In these labors, there is one friend that they can count on, day in and day out . . . he’s a constant companion in their headsets with the Smack and Crack, Sno Bro, and other music they love, as well offering a seemingly endless stream of friendship and encouragement: the morning DJ on Company Radio Channel D, Robin Whitlake. But, Robin is more than a warm human voice in the endless night, he is a man with a heroic, yet deadly and dangerous secret past that could condemn him to death at any time. Disfigured and aging rapidly, he must work harder and harder to project the youth and vitality that he brings to his broadcasts, all the while wondering when and if his past will catch up with him. On 14 January 2314, it did. A disaster in the mining colony brings the heroic and deadly elements of Robin’s past into sudden collision. Not only must he decide whether to subject himself to possible execution, Robin has to call upon all his professionalism as a broadcaster, the skills he spent decades honing in his former life, and the Morse code abilities of a red-headed, pig-tailed Space Scout named Elaine, in a desperate “Hail Mary” improvisation with thousands of innocent lives hanging in the balance. Good Morning Vendemiatrix is an 8800 word stand-alone novelette set in the “Man of War” universe. Fans of Honsinger’s other work will recognize the setting and be treated to a cameo appearance by a familiar character, while new readers will not find themselves “lost in space.” It is a humorous and exciting piece of shorter fiction written to be enjoyed by all Science Fiction readers.

    A mage cop on his first assignment learns the world isn't as black and white as hopedA jump mage and a starship with matching needs turn out to be a magnet for troubleDigging in 1940s New York City awakens a monster--and brings in the elite of the FaeThe protected heir of an interstellar dictatorship is called to a battle no one expected him to fightAn explosive collection of four novellas from science fiction and fantasy author Glynn Stewart, spanning his ONSET, Starship's Mage, Changeling Blood and Exile universes, including two brand new urban fantasy novellas.  Includes:ONSET: Murder by MagicStarship's Mage: Episode 1Fae, Flames and FedorasAshen Stars

    

    Moreover, it had the answer! But what man ever takes free advice?

    The ship contains an experimental quantum device, lost while en route to a research colony on Europa. On Earth, powerful corporate forces are moving to resume unrestricted, inter-AI communications, their objective being to gain complete dominion over the colonized solar system. But the outer worlds are mobilizing to prevent them from achieving their objective, a fight back which is being led by Solomon, a sentient quantum intelligence (QI), also on Europa. However, once word of the crew’s discovery gets out, they soon realize that ownership of this technology could fundamentally change the balance of power within the solar system, and they now find themselves at the very nexus of a system-wide conflict. Their fight for survival plays out across the solar system, from the mining outposts of the asteroid belt to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and from the great Martian city of Jezero to the irradiated wastelands on Earth. This is an epic tale of humanity’s struggle for survival and meaning in a time when artificial intelligence has finally out-paced our own ability to control it. About The Belt: The story is set a century or so into the future where humanity has colonized most of the inner solar system. The asteroid belt (The Belt) is now a hive of mining activity and ships ply the trade routes to Earth and Mars. The technology depicted, for the most part, is what I consider to be technically plausible, although I do stretch it a little with quantum entanglement. That said, you won’t need a calculator or a slide-rule to enjoy the story.

    That was always going to be complicated since he was a Prince of the Realm. Complicated turned into almost impossible when the Empress is attacked. What is a simple lieutenant supposed to do with his mother in a coma, a seemingly invincible enemy on the offensive, a darkness from the past stirring and his paranoid older brother trying to assassinate him. The lieutenant remembers his oath and with a former spy, a handful of Marines, his uncle and most importantly, his father, decides to defend the Empire from all enemies whether foreign or domestic.

