The aliens tested humans on an individual basis for miner rentals. Do well on your pilot test, get a spaceship, sign up with a corp, and you can mine the belt. For a puddle-jumper pilot like me, yeah, I was so interested I became obsessed. When I finally tested, I performed above and beyond, being offered a contract for some better than a miner - Earth's First Starfighter.

This is the warning delivered to Will Ryder by the alien spaceship that crash-landed in his backyard. But there is hope. With the ship's AI guiding him, Will must rebuild the craft in his barn and take to the stars to prevent the cataclysmic invasion.

As a martial arts instructor, Nori has always had a simple purpose in life: Help underprivileged kids build confidence and self-discipline. Now she'll have to do so for everyone else, too. It all started with a mist, one that gave everyone stats and levels, but also disabled technology and transformed animals and humans into cybernetic horrors that preyed on the living. Within months of its inception, civilization had crumbled.

Ian Stevens, director of the Deep Space Research Institute, isn’t interested in conducting research just for the sake of research. While the rest of the world - including the US Government - thinks that’s the DSRI’s sole mission, Stevens is actually interested in more - he wants manned space travel and the colonization of the moon. With NASA defunct, few scientific probes are being launched, and no one even talks about human spaceflight anymore. Stevens is out to change that.

When Ben Murdock receives a text message offering a fully operational starship for sale, he’s certain it has to be a joke. Already trapped in the worst day of his life and desperate for a way out, he decides to play along. Except there is no joke. The starship is real. And Ben’s life is going to change in ways he never dreamed possible. All he has to do is sign the contract. Joined by his streetwise best friend and a bizarre tenant with an unseverable lease, he’ll soon discover that the universe is more volatile, treacherous, and awesome than he ever imagined.

Captain Mead sold his banking gig for space raising his children between Earth and Pluto for over a decade. With all but one of them moved on, and with business on the upswing, it's time to hire. When an overqualified young man lands on his ramp eager for work, he ignores the shady history on his resume, especially since his past has its own flaws. After a boring decade of living as a trading merchant, the Sol System heats up in more ways than one.

Confronted with uncertainty in the aftermath of war, a legendary master restarts a whole new system. General Glenaron gave up everything to stop the Beetle Queen’s invasion. He lost his wife, his youth, and his attachment to this world in a constant war that suddenly ends. His next cause is clear: Venture to the Cursed Valley and retire as a Warden Mage. Unfortunately, the Cursed Valley is actually cursed, he has no gold, and politics plague him.

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.

Knocking at death’s door. Bargaining for a second chance. Seems like a heck of a way to find out about an alien invasion.... Vietnam vet Albert Jenkins is battling a bulging waistline and a passion for drink. So when a towering pile of scrap rocket parts falls and crushes the stubborn curmudgeon, he thinks it’s finally the end. But just as he’s about to take one final breath, a snarky alien parasite offers him a deal: His life in return for sharing his body.

Captain Caleb Card and his crew are on a mission to investigate a transmission believed to be from the lost ship. Ambushed upon arrival, they immediately fear the worst. But the beacon isn’t only active, it’s on the move, and where it leads will change everything they thought they knew about the universe. Cast into a distant galaxy brimming with unknown dangers, they’ll need to adapt quickly if they want to survive long enough to help the missing colonists.

Lux Blakely, the preteen son of a NASA scientist working on top-secret government projects, is not shackled by accepted scientific theory and dogma. His experiments in gravimetric research and the expanding capability of a nascent AI cause Lux to be closely observed by several government agencies. He discovers a way to use magnetic fields for propulsion, but he needs money. Lux and his friend, Prissy, come up with a way to use his father's developing AI to raise money through social media.

Brad Mendoza is an idiot. He knows it, and so does everyone else. A promising naval career down the drain just, because he accidentally killed 504 civilians. So, it's time for him to give up and accept a dead-end command on Persephone, the worst ship in the fleet. Until he meets the beautiful and cunning Jessica Lin, his new executive officer, who harbors a terrible secret of her own. Now, he's in a race to save her and his stupid ship.

What would you do to change your life? How far would you go? How hard would you fight? Rather than work his bones into dust toiling away on a barren world, Ryck Lysander chooses to enlist in the Federation Marine Corps. But as he quickly finds out, this path isn't just a job...it's a calling...and not everyone is suited to wear the uniform.

Moving on from the trauma of combat in Afghanistan, former Green Beret Captain Sam Dale has just begun to settle down in his hometown of Castle Rock, Colorado. Now the owner of several small businesses, he is unaware that his world is about to be turned upside down. The call comes in at 2:30 a.m. The skies outside have opened up, unleashing a torrential rainstorm. Sam’s small towing company is being tasked with the retrieval of some kind of crashed aircraft.

