Adventure Military Space Opera

In this, the sequel to A Hymn Before Battle, Captain Michael O'Neal and his forces on Earth prepare to hold back an impending Posleen invasion.

Keeping up-to-date with the most buzzworthy and cutting-edge science fiction requires sifting through countless magazines, e-zines, websites, blogs, original anthologies, single-author collections, and more - a task accomplishable by only the most determined and voracious readers. For everyone else, Night Shade Books is proud to introduce the latest volume of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, collecting the finest that the genre has to offer, from the biggest names in the field to the most exciting new writers.

With Earth in the path of the rapacious Posleen, the Galactic Federation offers help to the backward humans - for a price. You can protect yourself from your enemies, but God save you from your allies!

As a development platform for desperately needed advanced technology, the experimental starship Foresight is the greatest hope humankind has to flee the alien hordes. For test pilot Captain Nicholas Shepherd, the success of the program is even more personal. Successful completion means delivering his wife and son safely off-world and leaving the war behind for good. But when Foresight suffers a critical malfunction during her final scheduled flight, what should have been a minor setback becomes a major fight for survival.

Captain Melias Volery is a Sentinel, a warrior who travels the galaxy protecting those that can’t protect themselves—if they can afford to pay for his services. Whether you call them mercenaries or heroes, there’s no denying their effectiveness, but even these experienced warriors may be in over their head in the ruins of the Prime Ones. Can Melias and his crew unravel the secrets of this long lost race and save the galaxy from an ancient alien power trying to destroy the galaxy?

They are the Lost Legions. Famed warriors in the annals of military history, made famous when they struck out for the stars to fight a Savage invasion ... never to return or be heard from again. Until new evidence is uncovered that a Lost Legion sleeps in the pocked craters of a distant mining world. Sergeant Carson Metzger, a replacement pilot for a Republic HARD HK-PP mech unit, is sent to act as security for the science team seeking to confirm the discovery of the fabled missing legion. But when the local miners object to the arrival of Republic forces, tensions simmer to an all-out boil.

The Posleen are coming and the models all say the same thing: Without the Panama Canal, the US is doomed to starvation and defeat. Despite being overstretched preparing to defend the US, the military sends everything it has left: A handful of advanced Armored Combat Suits, rejuvenated veterans from the many decades that Panama was a virtual colony and three antiquated warships. Other than that, the Panamanians are on their own.

For nearly one thousand years, the Core Empire has held together thousands of star systems and billions of citizens. But a coup attempt has broken the empire into pieces. Some planets and systems have survived and still have law and order. Others have fallen to barbarism and piracy. For young Hugh Cascade, this is but a history lesson, even if the nightmares of kinetic weapons exploding have followed him through most of his childhood. Ten years later, the war finds Hugh, now a military cadet.

Contains books one and two of The Ibarra Crusade, a continuation of the action-packed military sci-fi Ember War Saga. Earth suffers under a brutal alien occupation, but one young man brings hope from beyond the galaxy's edge. Ely Hale returns to the Earth with a desperate plea from his father: Take his son to Stacy Ibarra, and remove the Qa’resh technology embedded in his skull before it kills him.

After narrowly escaping a brutal attack, Chief Kit Carson and her surviving Pathfinders reach the Zeis Homeworld. Their mission is to seek new allies among the uncharted stars continues, but first they must end the insurrection tearing across the planet, threatening the fragile negotiations. Governor Ken Hale is in a desperate race against time to build up the colony’s defenses. When his new soldiers are found dead on the colony’s streets, he must turn to a retired assassin to help hunt down the deranged killer.

As the celebration of the victory at Legatus cools, a shuttle accident claims the lives of the Mage-King of Mars and his heir. The Crown and the Mountain fall to the Mage-King’s daughter, 16-year-old Kiera Alexander. She recalls Damien Montgomery, her father’s First Hand, to stand as her Lord Regent. The pair are unprepared to govern but are thrust into the heart of Protectorate politics. Damien is grimly certain of one thing: when it comes to the deaths of Kings, he doesn’t believe in accidents.

Logan Conner is the son of a king, the heir to the largest of the five star-dominions, and the best mech pilot in the galaxy. His people are plagued by pirates and raiders, surrounded by enemies, and not even his father can fight them all. Logan gives up his position, his rank, even his name, and becomes Jonathan Slaughter, leader of a rough-and-ready band of mercenary mech-jocks bent on taking the battle to the enemy on their own terms.

The first of the acclaimed Vatta's War books, the exciting military science fiction series that features a swashbuckling spaceship-captain heroine who mixes commerce with combat.

After failing the most important exam of his life, Kyle is forced into a VR war. Now, he fights on the front lines as cannon fodder for what he always assumed was the government, losing a little part of his memories with every virtual death.

Hail Bristol: former runaway princess, interplanetary gunrunner, Empress of Indrana. When the Empire's closest ally asks her to intervene in a galactic military crisis, she embarks on the highest stakes diplomatic mission Indrana has ever faced. Caught between two powerful alien civilizations at each other's throats, Hail has one chance to make peace before all of humanity becomes collateral damage in a full-blown galactic war.

After two years, the collapse of the Terran Commonwealth has finally slowed. With communications networks rebuilding, the Successor States are beginning to look to the future—but for some of these states, that is a future to be forged in fire and conquest. With warlords leading fleets into their stars, the newborn Weston Republic has called for help from every Successor State they could find. Now, James Tecumseh, founder of the Dakotan Confederacy, finds himself fighting shoulder to shoulder alongside Imperator Walkingstick—the man he blames for the fall of the Commonwealth itself.

The empire defeated the Swarm at the Battle of Iris, but it came at a great cost. To win, Hazard King needed to reveal he was Crown Prince Henry and take command of the Imperial Fleet as War Leader. Now their enemy is suing for peace, something many in the empire don't want to give. There are even officers in his own fleet that wish to restart the war and eradicate the Swarm. Hazard and his mother, Empress Elizabeth, face not only issues in the Isis System but across the empire.

Ely Hale and the Steel Sworn strike out on a dangerous mission. They must save the souls of an unsuspecting world before the evil Geist can harvest them. A desperate call for help from hidden agents on the planet Roanoke brings an opportunity for the Ibarra Crusade: a Charon transport. The Geist reap colonies under their control, the harvest transported between the stars aboard their soul prisons. Lady Ibarra wants that ship, and sends two lances of Armor and the Scipio to seize her prize. If Ely fails, and the Geist will grow ever stronger.

The Dusahn have taken a massive blow, and with the Aurora's improved jump range, Captain Scott and the Karuzari Alliance can finally keep them at arm's length. Now, a previously unknown world may hold the key to defeating the Dusahn, and possibly even to bring peace to the entire galaxy.

The brilliantly unorthodox Kylara Vatta - black-sheep scion of Vatta Transport Ltd., one of the galaxy's wealthiest merchant houses - is a heroine like no other, blessed with a killer instinct both for business and for battle. Now, in the aftermath of cold-blooded assassinations that have left her parents dead and the Vatta shipping empire shattered, Kylara faces her greatest challenge yet. There is a time for grief and a time for revenge. This is decidedly the latter.