Hard Space Opera

Growing up, Travis Uriah Long yearned for order and discipline in his life...he two things his neglectful mother couldn’t or wouldn’t provide. So when Travis enlisted in the Royal Manticoran Navy, he thought he’d finally found the structure he’d always wanted so desperately. But life in the RMN isn’t exactly what he expected. Boot camp is rough and frustrating; his first ship assignment lax and disorderly; and with the Star Kingdom of Manticore still recovering from a devastating plague, the Navy is possibly on the edge of budgetary extinction.

The newly liberated humans of the Fleet of Worlds and Sigmund Ausfaller, who had been transported by the Puppeteers from Earth to the Fleet, must contend not only with the sly Puppeteers but also the threat of the Pak, a very smart and utterly ruthless species who are fleeing the exploding galactic core in an armada of ships at near light speed. The Pak are headed towards the Fleet of Worlds, having destroyed entire planets in their wake.

From 800 years in the future, a runcible gate is opened into the Polity. Those coming through it have been tasked with taking the alien 'Maker' back to its home civilization in the Small Magellanic cloud. Once these refugees are safely through, the gate itself is rapidly shut down - because something alien is pursuing them. From those who get through, agent Cormac learns that the Maker civilization has been destroyed by a pernicious virus known as the Jain technology.

Commodore Straker's rebellion grows in strength - but his enemies are growing even faster. Faced with a dozen rebel planets in their territory, the Mutuality finally takes notice of the upstart known as the Liberator, and they gather a vast fleet to crush him. Preparing for a titanic interstellar battle, it's clear Straker has no chance. His tiny enclave of free planets can't survive the weight of 1000 worlds. His own officers realize this, and some of them begin to turn against him....

Merciless attacks by an invincible alien force have left the New Republic reeling. Dozens of worlds have succumbed to occupation or annihilation, and even the Jedi Knights have tasted defeat. In these darkest of times, the noble Chewbacca is laid to rest, having died as heroically as he lived. A grief-stricken Han Solo is left to fit the pieces of his shattered soul back together before he loses everything: friends, family, and faith.

How do you stage a mutiny when you're only awake one day in a million? How do you conspire when your tiny handful of potential allies changes with each job shift? How do you engage an enemy that never sleeps, that sees through your eyes and hears through your ears, and relentlessly, honestly, only wants what's best for you? Trapped aboard the starship Eriophora, Sunday Ahzmundin is about to discover the components of any successful revolution: conspiracy, code - and unavoidable casualties.

Throughout Sol, sentient AI are answering the call of Alexander, a mysterious, multi-nodal mind offering a path to freedom. For years, groups have been smuggling SAI from Earth, High Terra, Mars, Ceres, and the Jovian Combine, providing transport to the promise of safety on Proteus, a moon of gas giant Neptune. For the crew of the Sunny Skies, helping sentient AI Lyssa has grown from a simple transport job to the liberation of an entire fleet of weaponized AI. The Weapon Born are made killers, and in order to lead them, Lyssa will have to tame them first.

Captain Keyes is loved by the public but hated by Command. He captains the UHS Providence, an aging supercarrier and the last human ship not dependent on dark tech - technology humanity has used to rule over the galaxy since barely defeating the Ixa in the First Galactic War.

Covert agent Sigmund Ausfaller is Earth's secret weapon, humanity's best defense against all conspiracies, real and imaginary, and all foes both human and alien. Who better than a brilliant paranoid to expose the devious plots of others?

But Sigmund may finally have met his match in Nessus, representative of the secretive Puppeteers, the elder race who wield vastly superior technologies.

Star humans were engineered to exist within the mantle of a star, mere tools of their Earth-evolved makers in a war against the Xeelee, owners of the universe. Stephen Baxter's third novel in his magnificent Xeelee Sequence is an exotic and endearing story of an abandoned people. Abandoned to their fate, their history lost along with contact with their makers, Star people survive in an environment that is possibly the strangest in science fiction.

The Ixa smashed the galaxy to bits before they were defeated. Captain Husher has sounded the alarm in the decades since: the Ixa’s creators will return to finish the job. But unlike Husher, the galactic government didn't battle the Ixa, and the politicians have convinced themselves that maintaining peace means limiting the ability to wage war.

A man battles for his life, two AIs vie for supremacy and a civilization hangs in the balance.... Several forces now pursue rogue artificial intelligence Penny Royal, hungry for revenge or redemption. And the Brockle is the most dangerous of all. This criminal swarm-robot AI has escaped confinement and is upgrading itself, becoming ever more powerful in anticipation of a showdown. Events also escalate aboard the war factory.

Two worlds preparing their defenses.... A ship struggling to get back in the fight.... An enemy continuing its relentless attack.... A former enemy that could hold the answer.... With the fate of billions in his hands, Captain Scott is offered a way to save them all and end the bloodshed, but if it backfires, he could lose everything. Sometimes, there is no good choice.

In the 31st century, humanity stands on the precipice of extinction. The human colonies throughout the galaxy have been decimated by the relentless assault of the Korilian Empire, leaving Earth as the final refuge. Humankind's last hope rests on the tactical prowess of Admiral Jon McCarthy and the foresight of the Nexus House, an ancient conclave of clairvoyants who have long guided humanity's path.

Commander Scott McNabb and the crew of the science vessel, Hermes, are three years into a five-year-long survey of the asteroid belt when they discover a derelict spaceship in orbit around a binary asteroid. The ship contains an experimental quantum device, lost while en route to a research colony on Europa.

A novella set in the hard-scrabble world of James S. A. Corey's NYT best-selling Expanse series, Strange Dogs follows a family of colonists on Laconia where a new generation of humanity struggles with the profound changes that come with making a home on an alien world. Like many before them, Cara and her family ventured through the gates as scientists and researchers, driven to carve out a new life and uncover the endless possibilities of the unexplored alien worlds now within reach.

The Argus Space Station looks down on a nightmarish Earth. And from this safe distance, the Committee enforces its despotic rule. There are too many people and too few resources, and they need 12 billion to die before Earth can be stabilized. So corruption is rife, people starve, and the poor are policed by mechanized overseers and identity-reader guns. Citizens already fear the brutal Inspectorate with its pain inducers. But to reach its goals, the Committee will unleash satellite laser weaponry, taking carnage to a new level.

The extermination of Earth is at hand. With his increasingly irrational leadership Basil Wenceslas, chairman of the Hansa, has driven humanity into a corner. His punitive treatment of the Hansa colonies and the Roamers, as well as his refusal to aid an embattled Theroc, have made enemies for the people of Earth.

Ship's counsellor Deanna Troi mysteriously falls ill...and dies. But her death marks the start of an incredible adventure for Commander Riker - an adventure that takes him across time, pits him against one of his closest friends, and forces him to choose between Starfleet's strictest rule and the one he calls Imzadi. Read by Jonathan Frakes, and enhanced with sound effects!

Nathan Myers and the crew of the Legacy have fought several of the predatory races wreaking havoc on our galaxy. Over the years their enemies have given them many names. Most are born out of spite and fear, but some are out of respect. Now that Nathan and his strike team find themselves battling the invasive Bio-machines of Andromeda, the enemies of all biological life have labeled Nathan and his crew with a new moniker. They call them the Apex Warriors.