Twenty-seven years is a long time unless you are trying to save the world. Nick was enjoying a late fall day, happily skipping his English class, when he was interrupted by a little silver ball. A ball that not only spoke, but claimed to be an alien artificial intelligence sent to warn humanity that a xenophobic alien race was on its way to wipe out every man, woman, and child on the Earth. The catch: They would arrive in 27 years.

Within the L, a tri-star system located inside the Aquilian Nebula, Jax makes a living trading and smuggling whatever goods pay the best. So far, he’s avoided being caught with anything too damning in his ship’s holds, but when he takes a job for Korinth, an infamous arms dealer, all that changes. The haul is worth 10 times his ship, and when the contents gets him embroiled in a tug of war between the major political factions of the L, Jax has to keep the criminals he works for from discovering that he’s playing both sides.

The last reward Kira Demirci expected for heroism in a time of war was to spend the rest of her life dodging assassins - but when her government betrays her as part of their surrender, she and her comrades flee the star system of Apollo to the edge of civilized space. The Syntactic Cluster is disorganized, disunified, and in desperate need of the nova fighters Kira smuggled out of Apollo with her. With an entire squadron supposed to follow in her wake, it falls to her to build a new home for her comrades.

Contains books one and two of The Acheron series: The Acheron and The Prodigal. Sandi and Ash never set out to be heroes. She joined the Fleet to please her mother, the Admiral. He signed up to escape the grinding poverty of the Housing Blocks. And the unlikely friends envisioned boring, peacetime careers as shuttle pilots. The Tahni Imperium had other ideas.

On the run and out of chances, he guides his ship and crew into the heart of a relic older than the galaxy itself - and find himself on the edge of an eternal war he never knew existed. The relic is a mech, lost to history and forgotten by all who remain. Built by an ancient race to be the ultimate weapon, the machine is capable of unspeakable destruction, and its discovery could unhinge the balance of power throughout known space.

We were fighting on the wrong side of a war we couldn't win. And that was the good news. The Ruhar hit us on Columbus Day. There we were, innocently drifting along the cosmos on our little blue marble, like the native Americans in 1492. Over the horizon come ships of a technologically advanced, aggressive culture, and BAM! There go the good old days, when humans only got killed by each other. So, Columbus Day. It fits. When the morning sky twinkled again, this time with Kristang starships jumping in to hammer the Ruhar, we thought we were saved.

On the fringes of human space, a murder will light a fuse and send two rebels on a planetary scale collision course. This audiobook box set contains the first three books of the Opus X sci-fi series from Michael Anderle: Obsidian Detective, Shattered Truth, and Investigating Deceit. Jia lives on Earth, where peace is a given. Erik is on society’s frontier, where authority depends on how much firepower you wield. She is from the powerful, the elite. He is with the military. Both want the truth—but is revealing it good for humanity?

The Hundred Worlds have withstood invasion by the relentless Hok for decades. The human worlds are strong, but the Hok have the resources of a thousand planets behind them, and their fleets attack in endless waves. The long war has transformed the Hundred Worlds into heavily fortified star systems. Their economies are geared for military output, and they raise specialized soldiers to save our species. Assault Captain Derek Straker is one such man among many.

Kyle Riggs is snatched by an alien spacecraft sometime after midnight. The ship is testing everyone it catches and murdering the weak. The good news is that Kyle keeps passing tests and staying alive. The bad news is the aliens who sent this ship are the nicest ones out there.

When a mine owner thinks that he's above the law and continues to utilize slave labor to keep his mines running, Barnabas, a former Ranger One, must fight for justice.

Earth is conquered. Sol is lost. One ship is tasked to free them. One Captain to save them all. When an alien armada destroys the United Earth Space Force and takes control of the human homeworld, newly reinstated Captain Annette Bond must take her experimental hyperspace cruiser Tornado into exile as Terra's only interstellar privateer. She has inferior technology, crude maps, and no concept of her enemy, but the seedy underbelly of galactic society welcomes her so long as she has prizes to sell and money to spend.

When Simon and Katherine Hawke stumble upon an alien shuttle that has landed on earth, it’ll not only change the course of their lives, but of the entire world. Taking the shuttle into orbit, they discover a much larger ship left adrift with no one on board. Commandeering it, they confirm that we’re not alone in the universe and must prepare the human race for what is about to come. Recruiting from all over the world, they begin to expand their fleet and build a federation to give humans a foothold in the galaxy.

A derelict warship, ancient but still alive. A small team of humans fighting for all humanity. Built for a time when the races were just finding their way to the stars, finding that they could dominate others. The galactic conquests created the arms race and the ancients, the Progenitors had to protect their own. They built a ship to drive the others away.

