Space Adventure Fantasy

Lovelace was once merely a ship's artificial intelligence. When she wakes up in an new body following a total system shutdown and reboot, she has to start over in a synthetic body, in a world where her kind are illegal. She's never felt so alone. But she's not alone, not really. Pepper, one of the engineers who risked life and limb to reinstall Lovelace, is determined to help her adjust to her new world. Because Pepper knows a thing or two about starting over.

The year is 2312. Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer humanity's only home; new habitats have been created throughout the solar system on moons, planets, and in between. But in this year, 2312, a sequence of events will force humanity to confront its past, its present, and its future. The first event takes place on Mercury, on the city of Terminator, itself a miracle of engineering on an unprecedented scale. It is an unexpected death, but one that might have been foreseen....

This collection includes 'Chosen of Khorne' by Anthony Reynolds, 'Throne of Lies' by Aaron-Dembski Bowden, 'Perfection' by Nick Kyme, 'Ahriman: The First Prince' by John French, 'Repairer of Ruin' by Josh Reynolds, and 'The Embrace of Pain' by Ian St Martin.

Centuries ago the human race fought its first great war against an alien race - and lost. A tiny population of human beings fled to distant Safehold. Centuries later their descendants have forgotten their history; for them, life has been an eternal Middle Ages, ruled by the Church of God Awaiting, whose secret purpose is to prevent the reemergence of industrial civilization. But not all of Safehold's founders were onboard with this plan. Those dissidents left behind their own secret legacies.

No one wanted another war. Thomas Theisman didn't. Not after risking his life to overthrow the Committee of Public Safety's reign of terror and restore the Republic of Haven's ancient Constitution. Baron High Ridge didn't. The Prime Minister of Manticore was perfectly happy with the war he had. No one was shooting anyone else at the moment, and his government could continue to milk all those "hostilities only" tax measures for their own partisan projects.

During the Great Crusade, it falls to the primarch Corax of the Raven Guard to humble the immense void-cities of the Carinae. Determined to bring these worlds into compliance, he unleashes the might of his Legion and a massive war host of the Imperial Army. But the lords of Carinae are well defended and without remorse....

Following her victory against the aliens in Washington, Anya Nowicki has allied herself with the Department of Extraterrestrial Research and Defense: a newly formed organization headed by the shrewd Director MacDougal. Other hosts for the Archive, like Anya, have also joined the DERD, dedicating their time and efforts to honing their supernatural abilities and searching for whatever aliens remain on Earth. The hostile creatures known as gnosiphages have gone into hiding, but they have not remained idle. Hosts have been vanishing overnight, along with many civilians all across the globe.

Jun Ironway—hacker, con artist, and occasional thief—has gotten her hands on a piece of contraband that could set her up for life: proof that implicates the powerful Nightfoot family in a planet-wide genocide seventy-five years ago. The Nightfoots control the precious sevite that fuels interplanetary travel through three star systems. And someone is sure to pay handsomely for anything that could break their hold. Of course, anything valuable is also dangerous. The Kindom, the ruling power of the star systems, is inextricably tied up in the Nightfoots’ monopoly.

Four months ago, the Crickets—the Chhrt'ktk't, in their own language—had abandoned a mobile shipyard with a burned-out hyperdrive core in Sol system as a decoy. They hadn't told humanity about the decoy part. Then they picked Alex Holder to operate it, simply because he happened to be the first human they found who could—because that would make it a better decoy. In perhaps as little as five years, the Khreetan will be coming. The Crickets hadn't intended for humanity to know that, either.

Lady Jessica, mother of Paul, and consort to Leto Atredies. The choices she made shaped an empire, but first the Lady of Caladan must reckon with her own betrayal of the Bene Gesserit. She has already betrayed her ancient order, but now she must decide if her loyalty to the Sisterhood is more important than the love of her own family. Meanwhile, events in the greater empire are accelerating beyond the control of even the Reverend Mother, and Lady Jessica's family is on a collision course with destiny.

