Book picks similar to
Son of Justice by Steven L. Hawk


science-fiction
sci-fi
military
young-adult

Earth Alone


Daniel Arenson - 2016
    They came to destroy us. Fifty years ago, bloodthirsty aliens devastated the Earth. Most of humanity perished. We fell into darkness. But now we rise from the ashes. Now we fight back. Marco Emery was born into the war. After his mother is killed, he joins the Human Defense Force, Earth's ragtag army. Emery must survive basic training, become a soldier, and finally face the aliens in battle. Against the alien onslaught, Earth stands alone. But we will fight. We will rise. We will win.

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.

Starship Eternal


M.R. Forbes - 2015
    A dire warning from futures past... A desperate search for salvation… Captain Mitchell “Ares” Williams is a Space Marine and the hero of the Battle for Liberty, whose Shot Heard ‘Round the Universe saved the planet from a nearly unstoppable war machine. He’s handsome, charismatic, and the perfect poster boy to help the military drive enlistment. Pulled from the war and thrown into the spotlight, he’s as efficient at charming the media as he was at shooting down enemy starfighters. After an assassination attempt leaves Mitchell critically wounded, he begins to suffer from strange hallucinations that carry a chilling and oddly familiar warning: They are coming. Find the Goliath or humankind will be destroyed. Convinced that the visions are a side-effect of his injuries, he tries to ignore them, only to learn that he may not be as crazy as he thinks. The enemy is real and closer than he imagined, and they’ll do whatever it takes to prevent him from rediscovering the centuries lost starship. Narrowly escaping capture, out of time and out of air, Mitchell lands at the mercy of the Riggers - a ragtag crew of former commandos who patrol the lawless outer reaches of the galaxy. Guided by a captain with a reputation for cold-blooded murder, they’re dangerous, immoral, and possibly insane. They may also be humanity’s last hope for survival in a war that has raged beyond eternity.

Timberwolf


Tom Julian - 2015
    He just wants the damn spider out of his head! For a hundred years, humanity destroyed every alien species they encountered… until we met the Arnock – psychic spiders that drove us insane on contact. There was only one man who ever survived contact with the spiders - Timberwolf Velez. He’s a very damaged man and took every suicide mission he could, but the spider forced him to stay alive and do its bidding. As a madman schemes to control the most deadly weapons in the galaxy, Timberwolf is the only force that can stop the galaxy from descending in to endless war. A cinematic epic on every page - Timberwolf has the hardware of Aliens, the intensity of Battlestar Galactic and the intrigue of Dune. Terrific action and great characters make this book impossible to put down! READERS SAY - "This is the very definition of a page turner." David Adkins - "This book should come with a warning: read only on weekends when you can sleep in. Stayed up all night because I couldn't put it down." Alexis W - "This book is like a train, heading to it's destination. Unswerving. ALWAYS moving forward, to it's terminus." - "Timberwolf is what you'd get if Dirty Harry and Ripley had a son." Merrill Chapman - "The action is simply amazing; it makes putting the book down nearly impossible." Tito Martínez Barberi - "Skillfully plotted, with well-drawn characters that have subtle shading, Timberwolf is a fast-paced story that is immensely readable." Photoguy126 - "Timberwolf has a human heart; it’s not about the combat suits or space ships, it’s about the people and their motivations for doing what they do." Eric Lahti - "How Timberwolf hasn't been snatched up by Hollywood as a screen play, is beyond me" DavidM - "Characters in Timberwolf are thoughtfully developed with great depth and the action is described in outstanding detail that puts you right on the pages with them." Picode Gallo CONNECT Talk to the author here... www.facebook.com/Timberwolf and here... www.twitter.com/TimberwolfNovel

The Lost Starship


Vaughn Heppner - 2014
    The vessel's dying crew set the AI on automatic to defend the smashed rubble of their planet. Legend has it the faithful ship continues to patrol the empty battlefield, obeying its last order throughout the lonely centuries. In the here and now, Earth needs a miracle. Out of the Beyond invade the New Men, stronger, faster and smarter than the old. Their superior warships and advanced technology destroy every fleet sent to stop them. Their spies have infiltrated the government and traitors plague Earth’s military. Captain Maddox of Star Watch Intelligence wonders if the ancient legend could be true. Would such an old starship be able to face the technology of the New Men? On the run from killers, Maddox searches for a group of talented misfits. He seeks Keith Maker, a drunken ex-strikefighter ace, Doctor Dana Rich the clone thief stuck on a prison planet and Lieutenant Valerie Noonan, the only person to have faced the New Men in battle and survived to tell about it. Maddox has to find a place hidden in the Beyond and bring back a ship no one can enter. If he fails, the New Men will replace the old. If he succeeds, humanity might just have a fighting chance…

