In the 20th century Earth sent probes, transmissions, and welcoming messages to the stars. Unfortunately, someone noticed. The Galactics arrived with their battle fleet in 2052. Rather than being exterminated under a barrage of hell-burners, Earth joined their vast Empire. Swearing allegiance to our distant alien overlords wasn't the only requirement for survival. We also had to have something of value to trade, something that neighboring planets would pay their hard-earned credits to buy. As most of the local worlds were too civilized to have a proper army, the only valuable service Earth could provide came in the form of soldiers....

Space travel just isn't what it used to be. With the invention of quantum teleportation, space heroes aren't needed anymore. When one particularly unlucky ex-adventurer masquerades as famous pilot and hate figure Jacques McKeown, he's sucked into an ever-deepening corporate and political intrigue. Between space pirates, adorable deadly creatures, and a missing fortune in royalties, saving the universe was never this difficult!

Get ready to experience two more origin stories in the Backyard Starship universe.

They hunt us. They bomb our worlds for target practice. A star cluster in the constellation of Orion rotates once every 1,000 years. Those who rule there have an ancient tradition: When each cycle ends, they train their fleets by spilling the blood of lesser beings. The enemy fleets are coming again. In response, the Rebel Worlds gather their starships to face the terrifying threat, and this time humanity is asked to stand with them. The last time they considered Earth, Vikings in longboats were raiding English coastlines. Today, we're less primitive. Today, we're a target.

The planet is called Banshee. The air is unbreathable, the water poisonous. It is the home of the most implacable enemies that humanity, in all its interstellar expansion, has ever encountered. Felix is a scout in A-team Two. Highly competent, he is the sole survivor of mission after mission. Yet he is a man consumed by fear and hatred.

He was a child without a past, a Corellian street urchin, abandoned, foraging for scraps of food, when the cruel Garris Shrike whisked him away to join a nomadic band of space-faring criminals. Now, years later, chafing under Shrike's sadistic tyranny, driven by dreams of adventure and glory, Han fights his way free. His goal: to become an Imperial Navy pilot. But first he needs hands-on experience flying spacecraft, and for that he takes a job on the planet Ylesia.

Starfall: a world on the edge, where crooks and smugglers hide in the gloomy shadows and modern technology refuses to work. And that includes the TARDIS. The pioneers who used to be drawn by the hope of making a fortune from the mines can find easier picking elsewhere. But they still come... for the romance of it, or old-fashioned organic mining. Or in the hope of finding the lost treasure of Hamlek Glint, scourge of the spaceways, privateer, adventurer, bandit.

You know we have been betrayed. You must discover why. They have put a plan in motion. They have infiltrated your government. They have already turned some of you. They will do whatever it takes to have your planet. The battle lines have been drawn. Whose side are you on?

Fifty people go to sleep in their own beds and wake up in a compound in the middle of the jungle. Men and women from all walks of life with only one thing in common - none of them know where they are or how they got there. Alex is a paratrooper. Yael is a mathematician. Max is a law professor. They can't leave - a lethal barrier surrounds the facility, but no one knows if it's there to keep them in, or to keep something out.

What you thought you knew about vampires and werewolves is wrong...so very, very, wrong. A thousand years of effort to keep the Unknown World hidden is unraveling and the Patriarch is tired. He needs to find someone to take over. He finds Bethany Anne.

Terminal Lance Lucky Lee Savage likes his life. Sure, doing PT hungover is a pain, but no one can dodge responsibility like he can - or sweet-talk the cooks into giving out double rations.

When the security director of the powerful corporation Nebulaco dies under mysterious circumstances, courier Sai Collins has one last top-secret delivery to make on his behalf. Sai has come a long way from her street-kid childhood, but she has her secrets - namely that she’s a cyber-psi, a computer telepath who can connect to the grid without hardware. A talent she’s going to desperately need.

No good deed goes unpunished. That’s the one thing Brace Cordova is convinced of when he’s released from a five-year stretch in a military prison. He figures the best he can do is spend the rest of his days as a freighter pilot and vicariously live out his dream of a Commonwealth Fleet career through his cousin, Commander Letessa Cordova. His plans unravel when he's accosted by gangsters, rescued by smugglers, and swept up in the search for an ancient Earth relic. Brace soon realizes he might not live long enough to ever get a taste of the quiet life.

Former Captain of the Confederate Fleet, Terenze Milos is the hero of the Locusta-Vanga wars, said to have brought the galaxy back from the brink of extinction. Now he lives in obscurity, running a freight operation on the derelict ship Endeavor. When Captain Milos recognizes the unmistakable signs of deadly Locustan technology in a salvaged fighter craft - the Stryker - he sounds a warning. But the Confederacy isn't listening....

The first to disappear is a ski instructor in the secluded mountains of Colorado. Hours later, a pregnant woman is abducted from a crowded hospital. Two places, two incidents, a single motive. And so it begins....