What price victory? The war with the Republic of Haven has resumed . . . disastrously for the Star Kingdom of Manticore. Admiral Lady Dame Honor Harrington, Steadholder and Duchess Harrington, the single victorious Allied commander of the opening phase of the new war, has been recalled from the Sidemore System to command Eighth Fleet. Everyone knows Eighth Fleet is the Alliance's primary offensive command, which makes it the natural assignment for the woman the media calls "the Salamander."

Set in the wake of a galaxywide war and the destruction of a human empire, The Dangerous Type follows the awakening of one of the galaxy's most dangerous assassins and her quest for vengeance. Entombed for 20 years, Raena has been found and released. Thallian has been on the lam for the last 15 years. He's a wanted war criminal whose entire family has been hunted down and murdered for their role in the galaxywide genocide of the Templars.

It has been a quiet two weeks since their ill-fated mission to stop a human trafficker, and the crew of Huli Jing has spent the time recovering: Zan has relaxed back into their normal routine of meditation, exercise, and intellectual debates at a high-level vin lounge; Soo-jin’s arm is halfway healed, and she’s getting ready for her first date with her favorite commander; and Bob has been flexing his growing power with new and exciting interdimensional antics.

Quinn Dexter is loose on Earth, destroying the giant arcologies one at a time. As Louise Kavanagh tries to track him down, she manages to acquire some strange and powerful allies whose goal doesn't quite match her own. The campaign to liberate Mortonridge from the possessed degenerates into a horrendous land battle, the kind that hasn't been seen by humankind for 600 years; then some of the protagonists escape in a very unexpected direction.

When Manchester Yards donates a new training vessel to the Merchant Officer Academy at Port Newmar, Alys Giggone recalls the Chernyakova. She wants Ishmael Wang and his crew to take a crew of cadets into the Deep Dark. They have to sort out the crews of two ships, figure out what lessons they need to teach, and who will get those lessons. Once they agree, the trouble starts.

For thousands of years, the planet of Belusha has served the galactic Sollan Empire as its most notorious prison planet. It is here the very worst men in the Empire are locked away: murderers, traitors, deserters—each condemned to toil on the oil rigs and scrapyards of the planet in bitter cold, preyed upon both by the men of the Martian Guard set to watch over them, and by the Outborn reavers whose fathers escaped the work camps to scratch a living from the icy wilderness. It is a hard world. A desperate world. And it is here that Lorian Aristedes finds himself: alone; friendless; betrayed.

Once the Church of God Awaiting dominated all the kingdoms of Safehold. Then, after centuries of stasis, the island kingdom of Charis began to defy the edicts of Mother Church—egged on, some say, by the mysterious warrior-monk Merlin Athrawes, who enjoys the Charisian royal family's absolute trust. What vanishingly few people know is that Merlin is the cybernetic avatar of a young woman a thousand years dead, felled in the war in which aliens destroyed Earth...and that since awakening, his task has been to restart the history of the long-hidden human race.

In a single act of courage, the young American grunt saves an interstellar soldier from certain death at the hands of a vicious killer. Afterward, she promises to show him the stars. Mark will begin his new life far away from Earth—a life not so different from that of a humble soldier. Out among the asteroids, he learns of swords and honor, starships and empires. He learns what it means to be a Peacemaker. Along the way, he's joined by Perry, his combat AI companion who helps Mark learn how to survive—and earn a living—among the stars.

Celebrate the lasting impact of Return of the Jedi with this exciting reimagining of the timeless Star Wars film featuring new perspectives from forty contributors.

Three against the stars! A sky pirate armed with superior weapons of his own invention.... First contact with an alien race dangerous enough to threaten the safety of two planets.... The arrival of an unseen dark sun whose attendant marauders aimed at the very end of civilization in this Solar System.... These were the three challenges that tested the skill and minds of the brilliant team of scientist-astronauts Arcot, Wade, and Morey.