It started as a simple heist. It went to hell from there. On a space station orbiting a pale blue sun, a package changes hands. Data too sensitive to transmit will be exposed for one brief moment. The client is paying a crazy sum - if the job is clean. That’s not going to happen. Instead, the galaxy’s unluckiest crew of outlaws will have to put all their resources into salvaging what they can from the job. Even if it’s only avoiding blame for the fallout.

Esper may dress the part. She has her own ship. She even carries a blaster - not that she ever uses it. But she violates the cardinal rule of the galaxy’s most cold-blooded profession: get paid. At least she's not alone. Her partner, Kubu, is an alien who gets mistaken for a dog. One is a wizard on the run from her past. The other is a lovable eating machine. Between them, they haven’t got a ruthless bone in their bodies. But when a client hires them, they’ll do whatever it takes to bring a target home safely. This time, it’s a teenage kidnapping victim.

Jessie and Eric Ramsey have a family history of crime. Fighting back against heredity, each tried to make their way in the galaxy by respectable means. Jessie joined Earth Navy; Eric went to college for magic. But fate wasn’t having it. Eric was expelled. Jessie went AWOL. Now, due to a magical mishap that wasn’t entirely anyone’s fault (we swear!), they’re stranded five years in the future on a Mars that’s no longer friendly territory.

Charlie7 is the progenitor of a mechanical race he built from the ashes of a dead world—Earth. He is a robot of leisure and idle political meddling—a retirement well-earned. Or he was, until a human girl named Eve was dropped in his lap. Geneticists have restored Earth’s biome and begun repopulation. But primate cloning is in its infancy; human cloning is banned. Far from a failed genetics experiment, Eve is brilliant, curious, and heartbreakingly naïve about her species’ history. But Eve’s creator wants her back and has a gruesome fate planned for her.

Have you ever wanted to quit your soul-sucking hell of a day job, tell your supervisors exactly what you think of them, set the office on fire, jump in your slightly used spaceship and scour the galaxy for lost treasures? Of course, you have. And Reggie, Maddy, Ed, and Harold are no different.

U.S. Marine Tyson Gage has only one option left: to become a bounty hunter, then collect enough loot and upgrades to mount a rescue among the stars... Eight hundred years in the future. Joined by his dog and a beautiful woman who, despite their attraction, is on his last nerve, Gage must leave life on Earth behind for a universe of aliens, criminals, and hyperspace more deadly and awesome than he can imagine.

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.

Two centuries after the Confederation staved off an invasion by the robotic Locusts, Captain Jack Romanoff faces mandatory retirement from an ever-shrinking navy. Actions speak louder than words. The Confederation doesn’t think the Locusts are coming back. But what if the politicians are wrong?

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?

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.

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.

Nora Devi is a xeno-archaeologist with a complicated past. She has buried more secrets than she’s dug up. Widowed in the recently ended twelve year war between Capitoline and Palantine, she now makes a living as an independent tagger in border space. Captain Liam Kimani could be credited with ending the latest royal war. Instead, he’s blamed for it. Dirty commoners aren’t meant to lay their hands on royalty. He has no regrets.

Experience Star Wars: A New Hope from a whole new point of view. On May 25, 1977, the world was introduced to Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, C-3PO, R2-D2, Chewbacca, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader, and a galaxy full of possibilities. In honor of the 40h anniversary, more than 40 contributors lend their vision to this retelling of Star Wars. Each of the 40 short stories reimagines a moment from the original film, but through the eyes of a supporting character.

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!

Before the Robot Uprising, Block the CleanerBot dutifully followed his programming as part of a hotel cleaning crew. Now in the aftermath of the AI Apocalypse that annihilated the world, he tries to simply do his job, avoiding the dangerous SoldierBots who wage war on the last human survivors. But when Block discovers a human infant, his surprise attachment to the girl compels him to protect her while traveling across the metal infested wastelands of America to a safe haven.

It started as a simple heist. It went to hell from there. On a space station orbiting a pale blue sun, a package changes hands. Data too sensitive to transmit will be exposed for one brief moment. The client is paying a crazy sum - if the job is clean. That’s not going to happen. Instead, the galaxy’s unluckiest crew of outlaws will have to put all their resources into salvaging what they can from the job. Even if it’s only avoiding blame for the fallout.

Syd Chambers grew up on Earth with his human mother and barely remembers his alien father from Denza, who left on a mission when Syd was very young. After leaving Earth, Syd learned the truth of his father’s disappearance on the planet Ashfall—his father had died protecting a devastating secret about the history between humans and Denzans.

