Book picks similar to
Bug Hunt by Isaac Hooke


sci-fi
science-fiction
aliens
space-opera

On Basilisk Station


David Weber - 1992
    Her demoralized crew blames her for their ship's humiliating posting to an out-of-the-way picket station. The aborigines of the system's only habitable planet are smoking homicide-inducing hallucinogens. Parliament isn't sure it wants to keep the place; the major local industry is smuggling, the merchant cartels want her head; the star-conquering, so-called "Republic" of Haven is Up to Something; and Honor Harrington has a single, over-age light cruiser with an armament that doesn't work to police the entire star system.But the people out to get her have made one mistake.They've made her mad!

Planetside


Michael Mammay - 2018
    So when Colonel Carl Butler answers the call from an old and powerful friend, he knows it's something big—and he's not being told the whole story. A high councilor's son has gone MIA out of Cappa Base, the space station orbiting a battle-ravaged planet. The young lieutenant had been wounded and evacuated—but there's no record of him having ever arrived at hospital command. The colonel quickly finds Cappa Base to be a labyrinth of dead ends and sabotage: the hospital commander stonewalls him, the Special Ops leader won't come off the planet, witnesses go missing, radar data disappears, and that’s before he encounters the alien enemy. Butler has no choice but to drop down onto a hostile planet—because someone is using the war zone as a cover. The answers are there—Butler just has to make it back alive…

Live Free or Die


John Ringo - 2010
    But the first aliens to come through, the Glatun, were peaceful traders and the world breathed a sigh of relief. Who Controls the Orbitals, Controls the World When the Horvath came through, they announced their ownership by dropping rocks on three cities and gutting them. Since then, they've held Terra as their own personal fiefdom. With their control of the orbitals, there's no way to win and earth's governments have accepted the status quo. Live Free or Die. To free the world from the grip of the Horvath is going to take an unlikely hero. A hero unwilling to back down to alien or human governments, unwilling to live in slavery and with enough hubris, if not stature, to think he can win. Fortunately, there's Tyler Vernon. And he has bigger plans than just getting rid of the Horvath.

Freedom's Fire


Bobby Adair - 2017
    Now humans fight in the armies of their masters to save themselves from annihilation. At least, that's what the propaganda insists is true. What the layers of lies keep hidden, is how badly the new war is going for the people of earth. Now it's Dylan Kane's turn to blast into the heavens and join the battle, but what his masters don't know, is that by putting a weapon in his hands, they're giving him the key to unlocking his hopes of freedom. When the railgun slugs are tearing through his ship, and the vacuum is sucking the life out of his wounded friends, will Dylan's years of repressed rage turn into enough bravery to make his dream come true? The Freedom's Fire Series book 1 - Freedom's Fire book 2 - Freedom's Fury book 3 - Freedom's Fray

Skint Idjit


Felix R. Savage - 2016
    Since he, and half the galaxy, signed on to the rat race of the technological relics trade, Fletch has long since come to terms with the idea that he will join the ranks of the unlucky explorers that perish lightyears from home without a dime to his name.As the first mate of an old, decrepit exploration ship--the Skint Idjit--things can't get much worse. As if that isn’t enough, he has a hard time convincing himself his luck is bound to change when he finds himself stranded on the planet Suckass, on a remote branch of the Interstellar Railroad. With his new assignment an unlikely candidate to hide alien treasures, true to his personality, Fletch settles down to work on his tan.But when disaster strikes and a member of his crew is killed, Fletch finds himself torn between loyalty to the surviving crew and the siren song of an unsuspected trove of A-tech.Can Fletch save the Skint Idjit and her crew from a horrible death? Or will he ignore their dying screams and laugh all the way to the bank? Volume 2 of the Interstellar Railroad series, Intergalactic Bogtrotter, is now available!

TFS Ingenuity


Tori L. Harris - 2015
     For fifty years, Earth has received mysterious data transmissions from random locations in deep space. The streams include advanced technology, allowing Humans to achieve faster-than-light travel virtually overnight. As we prepare to take our first, tentative steps into interstellar space, we know almost nothing about our alien benefactors, and their motivations remain unexplained. While completing their shakedown cruise, Captain Tom Prescott and the crew of the first Terran Fleet Command starship, TFS Ingenuity, stumble into a first contact situation. They learn that Earth is not the first civilization granted access to the stars before their time – and how this Faustian gift has inevitably led to centuries of interstellar war. Humanity’s existence hangs in the balance as a powerful alliance assembles a preemptive military strike, believing it to be their only option to protect themselves … from us. Prescott and his small, initially unarmed starship must serve as our only line of defense. Ingenuity is our only hope.

Dreadnaught


Jack Campbell - 2011
    Now Fleet Admiral Geary's victory has earned him the adoration of the people-and the enmity of politicians convinced that a living hero can be a very inconvenient thing.Geary knows that members of the military high command and the government question his loyalty to the Alliance and fear his staging a coup-so he can't help but wonder if the newly christened First Fleet is being deliberately sent to the far side of space on a suicide mission.

Powered


Scott Bartlett - 2017
    But a highly trained soldier piloting a mech? Now we’re getting somewhere... Stranded in a hostile galaxy. Exiled from humanity. Of course we had to carve out a foothold on Eresos. We had no idea someone was already living here… A single Quatro can take down an entire squad. Bigger than a stallion, more muscular than a grizzly, with jaws that splinter bone. And zero fear. But Darkstream Security only ever hired the most elite troops, and we managed to drive the Quatro into the holes they attacked us from. We were better trained, better equipped, and more intelligent. At least, we thought we were. After years of peace, the Quatro are back, in numbers we didn’t know they had, with artillery we didn’t think they could use. Suddenly, if we want to win this thing, we’re going to need a brand new weapon. We’re going to need mechs. Thank God R&D just finished a working prototype. Mech Wars takes place in the same universe as The Ixan Prophecies Trilogy, and it answers the question: what happened when Darkstream escaped the Milky Way for another galaxy?

