An explorer tug captain, Alex Racine detects a damaged alien craft drifting into the system. Recognizing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make first contact, Alex pulls off a daring maneuver to latch on to the derelict. Alex discovers the ship was attacked by an unknown craft, the first of its kind ever encountered. The mysterious silver ship's attack was both instant and deadly.

The descendants of a fourth Earth colony ship, Destiny, successfully establish a foothold in unoccupied space. Naiad, the home world, is a frozen ball, but the colonists persevere and expand through wormholes to remote systems. Navigating the time-space anomalies requires Axis-ships. The expensive vessels are constructed by corporations, and remote worlds are claimed by the companies for their valuable ores and gases.

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.

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

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.

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.

Geary believed in the Alliance. Even when he uncovered overwhelming evidence that the highest echelons of the government and fleet command were involved in secret programs and prison camps, he believed it was worth saving. He believed his duty was to see that justice was served even though some factions feared that revealing the truth would cause the Alliance to crumble. But after narrowly surviving two assassination attempts when he brings evidence of the misdeeds to the capital star system, Geary realizes that some want to get rid of him.

When itinerant cave diver James Tighe receives an invitation to billionaire Nathan Joyce's private island, he thinks it must be a mistake. But Tighe's unique skill set makes him a prime candidate for Joyce's high-risk venture to mine a near-Earth asteroid - with the goal of kick-starting an entire off-world economy. The potential rewards and personal risks are staggering, but the competition is fierce, and the stakes couldn't be higher. Isolated and pushed beyond their breaking points, Tighe and his fellow 21st-century adventurers must rely on each other to survive....

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....

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.

A short story set in the universe of James S. A. Corey's NYT best-selling Expanse series. Now a Prime Original series. This story will be available in the complete Expanse story collection, Memory’s Legion.

Knocking at death’s door. Bargaining for a second chance. Seems like a heck of a way to find out about an alien invasion.... Vietnam vet Albert Jenkins is battling a bulging waistline and a passion for drink. So when a towering pile of scrap rocket parts falls and crushes the stubborn curmudgeon, he thinks it’s finally the end. But just as he’s about to take one final breath, a snarky alien parasite offers him a deal: His life in return for sharing his body.

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.

It's the year 2277. For 50 years, Earth has received mysterious data transmissions from random locations in deep space. The streams include advanced technology, allowing humans to achieve faster-than-light travel virtually overnight. As we prepare to take our first tentative steps into interstellar space, we know almost nothing about our alien benefactors, and their motivations remain unexplained.

It's 1949. When war veteran Aloysius Archer is released from Carderock Prison, he is sent to Poca City on parole with a short list of dos and a much longer list of don'ts: do report regularly to his parole officer, don't go to bars, certainly don't drink alcohol, do get a job - and don't ever associate with loose women. The small town quickly proves more complicated and dangerous than Archer's years serving in the war or his time in jail.

An explorer tug captain, Alex Racine detects a damaged alien craft drifting into the system. Recognizing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make first contact, Alex pulls off a daring maneuver to latch on to the derelict. Alex discovers the ship was attacked by an unknown craft, the first of its kind ever encountered. The mysterious silver ship's attack was both instant and deadly.

The first book in C.J.Cherryh's eponymous series, Foreigner begins an epic tale of the survivors of a lost spacecraft who crash-land on a planet inhabited by a hostile, sentient alien race. From its beginnings as a human-alien story of first contact, the Foreigner series has become a true science fiction odyssey, following a civilization from the age of steam through early space flight to confrontations with other alien species in distant sectors of space. It is the masterwork of a truly remarkable author.

Centuries in the past, mankind fought a seemingly unbeatable adversary from sector to sector across the Spiral Arm until the war ground to a standstill and the Enemy withdrew. Believing that they had won, the citizens of the galaxy rebuilt. The Inner Worlds, which had escaped the worst of the war's ravages, became even more insular, while the Rim worlds adopted a free and easy way with law and order. Now, hundreds of years after their withdrawal, the Enemy is back - and this time they'll be satisfied with nothing less than the extinction of the galaxy.

