Showing results by author "Rick Partlow" in All Categories

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.

Go to war or go to jail. For small-time street hustler Cam Alvarez, the choice is simple.... He has no family, no friends, no place in the world...nothing to lose. When his latest con results in the death of a cartel hit man, Cam opts to join the Marines and leave Earth to fight a vicious alien enemy. Drafted into the Marine Drop-Troopers, Cam discovers there’s one thing he’s even better at than running street-con games, and that’s killing the enemy.

Jack Schafer saved Earth by accident. Saving his newly adopted home, Dravos, won't be any easier. Dravos has fallen into a new star system, sunlight blazing down on a civilization that's never known day or night. Its people are terrified. Its nobles are plotting. Its king wants answers Jack doesn't have. And the Archon Draven—the centuries-old tyrant Jack thought he'd disposed of—is recovering in the mountains, preparing for his next move. With rebellion spreading and old enemies becoming uneasy allies, Jack, Lisa, and Erik must hold a fragile kingdom together long enough to strike back.

Terribly wounded during the battle for Hermes, Ryan Hendrix was repaired with cybernetics, transformed into a weapon by Fleet Intelligence...and covertly dropped onto the enemy-occupied colony at Aphrodite to sabotage the enemy and build up a civilian resistance. While Ryan fights the real battle behind enemy lines, Travis Miller and Jessica Leer struggle with politics...and their new commands.

Four complete books. Explosive, military sci-fi action completes the entire second arc of the best-selling Drop Trooper Series.

Cameron Alvarez is a Marine Drop Trooper and Marines are no stranger to sacrifice. He was willing to sacrifice his life to protect the innocent, but what’s he’s been asked to give up now is far worse. Having subjected himself to the transformation virus, become linked to the power of another universe, Cam may have sacrificed his sanity—and his soul. The ghosts of that universe haunt him now, whispering in every unguarded moment, trying to turn him against the ones he loves.

Travis Miller, his image reformed from the moron who screwed up our first contact with aliens to one of the heroes of the Battle for Eden, is given a new assignment: Retake the occupied colony of Brigantia. Losing it would be a glancing blow to the Tahni Imperium, but it would be Earth’s first solid strike against them, a chance to go on the offensive. Ryan Hendrix and the Fleet Marines will be the tip of the spear, outfitted with their new Aegis-powered armor, while Jessica Leer and her Fleet Strike fighter squadron clear the way for the Marines and their landers.

Dr. Erik Manheim needed a warrior. A Navy SEAL. Someone who could help him confront the threat he uncovered in ancient ruins—evidence that a rogue planet brings devastation every time it passes Earth. Instead, he got Jack Schafer, a hungover bush pilot in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now, Jack is swept into a mission he was never meant to survive—one that stretches from the Alaskan wilderness to the stars beyond. Humanity's future hangs in the balance… and its best hope may be a reluctant pilot who wasn't supposed to be here at all.

As a sci-fi author with a hit TV show, I have a few ideas about what alien invaders are supposed to look like. In my stories, they’re technologically advanced monsters, with tentacles, and no faces. Turns out I was right about the technology. And about how angry they’d be. But the way they look…that’s more terrifying than even I could have imagined. They look exactly like us. Because they are us.

Charlie Travers figures his life can’t get much worse. He lives over a pizza restaurant, he’s lost his girlfriend, and has no prospects for a career. Then, he’s abducted by an alien robot and taken across the galaxy. When he wakes up, he finds himself stranded thousands of light-years away, and about to be killed by space pirates.

Cameron Alvarez and the crew of the Orion are hot on the trail of the Seekers, following the Predecessor faction on their quest to find the source of the Skrela infestation. But the crew is close to the breaking point, and their commander, Colonel Hachette, is long past it. The death of Sgt. Major Campbell has left him devastated and unable to lead.

Brent Parthet just wanted to be left alone. A deadly supercommando in the Southwind War, Brent had retired a hero to a wildlife preserve as far from civilization as possible to enjoy the simple life with his wife and young son. But when one of the Southwind, the massive, genetically-engineered slaves who'd rebelled against their human masters, shows up at Brent's door, asking for help from an old enemy, Brent will find out that the war isn't really over. And he may have been fighting for the wrong side.

For small-time street hustler Cam Alvarez, the choice is simple. He has no family, no friends, no place in the world...nothing to lose. When his latest con results in the death of a cartel hitman, Cam opts to join the Marines and leave Earth to fight a vicious alien enemy.

Logan Conner has given up the life of a warrior prince to become Jonathan Slaughter, a mercenary captain of a rough-and-ready band of mech-jocks for hire. Already legendary throughout the Periphery, their next job brings them head to head with the Jeuta, militant aliens who seek to loot and plunder isolated human colony worlds. The fearsome Jeuta raiders will task Logan to his limits, but they’re only a sideshow to Wholesale Slaughter’s real operation objective - locating a treasure trove at the legendary Terminus Cut outpost.

The war with the Tahni has dragged on for over two years, taking its toll on the lives of all involved. On the Aphrodite colony, Marine turned cybernetic commando Ryan Hendrix is readying his civilian militia to make one final strike against the enemy, in what they know could be a suicide mission. Back in Commonwealth space, Travis Miller and his task force have finally been given clearance to take back the occupied colony system, but the Tahni have had a year to prepare their defenses and the price in blood will be dear.

Hard times make for strong men, and Antonin Murdock’s childhood was as rough as it gets. Now, he’s a Ranger, the only law for colonists seeking their fortune far from home. Murdock’s investigation into a missing freighter takes him to Coracaesium, a world he discovers has been turned into a stronghold by brutal pirate forces. They are more organized than anything he’s seen before, equipped with advanced weaponry, and led by a tactical and strategic genius.

They destroyed the civilization of the ancient alien Elders thousands of years ago, and now they’re following Andy Clanton and the crew of the James Bowie back from the edge of the galaxy and into Alliance space, bent on wiping out all intelligent life in the galaxy. The Bugs probe for weakness, attacking new friends and old enemies, and forcing Andy and the others into union with forces that had tried to destroy them only months before and putting a wedge between the Earth and the Alliance.

Cam Alvarez and the crew of the Orion spent five years in hibernation, putting old enemies behind them, searching for the pathway home. When they find another network of wormhole jumpgates created by the Predecessors, Cam is sure they’re on the right track. But there are other civilizations in this new part of the galaxy, and they already have their own plans for the network. Plans they’re willing to go to war to protect. War with each other…and war with the human newcomers.

After his mom died from cancer, Wash gave up his girlfriend and his dream of being a career Army officer to stay home and take care of his father, a former Special Forces soldier stricken with PTSD. Wash works three jobs just to pay the bills, and one of them is at the ranch of the man who’s engaged to his exgirlfriend, Jimmy Bonner. Sound rough? He thought so too … until a portal to a hell-world of giant, insectoid aliens opens behind the ranch house, sucking Wash and Jimmy into the nightmare domain of the Hive Mind.

As a sci-fi author with a hit TV show, I have a few ideas about what alien invaders are supposed to look like. In my stories, they’re technologically advanced monsters, with tentacles, and no faces. Turns out I was right about the technology. And about how angry they’d be. But the way they look is more terrifying than even I could have imagined. They look exactly like us. Because they are us.