But humanity survives, out on the frontier, growing and looking boldly to the future. But man has never been able to live in peace, and even Earth’s sad fate has failed to slow the call to war. Lacking the resources to sustain their own armies and navies, the worlds look to the mercenaries of the Great Companies for aid, futuristic condottiere who contract themselves to the highest bidder. Darius Cain is the leader of the Black Eagles, the most renowned of the Companies. The Eagles command the highest rates of any of the Companies, and leaders bankrupt worlds to pay their price. But there are signs of a force working in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to launch a final war to reduce all mankind to slavery. As Cain slowly uncovers the truth, he must forge an alliance among old enemies, the other Companies his soldiers have fought for years…and the twin brother he hasn’t seen in a decade. The Crimson Worlds are about to explode into a war that may be mankind’s last. The Prisoner of Eldaron (Successors 2) Darius Cain’s veteran warriors have fought dozens of battles, and they have never met their equals. But there is another power, The Triumvirate. For decades, it has operated in the shadows, interfering secretly in the affairs of the colonies while steadily building an invincible war machine. The Triumvirate fears the Black Eagles, and the decision has been made. Darius Cain’s private army must be destroyed before the final invasion of human space can begin. A message reaches the Eagles’ base, word that the father he’d thought long dead might still be alive, a captive of the shadowy enemy. Darius Cain is skeptical, but he didn’t build the greatest military force in human space by being cautious or timid…and even the slightest chance his father was alive compelled his course of action, and leads him to a highly-developed planet called Eldaron, ruled by a dictator who calls himself the Tyrant. Darius knows he is walking into a trap, but he has no choice. He will free the prisoner of Eldaron…or he will extract a vengeance beyond the imaginings of dark nightmares. The Black Flag (Successors 3) The Triumvirate. Three clones of Gavin Stark who survived their evil master’s destruction. Now they have cheated death again, downloading their minds into an alien intelligence, a relic of the First Imperium. Vali, a secret planet, a hidden and haunted world covered entirely with factories and fortifications, worked by legions of slaves, the kidnapped and forgotten of a thousand worlds, working in darkness, building the tools of war for their masters. Erik Cain, the legendary hero of the Marines Corps, the man who killed the real Stark. For years he was a prisoner, held in brutal captivity on a dark world. Now he is free, and ready for the final struggle. Darius Cain, Erik’s son, and the commander of the feared Black Eagles, the greatest of the mercenary Companies. Darius freed his father, and now he is ready to rally the free forces of human space. Augustus Garret, the legendary admiral. He is old, but the same heart beats within his chest, and he will stand with the Cains, fight alongside his old allies one last time. From the barren ruins of shattered Earth to the farthest reaches of human habitation, the final battle has begun.

    When the Intergalactic Empire has a tough mission, they send in a wizard scout. When they have an impossible mission, they send in Wizard Scout Trinity Delgado. The planet Cavos is on the verge of civil war. Only an outmanned, outgunned force of Empire peacekeepers prevent an outbreak of bloodshed on a global scale. When the peacekeepers’ commander requests an armored regiment as reinforcements, the Imperial High Command sends him Wizard Scout Trinity instead. With only a fresh out of the university grad student and a half-crazy old pilot as allies, Trinity has to find the source of Cavos’s troubles before the Empire becomes part of a disaster far greater than a mere local civil war. Caught between the peacekeepers’ resentful commander and suspicious local government officials, Trinity and her battle computer, Jennifer, have their work cut out for them. Together they must weave their way through one mystery after another leaving a trail of bloody bodies along the way until they find the answer. That is, if they can remain alive long enough to find it.

    For hundreds of years, the danger of collision has been ignored as mere crackpot theories, until now, and now it's too late. Collision is a short story commissioned by Vanquish Motion Pictures for development in film and television, and is the first in a series of character-rich, mystery-driven science fiction grounded in science fact.

    Chaos rules the final days of the Forerunner empire. The Flood—a horrifying, shape-changing, and unstoppable parasite—has arrived in force, aided by unexpected allies, and internal strife has desperately weakened Forerunner defenses. Facing the imminent collapse of their civilization, the Forerunners known as the Ur-Didact and the Librarian reveal what they know about the relationship between the long-vanished race of the Precursors and the Flood. While the Precursors created many technological species, including those of the Forerunners and humanity itself, the roots of the Flood may be found in an act of enormous barbarity, carried out beyond our galaxy ten million years before. Because of that savagery, a greater evil looms. Only the Ur-Didact and the Librarian—husband and wife pushed into desperate conflict—hold the keys to a solution. As they face the consequences of a mythic tragedy, one of them must now commit the greatest atrocity of all time—a shocking act designed to prevent an insane abomination from dominating the entire galaxy…

    The crew and family aboard the Centauri Bliss has grown and is made up of those on both sides of the conflict, and have developed worlds of their own in need of protecting. With plans to finally withdraw themselves from the conflict, they have one last chance to try to set things right.