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.

Long before Casmir Dabrowski and Kim Sato leave their world for the epic adventures of the Star Kingdom series, long before they outwit terrorists and mercenaries and do battle on a galactic scale, long before they become best friends and roommates...they have to meet for the first time. This is that story.

The future has amazing technology. Our alien allies have magic. Together, we are building a training system to teach the best of humanity to go to the stars. But the training is monumentally expensive. Stephanie Morgana is a genius, she just doesn't know it. Join her on the first half of her adventure with this collected edition, including the first three megabooks in the Federal Histories series.

New York Times best-selling author David Weber invites David Drake and S.M. Stirling, two of today's top writers of military science fiction, to join him in an exploration of Honor Harrington's universe.

A mysterious terrorist organisation has carried out several attacks against the Federation and Klingon Empire. Tensions are running high in a region already crippled by conflict. The perpetrators are tracked to the Lembatta Cluster, a mysterious region of space whose inhabitants, the Renao, regard the Alpha Quadrant s powers as little more than conquering tyrants. The Federation are desperate to prevent more bloodshed, and have sent their most powerful warship, the USS Prometheus, into the Cluster to investigate the threat before all-consuming war breaks out.

When Simon and Katherine Hawke stumble upon an alien shuttle that has landed on earth, it’ll not only change the course of their lives, but of the entire world. Taking the shuttle into orbit, they discover a much larger ship left adrift with no one on board. Commandeering it, they confirm that we’re not alone in the universe and must prepare the human race for what is about to come. Recruiting from all over the world, they begin to expand their fleet and build a federation to give humans a foothold in the galaxy.

The TDF Marco Polo embarks on its maiden voyage outside Earth's solar system, leading to the discovery of an extinct civilization destroyed by orbital bombardment. Deep underground is a mysterious library of alien secrets.

What lies on the dark side of the moon could change the course of humanity forever. When a Chinese rover discovers an alien technology on the dark side of the moon, it is up to Richard "Rock" Crandon and his NASA team of scientists and engineers to devise a way to return before the Chinese and Russians. Forced to deal with bureaucratic oversight and a complex team of personalities, Rock Crandon pushes his team to their limits.

Growing up, Travis Uriah Long yearned for order and discipline in his life...he two things his neglectful mother couldn’t or wouldn’t provide. So when Travis enlisted in the Royal Manticoran Navy, he thought he’d finally found the structure he’d always wanted so desperately. But life in the RMN isn’t exactly what he expected. Boot camp is rough and frustrating; his first ship assignment lax and disorderly; and with the Star Kingdom of Manticore still recovering from a devastating plague, the Navy is possibly on the edge of budgetary extinction.

From the Audie-nominated narrator of The Martian. In eleven years' time, a million members of an alien race will arrive at Earth. Years before they enter orbit, their approach will be announced by the flare of a thousand flames in the sky, their ships' huge engines burning hard to slow them from the vast speeds needed to cross interstellar space. These foreboding lights will shine in our night sky like new stars, getting ever brighter until they outshine even the sun, casting ominous shadows and banishing the night until they suddenly blink out.

Former Marine Arthur Holland’s destiny begins when an aircraft crashes on his property in the mountains of Colorado. He moves to investigate and to help any survivors, but the closer he gets the less control he has of his movements. An unknown force urges him to open the door of the mysterious craft, discovering the secret that lies within: a dead, alien pilot and a peculiar, otherworldly crystal. If that wasn’t enough, the crystal feels like it is alive. That’s when he hears a single word inside his mind: run.

No one knows the true motives of Kees vaan Loo-Macklin. He's a mastermind criminal who gave up his place at the head of the dark underworld to become a legitimate member of Evenwaith's cities. But soon he was reaching out to powerful enemies - the slimy aliens called the Nuel. Loo-Macklin negotiates an illusory peace agreement and gains precious alien secrets in the process. Is he after peace, power or pure evil? With enemy starships beginning to amass, we won't have to wait long to find out.