Now its fleet is crippled and stranded in enemy territory. Their only hope is a man who's emerged from a century-long hibernation to find he has been heroically idealized, beyond belief...Captain John "Black Jack" Geary's legendary exploits are known to every schoolchild. Revered for his heroic "last stand" in the early days of the war, he was presumed dead. But a century later, Geary miraculously returns from survival hibernation and reluctantly takes command of the Alliance fleet as it faces annihilation by the Syndics.Appalled by the hero-worship around him, Geary is nevertheless a man who will do his duty. And he knows that bringing the stolen Syndic hypernet key safely home is the Alliance's one chance to win the war. But to do that, Geary will have to live up to the impossibly heroic "Black Jack" legend...

    Maybe my last.They made their presence on Earth known thirteen years ago.Providing technology and scientific insights far beyond what mankind was capable of. They became indispensable advisors and promised even more gifts that we just couldn't pass up. We called them Gurus.It took them a while to drop the other shoe. You can see why, looking back.It was a very big shoe, completely slathered in crap.They had been hounded by mortal enemies from sun to sun, planet to planet, and were now stretched thin -- and they needed our help.And so our first bill came due. Skyrines like me were volunteered to pay the price. As always.These enemies were already inside our solar system and were moving to establish a beachhead, but not on Earth.On Mars.

    The first of the deep space carriers, no other warship in the fleet holds as many honors or has recorded as many kills. No other warship in the fleet is as old. Accepting the inevitable, the Federation Space Navy has decided to refit her and send her on a tour of the frontier, showing the flag to their allies and enemies as a reminder of her glory-and then decommission her for good. But Avalon has been a backwater posting for ten years and has problems a mere refit can't fix. The systems along her planned tour have been seeing pirates for the first time in decades, and there are rumblings of Commonwealth scouting ships all along the border. It may be Avalon's final tour, but it looks to be anything but quiet.

    And most days I don’t know if the legionnaires are putting out the flames, or fanning them into an inferno. A hostile force ambushes Victory Company during a reconnaissance-in-force deep inside enemy territory. Stranded behind enemy lines, a sergeant must lead a band of survivors against merciless insurgents on a deadly alien world somewhere along the galaxy’s edge. With no room for error, the Republic’s elite fighting force must struggle to survive under siege while waiting on a rescue that might never come. When you think you’ve surrounded the Legion... you’ve just made your last mistake.

    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.

    Her father is the Prime Minister of her home planet. Her mother the consummate politician's wife. She's been raised only to be beautiful and marry well. But the heritage of the military Longknifes courses through Kris's blood-and, against her parents' objections, she enlists in the marines.

    Nearly unlimited cheap energy from tachyons led to the creation of Jump Hole technology and faster than light travel to the stars. In two hundred years, humanity had colonized over seven hundred planets in a volume five hundred light years in radius. Humankind enjoyed the benefits of the end of wars and disbanded its standing armies. Life was idyllic for three hundred years. Then the Krall came.The Krall, a warrior race with lightning-fast reflexes has used combat for 25,000 years to select the genes of the strongest and fastest warriors. This breeding program created a species fit to dominate the galaxy. Dominate everywhere but on Koban, an uninhabited planet with high gravity, teal colored flora and impossibly fast and savage animals that employ organic superconducting nerves.The Krall captured humans at the fringes of their expansion for testing on Koban. Humanity was useful only if they were adequate fighters. If not, the Krall intended to destroy the species because they already had slave races, and humans were poor tasting meat animals. If humans proved worthy opponents, the Krall would fight with the same weapons humans used, in order to continue their quest for physical perfection.Growing weary of the humans’ incapacity to fight well, the Krall were close to a decision to eliminate the race when they captured their last cargo of humans for testing – a ship containing bio-scientists. The choice was simple: Put up a good fight or condemn humanity to extinction. The Krall will discover more than one species knows how to bypass natural selection.

    With average grades, less than stellar play in baseball, and a single mother struggling to make ends meet, it looks as if Austin’s only way to continue his education would be through some kind of miracle. His only escape is playing an online space simulation, Star Runners. It seems to be the only environment in which he excels. However, being a champion Trident Starfighter isn’t something you want to brag about in public nor will it help earn a scholarship. But as soon as Austin is about to give up on college he reaches the top of the elite server. He receives an invitation from a school shrouded in secrecy promising to unlock his hidden potential. With no other options, Austin takes the offer. What Austin doesn’t realize is that his dream of going to college has just opened up the cosmos and will challenge everything Austin thinks he knows about himself and the universe.

