Hard Space Opera

Although the exciting military career she hoped for never got off the ground, Ky Vatta ended up seeing plenty of combat when she took the helm of one of the commercial transport vessels in her family's fleet...and steered it into a full-blown war. Now the lessons she learned in that trial by fire are about to pay off - because this time, the war has come to her. Someone has launched a full-throttle offensive against Vatta Transport Ltd., Ky's father's interstellar shipping empire.

Although the exciting military career she hoped for never got off the ground, Ky Vatta ended up seeing plenty of combat when she took the helm of one of the commercial transport vessels in her family's fleet...and steered it into a full-blown war. Now the lessons she learned in that trial by fire are about to pay off - because this time, the war has come to her. Someone has launched a full-throttle offensive against Vatta Transport Ltd., Ky's father's interstellar shipping empire.

The science vessel Hermes has been urgently recalled from its mission to survey the moons of Saturn, just as First Officer Miranda Lee receives bad news from home - her mother is dying so she must leave the ship and return to Earth - for good. Commander Scott McNabb is so distraught by her sudden decision to leave that he pays little or no attention to the parameters of the new mission being requested by the Council of Europa. Big mistake. Powerful forces on Earth are now moving to resume inter-AI communications, risking the development of an all-out war.

In the early 22nd century, humanity has spread through the solar system - and their electromagnetic signals have traveled hundreds of light years. An alien race called the Oghaldzon has decided that mankind is dangerously insane...and must be forcibly taken under control. The invasion fleet's technology is decades ahead of Earth's best. They have more ships than the human fleets combined, and a seemingly-inexhaustible number of ground troops. And they're not afraid to kill billions of people.

When 17-year-old Toby McGonigal finds himself lost in space, separated from his family, he expects his next drift into cold sleep to be his last. After all, the planet he' s orbiting is frozen and sunless, and the cities are dead. But when Toby wakes again, he' s surprised to discover a thriving planet, a strange and prosperous galaxy, and something stranger still - that he' s been asleep for 14,000 years. Welcome to the Lockstep Empire, where civilization is kept alive by careful hibernation. Here cold sleeps can last decades and waking moments mere weeks.

Nearly 100,000 years after first contact with the machines that dominate the universe, only a few hundred humans survive. Trapped on Snowglade, a barren world near the center of the galaxy, Killeen and his child, Toby, of the Bishop Tribe, are primitive scavengers, homeless and hunted by the ruling “mechs”. Then suddenly, a strange cosmic entity – neither organic nor cybernetic or living matter – reaches out from a black hole to speak with Killeen.

It is 2076: Lancer, Earth’s first starship, is on a mission to find interstellar civilizations. Although astronaut Nigel Walmsley’s experiences with alien encounters make him the expert, no one believes Nigel’s theory that machines are the dominant intelligent beings left in the galaxy and that their purpose is to annihilate all organic life. Then the explorers discover once-living planets where only machines remain – and ruined worlds where fugitive survivors must evade omnipresent and lethally advanced A.I. warships.

The colony ship Intrepid is falling into a star. The ship's AI has lost control of the engines and core systems. Battling a saboteur who strives to isolate him, his last act is to wake Colonel Tanis Richards from stasis. Tanis finds herself alone on a dying ship, unable to contact the AI. She must discover what has happened and save the Intrepid from burning up in the star's angry red light. Even if she is successful, the journey to the colony world of New Eden is just beginning.

When John Bandicut sets out across the surface of Triton, he's hardly ready for the storm of chaos that's about to blow through his life. The alien Quarx that soon inhabits his mind is humanity's first contact with an alien life. The Quarx, part of an ancient galactic civilization that manipulates chaos theory to predict catastrophic events, seeks to prevent a cometary collision that could destroy the Earth. But it must have help. If Bandicut chooses to trust the Quarx, he must break all the rules - indeed, sacrifice his own life.

Facing the threat of their dark enemies, Gillian must also cope with his inner turmoil, as the madness of his nature threatens to consume his life. He discovers that he is a genetically modified creature whose purpose is to serve the needs of others, and that the course of his destiny is not in his own hands.