     The wreck of a Sekar battleship and the intel contained within a subsurface alien facility could affect the outcome of a war which has so far claimed billions of lives. However, while the Raggers are defeated, they are not destroyed, and they are unwilling to give up the prize. What starts as a hard fight to claim invaluable alien tech turns into something with far higher stakes. The crashed battleship is called Nullifier and its control entity promises many things. Captains Jake Griffin and Tanner Conway will soon find that this mysterious craft has a mission of its own. A mission that requires a replacement for its dead crew. From the ice storms of Glesia to a planet in the throes of cataclysmic violence, the Nullifier takes Griffin and Conway on a journey where they will learn the history of a long-dead alien race and find that ancient threats still exist. Overcoming this new challenge will bring rewards unimagined and a chance to hold back the Sekar tide for a little longer. Beating the odds has never seemed harder or more important for humanity’s survival… Nullifier is a fast-paced military sci-fi shooter filled with spaceships, guns, tech and warfare. It follows on from book 5 in the Fire and Rust Series: Refuge 9.

    Short on every resource but the intelligence of their personnel, Exploration Command goes where no human has gone before, discovering new worlds, species and civilizations, pushing the boundaries of knowledge, and always on the lookout for new discoveries that could help the Empire in its struggle against the invader. In this volume are three novelettes about Exploration Command, the scientific part of the Fleet. In Retribution, a Command team finds a devastated alien civilization being aided by missionaries from the Empire. Or are they? In Timeless, an ancient derelict is found in a place where no ship should be. Does it hide the secrets to a technology the Empire has sought for over a thousand years? And in They Don't Care, alien species are being wiped out by a renegade race. Can a single two ship team stop them, or will more species go into the long night? For those readers of Exodus: Empires at War, these stories fill in some of the background of the Empire and add to the series. For newcomers, they are a great introduction to the series.

    But he returned changed, he had lost one of his AI to rampancy after fighting an Xeno AI Wraith, and his greatest AI, his confidant Commander Sprite had chosen to leave him. He didn't return to civilization alone however. He brought with him over a hundred precious sleepers, officers and enlisted personnel ready to help rebuild the Federation once more, along with petabytes of precious blueprints and data, designed by some of the greatest minds of the Federation. But before they can begin to forge a new fleet they have to stop the rampaging Horathian Empire in it's tracks. Rear Admiral Amadeus White has been assigned to push the enemy back and keep them back while Admiral Irons and Subert work on building new ships. Admiral Subert has his own problems to deal with in Pyrax. He needs time, time to adjust, time to clean up the mess. Time to build more ships. But the enemy within and without won't wait. Napoleon said it best, "You can ask me for anything but not time!" The Battle Lines have been drawn!