    Years before they enter orbit, their approach will be announced by the flare of a thousand flames in the sky, their ships’ huge engines burning hard to slow them from the vast speeds needed to cross interstellar space. These foreboding lights will shine in our night sky like new stars, getting ever brighter until they outshine even the sun, casting ominous shadows and banishing the night until they suddenly blink out. Their technology is vastly superior to ours, and they know they cannot possibly lose the coming conflict. But they, like us, have found no answer to the destructive force of the atom, and they have no intention of facing the onslaught of our primitive nuclear arsenal, or the devastation it would wreak on the planet they crave. So they have flung out an advanced party in front of them, hidden within one of the countless asteroids randomly roaming the void. They do not want us, they want our planet. Their Agents are arriving.

    First he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army.The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce-- and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. To defend Earth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding.Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity's resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don't want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You'll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You'll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, you'll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets.John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine--and what he will become is far stranger.

    Congratulations! You have graduated high school. Your financial obligation is 67,879 credits. Please visit our loan officer as you exit."Tanner Malone never bought into military myths of honor and glory. He never wanted to wear a uniform or medals. Yet when family upheaval brings his otherwise stellar performance in school to a disastrous end, Tanner's plans for university lie in ruins. Facing homelessness and a mountain of debt, Tanner enlists in his home planet's tiny navy.It’s a hell of a time to sign up. Vicious pirates stalk the space lanes, claiming to fight an oppressive economic system even as they shed innocent blood. Civil war looms beyond the borders of Tanner’s home star system of Archangel. Corporate security fleets are nowhere to be found when trouble arises.In response, Archangel begins ambitious military expansion. Basic training becomes six months of daily bare knuckle brawls, demanding cross-training and constant stress. Brutal as it is, Tanner will need the preparation. The pirates grow more audacious with every attack. As if that’s not enough, Tanner is assigned to a small ship whose disgruntled crew has no patience for cerebral new recruits, and they’re on the front lines of all of Archangel’s woes.Tanner soon learns there is only one way to deal with his bullying comrades, their ruthless foes and the unforgiving void of space, and that’s to get up close and personal.

    Chosen for a coveted slot in the glorious Nighthawks, Special Forces, she will certainly be able to prove herself as more than a half-alien outcast. But when her team deploys to the moon of Dyn, tragedy strikes and Helga is put to the ultimate test--survival. Facing insurmountable odds and escaping torture, Helga and her mentor, Cilas Mec, are forced to face a fate worse than death. Battling brain-eating aliens and human pirates, the odds are stacked against them in every way. The rescue should be coming. Unless the Alliance is involved in this botched mission... Can Helga survive the odds to get out alive, or will she be the last of the Nighthawks?

    However, the shadowy Syndicate organisation has set their sights on the Commander and his business, having sent a beautiful assassin to kill him. To make matters worse, she’s become the target of his infatuation, much to the dismay of his ex-girlfriend. Recently elevated to President of the Confederation, she’s still very much in love with him and capable of making his life a living hell.Surrounded by a galaxy beginning to tear itself apart, with enemies on all sides, he’s now also unwillingly tasked with trying to save the Confederation – for which he has little regard. Jon has little going in his favour, except a crew consisting of the elite of the old Imperial Navy, all of whom would fight to the death for him, and a past that possibly makes him one of the most dangerous men alive.The Last Praetorian is a Science Fiction adventure/romance, which tries to answer the question: “Can you ever find redemption for the mistakes of your past?”

    And that was the good news. The Ruhar hit us on Columbus Day. There we were, innocently drifting along the cosmos on our little blue marble, like the native Americans in 1492. Over the horizon come ships of a technologically advanced, aggressive culture, and BAM! There go the good old days, when humans only got killed by each other. So, Columbus Day. It fits. When the morning sky twinkled again, this time with Kristang starships jumping in to hammer the Ruhar, we thought we were saved. The UN Expeditionary Force hitched a ride on Kristang ships to fight the Ruhar, wherever our new allies thought we could be useful. So, I went from fighting with the US Army in Nigeria, to fighting in space. It was lies, all of it. We shouldn't even be fighting the Ruhar, they aren't our enemy, our allies are. I'd better start at the beginning....

    Everyone had told her it would be easy—in and out.Then, the hostile aliens invaded.Now, she slaves away training and retooling a mining ship for war as part of the Star Defenders.All Vega wants is to get home to her family. So, when a chance at officers training opens up, she jumps at the opportunity for more freedom. But there are only five slots, and Vega must use all her planetborn skill to fight for her place.As if that wasn't enough, the ship's condition continues to worsen. "Accidents" may not be accidents. The lines between friends and enemies blur, and Vega realizes there's a lot more at stake than her chance at freedom.Fans of Aurora Rising, Ender’s Game, and Brandon Sander’s Skyward will devour this story of adventure, mystery, and friendship.