an alien Phor transport spaceship. The ship specializes in transporting cargo, and Ava tends to the engine. An alien Vorbax is brought on board to be transported to an enemy planet for a war crimes trial. But is he really a helpless prisoner? Why does Ava feel drawn to him? Will she become part of his plans? Now Ava is caught in the middle of something bigger than her heart and certainly bigger than what the ship she's on can handle.

The threat from the JPU has been eliminated and the empires should be at peace, but fractions within the SAS have revised old resentments against the Riss and Freeland. These anti-Riss groups have distorted the facts of the war with the JPU and dispute the Riss' right to quarantine JPU, insisting the SAS should have exclusive rights to the JPU and the Riss quarantined. While the SAS plots against the Riss, an alien force enters SAS space and is annihilating inhabitable systems.

Drifting in the intergalactic deep, Dash begins the final push toward peace. From the depths of Realm lore, the Kingsport takes shape, one component at a time. But the war isn't over, and the Deepers aren’t done. The space beyond our galaxy is far from empty. The Arkubators, Deeper worlds, and other secrets begin to reveal themselves as the Realm forces fight their way, gate to gate, into areas never seen by humans. Dash will journey farther than any other human has ever gone - or so he thinks. What awaits him is a secret that will change everything humans know about their origins.

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.

Taiki Sato had long been the genius behind the Winged Hussars’ success. He spent years innovating, discovering new technologies, and generally making a nuisance of himself. But when he took his first trip to 2nd Level Hyperspace, everything changed. He created an innovative pinplant design, which he had Nemo, the Hussar’s Wrogul physician, install. A short time later, he executed a perfectly planned escape, disappearing from New Warsaw.

Captain Kyle Torres, now back in command of the Ichi, hand-picks his crew for their most dangerous mission yet. They scour the galaxy, searching for the home world of the Va’alen, with the hope of destroying them once and for all. Their journey takes them to never-before-explored sectors of space, and the secrets they uncover lead to an alliance with an unexpected ally. Admiral Dassiova, recovered from his grievous wounds, fights to prove his worthiness as a leader, but the Va’alen have plans of their own.

After the United Nations of Terra (UNT) Fleet Frigate Nelson reported an encounter with an alien spaceship, she disappeared without a trace. An alien race called the Maltaani have made their presence known by landing a mass of troops on Balfan-48, a desert planet located far too close to Terra Earth for comfort. Tensions are rising and tempers are growing short. The UNT responds by deploying ISMC’s Ninth Division aboard the flagship Atlas to the scene to investigate the Maltaani aggression.

It’s not easy being 16, especially when everyone expects great things from Tilly. It’s even harder when her mother and father are Federation luminaries, not to mention pressing her to attend one of the best schools the Federation has to offer. Tilly wants to achieve great things - even though she hasn’t quite worked out how to do that or what it is she wants to do. But this year, everything will change for Tilly, as she is about to embark upon the adventure of a lifetime - an adventure that will take her ever closer to the stars....

Earth's days are numbered. Two very different women race to prepare for the battle to come. The future of Earth is in their hands. One struggles to resurrect her ruined ship so she can navigate the politics at the galactic core in a desperate bid to recruit allies. The other strives to master alien technology to supply the forces of Earth with the tools needed to defend themselves against the ravenous Swarm.

The Queller race has lived for millennia in isolation. However, a secret kept by the Queller senior elder and a few associates drives the elder to make contact with another race. Little do the Quellers know that they send a QASAP ship, an autonomous search ship, to engage the conclave. Not detecting an aggressive society, Julien chooses to accept the autonomous ship’s invitation, and a small fleet commanded by Commodore Tocknicka follows the QASAP’s star map to the Queller home world.

Starting a war with an enemy 100 times stronger is insane. It’s desperate. And it’s Earth’s only hope. A massive alien power looms over humanity, claiming Earth as its territory and humanity as its slaves. The Hegemony has already taken over one colony, yoking hundreds of thousands under their brutal rule. Every tactical exercise, every war game, and every simulation gives humanity zero chance in a defensive campaign.

In an effort to improve relations with the Earth, the Colonial Union has invited a contingent of diplomats from that planet to observe Ambassador Abumwe negotiate a trade deal with an alien species. Then something very bad happens to one of the Earthings, and with that, the relationship between humanity’s two factions is on the cusp of disruption once more. It’s a race to find out what really happened, and who is to blame. "The Observers" is a tale from John Scalzi's The Human Division, a series of self-contained but interrelated short stories set in the Old Man's War universe.

The Majority always gets what it wants. Thomas Hill just wishes it didn't want him. There's no way to escape a galactic mob of mind readers, no way for him to blend in with his foster family and other average Americans. Because Thomas invented a way to save his own life. His custom medicine halts the progress of his degenerative neuromuscular disease. Newscasters proclaim him the next Einstein, but mere humans have no idea his bioengineered processing capacity rivals that of a supercomputer. They just think he's smart. However, there are other bioengineered supergeniuses in the Majority.

Abducted. Forced to fight against her will. Darcy has a 10,000-year-old secret buried in her genetic code. The Druid Gene makes her a target, but it may also save her. As a second year medical student, Darcy's life revolves around classes, studying, and her boyfriend Adam - until she treks through the desert, touches some mysterious stacked stones, and a network of glowing blue lines radiates under her skin.

Defying NASA, Jane Holloway, the linguist of the Providence expedition, commandeers the alien ship that crew explored. She sets off to return that ship's navigator to his home world, determined to discover who was behind the genocide that destroyed his original crew. But when she gets there, she finds his world devastated by the same plague. The remaining members of his race, uniquely gifted at navigating the stars, are stranded across the galaxy. And someone doesn't want those lost navigators found.

The Dusman offered to let humanity become their servitors, but the leaders of Earth’s Four Horsemen were unified in their decision: No, thanks. With the Dusman returning in strength, though, and steadily growing their influence and armed presence, humanity finds itself in a difficult place. The Guild War continues to rage, with planets becoming increasingly desperate for nonexistent help, while the Mercenary Guild continues to sit on its hands, despite Nigel Shirazi’s attempts to break the deadlock.

The sisters’ leader, Miriamal, and three mining chairpersons investigate an unexplored wormhole for possible economic expansion. Aboard the Dominance, they exit the wormhole and are stunned to find the nearby system inhabited. More troubling, technologically advanced warships hold station above the system’s exoplanet. SADEs witness the hasty return of the Dominance and the cessation of messages between Miriamal and Lisa Dyehouse. The Truth Matters partners race against time to save Samuel, and they’re not above leveraging an unreliable criminal hacker.

During James T. Kirk's heroic five year mission as captain of the Starship Enterprise, a mysterious alien threat called "The Totality" commenced its stealthy invasion, intending to conquer the Milky Way galaxy as it had conquered the Andromeda. Now the time for secrecy has passed, and a war unlike any other has begun, one that threatens to destroy the Federation, first by bringing warp travel to an end, and then by absorbing all living matter into an unknown realm.

When Todd’s critically damaged ship dropped out of hyperspace near the human colony world of Azure, he had no memory of his past. He didn’t know who he was, or even what he was, and the humans didn’t either. That didn’t stop the colonists of Azure - they took him in, anyway...even though they didn’t understand how he could do some of the things he could do. Todd and his descendants consider themselves human - eight-armed and water-breathing - but human, nonetheless. After 70 years living among humans, Todd’s descendants are going back out into the Union to make their mark.