Book picks similar to
Colony One by Tarah Benner


science-fiction
sci-fi
space-opera
scifi

The Loneliness of the Deep Space Cargoist


J.S. Carter Gilson - 2020
    Afraid. Fighting to survive. A collision with space debris has left a gigantic hole in Inez Stanton's ship, nearly crippling it. Inez is a cargoist, that rare breed of adventurer who takes to deep space solo, ferrying valuable cargo for the Tenth Great and Glorious Browns Company. Now she's in a race against her own rig's spaceworthiness, and that might not be the worst part. The totalitarian Free Earth, led by the populist Brother Lin, has also lost a ship on this lane, and is intent on finding out why. The Company wants their cargo delivered and can make Inez's life very difficult if she doesn't succeed. With the nearest waystation three days away, death in the cold vacuum of space is a distinct possibility as well. The clock is ticking for her to deliver her cargo. But will she want to when she finds out what she's actually carrying?

The Honour of the Knights


Stephen J. Sweeney - 2009
    And it would not be long before they themselves would come face to face with that which destroyed an empire: an unforgiving, unstoppable, and totally unrelenting foe.There seemed to exist only one glimmer of hope of driving back the darkness: The ATAF Project - a secretly developed set of starfighters that may well just harbour some terrible secrets of their own.Reviews:"A tightly plotted action-adventure yarn with a good mix of likeable, interesting and nasty characters" "Written with perspicacity and drive, with a strong voice and good attention to detail."124,000 words~ 450 pages

The Light Brigade


Kameron Hurley - 2019
    Grunts in the corporate corps get busted down into light to travel to and from interplanetary battlefronts. Everyone is changed by what the corps must do in order to break them down into light. Those who survive learn to stick to the mission brief—no matter what actually happens during combat.Dietz, a fresh recruit in the infantry, begins to experience combat drops that don’t sync up with the platoon’s. And Dietz’s bad drops tell a story of the war that’s not at all what the corporate brass want the soldiers to think is going on.Is Dietz really experiencing the war differently, or is it combat madness? Trying to untangle memory from mission brief and survive with sanity intact, Dietz is ready to become a hero—or maybe a villain; in war it’s hard to tell the difference.

New Moon


Ian McDonald - 2015
    Maybe it will kill you when the per diem for your allotted food, water, and air runs out, just before you hit paydirt. Maybe it will kill you when you are trapped between the reigning corporations-the Five Dragons-in a foolish gamble against a futuristic feudal society. On the Moon, you must fight for every inch you want to gain. And that is just what Adriana Corta did. As the leader of the Moon's newest "dragon," Adriana has wrested control of the Moon's Helium-3 industry from the Mackenzie Metal corporation and fought to earn her family's new status. Now, in the twilight of her life, Adriana finds her corporation-Corta Helio-confronted by the many enemies she made during her meteoric rise. If the Corta family is to survive, Adriana's five children must defend their mother's empire from her many enemies... and each other.

Terminus


Kevin Hardman - 2014
    Served up as a scapegoat and drummed out of the military, he has since lived a life of seclusion with only an adopted alien as a companion. Now the Vacra have returned. As the only person to have ever faced them and survived, Maker is reinstated in the Corps and given the onerous task of finding this enemy on a world located at the edge of known space. Assisting him is an unlikely band of military rejects, including a blind sharpshooter, an unstable psychic, and a genetically-engineered killing machine who refuses to fight. Given that the Vacra have superior weapons and technology, Maker recognizes that his team is at a distinct disadvantage. But Marines are nothing if not resourceful, and Maker has an audacious plan that just may level the playing field – if it doesn’t get them all killed.

A Talent for War


Jack McDevitt - 1989
    But now, one man believes Sim was a fraud, and Alex must follow the legend into the heart of the alien galaxy to confront a truth far stranger than any fiction.

Off Armageddon Reef


David Weber - 2007
    But the Gbaba can detect the emissions of an industrial civilization, so the human rulers of Safehold have taken extraordinary measures: with mind control and hidden high technology, they've built a religion in which every Safeholdian believes, a religion designed to keep Safehold society medieval forever.800 years pass. In a hidden chamber on Safehold, an android from the far human past awakens. This "rebirth" was set in motion centuries before, by a faction that opposed shackling humanity with a concocted religion. Via automated recordings, "Nimue" - or, rather, the android with the memories of Lieutenant Commander Nimue Alban - is told her fate: she will emerge into Safeholdian society, suitably disguised, and begin the process of provoking the technological progress which the Church of God Awaiting has worked for centuries to prevent.Nothing about this will be easy. To better deal with a medieval society, "Nimue" takes a new gender and a new name, "Merlin." His formidable powers and access to caches of hidden high technology will need to be carefully concealed. And he'll need to find a base of operations, a Safeholdian country that's just a little more freewheeling, a little less orthodox, a little more open to the new.And thus Merlin comes to Charis, a mid-sized kingdom with a talent for naval warfare. He plans to make the acquaintance of King Haarahld and Crown Prince Cayleb, and maybe, just maybe, kick off a new era of invention. Which is bound to draw the attention of the Church...and, inevitably, lead to war.

