Space Opera First Contact

Following the explosive events of Star Trek: Nemesis, the Romulan Star Empire is in disarray, and Ambassador Spock attempts to render aid by launching a last-ditch effort to reunify the Romulans with their distant forebearers, the Vulcans. But when Spock is publicly assassinated at a Romulan peace rally, Starfleet and the Federation are unable to search for the criminals responsible without triggering an intergalactic war.

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 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. There’s just one catch: We are pretty much at the bottom of the food chain, and there’s only one way for humanity to move up - by becoming mercenaries. In every mercenary’s life, though, there comes a time when things go wrong and even the best laid plans go awry.

The newly formed Military Assistance Command-Maltaan (MACM), led by General Ellis Boudreaux, is facing serious problems. The Maltaan rainy season has begun, and the unpredictable weather has significantly reduced flight operations. The east-west highway which connects the capital Daarben to Ulvaan, the only major city in the east, is choked with convoys. The increasingly vulnerable rail line is the sole means of moving supplies to support Space Marines deployed in the east. Thousands of PCS were abandoned by their mercenary handlers, and it’s up to the Space Marines to collect them.

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....

Peacemakers. The Galactic Union’s most capable enforcers and resolute negotiators, their name alone elicits fear and awe among the Union’s citizenry. When necessary, the Peacemaker Guild deputizes citizens to carry out special missions of great difficulty and danger. The only person ever to land a Combat Assault System, Personal (CASPer) from high-altitude free fall without a parachute, Tara Mason’s career as a mercenary showed promise, but it crumbled under poor choices and even worse leadership

A dying world, shattered by a broken machine. A desperate flight, their only hope for refuge. A robotic race, ally and destroyer alike. The Republic of Exilium has grown in strength and confidence at the far end of the galaxy from the rest of mankind, sending out scout ships to survey the worlds around them as they try to learn more about the mysterious Construction Matrix AIs. Finding one of the genocidal rogues of that mysterious “race” in the process of destroying an inhabited world, Captain Octavio Catalan takes his ship into a desperate battle.

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. As humanity begins to think about how to recover the planet, one thing is obvious - more powerful weapons of war will be needed in the effort. One of the keys to recapturing Earth will be the Raknar of Cartwright’s Cavaliers, but the power sources of many of the giant mecha have become unusable over the course of history.

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.

One of the greatest science-fiction epics ever written, John Varley's Titan, Wizard, and Demon comprise a groundbreaking trilogy that will live forever. Human explorers have entered the sprawling mind of the alien Gaea. Now they must fight her will. For she is much too powerful. And definitely insane....

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.

Colonial Union diplomat Hart Schmidt is back home for Harvest Day celebrations - to a family whose members wonder whether its youngest son isn’t wasting his life clinging to the lowest rung of the CU’s diplomatic ladder. When his father, a legendarily powerful politician, presents him with a compelling offer, Schmidt has to take stock of his life and career. "This Must Be the Place" 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 Novara: Our last hope. Built to deliver two million souls from a solar system in disarray, the colossal ark ship set off into the endless night with the hopes and dreams of the human remnant. They would find a new home. A new Earth. The Novara’s descendants—those promised a green Eden—live a ship-bound life. But it is not the isolated existence their ancestors had envisioned. One hundred and twenty-nine years ago, there was a collision, a devastating encounter that answered one of humanity’s oldest questions . . . We are not alone.

The greatest threat humanity has ever faced lies beyond the frontier of its galactic civilization, but dangers closer to home have been overlooked and allowed to grow. As greed and personal ambition in the Terran Union push the common good aside, the Navy is forced to turn to unconventional means. Jack Samson is ordered to team up with former allies to uncover and destroy the rot eating the Union from the inside. Chasing down a trail of smuggled alien technology through the Union's underworld, they soon discover the web of treachery reaches farther than anyone could have expected.

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.

On board an X101 stealth aircraft, Lauren, Jack, and Mike arrive at the secret location of Sky Dreamer Corp - a place equipped with technology and resources far more advanced than anything they could have ever imagined.

Bren Cameron, acting as the representative of the atevi's political leader, Tabini-aiji, as well as translator between humans and atevi, has undertaken a mission to the human enclave of Mospheira. Both his presence on the island and his absence from the continent have stirred old enemies to realize new opportunities. Old hatreds. Old grudges. Old ambitions. The situation has strengthened the determination of power-seekers on both sides of the strait. Bren knows most of them very well, but not all of them well enough.

Under the benevolent leadership of the League of Peoples, there is no war, little crime, and life is sacred...unless you're an Explorer. The ugly, the flawed, the misfit, the deformed, they are the unwanted, flung to the farthest corners of the galaxy to investigate hostile planets and strange, vicious creatures. Out there, there are a thousand different - and terrible - ways to die.

Caiden's planet is destroyed. His family gone. And, his only hope for survival is a crew of misfit aliens and a mysterious ship that seems to have a soul and a universe of its own. Together they will show him that the universe is much bigger, much more advanced, and much more mysterious than Caiden had ever imagined. But the universe hides dangers as well, and soon Caiden has his own plans.

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.