Zac was the most senior REV alive, a miracle of science and a legend in the Corps. His job was to be the battering ram for the Marines, the first in while revved up on NT-4. During a Run, he was a mindless killing machine, dangerous to both foe and friend alike. But something was happening to Zac. Long after most other REVs were dead, burned out or "retired", Zac was growing stronger, more powerful. He was also doing what no REV had ever done before during a Run. He was beginning to think.

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....

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

Ten thousand years ago, a single alien super-ship survived a desperate battle. The vessel's dying crew set the AI on automatic to defend the smashed rubble of their planet. Legend has it the faithful ship continues to patrol the empty battlefield, obeying its last order throughout the lonely centuries.In the here and now, Earth needs a miracle. Out of the Beyond invade the New Men, stronger, faster and smarter than the old. Their superior warships and advanced technology destroy every fleet sent to stop them.

The Confederated Systems Alliance has spread to dozens of systems, creating the first true interstellar alliance dedicated to bringing peace and prosperity to all inhabited worlds. Unfortunately, some see this new alliance as a threat to their own seats of power, and would do anything to stop it. After a well deserved rest, Captain Nathan Scott is once again called into action. This time, it is not the fate of the galaxy that is on his shoulders, but the life of one of his dearest friends. But not all is as it appears.

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.

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.

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.

It is an age of exploration. Jedi travel the galaxy, expanding their understanding of the Force and all the worlds and beings connected by it. Meanwhile, the Republic, led by its two chancellors, works to unite worlds in an ever-growing community among near and distant stars. On the close-orbiting planets of Eiram and E’ronoh, the growing pains of a galaxy with limited resources but unlimited ambition are felt keenly. The two worlds’ hatred for each other has fueled half a decade of escalating conflict and now threatens to consume surrounding systems.

The human soldiers stranded on the planet Paradise have been recruited into an alien legion to do the dirty jobs that the high-tech species won't do. Their first mission is to kick the enemy off a backwater planet no one cares about. It's a simple assignment, except everyone has a hidden agenda, and the planet could become a deathtrap.

Convicted of a minor traffic violation, Rev Pelletier is conscripted into the Perseus Union Marine Corps...for up to a 30-year term of service. Anxious to get back to his civilian life and job, Rev opts for a shorter term as a Marine Raider taking the fight to the enemy. But with extremely high mortality rates, can he and his friends survive until their term of service is over?

Captain Keyes is loved by the public but hated by Command. He captains the UHS Providence, an aging supercarrier and the last human ship not dependent on dark tech - technology humanity has used to rule over the galaxy since barely defeating the Ixa in the First Galactic War. Dominance has come at a cost. Over the decades, old allies have grown resentful, and when dark tech itself fails, Captain Keyes’ predictions start coming true: those old allies are now enemies.

Mars and the Moon have been colonized, piracy runs rampant in the asteroid belts, and a thriving society grows in the depths of space. Humanity prepares to embark upon its greatest journey - the colonization of Alpha Centauri. Then, everything changes. A deep space reconnaissance probe discovers a new Earth-like planet 12 light-years from Earth’s sun. The probe also finds something unusual, something unnerving. A new mission is created, a space fleet is formed, and humanity embarks on unravelling the greatest mystery of all - the origins of life itself.

Imperial Intelligence couldn't find them, the Imperial Fleet couldn't catch them, and local defenses couldn't stop them. It seemed the planet-wrecking pirates were invincible. But they made a big mistake when they raided ex-commando leader Alicia DeVries' quiet home/work, tortured and murdered her family, and then left her for dead. Alicia decided to turn "pirate" herself, and stole a cutting-edge AI ship from the empire to start her vendetta. Her fellow veterans think she's gone crazy, the Imperial Fleet has shoot-on-sight orders. And, of course, the pirates want her dead, too.

After two brutal, bloody struggles for their very existence against implacable alien foes, humanity is victorious, but not at peace. As distrust and accusations consume the political discourse between the two major factions, the Eastern Star Alliance military has already begun executing small raiding missions into United Terran Federation space. The Federation fleet, still reeling from the last war, is in no shape to try and protect its own borders.

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.

For 17 years, Colonel Henry Wong and the United Planets Space Force have fought the Kenmiri Empire. They drove the alien overlords back from humanity's borders into their own stars and found allies among the Kenmiri's slaves and subjects. Now the war is over. A great Gathering has been called of the allies who fought the war, but they only ever shared a common enemy. With the Kenmiri in retreat, a thousand new agendas are revealed.

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.