Eternal Frontier


Anthony J. Melchiorri - 2016
    But when an unexpected attack cripples a scientific vessel, the SRES Argo, it appears that time has come to an end.Chief Medical Officer Tag Brewer is the ship’s only survivor. He is alone in the far reaches of space. To survive he must restore and protect the downed vessel from its unknown attackers on a planet as deadly as it is mysterious. He vows to do everything in his power to seek justice for his fallen crew.When Tag uncovers a sinister secret about those who attacked the Argo, he realizes far more is at stake than just his survival. Something more powerful, more technologically advanced, and more ruthless has emerged from the darkest voids of the galaxy. It’s up to Tag to survive long enough to warn humanity and stop the dawn of a new war.

Dark Space


Jasper T. Scott - 2013
    He owes crime lord Alec Brondi 10,000 sols, and his ship is badly damaged. When Brondi catches up with him, he makes an offer Ethan can't refuse. Ethan must infiltrate and sabotage the Valiant, the Imperial Star Systems Fleet carrier which stands guarding the entrance of Dark Space, and then his debt will be cleared. While Ethan is still undecided about what he will do, he realizes that the Imperium has been lying and putting all of Dark Space at risk. Now Brondi's plan is starting to look like a necessary evil, but before Ethan can act on it, he discovers that the real plan was much more sinister than what he was told, and he will be lucky to escape the Valiant alive. . . .

The Legion Awakes


J.R. Handley - 2016
     Now he is woken into a strange new time, and tasked with whipping into shape the worst squad of misfits in the entire Human Marine Corps. THE PRICE OF FAILURE: DEATH! 2565AD. Tranquility-4 near the frontier of the White Knight Empire. Guided by mysterious orders, the authorities at the Human Marine Corps base of Beta City thaw Lance Scipio. In 2441, an entire Marine company was executed with the exception of Captain Grimgerde and Sergeant Lance Scipio, the usual punishment for running in the face of the enemy. But these two were preserved… as if they would be required in the future. Scipio is not expected to escape execution for long, but he has been given a slim chance. For a Marine, a chance can be all that’s needed to change the fate of worlds… The Sleeping Legion is a breakneck new sequence of military science fiction novels set in the worlds of the international bestselling series: ‘The Human Legion’.

Star Nomad


Lindsay Buroker - 2016
    It should be a time for celebration, but not for fighter pilot Captain Alisa Marchenko. After barely surviving a crash in the final battle for freedom, she's stranded on a dustball of a planet, billions of miles from her young daughter. She has no money or resources, and there are no transports heading to Perun, her former home and the last imperial stronghold.But she has a plan.Steal a dilapidated and malfunctioning freighter from a junkyard full of lawless savages. Slightly suicidal, but she believes she can do it. Her plan, however, does not account for the elite cyborg soldier squatting in the freighter, intending to use it for his own purposes. As an imperial soldier, he has no love for Alliance pilots. In fact, he's quite fond of killing them.Alisa has more problems than she can count, but she can't let cyborgs, savages, or ancient malfunctioning ships stand in her way. If she does, she’ll never see her daughter again.

Outsystem


M.D. Cooper - 2012
    Despite her soiled record, Tanis still one of the best military counter-insurgency officers in the Terran Space Force. And they need her to find the terrorists responsible for trying to destroy the GSS Intrepid, a massive interstellar colony ship in the final phases of construction at the Mars Outer Shipyards. It’ll be her ticket out of the Sol system, but Tanis discovers she is up against more than mercenaries and assassins. Major corporations and governments have a vested interest in ensuring the Intrepid never leaves Sol, ultimately pitting Tanis against factions inside her own military. With few friends left, Tanis will need to fight for her life to get outsystem.

Crossover


Joel Shepherd - 2001
    Cassandra is an experimental design — more intelligent, more creative, and far more dangerous than any that have preceded her. But with her intellect come questions, and a moral awakening. She deserts the League and heads incognito into the space of her former enemy, the Federation, in search of a new life. Her chosen world is Callay, and its enormous, decadent capital metropolis of Tanusha, where the concerns of the war are literally and figuratively so many light years away. But the war between the League and the Federation was ideological as much as political, with much of that ideological dispute regarding the very existence of artificial sentience and the rules that govern its creation. Cassandra discovers that even in Tanusha, the powerful entities of this bloody conflict have wound their tentacles. Many in the League and the Federation have cause to want her dead, and Cassandra’s history, inevitably, catches up with her. Cassandra finds herself at the mercy of a society whose values preclude her own right even to exist. But her presence in Tanusha reveals other fault lines, and when Federal agents attempt to assassinate the Callayan president, she finds herself thrust into the service of her former enemies, using her lethal skills to attempt to protect her former enemies from forces beyond their ability to control. As she struggles for her place and survival in a new world, Cassandra must forge new friendships with old enemies, while attempting to confront the most disturbing and deadly realities of her own existence

Earth Strike


Ian Douglas - 2010
    Now the creatures known as humans are near this momentous turning point.But an armed threat is approaching from deepest space, determined to prevent humankind from crossing over that boundary—by total annihilation if necessary.To the Sh'daar, the driving technologies of transcendent change are anathema and must be obliterated from the universe—along with those who would employ them. As their great warships destroy everything in their path en route to the Sol system, the human Confederation government falls into dangerous disarray.There is but one hope, and it rests with a rogue Navy Admiral, commander of the kilometer-long star carrier America, as he leads his courageous fighters deep into enemy space towards humankind's greatest conflict—and quite possibly its last.