Academy graduate Natalya Regyri stood first in line for her pick of engineering officer jobs, until, at the graduation party, a classmate turned up dead. Now, betrayed by her friends and framed for murder, she must flee beyond the reach of the Confederation...and any semblance of civilized society. With a damaged second-hand ship and TIC interceptors dogging her step, she nets a smuggling contract that might just get her back on her feet and in control of her destiny. But only if she's willing to make an ore run back to the place she's wanted for murder.

An old friend. A new course. A deadly ship with a secret cargo. Ishmael Wang returns to Port Newmar, but ghosts from his past have followed him. His old shipmate, Phillip Carstairs, offers him the opportunity to track down the man who killed his lover. The catch? He must take command of the Chernyakova, a ship that still stinks of death and haunts Ishmael's nightmares. Together Phillip and Ismael begin a journey into unknown reaches of the Deep Dark to bring back the man who killed Greta.

When Edgar Vagrant down checks Verkol Kondur’s mining barge, Kondur gets swept up in station politics in spite of his best efforts to avoid them. When Edgar pushes his elder son, Malachai, into working on the station’s freighter, Malachai decides to take matters into his own hands. With Malachai gone, his brother Zachary gets to pick up the pieces of a management structure that he had no hand in making, no authority to control, and no wish to continue.

In a universe run by corporations, where profit matters more than life, how can an orphan with no skills, no money, and no prospects survive? When Ishmael Wang's mother dies in a senseless accident, he's given a choice: leave the planet on his own, or the company will remove him. To avoid deportation Ishmael finds work as a mess deck attendant on an interstellar freighter.

Otto is Richard Krugg's only son and heir to the Shaman's gift. Otto doesn't want it. He wants to be a fisherman. When company policies force unwelcome changes onto his life and threaten even the security of the village, Otto discovers that being a shaman isn't optional. Jimmy Pirano is caught between the devil and the deep green sea when new production quotas are handed down from corporate headquarters. Locked into a century of existing practice, Jimmy is forced to find new ways to fish....

Get ready to experience two more origin stories in the Backyard Starship universe.

Jason and his friends just wanted to spend a week at the lake house. Time to relax, hang out, and catch up on old times. Then the System arrived. It only took a few hours for their world to become a real-life roleplaying game; trading some downtime for the need to learn new skills and powers while trying to defend their new home, their families, and survive. They don’t know the rules. They don’t know what’s coming next. What they do know is; they need to reinforce and expand their fort while protecting it, keep leveling up, and explore a dangerous new world.

A world on the precipice of the apocalypse. A secret forged in the flames of war. A chance to start over. For John Sutton, only one of those three things matters. Retired from a decade of brutal war, he wants nothing more than a quiet pastoral life while he does his best to stem the steady increase of his Doom Points before they hit 100, signaling the start of the end. He’s been given a small farm on the outskirts of the empire as thanks for his service, but no matter how far he travels, it's impossible to escape the war's devastating effects on the world.

Jason Burke was a man hiding from himself in a small cabin high in the American Rocky Mountains when his simple, quiet life was shattered one night by what he first assumed was an aviation mishap. But when he investigates the crash, what he finds will yank him out of his self-imposed exile and thrust him into a world he could have never imagined.

Eli "Nacho" Naches is a fearsome assassin who has lost everything in a post-apocalyptic world full of monstrous creatures. He knows where he fits in this horror show, and he’s only been hanging around to see what’s going to be thrown at him next. When he’s finally put in chains and sent to the chopping block, he goes readily...only to be unexpectedly sent back in time to his younger body with his memories intact and the chance to make a difference.