The Silver Ships


S.H. Jucha - 2015
    Recognizing a once in a lifetime opportunity to make first contact, Alex pulls off a daring maneuver to latch on to the derelict.Alex discovers the ship was attacked by an unknown craft, the first of its kind ever encountered. The mysterious silver ship's attack was both instant and deadly.What enfolds is a story of the descendants of two Earth colony ships, with very different histories, meeting 700 years after their founding and uniting to defend humanity from the silver ships.

Admiral's Lady: Ashes for Ashes, Blood for Blood


Luke Sky Wachter - 2014
    For reference its about twice the size of the previous Admiral's Lady book. Product Description: While Jason was getting back and gearing up for his Revenge, Akantha wasn't just sitting quietly in the corner or out waving the flag on a PR tour. She was gearing up for some revenge of her own. Determined to punish those who planted the knife in the MSP and just as or even more importantly her own people's back, this is one Hold-Mistress who isn't about to let the events that took place at Omicron Station pass. As far as she's concerned her Protector was far too lenient, a mistake she's not about to repeat. You see she has a name for her pain and it is King James, the very man who sent the traitors that took their ship and killed their people. There will be ashes, there will be blood and while victory may not be possible one thing is certain... whether she goes home carrying her shield or carried upon it, they will suffer as she has suffered. Or her name is not Akantha of Messene!

Fear the Sky


Stephen Moss - 2014
    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.

Prador Moon


Neal Asher - 2006
    Academic and insightful, its dominion stretches from Earth Central into the unfathomable reaches of the galactic void. But when the Polity finally encounters alien life in the form of massive, hostile, crab-like carnivores known as the Prador, there can be only one outcome — total warfare! Starships clash, planets fall, and space stations are overrun, but for Jebel Krong and Moria Salem, two unlikely heroes trapped at the center of the action, this war is far more than a mere clash of cultures, far more than technology versus brute force... this war is personal.

Battle Earth


Nick S. Thomas - 2011
    An elite marine unit commanded by Major Mitch Taylor is dispatched to protect the civilians. However, the attack is merely a prelude to a massive invasion of Earth. A futuristic adventure that chronicles vast battles following humanity’s reach into the stars.

Old Man's War


John Scalzi - 2005
    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.

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

Columbus Day


Craig Alanson - 2016
    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....

A Sword Into Darkness


Thomas A. Mays - 2013
    AN UNKNOWABLE THREAT APPROACHES EARTH . . . AND WE ARE COMPLETELY UNPREPARED TO FACE WHAT'S COMING. Aerospace tycoon Gordon Elliot Lee cannot stand idly by while a mysterious alien presence from Delta Pavonis bears down upon mankind's only home. Shut out from NASA and military support, Gordon is forced to go it alone, to sow the seeds for an entirely new sort of planetary defense: a space-based naval force. Joined by Nathan Kelley -- a bloodied naval warrior, scarred by his own actions in the waters off North Korea -- and Kris Munoz -- an avant garde scientific genius with more ideas than sense -- these three will scour the very edges of fringe science and engineering to attempt development of Earth's first space navy in time to oppose the Deltan invasion. Beset by ridicule, government obstruction, industrial espionage, and their own personal demons, it will take a miracle just to get off the ground. But the challenges on Earth are nothing compared to what awaits them in space. Against an unknown alien enemy with vastly superior technology, a handful of human scientists and warriors must become the sword that holds the darkness at bay. MISSILES WILL FLASH, RAILGUNS WILL RUMBLE, LASERS WILL BURN, AND DEFENDERS WILL DIE. IF THEY FAIL, OUR END IS AT HAND.

Beyond Armageddon IV: Schism


Anthony DeCosmo - 2011
    For Trevor Stone, however, what began as a straightforward battle for survival has grown into a complex campaign against both external and internal adversaries. While his forces confront a human/alien alliance, Trevor finds that his most dangerous enemy is much closer to home. Schism is the fourth installment in the five-part Beyond Armageddon series and features massive battles over the skies of California, a conspiracy that will shake the foundation of humanity's empire, and a conversation with the gods. Get Ready. Hold on. Choose your side.