Book picks similar to
Cloak of War by Casey Calouette


science-fiction
sci-fi
space-opera
standalone

Thunder & Lightning


Christopher G. Nuttall - 2018
    An alien race called the Oghaldzon has decided that mankind is dangerously insane… and must be forcibly taken under control. The invasion fleet’s technology is decades ahead of Earth’s best. They have more ships than the human fleets combined, and a seemingly-inexhaustible number of ground troops. And they’re not afraid to kill billions of people. Humanity is outnumbered, outgunned, and divided. But they have a few cards left to play – and they’re not going down without a fight.

Dryker's Folly: Book 1 in Void Wraith Origins


Chris Fox - 2020
    Before the Eradication.One man had a chance to stop it all, and failed...Captain Dryker is a washed up vet mining on the fringes of the Kuiper belt. He loads rocks into the Folly’s railgun, and fires them back to his corporate overlords on Earth. Boring, just the way he likes it. Until one day it isn’t.An alien signal bursts from Pluto, which as it turns out is neither a planet, nor a planetoid body. It is an ancient defense satellite activated because it detected the return of the Vuka Spectra. The Void Wraith.Dryker is the closest ship on the scene, but not the only one vying for the prize. Hostile aliens have emerged from our sun using something called a Helios Gate. The savage Tigris have come not just for the satellite, but to conquer Earth.Dryker’s only hope is finding something, anything, within the installation to counter the alien’s superior technology and save mankind.The prequel to the Void Wraith Saga. Learn how it all began...

First Flight


Zachary Jones - 2019
    Just the Earth Federation and the League of Sovereign Systems fighting for the third time over who would be the supreme power in settled space, and who would have to exist in the victor’s shadow. Then the Ascendency showed up and ruined everything.One moment, Flight Lieutenant Mason Grey was a fighter pilot of the Federal Space Forces about to strike a League base located on a dwarf planet in an uninhabited system. The next, unknown starships showed up, blew his carrier to hell, killed his squadron, shot down his fighter, and left him stranded amid the ruins of the very base he had come to attack.With nothing but a space suit and a dwindling life support system, Mason was in way, way over his head. And that was just the start of his problems. (Content Warning: This novel contains violence and adult language)

The Empire of Bones Saga Volume 1


Terry Mixon - 2017
     EMPIRE OF BONES After a terrible war almost extinguished humanity, the New Terran Empire rises from its own ashes. Sent on an exploratory mission to the dead worlds of the Old Empire, Commander Jared Mertz sets off into the unknown. Only the Old Empire isn’t quite dead after all. Evil lurks in the dark. With everything he holds dear at stake, Jared must fight like never before. Victory means life. Defeat means death. Or worse. VEIL OF SHADOWS Princess Kelsey Bandar made a terrible, life-altering mistake. Her enemies gave her unspeakable agony in return. She must forge the iron will to control the weapon her body has become. If she fails, the monsters who tortured her come for humanity. And horrors worse than she knows wait in the darkness. COMMAND DECISIONS Commander Jared Mertz thought the glories of the Old Terran Empire once more within his people’s grasp. One bold strike to make them his. But no plan survives contact with the enemy. With the odds stacked against him, the battle to save humanity starts now. FIST OF GOD With tens of thousands of lives on the line, Princess Kelsey Bandar must harness the power of Imperial technology to stop terrorists with a nuke. Her friends call her plan suicidal. If they only knew how dangerous it really was.

Destiny: Union Station


E.M. Foner - 2021
    Joe McAllister is a reluctant mercenary who's looking for a way out and family-friendly place to start a business and raise an orphaned boy. Will the choices they make in the next few months shape the rest of their lives, or is free will just an illusion in a galaxy managed by ancient artificial intelligence? Destiny: Union Station takes place two years before the start of the nineteen book EarthCent Ambassador series.

Pursue the Past: Samair in Argos: Book 1


Michael Kotcher - 2014
    Dropped in the void and left for dead, lost in survival sleep for centuries, she awakes to find her world has changed and hitches a ride on a decrepit freighter. Tamara and the crew work together to fix the dying ship, try to fight off pirates with a Republic Naval warship captain ruthlessly pursuing them, all while trying to turn a profit. The Argos Cluster is a dangerous place, but some of the worst threats are those left behind.

