The infection has begun, ravaging the American Southwest and leaving chaos in its wake. In this new world, there will be no last meal, no dying wish. The only reward left is to survive another day...The complete Contamination series - all in this one, special edition.

This short story collection will take you into the depths of Beck’s dark imagination: from what happens when the deepest bore hole on Earth has just passed nine miles and hits a strange open space – and it's hellishly hot down there; to an Antarctic research team examining fragments from a deep ice glacier and discovers a tiny seed that, once thawed, grows into something terrifyingly unexpected.

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.

First came the development of the Personality Matrix Construct—PMC, transferring human consciousness into a machine. It changed the galaxy and the way wars were fought. Then something went wrong with PMCs and the Federation Wars toppled the galactic order. PMCs became a menace to be hunted and exterminated.

Indiana Jones meets The X-Files in this thrilling, globe-spanning adventure about the greatest treasure hunt of all time—where ancient secrets collide with cutting-edge technology. In the high-stakes world of ancient artifacts and clandestine organizations, a trio of unlikely misfits are drafted into a desperate race to prevent the assembly of a long lost device.

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.

Sergeant Paxton Alejo is a League of Humanity Marine Commando, the best of the best. After getting sent to oversee a batch of fresh conscripts, Pax makes the fateful decision to sacrifice his life to save his subordinates. He is posthumously awarded the Cross of Honor, the highest military medal . . .

More than two centuries after World War III poisoned the planet, the final bastion of humanity lives on massive airships circling the globe in search of a habitable area to call home. Aging and outdated, most of the ships plummeted back to Earth long ago. The only thing keeping the two surviving lifeboats in the sky are Hell Divers - men and women who risk their lives by skydiving to the surface to scavenge for parts the ships desperately need.

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

Carpenter Lowell is a disgraced Marine assigned to a remote US research station on Saturn's moon Enceladus, where scientists have made an extraordinary discovery in the ocean below. A special forces team, led by Lowell’s murderous former commanding officer, shows up to investigate. Almost immediately, everything begins to unravel. Something beneath the surface has been activated.

With inhuman solemnity, the voice of the necromancer went on in a priest-like chant until the last echoes died out in hollow, sepulchral vibrations. Then the colored vapors cleared away. But the pale unearthly glow still filled the changer, and between Malygris and the door where hung the unicorn's head there stood the apparition of Nylissa!

When Thomas heard the cries for help, he didn’t hesitate to do the right thing. It was his chance for redemption. Until everything went wrong. The cave should have been deserted. The perfect place to hide. Instead, it’s crawling with soldiers and engineers working to unearth the impossible: Excalibur.

Freed from his captors by the Meraki Dominya, Nathan learns his sister was also taken and strikes a deal to rescue her. Joining their ranks, he meets Arista, a lethal alien commando trained to kill first and not ask questions later. Working together, he discovers that beneath her tough exterior, there is also a kindred spirit. But as the risks around them escalate, he must determine whether she is truly friend or foe.

Fresh out of the Academy, Ensign Cole Jackson’s first posting to Freedom couldn’t have come at a worse time. All over the Alliance, planets and colonies are suddenly under attack by the vicious Coven Empire. Freedom and her sister ship, Hood, are ambushed by alien warships, leaving Hood drifting dead in the void. Cole is ordered to salvage parts from the powerless Hood, but when he arrives on the unpowered hulk, Freedom is called away, marooning him and a group of malcontent techs in deep space.

The galaxy is much larger than the crew of the Junkyard could've anticipated. Their little corner is now being set upon by the savage, elf-like race known only as the Valtukta. Soon they are captured and experimented on in an attempt to create the ultimate weapon for their Valtukta front lines. What the Valtukta weren't counting on are the skills Dax has spent his entire professional career developing. Using these skills Dax is able to mount a prison break freeing his crew and the others held against their will.

Sixteen years ago, during a pause in the Algarian War, Duke Alessio Valente implemented a coup in the Star Kingdom of Narantea, killing King Altan Kotaro and Queen Brooke Kotaro. Before he died, though, the king gave his four children, Kellye, Yoshi, Jonatan, and Jayme Kotaro, to four trusted advisors and told them to take them to where they’d never be found.

McCall Richter finds criminals, con men, and deadbeats better than anyone else in the empire. She’s proud of her success and that she owns her own spaceship, especially since she struggles to understand human motivations, can’t tell when people are lying to her, and is horrible at recognizing faces. Being autistic in the empire is frowned upon—and there’s a handy normalization surgery to correct it—but she’s managed to prove her worth and avoid irking the tyrannical regime.

One man and his family of warriors love nothing better than mech battles, powered swords, and boarding actions. They're about to get their fill. Duke Uron Marlboro led his mighty house to victory in the Zezner war. The last thing he expected was for his political allies to turn on him once the planetary invasion was thwarted. With a civil war brewing between the noble houses, Uron has one option: lead a long-awaited expedition to find his people's mysterious home world.

In a riveting blend of adventure, discovery, and moral reckoning, Stranded is a thrilling exploration of human nature set against the backdrop of a world beyond imagination. Will the group find a way to return from this Lost Eden, or will their conflicting agendas lead to irreversible consequences?

All his life, Mark Fields has dreamed of joining the Defense Force to fight the vicious, alien Exlian, just like the rest of his renowned family. But so far, he’s … a dishwasher, trapped in a dead-end job with no powers, no money, and even fewer friends. But an encounter with a dying woman changes everything—granting him the abilities he needs to join the training camps—and his life finally feels like it’s turning around, faster than a movie martial-arts montage (just ignore the weird cat).

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.

Major Ethan Irons thought surviving Earth's near-extinction event was the pinnacle of disaster, but when the remnants of humanity are catapulted into a galactic conflict beyond their wildest nightmares, he's plunged into an unimaginable odyssey. Armed with nothing but his wits, a sardonic AI companion, and unlikely alliances with enigmatic alien species, he must navigate the treacherous waters of intergalactic politics and warfare. Can Ethan and his ragtag band of survivors rekindle the flame of hope for humanity?

Sector General: a massive deep-space hospital station on the Galactic Rim, where human and alien medicine meet. It's 384 levels and thousands of staff members are supposedly able to meet the needs of any conceivable alien patient–though that capacity is always being strained as more (and stranger) alien races turn up to join the galactic community. Sentient viruses, interspecies romances, undreamed-of institutional catering problems–it all lands on Sector General's doorstep.

Two centuries ago, the First Expansionary Fleet set off to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, hoping to explore, colonize, and conquer new worlds in the name of humanity. But when the fleet was violently and unexpectedly thrown off course, the colonists found themselves trapped in an unexplored region of the galaxy—and caught right in the middle of a bloody interstellar war. Now, after generations of relentless fighting, a tentative truce has finally ushered in an era of growth and prosperity.

The Revenant Program collects badly wounded soldiers broken by war and converts them into unthinking, unfeeling cyborg weapons. Their bodies are immune to pain, their minds impervious to fear and doubt. All controlled by a neural implant called the Imperative. They are the ideal force for any mission too deadly or too difficult for normal men. A force that answers to the darkest corners of the military. But when one of the Revenants awakens, he can only remember two things: that he must fight, and a code name…Dead Man.