Space Opera Science Fiction

TwiceFar station is at the edge of the known universe, and that’s just how Niko Larson, former admiral in the Grand Military of the Hive Mind, likes it. Retired and finally free of the continual war of conquest, Niko and the remnants of her former unit are content to spend the rest of their days working at the restaurant they built together, The Last Chance. But, some wars can’t ever be escaped, and unlike the Hive Mind, some enemies aren’t content to let old soldiers go.

Two hundred years ago, aliens invaded Earth. A violent war followed. The enemy won. Some of us escaped, most of us didn’t. On Proxima they flourished - the invasion forgotten. On Earth we floundered - the horror began. Their world is advanced, peaceful, and secure. Our world is broken, savage, and overrun. A new invasion is coming. A hunger that has swallowed half the universe. They don’t care which planet we live on. They want to end us all. But where there is life, there is hope. And where there is hope, there are heroes. This time, vengeance will be ours.

Max is a cheery xeno-archeologist from Earth, stranded and trying to find a way home. Lahra is a stern warrior of a nearly extinct race, searching for her people's heir. Wheel is the couple's cybernetic pilot, running from her past and toward an unknown future. On Wheel's ship the Kettle, the trio traverses the galaxy, dodging Imperial patrols and searching ancient temples and ruins for anything they can sell. Back on the Wreck, their home and base of operations, they're deeply in debt to the drifting city's most powerful gangster, and she wants her money back.

Jack Bennet returns from the war to find the life he left behind has moved on without him. The only option he has to make ends meet lies in a military surplus junkyard starship. What’s a former Combat Search and Rescue soldier to do? Fix up the ship, hire the cheapest pilot—a notorious drunk—and take the first contract that comes up: collect a bounty on one of the most ruthless killers in the Pirate Worlds, a place crawling with thieves, cutthroats and con artists whose primary language is violence. Jack must abandon his nice guy persona, or exploit it, if he is to survive.

Carl Ramsey has a heist to run and the crew to pull it off. All he’s missing is a specialized computer and the tech to run it. But when an unrelated robbery loses him both, the prospects for a successful job look grim. Unfortunately the one who hired them won’t take excuses, and the owners of the computer come looking for their stolen gear. Caught between a local crime lord and thugs from a galaxy-spanning syndicate, Carl needs to come up with a plan that doesn’t get them all killed.

Heather Kilgore is the deadliest assassin in the Fringe, a fearsome agent for her King and star nation. But when a high-profile defector is found dead outside the embassy on a contested world, Heather is pulled back into a past she'd tried to forget. Her orders are simple: find out why her name was in the dead man's pocket. But nothing is simple in a galaxy of shifting loyalties and buried truths.

In the year 2280, an alien fleet attacked the Earth. Their weapons were unstoppable, their defenses unbreakable. Our technology was inferior, our militaries overwhelmed. Only one starship escaped before civilization fell. Earth was lost. It was never forgotten. Fifty-two years have passed. A message from home has been received. The time to fight for what is ours has come.

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

The Solaran Defense Forces make the difficult decision to evacuate the colony of Robichar in order to avoid a direct confrontation. But when Captain Elya Nevers gets shot down during the evacuation, his squadron and the admiral in charge have to think fast to rescue their pilot before the Kryl overrun the system.

Born on a forsaken desert planet, Cole Shaw has two options - perish from starvation and disease, or enlist in the New World Republic’s armed forces. He chooses the military. For the first time, he thinks he has a shot at a better life. But survival is not guaranteed. Leading an elite team of mech operators, he is deployed to a frozen planet called Ferrous where dangerous relics of a past war lurk beneath the ice and savage creatures prowl the barren wastelands. Scientists on Ferrous are chasing rumors of godlike technologies buried in the ruins of a long-extinct civilization.

Neither cosmic philosopher Lars Soren, hotshot pilot Bianca Petrescu, nor the high priestess Jessica McHugh—Lady Death herself—can say quite where in the galaxy they are. But after an experiment gone horribly wrong, one thing is clear: Asphodel Station isn’t in orbit around Jupiter any longer. Worse, the monsters that live out here—ancient eldritch beings thought only to exist in stories and nightmares—have now been alerted to Earth’s existence.

Captain Nathan Kade just wants a quick job to keep his busted-up spaceship limping through the Solar System. Instead he gets Vessani S’Kaari, a mysterious and beautiful catgirl who tried—and failed—to steal a ship belonging to a band of space pirates. She’s chaos in a tight catsuit, but she also has a lead on what may be the greatest treasure trove of lost technology the Solar System has ever seen.

To save her people, she will destroy everything. An exciting sci-fi assassin and heist thriller set thousands of years in the future, in a time when humanity has spread through the stars. Everyone wants Heather Kilgore dead, even those she once called friends. Pursued by her own agency, she flees to the Outer Rim, where she’ll attempt one last time to put an end to a war that will kill billions. Her target: an interstellar arms manufacturer bent on destabilizing the Fringe and Heather’s star nation for profit. But she won’t be able to do it alone.

This dazzling anthology includes epic interstellar adventures, tales of space and wonder, from some of the brightest names in science fiction.

Hired to bring a tech team to a remote planet. They had no idea what was waiting for them. Wil and the crew of the Ghost show up to find a nearly deserted research outpost on a frozen world. Nearly deserted. Oh, and Maxim has been abducted and with the crew busy elsewhere there’s only one being who can rescue him, Bennie.

Jessica Lin is missing! And Brad Mendoza has no idea where she is. But he has other problems, like the people trying to extort him into capturing a man he was probably going to kill anyway! Now, with bounty hunters, crime lords, their own Navy, and some random gunslinger after them, can Brad and Jessica find a little more dumb luck and save each other and their crew? Old villains return, and new friends are forged as they scramble against the worst odds they've ever seen.

Rose McKenzie may be far from Earth with no way back, but she's made a powerful ally—a fellow prisoner with whom she's formed a strong bond. Sazo's an artificial intelligence. He's saved her from captivity and torture, but he's also put her in the middle of a conflict, leaving Rose with her loyalties divided. Captain Dav Jallan doesn't know why he and his crew have stumbled across an almost legendary Class 5 battleship, but he's not going to complain. The only problem is, all its crew are dead—all except for one strange, new alien being.

Damien Montgomery is as much a nobody as a Mage of the star-spanning Protectorate of Mars can be. Trained as a Jump Mage, one of the elite who teleport ships across interstellar space, he lacks the connections to find a ship that will take him. Until pirates and politics strand Captain David White of the jump freighter Blue Jayin his home system. The two men's matching needs birth a choice and a partnership that will take them from high-end orbitals to prisons to alien graveyards in forgotten star systems.

They won't settle for mere victory. They want to exterminate us. Every last one of us. A surprise attack has sent the Star Alliance fleeing for its life. A remnant of a remnant, their meager fleet—all that remains alive—flees to what seems like a safe harbor: a forgotten backwater planet called Earth. Join ace fighter pilot Chase as he teams up with the modern-day militaries of Earth and fights the last battle for the universe.

A hot, stinking, dumpster fire. And most days I don't know if the legionnaires are putting out the flames, or fanning them into an inferno. A hostile force ambushes Victory Company during a reconnaissance-in-force deep inside enemy territory. Stranded behind enemy lines, a sergeant must lead a band of survivors against merciless insurgents on a deadly alien world somewhere along the galaxy's edge. With no room for error, the Republic's elite fighting force must struggle to survive under siege while waiting on a rescue that might never come.