Space Opera First Contact

Over half of Earth's population has left the planet, mainly as contract workers for aliens, and the homeworld is losing relevance to the emigrants. The EarthCent president takes on the task of making sure that humanity isn't permanently stuck in a rut of low-skilled labor. Can the ambassador put aside her new-found obsession with the Galactic Free Press crossword puzzle and help save the day?

Edited by best-selling authors and universe creators Mark Wandrey and Chris Kennedy, Tales from the Lyon’s Den includes 18 all-new stories in the Four Horsemen universe by a variety of best-selling authors - and some you may not have heard of...yet.

Series finale! The starship Pioneer’s voyage is coming to an end, and it won’t be like anything the passengers or crew could have imagined. If any of them survive to see it. Pioneer needs to reach the Forge, but the Forge is surrounded by the enemy’s massive fleet, which is preparing to launch an assault that could leave the station in ruins. Keesha works to repel the attack, mounting a defense she can only hope will keep them all alive. Light-years away, Joseph and Max have located Preslan and Tyson. While finding them was relatively easy, getting to them won’t be.

Colonial Union diplomat Hart Schmidt is back home for Harvest Day celebrations - to a family whose members wonder whether its youngest son isn’t wasting his life clinging to the lowest rung of the CU’s diplomatic ladder. When his father, a legendarily powerful politician, presents him with a compelling offer, Schmidt has to take stock of his life and career. "This Must Be the Place" is a tale from John Scalzi's The Human Division, a series of self-contained but interrelated short stories set in the Old Man's War universe.

Jack Morgan has been framed for theft. He's hiding on a distant planet with the virtual presence of his deceased Uncle Virge, a con man who has been his only family since Jack's parents died. Jack knows he must clear his name before the cops catch up with him. A firefight among ships in the skies above leaves a downed ship near Jack's hiding place, with a single unlikely survivor. It looks like a dragon, and it must join with a human host within six hours or die. The only available host is Jack. Draycos, Jack's new companion, is a K'da, a dragon-like species that lives symbiotically with the humanoid Shontine. The attackers, determined to exterminate Draycos's people, will find them if they don't flee; so the pair works together to escape the planet and begin a search for the truth behind Jack's frame-up and the identity of the attackers. With Jack's future hanging in the balance, as well as the future of billions of Draycos's people, the pair must track down the people who framed Jack, and prevent the destruction of the remaining K'da and Shontine. They'll also discover whether their union was mere coincidence, or a friendship written in the stars. Zahn keeps the story moving at breakneck speed.

Less than three months have passed since Captain Charlotte Omandi and the crew of Earth’s first starship, the TSS Bladerunner, narrowly prevented an extinction-level event from wiping out humanity. Omandi knows Earth remains on borrowed time, until she meets with leaders of the Galactic Confederation to convince them that our planet no longer represents a threat. As she and her crew prepare to become the first humans to travel outside our solar system, a string of assassination attempts lead them to an unlikely mystery.

The heart-stopping third episode in the Eden Paradox series. After 18 years, the quarantine that has protected humanity’s survivors on the planet Esperia is about to end. Mankind won't stand a chance without external help. Yet in the middle of a galactic war, who is concerned about one small planet when worlds fall every day?

On August 25, 2012, the Voyager 1 probe crossed into interstellar space. It contained a "golden record" with sounds, pictures, and greetings from Earth. On March 15, 2013, NASA received a transmission from the spacecraft that said: "Hello. We received your golden record. Let's meet." Now, internationally best-selling author B.C. Chase invites you on a daring first contact mission into deep space with five intrepid astronauts, one spunky cosmonaut, and a 75-year-old truck driver.

The year is 1961. The Cold War is in full swing and the space race is on. Russia aims to send humanity to space. But what if space comes to humanity instead? Yuri Gagarin’s epic flight into space is disrupted when an alien Mothership jumps into orbit, causing a cosmic car crash that defies all odds. Everything changes. The US and USSR must quickly put aside their differences. In exchange for the Earth’s help in the rebuilding of their Mothership, the mysterious aliens, the Vulbathi, offer promises of technology beyond humanity's wildest dreams.

The Kalu are not a long lost nightmare anymore. They came from the black. They destroyed Rosho. They ravaged Heija. That was just the scouting force. They are coming back. Power those reactors, charge those rail cannons and ready the fighters. The Free Fleet is going to war.

The silent hell of deep space holds certain death for the unwary. It is the task of the UN Navy to defend the starways, no matter the danger. An alien attack and an admiral's betrayal leave a wounded Commander Seafort stranded aboard a doomed ship.

Ever want revenge so bad you'd cross the galaxy for it? U.S. Marine Jake Bayard does. After a telepathic killer executes his pregnant wife, he hunts the psycho through warp gates—straight to Atlantis. This Atlantis is an ocean world drowning in secrets. Under the waves lurk genetically altered horrors, airship-riding reptilian warriors, and relics of Nazi U-boats. Worst of all, something vast and hungry stirs in the deepest trenches—a cosmic evil the Atlanteans once sank their whole civilization to contain.

Bjorn’s Berserkers was a respected and flourishing mercenary company. Founded by Bjorn Tovesson I, it was now commanded by his son, Bjorn Tovesson II. Commander Tovesson wanted nothing more than to eventually pass on the Berserkers to his son, Bjorn Tovesson III. But young Bjorn had a different destiny in mind. He didn’t want a future of fighting aliens and risking death on some distant planet. One fateful afternoon in the Alaska wilderness changed everything, though, when a bear attack left Bjorn maimed.

The McCormacks have a starship, and now, they need a safe place to start harvesting the technology. They’re starting with a place in the Cook Islands, but to succeed, they have to avoid spies, figure out how to manufacture the new technology using Earth-based tools, and then introduce it without getting into too much trouble with the governments and big corporations of Earth.

Priscilla “Hutch” Hutchins discovers an interstellar message from a highly advanced race that could be her last chance for a mission before the program is shut down for good. Hutch has been the academy’s best pilot for decades. She’s had numerous first contact encounters and even became a minor celebrity. But world politics have shifted from exploration to a growing fear that the program will run into an extraterrestrial race more advanced than humanity and war.

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.

During the Alpha Contracts, 100 of Earth’s finest mercenary organizations went to the far reaches of the galaxy to fight for credits. Only four returned. The rest, tens of thousands of humanity’s best warriors, were gone. Unbeknownst to most, a small, unconventional group chose a different path. Their foresight and unique talents set the stage not only for the long-haul shipping company of the present day, but of something else.

Cade Korbin is playing for keeps this time. If he doesn’t find a way to eliminate Nadine Zabelle once and for all, she will be the death of him and everyone he cares about. Armed with a suit of armor from the long-dead Priors, a mysterious sample of sentient and self-replicating nano bots, he accidentally discovers what killed the Priors - Omnipotence.

In this thrilling second book of the Earthborn trilogy, Lucas and Asha have survived the decimation of Earth at the hands of the invading Xalans and seek safe haven with their enemy's true foes, the Sorans. They find a lush planet inhabited by a civilization far more advanced than their own, waging a seemingly endless war against a constantly evolving enemy. The Sorans call the pair of them the "Earthborn", and they're welcomed as heroes, almost as gods.