The first eight novellas of Blaze Ward's Science Officer series collected together for the first time!

Chuck, a 15-year-old hardened war orphan has seen friends killed, and now lies dying on a salvage battlefield himself. But the universe has a different plan for Chuck. A mortally wounded man offers to save his life, and Chuck accepts his help. A moment later, Chuck regrets his decision, when his rescuer forces Chuck’s mouth open and a reptilian octopus is ejected from his rescuer’s mouth and into his.

Jessica Keller has a reputation as a maverick commander. It almost got her court martialed. Now, it has gotten her a new command in an obscure sector, with orders to ignite a new front in the eternal war. But her old nemesis, Imperial Admiral Emmerich Wachturm, stands in her way. Worlds will fall before their feud ends, but only if she can forge her crew of strangers into a weapon. Otherwise, disaster looms.

Michael Freeman is a disabled veteran who had just been fired from his mind-numbing cubicle job, which allowed his opportunistic girlfriend to dump him. Now, he only wants to spend some time at his grandfather's mountain cabin so he can unwind, away from the drudgery of daily life and with a cold beer in his hands. Standing in his way is an ancient spaceship with an emotional AI, nanites that have invaded his body, an international crime syndicate, a suicidal FBI agent on a vigilante mission, terrorists . . . and that's just the beginning.

Fight, survive, adapt, and rely only on yourself. That is Derek’s creed and what's got him through the System Integration on Earth. Everything changed when the System came. Cute bunnies and beautiful butterflies became savage killing machines. Then the Invaders arrived with a single goal: to obtain ownership of this new habitable planet. War has raged ever since. None of this mattered much to Derek, aside from making living a little more perilous.

Few know the warship’s actual name. But everyone has heard the rumors. The PUV James Keeling can do something no other vessel in existence can do—slip into another dimension, travel undetected, then re-emerge onto our plane and surprise enemy targets. But the thing that makes the Crypt unique also makes it a nightmare for those onboard; interdimensional travel causes hallucinations, violent behavior, and psychotic breakdowns. Keeling could be the Union’s greatest weapon, a game-changing asset that can defeat the bloodthirsty zealots of the Purist Nation, the Union’s mortal enemy.

The Dungeon is a place of magic and mystery, a vast branching, underground labyrinth that has changed the world and the people who dare to enter its depths. Those who brave its challenges are rewarded with wealth, fame, and powerful classes that set them apart from the rest.

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.

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?

Out of the blue, a young Space Fleet officer's dream becomes reality: He's made captain of a starship. Just in time for the return of humanity's most terrible enemy, after 50 years of peace. To survive against this enemy, Captain Tad Thatcher will have to do more than learn how to become an effective commander, or how to wrangle his wayward crew. He will need to reinvent space combat. From scratch.

Bob thought he was doing fine on his own. Then the love of his life fell out of the sky. Can he get her back in the air with auto parts and a cutting torch? If he does, will she ever come back? Nikki took a job before she saw the equipment. Can she keep her passengers alive on a strange planet? Are the natives friendly?

Grant Masterson is a man with nothing left to lose.... A disgraced ex-cop, framed by a crooked politician, abandoned by his family, he’s forced into the life of a bounty hunter just to survive. Tracking down a traitor who stole military-grade weapons to sell on the black market, Masterson finds out things aren’t as simple as the wanted poster made them seem. Because Delia Beckett isn’t a traitor, simply a patsy, and the forces manipulating her may be the same ones responsible for Masterson’s fall from grace.

Juliette Contzen is a lazy, good-for-nothing princess. Overshadowed by her siblings, she's left with little to do but nap, read, and occasionally cut the falling raindrops with her sword. Spotted one day by an astonished adventurer, he insists on grading Juliette's swordsmanship, then promptly has a mental breakdown at the result. Soon after, Juliette is given the news that her kingdom is on the brink of bankruptcy. At the threat of being married off, the lazy princess vows to do whatever it takes to maintain her current lifestyle.

Ethan is a ranger, sworn to protect his walled settlement from the dangers of his ravaged wasteland planet. One night, a mysterious light thunders overhead and Ethan investigates, discovering a crashed spacecraft and two soldiers from a moon base he didn’t even know existed. Captain Salus and Commander Kurren have risked everything to find a Planetsider to help save their people. Ethan needs them to answer questions that have haunted him all his life – what happened to his world and why?

