Mutineer


Mike Shepherd - 2004
    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.

Death's Head


David Gunn - 2007
    David Gunn is loaded–and he shoots to kill.At the top of the galactic pecking order is the United Free, a civilization of awe-inspiring technological prowess so far in advance of other space-faring powers as to seem untouchable gods. Most of the known universe has fallen under their inscrutable sway. The rest is squabbled over by two empires: one ruled with an iron fist by OctoV, a tyrant who appears to his followers as a teenage boy but is in reality something very different, the other administered by the Uplifted, bizarre machinelike intelligences, and their no-longer-quite-human servants, cyborgs known as the Enlightened.Sven Tveskoeg, an ex-sergeant demoted for insubordination and sentenced to death, is a vicious killer with a stubborn streak of loyalty. Sven possesses a fierce if untutored intelligence and a genetic makeup that is 98.2 percent human and 1.8 percent . . . something else. Perhaps that “something else” explains how quickly he heals from even the worst injuries or how he can communicate telepathically with the ferox, fearsome alien savages whose natural fighting abilities regularly outperform the advanced technology of their human enemies. Perhaps it is these unique abilities that bring Sven to the attention of OctoV.Drafted into the Death’s Head, the elite enforcers of OctoV’s imperial will, Sven is given a new lease on life. Armed with a SIG diabolo–an intelligent gun–and an illegal symbiont called a kyp, Sven is sent to a faraway planet, the latest battleground between the Uplifted and OctoV. There he finds himself in the midst of a military disaster, one that will take all his courage–and all his firepower–to survive. But an even deadlier struggle is taking place, a struggle that will draw the attention of the United Free. Sven knows he is a pawn, and pawns have a bad habit of being sacrificed.But Sven is nobody’s sacrifice. And even a pawn can checkmate a king.From the Hardcover edition.

Old Guard: Bolos Anthology 5


Bill Fawcett - 2001
    For now the Kezdai -- a newly encountered species with war at the center of their philosophy -- have taken to arms against the Concordiat and its colony worlds. For war, the Terrans have only one answer:Break out the BolosSelf-aware robotic tanks, the Bolos have fought bravely and well since the days when humans fought each other. Now they battle across the stars to defend us all...and though the times are perilous, we've never been in better hands than those of our old metal guardians: Keith Laumer's greatest creation, the Bolos.Includes:Incursion by by Mark ThiesRook's gambit by by John MinaThe sky is falling by by J. Steven York & Dan Wesley SmithBrothers by by William H. Keith, Jr.

A Boy And His Tank


Leo Frankowski - 1999
    Lacking carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, or even dirt, they were the poorest people in the universe. But when they combined virtual reality with tank warfare, giving their warriors a close symbiosis with their intelligent tanks, neither war nor the galaxy would ever be the same. Not to mention sex . . .

Fallen Dragon


Peter F. Hamilton - 2001
    But as the Skins invade bucolic Thallspring, Z-B's strategy is about to go awry, all because of: Sgt. Lawrence Newton, a dreamer whose twenty years as a Skin have destroyed his hopes and desires; Denise Ebourn, a school teacher and resistance leader whose guerrilla tactics rival those of Che Guevara and George Washington and Simon Roderick, the director who serves Z-B with a dedication that not even he himself can understand. Grimly determined to steal, or protect, a mysterious treasure, the three players engage in a private war that will explode into unimaginable quests for personal grace...or galactic domination

Embedded


Dan Abnett - 2010
    When journalist Lex Falk gets himself chipped into the brain of a combat soldier, he thinks he has the ultimate scoop - a report from the forbidden front line of a distant planetary war, live to the living rooms of Earth. When the soldier is killed, however, Lex has to take over the body and somehow get himself back to safety once more... broadcasting all the way.Heart-stopping combat science fiction from the million-selling Warhammer 40,000 author.File Under: Science Fiction [ Future Warefare | Chipped-In | Anything For a Story | Get Out Alive! ]

Freehold


Michael Z. Williamson - 2003
    Mistakes might be made, but they are never acknowledged, especially when billions of embezzled dollars earned from illegal weapons sales are at stake. But where does one run when all Earth and the planets are under the aegis of one government?

