Space Opera First Contact

With the human-Shiravan treaty on the line, Kitty Hawke must violently end a mutiny aboard one of her ships. Afterwards, she leaves Shiravi, bound for Earth after being away for two years. Marsha Kane replaces Kitty as the head of the human fleet in Shiravan space, but she has her own plans on how to end the war with the Garmon, formerly called the Korvil. Meanwhile, the humans and Shiravan take the fight to the Garmon, destroying their ships and decimating their worlds, and it seems as if the war is nearing its end.

This hard sci-fi novel is the seventh book in the Stasis Stories series of optimistic tales of technological innovation in the near future. This one is about Kaem Seba’s daughter, Zaii, a young woman who, like her father, has extraordinary math talents. Eager to do her part in the war against the aliens from Epsilon Eridani, she becomes a Space Force ROTC cadet. However, as she studies potential warfighting strategies that might be used against the Eridanis, she realizes that the defenders of Sol system have a problem.

Time is running out for the people of New Pallas. Nobody knows that better than Alvera Renata, a tenacious captain determined to scout past the stars with nothing but a handpicked crew and a promise: to find a new home for humanity. But when a perilous journey across dark space leads to first contact with a galactic civilization on the brink of war, Alvera soon realises keeping her word might not be as easy as she thought.

After Sol’s construction of Tridents - Omnian-designed warships - Earthers possess the ability to transit quickly among the stars. The desire to know what happened to Earth’s colony ship, the Honora Belle, sent to the stars a millennium ago is resurrected. An Omnian Trident and the vessel Rêveur accompany three Sol Enclave Tridents in search of the Belle’s colonists. Swiftly, the Omnians and the Earthers become enmeshed in a centuries-old conflict enveloping a vast area of space inhabited by alliance races. The enemy is the Colony: a giant insectoid species.

Human descendants of the Earth colony ship Destiny face an incursion into their area of space by a powerful race. The Imperium Empire, which is ruled by the Krackus, is one wormhole away from the humans, and a rim mining planet, Kilmer, would be the alien race’s first contact. Fear rules the company leader. The Krackus represent danger. They sail powerful battleships. Moreover, the Naiad Council reels from the news that an alien race abuts their space. For centuries, humans in the Axis Crossing region thought they were alone.

Graduate student Tom Rice is thrilled to embark on his first deep-space archeological expedition. He is part of a team from Earth, venturing out in search of artifacts from a civilization that ruled the universe many millennia ago. Called the High Ones, the members of this long-gone society left tantalizing clues about their history and culture scattered throughout space. One such clue, a "message cube" containing footage of the ancient ones, is more interesting than all of the others combined. It seems to indicate that the High Ones aren't extinct after all.

Captain Michael Burnham and the crew of the USS Discovery are finding that each day is a critical adjustment to their new lives and new missions in an Alpha Quadrant more than nine hundred years in the future. It’s here that Discovery is reconnecting with various worlds where the cataclysmic event known as “the Burn” has decimated Starfleet and, with it, the United Federation of Planets.

The planet of Azure is nearly idyllic: There is a high standard of living, industry is booming, and the two races — Human and Wrogul — get along well with each other most days. But underneath it all, there is tension between the races. Despite having no reason for it, the Humans don’t always trust the Wrogul, and there is a faction within the Wrogul community that doesn’t want its young growing up “Human.”

With Alexis Cromwell shot in the back by her XO and the fleet in ruins, the Humans have run back to New Warsaw to lick their wounds, but the Merc Guild now knows the location of their hidden base, and they are in hot pursuit. Led by the New Era, a dreadnought built for the sole purpose of destroying humanity, they are an unstoppable force.

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.

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.

Terminally ill salvage pilot Ash Jackson lost everything in the war with the alien Vai, but she’ll be damned if she loses her future. Her plan: to buy, beg, or lie her way out of corporate indenture and find a cure. When she and her crewmates salvage a genocidal weapon from a ravaged starship above a dead colony, Ash uncovers a conspiracy of corporate intrigue and betrayal that threatens to turn her into a living weapon.

Albert Birnbaum was once one of the biggest political talk show hosts around, but these days he’s watching his career enter a death spiral. A stranger offers a solution to his woes, promising to put him back on top. It’s everything Birnbaum wants, but is there a catch? And does Birnbaum actually care if there is? "A Voice in the Wilderness" 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.

This debut science fiction novel is the story of Sira--a woman on the run from the law, from her own people, and from an unknown figure determined to use her for his own ends. Her memory taken from her by a stasis block, she must stay free long enough to regain both her identity and the full use of her telepathic powers. The price of failure may not only be the loss of her own future, but that of her entire race.

John Lee has come far from his time as a struggling survivor of the System Apocalypse. But now, his actions have gone too far, and he has drawn the ire of the Galactic Council. Not only he and his friends, but Earth itself, are faced with the displeasure of the Council. With the whole galaxy turned against them, John will have to scramble for allies and make Faustian deals to save Earth. But against the might of multiple empires, will it be enough?

Firestarter does her best to fit in on the Gene, but it's a long jump from stone-tipped spears to starships. Janet and the other girls do their best to help her fit in. Eve and Aika have trouble getting to know a new AI, and Topper's past brings a new problem for the crew to work on. Come along while they work it all out.

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.

Alex Racine, who led an elite group of humans and SADEs (self-ware digital entities), left the newly discovered planet of Celus-5 under difficult circumstances. Few of the Harakens with Alex thought there was little he could do to bring peace to the embroiled planet. From their viewpoint, the demands of the Celus-5 Swei Swee, the six-legged aliens of the ocean, and the Dischnya, the warring, doglike, intelligent creatures who inhabited the dry plains, were too convoluted to solve.

Trouble infiltrated the Harakens' capital city of Espero, in the form of New Terra criminal gangs who grew wealthy and powerful on the moons of Ganymede, hiding behind the cover of an ill-conceived mining charter. The gangs brought stims and addictive hallucinogenic drugs to Espero, distributing them to the young on the planet.

This prequel to the Trade Pact Universe series begins in a time before the Clan had learned how to manipulate the M'hir to travel between worlds. Aliens have begun to explore the world of Cersi, upsetting the delicate balance between the Clan and the two other powerful races who coexist by set rules. And one young woman is on the verge of finding the forbidden secret of the M'hir - a discovery that could prove the salvation or ruin of her entire species.