    You’d think that would be a good thing, but in truth, not so much. You see, a Protected World is a sentry world. One located along the edge of human space, there to sound the alarm if there’s an alien invasion. A world that is marginally habitable, so unlikely to be a target, yet well connected to the rest of humanity, so able to sound the alarm.And that’s the real problem. Marginally habitable worlds can’t support a significant population. And for the few of us that live here, it’s difficult to scrape out a living.You might ask why anyone would want to live in such a place. I ask that question all the time. The short answer is that these worlds were given away to anyone that had the means to claim and settle them. A lot of adventurers couldn’t resist the opportunity. My grandfather, six generations back, was one of those people.There are many stories about my ancestral grandfather. He was apparently quite a character, eccentric as well. Many of his sayings are built deeply into our culture, and most involve the number six. Spend a day in town and you’re likely to hear them. ‘Better to do one thing well than six things poorly.’ Or ‘better to have six good days than one good week.’Of his many sayings, there’s the one my mother quotes all the time. ‘The sixth son of the sixth generation will stand above them all.’Well, it turns out that I’m the sixth son of the sixth generation. My father, and all his forefathers, were first sons of first sons down the line from the great Jared Daan. I was my father’s sixth son. Sixth son of the sixth most direct connection to our founder. My parents gave me the name of my ancestor, Jared Daan. I’m the first to bear that name since the great man passed. My mother says I’m destined for greatness. I think that’s crazy talk. But my five brothers hate me for it.

    For hundreds of years, the danger of collision has been ignored as mere crackpot theories, until now, and now it's too late. Collision is a short story commissioned by Vanquish Motion Pictures for development in film and television, and is the first in a series of character-rich, mystery-driven science fiction grounded in science fact.

    Humanity is now at their mercy, but not all Space Force warships have been defeated. Wolfe Koenig’s light cruiser, Excalibur, is on a mission to acquire technology that just might enable the ragged remnants of the Fleet to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat—if he can find an alien race with that technology, if he can convince them to trade for it and if the technology can be exploited fast enough. Excalibur’s Quest is the story of that mission and the challenges, both alien and human, that Koenig faces. This is the second book in the action-packed military SF Swordships Odyssey series. Genre categories: space fleet, military SF, space opera, galactic empire, alien invasion, first contact, space exploration.

    They found a habitable planet and erased everything in the colony ship’s data banks about Earth in the hopes that none of their descendants would ever attempt to find mankind’s home world. Now, thousands of years after Britannia was settled, a war is looming between the Union and Coalition. Captain Grady Henricks is given a secret mission to discover how a small scout ship’s hull survived destruction from powerful blaster beams that destroyed everything but the hull. However, time is running out for Grady to finish his mission; the Coalition is becoming more aggressive and the war is going to kick off before Grady can complete his assignment. During his mission, Grady discovers that the scout wasn’t attacked and destroyed by Coalition warships. An alien civilization has found Britannia and it quickly becomes clear that not only is the Union threatened by the Coalition but all of Britannia is in danger of being attacked by the aliens. War breaks out and the aliens decide to strike in the aftermath. The Fight for Britannia is on and it appears that the humans living on Britannia don’t have long to live. Grady is forced to do something that the original colonists prayed would never happen; he goes in search of an ancient planet that might be able to save the remaining humans on Britannia. Earth must be found and quickly. Excerpt from The Fight for Britannia: Taffy stood behind the Hermit and saw the computer’s screen activate. She saw the startup screen appear and then go dark, as the Hermit turned a nob on the keyboard. Each time it clicked, another dark screen appeared. After ten clicks, a view appeared on the display. She heard the Hermit mutter to himself, “They left the polar satellite alone.” He began moving the cursor and the view changed. An image began zooming in and she saw a city appear. The image grew larger and she recognized that it was the city she lived in just over the mountains; the Government Tower was in the center of the city and that building couldn’t be anywhere else. She suddenly saw three large shapes move out of the mountains toward the outskirts of the city. Suddenly, brilliant beams of light stabbed out of the three objects hitting the ground. Her heart started pounding harder; where those light beams hit, massive explosions erupted, and everything caught on fire. The three-large objects moved out over the city and the only thing left behind them was a fire bright enough to be seen from space. She watched the fires move out into the city and saw her parent’s neighborhood go up in massive flames. The Hermit moved the cursor again and she saw numerous star ships moving toward the monitor. The Hermit pressed a button on the wall turning on the lights in the giant facility as he jumped up out of his chair and ran across the huge room. She followed him and suddenly saw a small ship in the center of the large cavern. The Fight for Britannia is a thriller and is the latest novel from the international bestselling author Saxon Andrew.