Get all four books in the Contingency War Series for one low price. Hours of epic space opera action and adventure with unique heroes and twists that you won’t see coming! The series includes: The Contingency, The Way Station Gambit, Rise of Nimrod Fleet, and Earth’s Last War.

When humanity reaches for the stars, our probes are destroyed. They crash into an incredibly advanced piece of technology: a massive force-field. Unknown beings have placed a barrier around our star and planets, enclosing us within. We’re locked inside a Great Sphere. Was this invisible obstacle built to imprison us - or to protect us? No one knows the truth, but it soon becomes clear the barrier has leaks. Aliens infiltrate and try to sabotage our efforts to escape our cage.

Passage at Arms tells the intimate, detailed and harrowing story of a climber crew and its captain during a critical juncture of the war. Cook combines speculative technology with a canny and realistic portrait of men at war and the stresses they face in combat. Passage at Arms is one of the classic novels of military science fiction.

The award-winning, bestselling author's first novel. The beamjacks work in zero-gravity constructing satellites in the vacuum of deepest space. And they're not going to let the military control them anymore.

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....

The 200 years' (and counting) peace was a time of tranquility that hasn't been seen since...well, ever. Mankind in the Galactic Age had finally conquered war, so what was left for the military to do but drink and barbecue? That's the kind of military that Sergeant R. Wilson Rogers lived in before he left the fleet to become a smuggler. But it turns out that smuggling is hard. Like getting-arrested-for-dealing-with-pirates-and-forced-back-into-service kind of hard.

The U.S.S. Merrimack was the finest battleship class spaceship in Earth's fleet, able to stand up against the best the Palatine Empire could throw at them, even able to attack and kill swarms of the seemingly unstoppable Hive. But nothing could have prepared the captain and crew of the Merrimack to face the Myriad - three colonized worlds in the midst of a globular cluster that the Hive had somehow overlooked.

The Keiko is a ship of smugglers, soldiers of fortune and adventurers, travelling Earth's colony planets, searching for the next job. And nobody talks about their past. But when a face from Captain Ichabod Drift's former life sends them on a run to Old Earth, all the rules change. Trust will be broken, and blood will be spilled.

Devi Morris isn't your average mercenary. She has plans. Big ones. And a ton of ambition. It's a combination that's going to get her killed one day - but not just yet. That is, until she gets a job on a tiny trade ship with a nasty reputation for surprises. The Glorious Fool isn't misnamed; it likes to get into trouble, so much so that one year of security work under its captain is equal to five years everywhere else. With odds like that, Devi knows she's found the perfect way to get the jump on the next part of her plan.

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 a distant future, Trevor "Lex" Alexander was shaping up to be the next great race pilot until a fixed race got him banned from the sport. Reduced to making freelance deliveries, he thinks his life can't get any worse. That's when a package manages to get him mixed up with mobsters, a megacorp, and a mad scientist. Now his life depends on learning what their plans are, and how he can stop them.

In the 21st century, the perfection of faster-than-light travel and the rise of a prodigious artificial intelligence known as the Eschaton altered the course of humankind. New civilizations were founded across the vastness of space. Now, the technology-eschewing world known as the New Republic is besieged by an alien information plague. Earth quickly sends a battle fleet - but is it coming to the rescue, or is a sinister plot in motion?

York August Sixteen was abandoned as a baby, abused and molested as a child, and beaten and harassed as a teen and had his rightful place in the Republic's Space Navy stolen from him. Fighting back against huge government systems was useless. Dispensing justice on an individual, case-by-case basis was more to his liking, yet even that was taken away when he was stationed on a lonely communication space station. York's life would change when he decided to seek justice for people even less fortunate than him.

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.

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.

As a lifer in the Imperial Navy, fighting in a war that has lasted generations, Lieutenant York Ballin's only hope for an honorable discharge is the grave. Neither the Empire nor the Directorate seems to care that millions have died or that millions more are doomed as hostilities continue. Ballin's only option is to hunker down, keep his crewmen and women in top condition, and try not to get them all killed.