    He’s forced to scrub booster tubes on commercial starships to make enough coins to feed his alcohol addiction in his dirty day-to-day existence. The future looks dark and is getting darker. To make matters worse, he discovers that two very powerful forces are attempting to capture him and he has no clue why. One of them is the Venzel Dragons, who are recognized as the most deadly warriors in the known universe. The other is a secretive organization simply known as the Movement. Gregor just can’t figure out why they’re after him and remaining free is quickly disappearing as an option. He has no choice but to run and try to determine why he is being pursued across the known universe. He has no memory of his childhood or where he was born and before he can make sense of everything, he would need to go back to Earth and find out who he really is. What he finds changes his world completely and learning that his adopted father was assassinated makes him resolve to make the killers pay for their actions. But what could a filthy, alcoholic bum do against the two most powerful forces in the known universe? The answer lies on the forest world of Bellingham and according to the Cartian Database, no one has gone to that planet in more than six hundred years and lived. Gregor’s Run will keep you guessing at all the twists and turns as Gregor struggles to find himself in a universe gone insane. Excerpt: Gregor’s Run Gregor looked around the gathering, “Some of ye give it a go.” A warrior standing next to Gregor shook his head, “I think it’s clear that swords will not go through that thing.” Gregor said loudly, “All of ye agree that swords are useless against this force field.” The warriors all looked at each other and nodded. “Now if that piece of wood inside the force field was holding a blaster and ye were close enough to strike the force field, ye would die. All of ye see that.” Again the warriors looked at each other and were forced to agree with Gregor. Gregor turned and said, “Now, I want the archers to move back ten yards and fire at that piece of wood like it’s an enemy coming to harm ye families. I want ye to move back in case the arrows you shoot bounce off towards ye.” Several male warriors and ten females moved back ten yards and formed a line. Ellie was one of the archers and she lifted her bow and pulled an arrow out of her quiver. The arrow flew toward the target at a speed that was difficult to see but, when it bounced off the force field, everyone saw it penetrate the canoe twenty yards further up the beach. Everyone immediately moved back another ten yards. The archers didn’t give up as easily as the swordsmen. They fired arrow after arrow at the target and arrows were ricocheting in all directions. Finally, all of them stopped firing except for Ellie. Gregor saw the anger on her face and she started screaming as each arrow failed to penetrate the force field. Gregor sighed and saw her frustration getting the better of her. She jumped and slammed her elbows down to her sides as she stamped both feet into the sand. She screamed at the top of her voice and ran toward the force field. Gregor yelled, “NO, ELLIE! STOP!!” Ellie arrived at the force field, jerked the last arrow out of her quiver, and screamed as she threw it at the wooden target. The arrow went through the force field and stuck in the center of the target. Gregor’s mouth fell open as he heard the computer say over the link, “What the hell just happened here!”

    Stirling.

    

    The stories originally appeared in magazines between 1940 and 1960. The book includes the following stories:Ring Around the Sun, Future Fiction, March 1940Darwinian Pool Room, Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1950Day of The Hunters, Future combined with Science Fiction Stories, November 1950Misbegotten Missionary, Galaxy Science Fiction, November 1950Everest, Universe Science Fiction, December 1953The Fun They Had, Boys' and Girls' Page, December 1951Youth, Space Science Fiction, May 1952Living Space, The Original Science Fiction Stories, May 1956Someday, Infinity Science Fiction August 1956The Jokester, Infinity Science Fiction, December 1956Lets Get Together, Infinity Science Fiction, February 1957Tale of The Pioneer (poem),Future Science Fiction, Summer 1957Oh That Lost Sense of Wonder (poem),The Original Science Fiction Stories, January 1958Silly Asses, Future Science Fiction, February 1958The Covenant, (with Poul Anderson, Robert Sheckley, Murray Leinster, and Robert Bloch), Fantastic Science Fiction Stories, July 1960Technical mistakes mentioned in a comment below is fixed.

    

    Each annotation includes audio from the new unabridged recording of Heir to the Empire to enhance their comments. The biggest event in the history of Star Wars books, Heir to the Empire follows the adventures of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia after they led the Rebel Alliance to victory in Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi.Five years after the Death Star was destroyed and Darth Vader and the Emperor were defeated, the galaxy is struggling to heal the wounds of war, Princess Leia and Han Solo are married and expecting twins, and Luke Skywalker has become the first in a long-awaited line of new Jedi Knights.But thousands of light-years away, the last of the Emperor’s warlords—the brilliant and deadly Grand Admiral Thrawn—has taken command of the shattered Imperial fleet, readied it for war, and pointed it at the fragile heart of the New Republic. For this dark warrior has made two vital discoveries that could destroy everything the courageous men and women of the Rebel Alliance fought so hard to create.The explosive confrontation that results is a towering epic of action, invention, mystery, and spectacle on a galactic scale—in short, a story worthy of the name Star Wars.

    The material was recorded while he was on Iora, a technically advanced world as the holocaust virus struck it. She is to review all materials and create a report that includes insights into the young pilot's personality, strategic information about Iora and any other details that could help Haven Fleet. Before long, Alice becomes personally invested in the plight of her subject, and makes discoveries that could change her forever. Meanwhile, a permanent government is taking hold in Haven Shore, and the Fleet is undergoing one last shakeup that could break the Apex class apart. All the while Alice is left to wonder where her father and his ship, the Revenge have gone while they wait for the rest of their active fleet to return from the Iron Head Nebula. The Spinward Fringe saga continues in Carnie's Tale, the connective tissue between Spinward Fringe Broadcast 10: Freeground and Spinward Fringe Broadcast 11: Revenge, telling Alice's story between those books from a more personal perspective. Version 2.