     The wreck of a Sekar battleship and the intel contained within a subsurface alien facility could affect the outcome of a war which has so far claimed billions of lives. However, while the Raggers are defeated, they are not destroyed, and they are unwilling to give up the prize. What starts as a hard fight to claim invaluable alien tech turns into something with far higher stakes. The crashed battleship is called Nullifier and its control entity promises many things. Captains Jake Griffin and Tanner Conway will soon find that this mysterious craft has a mission of its own. A mission that requires a replacement for its dead crew. From the ice storms of Glesia to a planet in the throes of cataclysmic violence, the Nullifier takes Griffin and Conway on a journey where they will learn the history of a long-dead alien race and find that ancient threats still exist. Overcoming this new challenge will bring rewards unimagined and a chance to hold back the Sekar tide for a little longer. Beating the odds has never seemed harder or more important for humanity’s survival… Nullifier is a fast-paced military sci-fi shooter filled with spaceships, guns, tech and warfare. It follows on from book 5 in the Fire and Rust Series: Refuge 9.

    But when a terrified woman falls through his bathroom ceiling, he's forced back into a life of gunfights, double agents and paranormal research. The secret he's been keeping for nearly four decades might reunite him with his lost love, or kill millions.This new short story by John August falls into the genre of paranoid "spy-fi" popularized by writers like Jorge Luis Borges and shows like The Prisoner and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.== What Others Say =="I really dug the story. Gave it a glance just to see, got totally hooked, and blazed on through to the end."-- Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Yiddish Policemen's Union) "The Variant" is both a good, fun, smart story and an interesting experiment in indie self-publishing for fiction."-- John Gruber, daringfireball.net== About the Author ==An excerpt of The Variant is available at johnaugust.com/variant About the AuthorJohn August is the screenwriter of eight feature films, including Go, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Corpse Bride. He wrote and directed the 2007 movie The Nines.He can be found on Twitter, @johnaugust

    Then the enemies are forced to become allies when everyone becomes lost in an unfamiliar region of the galaxy and must fight their way back through primative planets and against alien fleets. As always with Smith, romance and action are equally mixed. The Seaton is forced back into action to stop a menace that threatens every civilized planet in the galaxy, but to do it he must create the greatest starship ever conceived. Finally read Triplanetary, the story that helped launch the Lensmen series. A brainy man and heroic woman fight against ruthless space pirates for life and love.

    Rapid expansion into habitable worlds brings immense prosperity and a new age of exploration unlike any humanity has seen. WAR Conflicts over control of the colonial worlds spawn a massive, generation-long war among humans. Under a shaky armistice, humanity has just begun to crawl out of the shadows of destruction, but suspicion and bitter hostility run deep. INVASION On a rocky, desolate planet, a small band of gold prospectors find themselves making a discovery they never expected—valuable and powerful relics of the galaxy's deep past. The prospectors also discover a hostile alien species, ruthless beings who do not tolerate humans and wipe them out on sight. Humanity's first contact with intelligent aliens becomes a war for survival. The invasion has begun...but the beginning of the invasion is also the beginning of the resistance. "Resistance is a terrific space opera adventure. It combines mystery, heart-pounding action, and a good dose of humor. It's Aliens meets Tremors. I can't wait to read the sequel." -Daniel Arenson, USA Today bestselling author of the Earthrise series

    Short on every resource but the intelligence of their personnel, Exploration Command goes where no human has gone before, discovering new worlds, species and civilizations, pushing the boundaries of knowledge, and always on the lookout for new discoveries that could help the Empire in its struggle against the invader. In this volume are three novelettes about Exploration Command, the scientific part of the Fleet. In Retribution, a Command team finds a devastated alien civilization being aided by missionaries from the Empire. Or are they? In Timeless, an ancient derelict is found in a place where no ship should be. Does it hide the secrets to a technology the Empire has sought for over a thousand years? And in They Don't Care, alien species are being wiped out by a renegade race. Can a single two ship team stop them, or will more species go into the long night? For those readers of Exodus: Empires at War, these stories fill in some of the background of the Empire and add to the series. For newcomers, they are a great introduction to the series.