Island 731


Jeremy Robinson - 2013
    But his work is interrupted when, surrounded by thirty miles of refuse,  the ship and its high tech systems are plagued by a series of strange malfunctions and the crew is battered by a raging storm.When the storm fades and the sun rises, the beaten crew awakens to find themselves anchored in the protective cove of a tropical island...and no one knows how they got there. Even worse, the ship has been sabotaged, two crewman are dead and a third is missing. Hawkins spots signs of the missing man on shore and leads a small team to bring him back. But they quickly discover evidence of a brutal history left behind by the Island’s former occupants: Unit 731, Japan’s ruthless World War II human experimentation program. Mass graves and military fortifications dot the island, along with a decades old laboratory housing the remains of hideous experiments.As crew members start to disappear, Hawkins realizes that they are not alone. In fact, they were brought to this strange and horrible island. The crew is taken one-by-one and while Hawkins fights to save his friends, he learns the horrible truth: Island 731 was never decommissioned and the person taking his crewmates may not be a person at all—not anymore.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet


Becky Chambers - 2014
    While the patched-up ship has seen better days, it offers her a bed, a chance to explore the far-off corners of the galaxy, and most importantly, some distance from her past. An introspective young woman who learned early to keep to herself, she’s never met anyone remotely like the ship’s diverse crew, including Sissix, the exotic reptilian pilot, chatty engineers Kizzy and Jenks who keep the ship running, and Ashby, their noble captain.Life aboard the Wayfarer is chaotic and crazy—exactly what Rosemary wants. It’s also about to get extremely dangerous when the crew is offered the job of a lifetime. Tunneling wormholes through space to a distant planet is definitely lucrative and will keep them comfortable for years. But risking her life wasn’t part of the plan. In the far reaches of deep space, the tiny Wayfarer crew will confront a host of unexpected mishaps and thrilling adventures that force them to depend on each other. To survive, Rosemary’s got to learn how to rely on this assortment of oddballs—an experience that teaches her about love and trust, and that having a family isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the universe.

A Soldier's Duty


Jean Johnson - 2011
    To prevent this vision from coming true, Ia enlists in the Terran United Planets military with a plan to become a soldier who will inspire generations for the next three hundred years-a soldier history will call Bloody Mary.

Fire Fight


Chris Ward - 2018
    The only person capable of stopping him is Lianetta Jansen, a disgraced former Galactic Military Policewoman now turned smuggler, who is haunted by a terrible tragedy in her past. Along with her ragtag, wisecracking crew—the one-armed pilot Caladan, and the malfunctioning droid, Harlan5—Lia must confront her own demons, while trying to stop another.

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. . . .

Honor Among Thieves


Rachel Caine - 2018
    In her eyes, living inside a dome isn’t much better than a prison cell.Still, when Zara commits a crime that has her running scared, jail might be exactly where she’s headed. Instead Zara is recruited into the Honors, an elite team of humans selected by the Leviathan—a race of sentient alien ships—to explore the outer reaches of the universe as their passengers.Zara seizes the chance to flee Earth’s dangers, but when she meets Nadim, the alien ship she’s assigned, Zara starts to feel at home for the first time. But nothing could have prepared her for the dark, ominous truths that lurk behind the alluring glitter of starlight.

EON


Earl E. Hardman - 2016
    The Ring keeps out all of humanity’s enemies – in particular, a vicious race of reptilians known as the Parsnaak. On the outer fringe of human-occupied space is the planet Muse, an entire world dedicated and established as a colossal museum – a storehouse of antiquities and relics from the ancient histories of both men and aliens. There, Ian Lotus, a man with his own mysterious past, has chosen to live in deliberate obscurity, harboring secrets that could reshape mankind’s destiny. Now, the impossible has happened: the Chronos Ring has been breached – rendered inert – and Lotus finds himself no longer able to hide in the shadows as he becomes the object of a massive interplanetary manhunt. However, his problems go well beyond simply being the most wanted man in the galaxy. There’s also the approaching Parsnaak invasion fleet to deal with, as well as an enigmatic, extra-dimensional being of immense power who, for reasons unknown, wants Lotus dead.

Captain Hawkins


H. Peter Alesso - 2016
    His heroic effort to save the lives of innocent women and children, caught in the cross-fire of war, placed him squarely in the cross-hairs of avenging soldiers.Hawkins was stunned when his rescue effort was seen as treachery. Unfairly convicted of treason by a corrupt judge, he was sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor on an infamous penal colony.Once in prison, his courage and perseverance won him the admiration and trust of his fellow convicts. While he was plotting his escape, an enemy attacked the planet--giving this daring warrior his chance. Together with his fellow prisoners, he launched a bold assault and high-jacked an enemy warship.From then on, Captain Jamie Hawkins and his ship the Indefatigable fought against a corrupt government--only to discover a mysterious alien presence was behind the war.