First Contact

Akuleh—Ku to his friends—thought his life would get easier after he learned his destiny wasn’t inescapably bound to his people’s death demon, Machitew. Then the enemy Supremacy gained a new ally that pushed the Resistance Pact forces into a two-front war across the galaxy. To halt the enemy’s advance and liberate a captured world, Ku’s unit, the 15th Aerospace Combat Wing, deploys to a planet aptly named for the destination of condemned souls. The terrain is rugged; the fighting worse.

After the main shipyard is heavily damaged, the enemy advances with a fresh offensive, and losses are piling up with no hope of building replacements. How can the surviving fleet stand up to the new onslaught? The Paragon have been weakened, but they still outnumber the humans. And now they're angry. Relics of the past. Mothballed ships and forgotten warriors, waiting for their names to be called again. The ship from a war fought long ago. Glory as a paradigm for the future.

Professor Harak H'gin leads a peaceful life studying linguistics on his native planet of Plumeria. Until the day he stumbles across a bedraggled, beautiful human female. Dared by a colleague to transform the pitiful creature into a true member of their society, Harak takes on the challenge. Forced to eke out a meager living selling flowers, Liza is desperate to improve her situation. When a chance meeting offers the opportunity to become something more than a menial worker, she doesn't hesitate—even though it means moving in with the arrogant, handsome alien.

I'm the next in line for Fyrifirar Tribe Jarl, a skilled warrior, and definitely not good at chopping down trees. But I can't stop thinking about the tiny human female who we'd found near our village with eleven other human females. She's so small, barely larger than an orkin child, and so lovely I can't get her out of my mind. And then I went and nearly killed her while felling a tree to distract myself. Yet somehow, she still ended up in my arms.

It's the year 2001... No, it's 2022? No... It's the future, with land-squids and kidnapped celebrities in super suits. Squid are the dominant species eighty million years from now. But they have a problem: Dinosaurs are coming home. Fear, greed, xenophobia and ego inevitably lead to war. Three celebrities from the early 21st Century in a weird world--recruited to fight, unaware of the truths of the situation... Out of their element... beyond their experience...

Following their successful escape from Androchida Prime’s capital city, Sir Chuck and the rest of the Phantoms find themselves mystified by unsettling news. The leader of the Blood Guard resistance, famed General Cordan, has defected to the AE. But while many doubt the veracity of the development, more pressing intel awaits: the empire is planning to invade the Sci-Rung home world.

Ariock Dovanack never asked to be a hero, let alone a demigod. But when a prophecy deemed him "The One," he dutifully amassed thousands of messianic followers in the sun-starved civilization beneath the Torth Empire's capital. Now, destined to lead the cave-dwelling Alashani people into the light of other worlds, he and a small army must first annihilate the formidable telepaths who guard the city's spaceport. By Ariock's side is Thomas Hill. A Torth/human hybrid, Thomas may be physically vulnerable, but he's also a telepathic supergenius.

She's an oracle. She knows that trouble is closing in. However, there's an instant in which she could escape, and so could those she loves. Too bad she's surrounded herself with ridiculously noble allies. The kind of self-sacrificing, kind, clever, and resolute people who force you to love them…then go off to risk their lives for the greater good. Of course, Cherry has to rescue them. And if she's rescuing those she loves, maybe she could save everyone else along the way.

Having been separated from his mother when Green Bank was commandeered by the Cosmics, Bobbie Cagle is left with Imago, the extraterrestrial guide who somehow saved him from catastrophe. Forced into hiding after being labeled a terrorist, Bobbie develops his telepathic powers under the tutelage of Imago, and the results prove staggering. Will they, however, be nearly enough to find endangered Angie and bring Earth back from the brink?

First, the stars in the Milkey Way go dark. Then everyone on earth hears in their minds a very real voice speaking in their own language, dialect, and gender at the precise same time: ''Judgment of the inhabitants of the planet Earth will be held in five days. Please prepare yourselves for the final examination and departure. That is all". Humanity prepares for the rapture. But wait, fate takes a turn.

Sixty-seven years ago the Qash'vo'tar conquered Earth. Ever since then, the aliens had ruled from above. The Qash'vo'tar did not care what humanity did on the ground, as long as they didn't attempt to build anything that could get them to the stars. And now, sixty-seven years after they had been conquered, it was time for humanity to show the Qash'vo'tar that they had been right to fear humanity.

The only way I've been surviving through the chronic pain of my mutation is the drug, Kixx. I hate what the addiction has done to me, but what I resent the most is that I've had to barter with a lowlife Rogastix for my supply. One day, he shows off his new property-a human female. He makes me a deal to protect her until he can exchange her for a healthy supply of Kixx of which I'll get a lion's share.

Joshua has a life. He's attending college. He's in love. A secret crime fighting agency brings him into their fold and gives him a new name, Bear. A world opens up with aliens, and drugs that can control the minds of the strongest men. They want Bear to find the leader of the biggest crime syndicate on Earth, Centurian. They make him point on missions, and it makes him feel like he's doing the right thing.

"Who Goes There?" is the novella that formed the basis of John Carpenter's classic film The Thing. Campbell's classic story tells of an Antarctic research base that discovers and thaws the ancient, frozen body of a crash-landed alien with terrifying results!

In the title story, a man's newfound ability to walk in the past allows him to dwell among dinosaurs, saber-toothed tigers . . . and something even more timeless. In "Construction Shack," the first manned expedition to Pluto reveals that no matter how advanced aliens may be, even they don't always get everything right. And in "Univac 2200," the thin line between humans creating technology and humans becoming technology is about to be crossed-and there may be no going back.