Alone and desperate, Eve sits in the control center of an alien structure. She has lost the other members of the team sent to explore exoplanet Proxima Centauri b. By mistake she has triggered a disastrous process that threatens to obliterate the planet. Just as Eve fears her best option may be a quick death, a nearby alien life form awakens from a very long sleep. It has only one task: to find and neutralize the destructive intruder from a faraway place.

New Canaan is under attack. Driven by Uriel, the Hegemony and its last remaining allies have sent their fleets against the ISF's homeworld. It's a final solution, little more than an attempt to bring about mutually assured destruction. Of course, the humans of Sol don't know that their leader is under the control of core AIs who do not care which side wins, so long as humanity is weakened. Tanis and Tangel have returned from the core, ready to defend their homes, but they lost a month in a temporal jump, and the core AIs are ready for them, led by one of Epsilon's lieutenants.

The final novel in the Orion War series, Return to Sol sees the I2 and her crew return to where it all began....

Five thousand years in the future, humankind has spread across thousands of worlds, and more than a dozen different governments exist in an uneasy truce. But human beings have found no signs of other life anywhere approaching human intelligence. This changes when scientists discover a sunless planet they name Danann, traveling the void just beyond the edge of the galaxy at such a high speed that it cannot be natural. Its continents and oceans have been sculpted and shaped, with but a single megaplex upon it - close to perfectly preserved.

Living in the Fellowship meant fighting one space battle after another. Every civilization was aggressive, hostile, and impossible to live with in peace. A Welken task force stumbles upon a massive Myot ship building complex and every Welken warship is destroyed in the ensuing battle before they can warn the home world of the Myot's location. One escape pod manages to escape the battle and the Myot know it must be prevented from making it back to Welken territory.

On the eve of Luca Lee-McNabb’s 23rd birthday the quantum intelligence, Athena delivers her some bad news. Due to a devastating attack on its infrastructure it can no longer protect her and keep her hidden. She must leave Earth immediately and try to make it to New World One, a gargantuan habitat being constructed out in the asteroid belt. For Luca, leaving her home means potentially exposing herself to the powerful VanHeilding family, who will stop at nothing to harvest her unique biology.

In the aftermath of the cold-blooded assassinations that killed her parents and shattered the Vatta intersteller shipping empire, Kylara Vatta sets out to avenge the killings and salvage the family business. Ky soon discovers a conspiracy of terrifying scope, breathtaking audacity, and utter ruthlessness. The only hope against such powerful evil is for all the space merchants to band together.

Kylara Vatta is the only daughter in a family full of sons, and her father's only child to buck tradition by choosing a military career instead of joining the family business. For Ky, it's no contest: Even running the prestigious Vatta Transport Ltd. shipping concern can't hold a candle to shipping out as an officer aboard an interstellar cruiser. It's adventure, not commerce, that stirs her soul. And despite her family's misgivings, there can be no doubt that a Vatta in the service will prove a valuable asset. But with a single error in judgment, it all comes crumbling down.

Still reeling from a former teammate's betrayal, Commonwealth operative Simon Kovalic and his band of misfit spies have no time to catch their breath before being sent on another impossible mission: to pull off the daring heist of a quasi-mythical alien artifact, right out from under the nose of the galaxy's most ruthless crime lord. But their cold war rivals, the Illyrican Empire, want the artifact for themselves. And Kovalic's newest recruit, Specialist Addy Sayers, is a volatile ex-con with a mean hair-trigger who might put the whole mission at risk.

Im Jahr 2330 steht die Menschheit vor einer historischen Entdeckung: Ein unbekanntes Objekt tritt in das Sonnensystem ein. Klar ist: Es korrigiert selbstständig seine Flugbahn und sendet Strahlung aus, wie es kein natürliches Objekt könnte. Militärs und Politiker sind bereit, alles auf eine Karte zu setzen – notfalls mit Gewalt. Während die Regierungen der Erde in Machtspielen versinken, wird Holmgren auf eine gefährliche Aufklärungsmission geschickt. Was als Suche nach Informationen beginnt, entwickelt sich schnell zu einem Albtraum und endet in einer Katastrophe.