The plot by the Galactic Union’s Mercenary Guild against the Four Horsemen has culminated in an invasion of Earth. Faced with an overwhelming force, the human mercs had no choice. They’ve fled, leaving Sansar Enkh to go to the Mercenary Guild headquarters on Capital Planet to stand trial for humanity. On the run, Jim Cartwright and Nigel Shirazi have travelled to the Winged Hussars’ secret base of New Warsaw, in an effort to convince Alexis Cromwell to join the fight, while the other mercenaries who escaped the fall of Earth have gone to the perceived safe haven of Karma.

Earth has been a scarred ruin for three decades, its scattered people struggling to survive amid the poisoned and radioactive wreckage of the final war between its despotic superpowers. While the people of Earth struggle to survive, out on the frontier, on a thousand worlds, mankind thrives and grows, building new civilizations and looking boldly to the future. But man has never been able to live in peace, and even Earth's sad fate has failed to slow the call to war.

Terrence Compton is one of Earth's greatest admirals, a warrior almost without equal. Alongside his oldest friend and brilliant colleague, Augustus Garret, he and his forces saved Earth from invasion by the robotic legions of the First Imperium's insane computer Regent. There is just one problem. The First Imperium was held back by the disruption of the sole warp gate connecting the two domains...and Compton and 300 of his ships are trapped on the wrong side, surrounded by the Regent's vast fleets and cut off from Earth.

Escaping wrongful imprisonment wasn't something Connor had in mind, but being put into stasis aboard Earth's first interstellar colony ship was something he couldn't have prepared for. For 300,000 colonists, the new colony brings the promise of a fresh start...a second chance. Connor might be the wrong man for the colony, but he's the right man to see that it survives what's coming.

The Galactic Empire is dying and chaos and anarchy are breaking out everywhere. After a disastrous mission against terrorists on Earth itself, Captain Edward Stalker of the Terran Marine Corps makes the mistake of speaking truth to power, telling one of the most powerful men in the Empire a few home truths. As a result, Captain Stalker and his men are unceremoniously exiled to Avalon, a world right on the Rim of the Empire. It should have been an easy posting...

The Tyrell are a race that love to fight. The more difficult the fight, the better they like it. Every race they find is given the same level of technology and a specific amount of time to exploit it before the Tyrell come back looking for a fight. Humanity is warned by another alien species that the Tyrell are coming, and the race is on to build an Alliance of races strong enough to stand up against an empire whose expansion has been relentless.

It's been eighty years since Thorn split his people into six societies spread across the galaxy. He's known all that time a timeline shift was coming, and the role he needed to play when it did. The mages of his world are ready, including his great-great nephew, Bud. For Bud, living in the shadow of his legend relative hasn't really been an issue, and his role in the timeline shift is supposed to be minor. But Kali has an agenda, magic has its own agenda, and since Thorn is old, and tired of his people's reliance on him, he too has an agenda.

Spacers call the warp point Charon's Ferry. No star ship has ever entered it and returned since a vengeful Orion task force pursued a doomed Terran colonization fleet into it in 2206. Almost a century has passed. The fiery hatreds of a quarter-century of warfare between the Terran Federation and the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieeee, the cat-like species humans called the "Orions", have eased at least a little.

A thousand years ago, an alien invasion set humanity back to the Iron Age. Slowly, we recovered, colonizing the Solar System in peace. And discovered that an unknown force is stopping us from exploring any farther. But before the cause can be discovered, a slow-burning conspiracy threatens to explode into System-wide war. With enemies at home and in the darkness beyond, a team of unlikely heroes-a janitor, a mercenary, an asteroid miner, and a pirate-are the only ones who can avert a second apocalypse. This set includes the first three books of the newly-finished REBEL STARS series.

At a time when Humans were just starting to venture forth into the Galactic Union as mercenaries, Martin Quincy survived long enough to do something no one else had - he retired. There was only one problem: He got bored. After battling aliens for many years - killing aliens and getting paid - retirement didn’t suit him, and he decided to strap on the combat armor and go back to the stars. Along with his old friend Kal, Martin joined Cartwright’s Cavaliers, humanity’s best merc company. Life was exciting! But he got bored. Again.

After almost a century of peaceful exploration and colonization of space, the United Earth Space Force stumbles across a shockingly xenophobic alien race that has more and better armed ships and refuses all attempts at contact. As the outgunned Space Force is driven back in battle after battle in what appears to be a war of extermination, one officer experiences precognitive visions that help him blunt the enemy onslaught, but he can't control or predict when they occur.

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.