Archaeologists Pippa Quinn and Charlie Jackson find advanced technology in undisturbed 16th-century graves. A portent, the discovery precedes thousands of giant sinkholes opening up across the globe as extreme weather threatens the population. Charlie suspects the two are related.

Mankind was beginning its third leap into the Galaxy, but Old Earth had so long kept to herself that her people were unable to travel safely among the rough-and-tumble cultures that had evolved on distant worlds. That annoyed Earth's rulers, for Hobart Floyt--a minor Terran bureaucrat-- had been left a mysterious inheritance by the deceased ruler of a small but wealthy interstellar empire.

Convicted criminal James Griffin-Mars is no one's hero. In his time, Earth is a toxic, abandoned world, and humans have fled into the outer solar system to survive, eking out a fragile, doomed existence among the other planets and their moons. Those responsible for delaying humanity's demise believe time travel holds the key, and they have identified James, troubled though he is, as one of a select and expendable few ideally suited for the most dangerous job in history.

Traveling unexpectedly aboard the luxury liner Nebula Dream on its maiden voyage across the galaxy, Sectors Special Forces Captain Nick Jameson is ready for ten relaxing days, and hoping to forget his last disastrous mission behind enemy lines. He figures he'll gamble at the casino, take in the shows, maybe even have a shipboard fling with Mara Lyrae, the beautiful but reserved businesswoman he meets.

Solara Brooks needs a fresh start, someplace where nobody cares about the engine grease beneath her fingernails or the felony tattoos across her knuckles. The outer realm may be lawless, but it's not like the law has ever been on her side. Still, off-world travel doesn't come cheap; Solara is left with no choice but to indenture herself in exchange for passage to the outer realm.

Never meddle with unidentified spying objects...The year is: The Future. Mars and Earth are like that divorced couple who don’t exactly like each other but have at least stopped fighting in public. Floating somewhere in between them, amid all the garbage and Gene Roddenberry’s ashes, a transport vessel called the SS Jefferson is homeward bound. Its crew might have even made it on time for once, too...

After decades hunting wanted offworlders throughout the solar system, Corporate Bounty Hunter Malcolm Graves doesn't bother asking questions. So long as the pay is right, he's the man for the job. And he always works alone. But when a high-profile bombing on Earth has Pervenio Corp clamoring for answers, they force him to team up with a strange, cyber-augmented partner. A young man more interested in statistics than instinct. Their assignment: Track down a suspected group of extremists from Titan who will go to any length to free their moon from the grip of Earth's corporations.

They are the last survivors of their race, beings who live on and communicate through energy, who are capable of assuming the shape of any other species. When their youngest member is assigned to a world considered safe to explore, she is captured by the natives. To escape, she must violate the most important rule of her kind, and reveal the existence of her species to a fellow prisoner - a human being. Now her race is in danger of extinction, for even if the human does not betray her, the Enemy who has long searched for her people may finally discover their location.

Cities all around the world reported strange alien vessels descending. Some saw them as the heralds of a new age; others fired everything they had at them. All were taken as the beams lashed down and drew them into the sky. Dean was left behind, seemingly the last man on Earth. A trail of clues left by his dead wife guides Dean on a perilous journey across America and beyond to learn the truth behind the mysterious ships and save humanity from its doom.

Humankind has escaped a dying Earth and set out to find a new home among the stars aboard an immense generation ship affectionately named the Ark. Bryan Benson is the Ark's greatest living sports hero, enjoying retirement working as a detective in Avalon, his home module. The hours are good, the work is easy, and the perks can't be beat. But when a crew member goes missing, Bryan is thrust into the center of an ever-expanding web of deception, secrets, and violence.

In the distant future, humans and several other races have been granted membership in the Confederation - at a price. They must act as soldier/protectors of the far more civilized races who have long since turned away from war.

If Asher Hearst had a superpower, it would have to be his ability to take a punch, laugh it off, and keep on swinging. So yeah, immortality comes with a few perks. As a college student slash small-time fixer, he's about to take a job that's best left to the pros. A proposition by a dryad to save witches from the Inquisition is a first, but he isn't one to balk when the odds are stacked against him. Especially not while he's drinking on someone else's dime.

Rob Dunbar is the world's best history professor. And with good reason: he's been alive for 3,000 years, keeping his existence a secret since before the days of Athens. But a stranger named Baxter has a better use for Rob's vast expertise. Baxter's looking to found a mining company in the Asteroid Belt. In exchange for Rob's help, he'll try to unravel the mystery of Rob's origin. As they're getting their outfit off the ground, they come under covert attack by HemiCo, a powerful Mars-based corporation.