Space Military Science Fiction

Out of the blue, a young Space Fleet officer's dream becomes reality: He's made captain of a starship. Just in time for the return of humanity's most terrible enemy, after 50 years of peace. To survive against this enemy, Captain Tad Thatcher will have to do more than learn how to become an effective commander, or how to wrangle his wayward crew. He will need to reinvent space combat. From scratch.

When asubatomic physics experiment causes a massive explosion, interdimensional gateways open in Florida - and aliens pour out. Some intend to bring Earth to its knees. Others seem willing to help, but will annihilate the planet if Navy SEAL Command Master Chief Robert Miller can't stop the menace from spreading.

The fearsome bounty hunter Tyrus Rechs has laid a careful trap to kill an elusive and powerful criminal known as Mister Zauro for crimes orchestrated on the planet Detron. But unbeknownst to the bounty hunter, another trap has been laid just as carefully ... a trap for Tyrus Rechs himself. For Zauro is a Lizzaar, and Lizzaar crime lords are not without their defenses. Rechs is mere moments away from finishing his termination when the counter-trap is triggered. In an instant the tables are turned, the hunter becomes the hunted.

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.

Miles Vorkosigan graduates from the Barrayaran Military Academy with high expectations of ship command, but is disappointed with an assignment as meteorologist to Lazkowski Base, an arctic training camp. His tenure in the windy, snow-covered north is cut short when Miles narrowly averts a massacre between the trigger-happy base commander and mutinous recruits. After a brief stay under 'house arrest', Miles is re-assigned to investigate a suspicious military build-up near a wormhole nexus.

The lines. No ship can traverse the void without them. Only linesmen can work with them. But only Ean Lambert hears their song. And everyone thinks he's crazy.... Most slum kids never go far, certainly not becoming a level 10 linesman like Ean. Even if he's part of a small and unethical cartel, and the other linesmen disdain his self-taught methods, he's certified and working. Then a mysterious alien ship is discovered at the edges of the galaxy.

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.

All Thorn wanted was to be a Battle Mage. He had the talent, and his whole future was before him. On the day of Choosing, he finds things don't always go as planned. Suddenly Thorn's life is thrown into fast forward, and he finds himself in a world not of his own choosing. In a world of spaceships and blasters, instead of horses and swords, Thorn needs to adapt and survive, make new allies, and rediscover that although nothing is familiar, he's still a Mage, and pirates and slavers beware.

An elite team of SAS special operators battle across the multiverse after a plague of land-hungry sentient robots invade today’s Earth. But, when an aircraft carrier-based counterattack goes horribly wrong, it traps the team in an alien universe with a top-secret group who’ve already saved the world twice. After discovering a dark plot that threatens humanity’s very existence, the two groups jump into action, fighting both on the surface and in orbit in a last-ditch effort to stop the enemy before time runs out.

After a series of victories, the Imperial forces are on the back foot once more. The power of Chaos is rising, the Traitors gain ground, and all hope seems lost. Can Terra endure?

Although the exciting military career she hoped for never got off the ground, Ky Vatta ended up seeing plenty of combat when she took the helm of one of the commercial transport vessels in her family's fleet...and steered it into a full-blown war. Now the lessons she learned in that trial by fire are about to pay off---because this time, the war has come to her. Someone has launched a full-throttle offensive against Vatta Transport Ltd., Ky's father's interstellar shipping empire.

The Custodian Guard have stood watch over the Emperor's Palace on Terra since the foundation of the Imperium. Charged with protecting the Master of Mankind from all threats, within and without, their fearsome resolve is renowned throughout the galaxy, and their golden armour is the last thing that a would-be assassin or saboteur will ever see.

Honor Harrington has been exiled to Basilisk station and given an antique ship to police the system. The vindictive superior who sent her there wants her to fail. But he made one mistake: he's made her mad....

While the crew of the UN Expeditionary Force's pirate starship Flying Dutchman are enjoying a luxury vacation cruise (not!), UNEF troops are still stranded on an alien-controlled planet. Major Emily Perkins and her team are busy picking up the pieces, and it's not easy, because there is trouble on Paradise...

The first of the acclaimed Vatta's War books, the exciting military science fiction series that features a swashbuckling spaceship-captain heroine who mixes commerce with combat.

The Krakau came to Earth to invite humanity into a growing alliance of sentient species. However, they happened to arrive after a mutated plague wiped out half the planet, turned the rest into shambling, near-unstoppable animals, and basically destroyed human civilization. You know - your standard apocalypse. The Krakau's first impulse was to turn around and go home. Their second impulse was to try to fix us. Now, a century later, human beings might not be what they once were, but at least they're no longer trying to eat everyone. Mostly.

A world recovering from a devastating plague. A brutal enemy threatening invasion. A young man seeking to escape the shadow of his father. A ship manned by a crew of fresh academy graduates. A top-secret experimental propulsion system. A questionable alliance with a mysterious green-eyed woman. What destiny has in store for the crew of the UES Aurora is far greater than any of them could ever imagine. And this is only the beginning....

The Warmaster’s horde advances through the fire and ash of Terra's dying breaths, forcing the loyalists back to the Delphic Battlement—the very walls of the Sanctum Imperialis. Angron, Primarch of the World Eaters and Herald of Horus, has achieved immortality through annihilation—now he leads the armies of the damned in a wrathful tide, destroying all before them as the warp begins its poisonous corruption of Terra's very soil.

Colonel Butler has paid his dues and just wants to enjoy his retirement on a remote planet. But the galaxy has had other plans. He has been roped into searching for a politician’s missing son and an industry magnate’s missing daughter. He has been kidnapped, violated numerous laws, and caused the destruction of colonial facilities. He’s famous—or infamous, depending on who you ask—praised and reviled in equal measure across the galaxy for his exploits.

Their foothold established, Reach and the soldiers sent to secure Amir have only begun to repair the destruction inflicted on them by hostile neighbors when a terrifying new threat emerges from the deep woods and dark jungles of Amir itself. Something so lethal and evasive, not even Brody can seem to take it down. New threats and old enemies arrive as more mysteries of this new home world are uncovered, and with them, clues to humanity’s own mysterious past.