Miles, Mystery, and Mayhem


Lois McMaster Bujold - 2001
    Admiral Naismith of the Dendarii Free Mercenaries, is a young man of many parts.Miles and his handsome cousin Ivan are called upon to play a simple diplomatic role on the capital world of Barrayar's old enemy until murder and deceit thrust them into Cetagandan internal politics at the highest levels, and Miles discovers the secrets of the haut-women's biological domain to be very complicated indeed.Commander Elli Quinn, sent by Miles on the trail of those secrets, meets a man who marches to the beat of a very different drummer. Dr. Ethan Urquhart, obstetrician from a planet forbidden to women, is on a quest at cross-purposes to Elli's mission - or is it?Consequences of Cetagandan bioengineering continue to play out, this time on a Dendrii sortie to the crime planet of Jackson's Whole. When he encounters a genetically altered super-soldier, Miles's routine rescue strike takes a sudden hard turn for the unanticipated.Contents: CetagandaEthan of AthosLabyrinth.

Bill, The Galactic Hero


Harry Harrison - 1965
    But Bill, a Technical Fertilizer Operator from a planet of farmers, wasn't interested in honor-he was only interested in two things: his chosen career, and the shapely curves of Inga-Maria Calyphigia. Then a recruiting robot shanghaied him with knockout drops, and he came to in deep space, aboard the Empire warship Christine Keeler. And from there, things got even worse.

Shadowline


Glen Cook - 1983
    But one Sangaree survived - the young Norborn heir, the man who swore vengeance on the Storm family and their soldiers, in a carefully mapped plot that would take generations to fulfill. Now Mouse's father Gneaus must fight for an El Dorado of wealth on the burning half of the planet Blackworld. As the great private armies of all space clash on the narrow Shadowline that divides inferno from life-sheltering shade, Gneaus' half- brother Michael plays his traitorous games, and a man called Deeth pulls the deadly strings that threaten to entrap them all - as the Starfishers Trilogy begins.

The Clone Republic


Steven L. Kent - 2006
    Humans have spread across the six arms of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Unified Authority controls Earth’s colonies with an iron fist and a powerful military—a military made up almost entirely of clones…Private first-class Wayson Harris was raised in a U.A. orphanage among thousands of clones born and bred to be the ultimate soldiers. But Harris isn’t like the other Marines: he has a mind of his own. He figures he’s paying for that independent streak when his first assignment out of boot camp is the smallest Marine outpost in the whole U.A.When a rogue general surfaces, the remote desert world Harris thought was a dead-end posting becomes anything but. Fighting off the general’s raid gains Harris a promotion. But it also brings him to the attention of some unfriendly U.A. leaders. They have their own plans for the military—plans Harris disrupts by his very existence. For in an army of clones, the one unforgivable sin is to be different…

Constitution


Nick Webb - 2015
    Without warning. Without mercy. We were not prepared. Hundreds of millions perished. Dozens of cities burned. We nearly lost everything. Then, the aliens abruptly left. We rebuilt. We armed ourselves. We swore: never again. But the aliens never came back. Until now. With overwhelming force the aliens have returned, striking deep into our territory, sending Earth into a panic. Our new technology is useless. Our new ships burn like straw. All our careful preparations are wasted. Now, only one man, one crew, and the oldest starship in the fleet stand between the Earth and certain destruction: ISS CONSTITUTION

On Silver Wings


Evan Currie - 2011
    Through it all, life has been found in almost every system we visited and yet we've never encountered another intelligent species.Until now.When the Colony on the planet known as Hayden's World stops transmitting on their CASIMIR FTL system, a Solari Fleet Task Force is sent to investigate. When they arrive there are enough oddities in the situation that they in turn send in a special operations unit to contact the colonists and determine what happened.Only one of those operators survives to make planet fall.Sergeant Sorilla Aida finds herself against an alien force of unknown power and capability. Her only assets? A depleted suit of power armor, her rifle, basic kit, and a few hundred Hayden born civilians looking to take back their home.Just what she was trained for.On Silver Wings is an 81 thousand word novel.

Sixth Column


Robert A. Heinlein - 1949
    Now the only hope resides in a mountain redoubt where six men work in secret on a plan to rock the planet. . . .

Berserker


Fred Saberhagen - 1967
    The sole legacy of that war was the weapon that ended it: the death machines, the BERSERKERS. Guided by self-aware computers more intelligent than any human, these world-sized battlecraft carved a swath of death through the galaxy--until they arrived at the outskirts of the fledgling Empire of Man.These are the stories of the frail creatures who must meet this monstrous and implacable enemy--and who, by fighting it to a standstill, become the saviors of all living things.