Space First Contact

Captain Tom Thrush is patrolling the Octagon Rift when his ship is attacked by a black destroyer that seems to predict his every move. Outgunned and outmaneuvered, he flees in a crippled ship to the only sanctuary he can reach—a den of thieves and spies called Lotus Station. His ship will be broken up for scrap. Half the crew are casualties. The rest are scattering, leaving Tom stuck on Lotus. As the black destroyer hunts down local freighters, Tom becomes obsessed with tracking it down and taking revenge.

Eleven years ago, colonists from Earth made Galena their home. It is a planet of wondrous and deadly mysteries. Survival means adaptation—yet there can be no adaptation to an ancient corruption festering deep beneath the soil. Something is waiting down there, altering the plants and wildlife, twisting them to fit its dark plan. At the same time, progress has finally come to Galena. The dream of cities and superhighways suddenly becomes reality…and the only price is the total subjugation of the colonists who built them.

Restored to his prestigious position within NUESSA, Jericho Fox takes command of the Marquis-class ship’s test program on a mission that promises to move humanity to a habitable exoplanet. But not everyone believes he’s fit for the job. As launch hour nears, can Jericho keep his crew from following the doomed fate of his last mission? Meanwhile, Dr. Evelyn Park leads her team of scientists in decoding the now legendary alien transmission that survived the Astraea Station catastrophe.

2187. Earth is cold, dead and divided. The rich hide away while the rest will do anything to survive. Humanity have only one hope: crossing hostile alien territory to reach a habitable planet. Jinnifer Blue is on the run. An expert pilot, she apprehends criminals on behalf of the government and keeps her illegal genetic modifications a closely guarded secret. But when a particularly dangerous job goes south, Jinn is left stranded on a prison ship with one of the most ruthless criminals in the galaxy.

Exhausted from a two-year rescue mission to a distant sector of space, and with resources strained by four thousand extra mouths to feed, the crew of the starship Phoenix yearns for the luxuries of home. But when the ship makes the final jump into atevi space, they learn the worst: supplies to their home station have been cut off; civil war has broken out on the atevi mainland; the powerful Western Association has been overthrown; and Tabini-aiji is missing and may be dead.

The journey of the starship Pioneer continues in the fourth thrilling installment of the Forgotten Starship series. The ship is in dire straits, deep behind enemy lines, and on the verge of capture. While Tyson fights to prepare a defense, other forces work to ensure his ultimate failure as they seek to claim one of Pioneer’s few remaining secrets. Meanwhile, Keesha and the Marines may have captured the enemy Forge, but they have no idea how to bring it under control. Searching for answers, strange echoes from within the station lead Keesha to make a dangerous decision.

Avalon was thriving. The cold sleep colonists from Earth had settled on a verdant, livable world. The fast and cunning predators humans named “grendels” were under control, and the mainland outposts well established. Avalon’s new mainland hydroelectric power station was nearly complete, and when on-line would compensate for the nuclear power systems lost in the Grendel Wars. Humans would have power, and with power came the ability to make all the necessities for life. They would survive. They would not survive as a spacefaring people.

The Omega War is in full swing. Earth has fallen to General Peepo’s army, and the surviving human mercenaries have taken refuge at the hidden Winged Hussars’ base in New Warsaw. On Earth, the defensive forces fight to keep the hearts and minds of their fellow humans, but Peepo’s plans are slowly converting the people to her way of thinking, and the Mercenary Guild troops continue to root out the forces arrayed against them.

The McCormacks have been trying to keep a low profile so they can complete their plan to bring Earth to the club of spacefaring civilizations without creating a world war over the technology. But it’s hard to keep a low profile while building a space station, what with lifting all the material they need, designing new shuttles, and harnessing asteroids. Without any other choice, they go public.

Now the McCormacks are finally going to get into space. At least if the big governments on Earth don’t stop them. They’ve managed to accumulate enough money to build a city, and now they’re going to build a space station that will create a safe place to manufacture their new technology, and a way to demonstrate to the world that humans have a future in space. But as they demonstrate more advanced technology, they attract more interest from the world’s governments. What will it take to keep their dream alive?

The McCormacks have a starship, and now, they need a safe place to start harvesting the technology. They’re starting with a place in the Cook Islands, but to succeed, they have to avoid spies, figure out how to manufacture the new technology using Earth-based tools, and then introduce it without getting into too much trouble with the governments and big corporations of Earth.

Earth is in turmoil. The enemy is bearing down on us with every warship they have, and our only allies are in chaos. Our one hope for survival is Andy Clanton - a hack science fiction writer trying to convince some aliens that humans are worth saving. It’s an uphill battle, because to the aliens, we are the monsters. We look just like their sworn enemies, the Tevynians, who’ve sworn to wipe out both our civilizations. When everything falls apart and the fate of the galaxy is on the line, can Andy Clanton pull our fat out of the fire?

A Tortantula and a Flatar. The most enigmatic teaming in the mercenary guild, it’s also a perfect pairing, where one’s strengths cover the other’s weakness. Raised together from birth, their lives are a brutal series of tests. Azah isn’t like most other female Tortantula; she’s much smaller and made fun of. No one expects her to survive, much less succeed, but she’s still given a chance and assigned a Flatar: Sadek. The two quickly bond and find they complement each other. Against all odds, they survive the breeding dome and join the ranks of their races’ mercenaries.

The Council of the Archons has been overthrown. Prometheus' final orders have been received. Still, a new menace is about to sweep over the city. Grey sets off for Neo Ark in order to face his old enemy. Or is it a friend? After all, no one really knows who the first Incarnators were or how they ended up on planet Earth.

Fifteen outstanding authors. Fourteen extraordinary stories. One best-selling universe. It’s the 22nd century. The galaxy has opened up to humanity as a hyperactive beehive of stargates and new technologies, and we suddenly find ourselves in a vast playground of different races, environments, and cultures. Enter the Four Horsemen universe, where only a willingness to fight and die for money separates humans from the majority of the other races. Enter a galaxy not only of mercenaries, but also of aliens, hired assassins, and accountants. Accountants?

When a human team is sent to scout a few hundred light-years in front of the death wave, it encounters a civilization far in advance of our own, a civilization of machine intelligences.These sentient, intelligent machines have existed for eons and have survived earlier "death waves" - gamma-ray bursts from the core of the galaxy. They are totally self-sufficient, completely certain that the death wave cannot harm them, and utterly uninterested in helping to save other civilizations.

They have absolute power; after all, they are the ones with the weapons. The only other armed agency, the Peacemaker Guild, is far smaller and unable to bend them to their will. But absolute power has the tendency to corrupt absolutely, and this is becoming increasingly apparent as the guild’s members pursue their hidden agendas.

As a sci-fi author with a hit TV show, I have a few ideas about what alien invaders are supposed to look like. In my stories, they’re technologically advanced monsters, with tentacles, and no faces. Turns out I was right about the technology. And about how angry they’d be. But the way they look is more terrifying than even I could have imagined. They look exactly like us. Because they are us.

The heart-stopping third episode in the Eden Paradox series. After 18 years, the quarantine that has protected humanity’s survivors on the planet Esperia is about to end. Mankind won't stand a chance without external help. Yet in the middle of a galactic war, who is concerned about one small planet when worlds fall every day?

Survivors are fleeing Earth, into a hostile galaxy where alien intelligence and weaponry rule. Can a deserted planet offer refuge? Or will the genetically engineered Alicians finish the job started on Eden? While Blake fends off attacks, Micah seeks allies, but his plan backfires, and humanity finds itself on trial for its very right to exist.