Logan Conner is the son of a king, the heir to the largest of the five star-dominions, and the best mech pilot in the galaxy. His people are plagued by pirates and raiders, surrounded by enemies, and not even his father can fight them all. Logan gives up his position, his rank, even his name, and becomes Jonathan Slaughter, leader of a rough-and-ready band of mercenary mech-jocks bent on taking the battle to the enemy on their own terms.

The future has amazing technology. Our alien allies have magic. Together, we are building a training system to teach the best of humanity to go to the stars. But the training is monumentally expensive. Stephanie Morgana is a genius, she just doesn't know it. Join her on the first half of her adventure with this collected edition, including the first three megabooks in the Federal Histories series.

A chance encounter, on his last mission, sends him hurtling through space on the Unity exploration ship XES01. Surrounded by aliens, Zade must quickly learn to interact with the non-soldiers on the crew. As he tries to earn his place amongst the ship, Zade's combat prowess quickly earns him a spot as the security officer of the ship. A seat left vacant because of a fatal exchange between the former security officer and the wildlife of a far planet. As Zade begins living the adrenaline filled life of a space explorer, he has to ask himself some very important questions.

The aliens tested humans on an individual basis for miner rentals. Do well on your pilot test, get a spaceship, sign up with a corp, and you can mine the belt. For a puddle-jumper pilot like me, yeah, I was so interested I became obsessed. When I finally tested, I performed above and beyond, being offered a contract for some better than a miner - Earth's First Starfighter.

This is the warning delivered to Will Ryder by the alien spaceship that crash-landed in his backyard. But there is hope. With the ship's AI guiding him, Will must rebuild the craft in his barn and take to the stars to prevent the cataclysmic invasion.

Life beneath the ashes of the old world has never been easy. For Ethan, though, it was simple in Refuge. Living in a small settlement inside a big cave and carving out a life with his little community was all he had ever known. It wasn’t a happy life, but there was little joy in a post-apocalyptic subterranean nightmare besides with the people you fought to survive with. And then he lost it all in the blink of an eye.

Damien was a simple man, cruising on the highway of life. A goddess of temptation lures him into a deal he scoffs at. Superstition is for the foolish. Small problem: She's real, her ritual works, and Damien is magically teleported into a strange new realm. Damien awakens in Nordan, a land of myth and magic. A realm where humans battle legendary creatures for the amusement of the gods. In a war between man and myth. Damien's powers set him above the rest, a lord of life and death - enemy of all. Stranded, but not alone, will he perish, or conquer his way home?

When the research starship Galileo vanishes without a trace, the powers-that-be are quick to bury the incident, eager to prevent escalating tensions that could lead to war. As a former POW, Soren refuses to give the ship up for lost. His daughter is one of the missing. Taking matters into his own hands, Soren starts pulling strings and calling in favors, determined to launch a clandestine mission to bring Galileo home. When an old friend offers him a ship for the operation, he expects a rusty relic headed for the scrapyard.

The war was over except for the crew of the TSS Phoenix. Lost deep in enemy space, crippled but not dead. The odds of survival were stacked against them, but they were still determined to fight their way back toward allied space. On New Terra, Roy O’Hara had discovered peace for his spirit and joy in a simple life. Yet he had only fulfilled a portion of the Commander’s Prophecy. It told of a darkness that would fall on his new home from the stars, and he would be called upon once again to save them all.

In the year 3152, humanity is at war with three species who suppress our existence. While one is more ruthless than the others, our species is viewed as an unstable threat to the galactic balance. Resources are finite, battle is ubiquitous, and the enemies of Earth are unrelenting. The average human is born to fight for the species’ survival, deprived of a normal life so that one day a future generation may know peace. The expansions of Alpha Centauri are under siege while the Wolf System is down to just a few outposts. Not all is lost, though.

Captain Caleb Card and his crew are on a mission to investigate a transmission believed to be from the lost ship. Ambushed upon arrival, they immediately fear the worst. But the beacon isn’t only active, it’s on the move, and where it leads will change everything they thought they knew about the universe. Cast into a distant galaxy brimming with unknown dangers, they’ll need to adapt quickly if they want to survive long enough to help the missing colonists.

Now back from the dead, Bogart must face the most fearsome beast there is, the greatest of all the monsters. A dragon and its fortune is the key to survival, and there's no settling for second best when your foe is fate itself. Every throne and every coin must be taken, and the mystery of the gods must be solved. This time, it's personal.

What if you died, only to wake up in a new body, in a world where magic is real and battles are fought like in a video game? That's what happens to James Thompson, who finds himself reincarnated as Talon Nightstrider, a young man with a destiny to become a powerful member of the Blackfang Guild. But Talon is not just any member; he is connected to the System, an advanced interface that displays his stats and powers, and allows him to level up like in an RPG.