Space Opera First Contact

Commander Dalton Reeves is a maverick officer with exceptional genetic strength and a dark family history—a history that will come back to haunt him. Punished for exceeding orders one time too many, he’s packed off to the "The Abyss"—the most dangerous space station in the galaxy. But a posting that should have led to five years in obscurity will propel Reeves into the center of an interstellar war against a long-forgotten alien adversary with a bitter grudge.

Wildcat colonies are illegal, unauthorized, and secret - so when an injured stranger shows up at the wildcat colony New Seattle, the colony leaders are understandably suspicious of who he is and what he represents. His story of how he’s come to their colony is shocking, surprising, and might have bigger consequences than anyone could have expected. Walk the Plank is a tale from John Scalzi's The Human Division, a series of self-contained but interrelated short stories.

It's been over a year since the System came to Earth, bringing blood and monsters in equal measure. Having left Whitehorse, John and his team travel down to British Columbia, running into new dangers from aliens and humans alike. Faced with new challenges and new enemies, John and his friends seek to free human settlements from Galactic control in North America.

The Klingon-Federation alliance is in peril as never before. Lord Korgh has seized control of the House of Kruge, executing a plot 100 years in the making. The Klingon cult known as the Unsung rampages across the stars, striking from the shadows in their cloaked Birds-of-Prey. And the mysterious figure known as Buxtus Cross launches a scheme that will transform the Klingon Empire forever.

When the Equal Grasp and other unsavory aliens launch their plot to open humanity up to the stars—in the name of profit, of course—Van and his crew spring into action, fearing the fallout of a world gone mad. With each passing event in his career, Van continues to unravel locked memories, held by Perry, that explain a family history far more violent than he ever imagined.

Botany is free now, and so is the devastated Earth. Earth needs food, and the resources to rebuild. Botany needs technology - from solar satellite panels to simple batteries - and, some say, the will to protect itself from being overrun by refugees who may or may not have strength and skills. As alien influence fades, the people of Botany must decide what kind of world they will become.

Kris Bjornsen has come a long way since alien slave ships scooped her up in Denver with thousands of others. Dropped off on an apparently uninhabited world with the rest, she has fallen in love with Zainal, a renegade Catteni, and has made a comfortable life for herself and her new family. But she feels a soldier's duty to escape Botany and rejoin the struggle for freedom.

An explorer tug captain, Alex Racine detects a damaged alien craft drifting into the system. Recognizing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make first contact, Alex pulls off a daring maneuver to latch on to the derelict. Alex discovers the ship was attacked by an unknown craft, the first of its kind ever encountered. The mysterious silver ship's attack was both instant and deadly.

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.

The final frontier erupts into chaos as vast quantities of a rare energy source are discovered beneath the surface of Baldur-3, a remote planet beyond the outer fringes of Federation space. Now, an old-fashioned “gold rush” is underway as a flood of would-be prospectors, from countless worlds and species, races toward the planet to stake their claim. Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise are dispatched to deal with the escalating crisis...which lies on the other side of a famously perilous region of space known as the Antares Maelstrom.

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.

Their historic five-year mission is over. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and all the crew have scattered to other jobs or other lives. Now, they are back together again on a fabulously refitted USS Enterprise as an incredibly destructive power threatens earth and the human race.

Elim Garak has ascended to Castellan of the Cardassian Union...but despite his soaring popularity, the imminent publication of a report exposing his peoples' war crimes during the occupation on Bajor looks likely to set the military against him. Into this tense situation come Dr. Katherine Pulaski - visiting Cardassia Prime to accept an award on behalf of the team that solved the Andorian genetic crisis - and Dr. Peter Alden, formerly of Starfleet Intelligence.

In the far reaches of the galaxy, a machine of war bursts into existence in a place and time it was never meant to be. On a mission of retribution for the destruction of his planet, its half-mad captain seeks the death of every intelligent being, and the annihilation of every civilized world. Kirk and Spock, two completely different and unyielding personalities must find a way to lead the only crew, aboard the only ship, that can stop him.

When Klingon commander Kruge died in combat against James T. Kirk on the Genesis planet back in 2285, he left behind a powerful house in disarray - and a series of ticking time bombs: the Phantom Wing, a secret squadron of advanced Birds-of-Prey; a cabal of loyal officers intent on securing his heritage; and young Korgh, his thwarted would-be heir, willing to wait a Klingon lifetime to enact his vengeance.

In this Hugo-nominated novel, an alien walks into a museum and asks if he can see a paleontologist. But the arachnid ET hasn't come aboard a rowboat with the Pope and Stephen Hawking (although His Holiness does request an audience later). Landing at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the spacefarer, Hollus, asks to compare notes on mass extinctions with resident dino-scientist Thomas Jericho.

Albert Jenkins never cared much for bureaucrats and politicians. So, when the Galactic Congress refuses to act on the illegal invasion of Earth by parasitic aliens, he does what any self-respecting vet would do - he steals a spaceship. But when AJ and a snarky pop culture-loving alien companion are pursued by space cops, he does the only rational thing he can come up with. He strategically crash-lands on a junkyard moon.

A spaceship from Earth accidentally crossed through a hole in space-time to a universe where the force of gravity is one billion times as strong as the gravity we know. Somehow the crew survived, aided by the fact that they emerged into a cloud of gas surrounding a black hole, which provided a breathable atmosphere. Five hundred years later, their descendants still struggle for existence, divided into two main groups. The Miners live on the Belt, a ramshackle ring of dwellings orbiting the core of a dead star, which they excavate for raw materials.

We've come a long way in the forty years since the Shongairi attacked Earth, killed half its people, and then were driven away by an alliance of humans with the other sentient bipeds who inhabit our planet. We took the technology they left behind, and rapidly built ourselves into a starfaring civilization. Because we haven't got a moment to lose. Because it's clear that there are even more powerful, more hostile aliens out there, and Earth needs allies. But it also transpires that the Shongairi expedition that nearly destroyed our home planet ... wasn't an official one.

With the invading aliens temporarily driven from Human-and-NeHaw-occupied space, all the races are using the pause to recover and rebuild, both friend and foe alike. For the NeHaw, that means pressuring the Earth to allow them to rebuild and rearm their fleet from the Wawobash shipyards, a risk that could easily backfire. For Jake, the lingering concerns of a lost crew with the un-activated Artificial Life installed in the captured saucer still dominate his thoughts.