Resistance


Max Carver - 2017
    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

Dark Star


Vaughn Heppner - 2016
    Then, the Coalition invaded, smashed the fleet and conquered the homeworld. The battered Dark Star barely escaped to wander the stars, helping its centurion eke out a living as a bounty hunter. Now, bad luck dogs Centurion Tanner. On Calisto Grandee, officials jail his crew and impound his ship, demanding fees he cannot pay. Rich strangers offer to hire him…maybe because he’s the only one desperate enough to accept their deal. They’ll pay to fix his ship and promise him a weapon to help him free his world. First, he must race to the galactic rim while there’s time and sneak into the most heavily fortified star system in the galaxy. There, they must destroy an extinction level threat before it can spread like a cancer against humanity. Tanner agrees. Now, the fate of the galaxy rests on one man and one ship to do the impossible before the clock strikes zero.

The Rise of Daan: Chronicles of Daan: Book 1


D. Ward Cornell - 2021
    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.

The Prince Awakens: Book 1 in the Prince of Britannia Saga


Fred Hughes - 2021
    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.

The Belt: Complete Trilogy


Gerald M. Kilby - 2018
    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.

... and they are us


Patrick McClafferty - 2014
    Voracious and relentlessly, the Creednax consume everything in their path, including people, planets and themselves if necessary. Only the Rose of the Dawn has the smallest chance of stopping them — if the abducted captain and shanghaied crew can figure out how to run the alien ship in time. Unfortunately, time is the one thing they don’t have.

The Colchis Job


Kal Spriggs - 2018
    Having taken over the Argonauts’ mercenary company when its previous owner was killed, he has arrived back at Karma to find that no one will deal with him. Blacklisted by his father, Jason is forced to do a job for him to clear his name. The early days of humanity’s expansion into space was an exciting time, as the best of the race went to the stars. Unfortunately, some of the worst went, as well, and the Argonauts must hunt down and destroy the worst of the worst, Colchis Industries. Colchis has powerful friends, though, and its coffers are overflowing with credits, allowing it to hire mercenaries and buy equipment beyond what the Argonauts can afford. They also meddle in genetics, and their creations range from…interesting…to unstoppable. Outmanned and outgunned, Jason and his crew embark on their voyage short on equipment but long on attitude. One thing is for sure—win, lose, or draw, they’re going to go out in style!

Echo of Tomorrow: Book One


Rob Buckman - 2014
    They say that vengeance is a dish best served cold, but to the men and woman who went with him over the border to deliver that vengeance, it was dish served hot, and out of the barrel of a gun and cannon, and from the air. Yet in victory came defeat as he found three hundred years later in the world he woke up in. One far different from the one he'd left behind when he went into cold sleep. Now he had to find a place in this strange new world, one without the means to wage war against an alien race raping the planet of its young people. First, he had to build an army, navy and air force from scratch while fending off attacks from the aliens and the secret government that wanted to put him and his men back into cold sleep or the grave.

Holy Ground


Evan Currie - 2021
    there was a war that had to be won.In this explosive novel traditional claims, modern borders, and the dreams for a better tomorrow clash when the IndoChina backed Eastern Alliance takes a new and aggressive stance on the world stage, ushering in the last great World War.A long patient wait is rewarded after over a century when the Chinese portion of the Eastern Alliance Bloc makes their move in the Pacific. For decades, only the US Navy has held them back from reclaiming what they believe to be theirs, but now the American forces are tired after decades of small wars, underfunded, and unprepared for what is coming. Additionally, the Bloc has an ace that shifts the balance of power and they intend to play it for all it is worth.As the world plunges into the fires of war, a ragtag force of American, Japanese, and a smattering of other nationalities, sent fleeing across the ocean from Japan with aggressors nipping at their heels, are presented with a choice. Keep running, or choose a battleground and face their fate.No more running. They will make their stand... on Holy Ground.This explosive military thriller from Evan Currie, author of the best selling Odyssey One series, introduces readers to a world on the cusp of something more... a world ready to step beyond the problems of history... but first, there is one final war to be fought.