War Games Fiction

What do you do when the killers come out to play? When it's hunt or be hunted? You sharpen your knives and prepare to get bloody because nobody does it better than a woman scorned with something to prove. Welcome to the 23rd annual serial killer war games, where the adrenaline runs high, the blood is fresh, and the revenge is best served cold.

Carter Ash wakes up with no memories in a virtual basic training. All the recruits will die within the next six weeks. Lucky for them, they’ve all got three lives. He’s assigned to a squad with his goofy friend and another captivating cadet, Iris. They have to keep each other alive as long as possible because when they die, they get assigned their permanent character class. And everyone in the squad wants a valuable class, ideally the kind where you don’t get killed immediately.

Evie can't believe she's made it to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. After fleeing the Oklahoma Dust Bowl for golden California, Evie's family is still poor and reeling from devastating losses. She could have never guessed that the sport she took up to escape her reality would lead to this. Now, she's competing in gymnastics on Team USA, with some of the greatest athletes in the world like track and field star Jesse Owens. But all is not as it seems in Berlin, a city now ruled by the Nazis and their tyrannical leader, Adolf Hitler.

Carter Ash should be a celebrated hero, instead he’s leading a doomed mission on a backwater moon, wondering what went wrong. His assignment is impossible—take over the whole moon with a handful of soldiers fresh out of Basic Training. It’s the kind of thing that takes an army, and his commanders won’t give him one. But Humanity’s position in the great galactic Game is worse off than ever, and they need the resources this colony could provide, so Carter isn’t going to sit idly by. He’ll have to fight an army of zombie aliens, plane sized vultures, and worse. Even alone, if he has to.

Carter Ash must take the fight to his enemies—or risk losing everything. As the leader of the United Interplanetary Republic, he knows the only chance for his people’s survival is defeating the Empire of Humanity. But the Emperor and his army are much stronger than Carter knows—and they will stop at nothing to wipe the evidence of his embarrassing betrayal from the face of the galaxy. Now, they must pin their hopes on a daring mission into the heart of danger to keep the Empire from attacking. With a sultry sniper at his side, can he win an unwinnable fight?

Get your affairs in order. War doesn’t wait for anyone to be ready. With the terrible recent events weighing on my mind, I know the only way I can go is forward. My family, our allies, and I know for certain that there is a sect of witches that want to control the moon cursed for their own nefarious purposes. We don’t know how many of them there are, and we don’t know their names. We know it’s not every witch, but that doesn’t make us less suspicious of every single one of them.

When a ruthless commander takes over the moon, he has it out for Carter Ash. The commander sends him to a tiny settlement to defend it with the worst soldiers for the job. Carter’s only support comes from an unexpected place: an enticing alien diplomat. That’s not all, however—the meager soldiers he has are being hunted and killed by something outside the colony.

All alone in a dangerous galaxy — a new civilization struggles for survival. War rages across the galaxy. Difficult diplomacy is all that keeps Carter Ash and his people safe from the threats around them. They need all the time they can get to build their home, because every day new, hungry eyes turn towards their fledgling government and their resource rich moon. Even now, multiple invading fleets race towards Carter’s home — and it’ll take everything he’s got to be ready for the fight of his life. And to top it off, a blast from his past arrives, complicating everything.

There’s a whole galaxy out there up for grabs—Carter Ash is going to take it. After narrowly surviving multiple attacks, the United Interplanetary Republic is ready to claim their first new system. The fleet is built, the soldiers are trained—it’s time to go. Conquering new solar systems is no easy feat, and Carter has his work cut out for him. There’s dungeons, armies, and all sorts of challenges ahead. At least he has a fiery redhead to back him up. But not all is as it seems in the new system—people are dying in unexpected ways.

Following Reyna Diaz’s death at the hands of the Swarm (in Gears of War 4), Kait seals her mother’s tomb and swears revenge. As she, JD, Del, Marcus, Cole, Samantha, and Baird lick their wounds and resupply, First Minister Jinn summons them to New Ephyra, promising that the “crimes” they committed will be forgiven. Before they can rejoin the Coalition, however, Jinn demands proof of their loyalty, and of the threat of the Swarm. Promised a new command, JD and Del agree. Plagued by nightmares, Kait rebels and refuses.

Maira Kanhai has had enough: Since the Green Poison epidemic hit DC, her cybersecurity degree is worthless, she can’t rejoin the US Navy, and her early efforts to secure Maryland led to a costly mistake: the death of her brother. Every day new factions emerge, trying to burn her city to the ground - until the Division emerges, inspiring hope. When a grenade kills one of their agents, Maira suddenly has a chance to make a real difference as a raw new Division recruit...if she can pass the tests and overcome the enemies plotting to permanently eliminate the Division once and for all.

Despite the death of a traitor and key conspirator, the plot to use the GhostWalker experiments to undermine the security of the US by foreign interests still exists. The GhostWalkers themselves must race against the clock to neutralize the danger.

In a future Earth where peace is a fragile dream, three ordinary teens—Lila, Alex, and Nate—find themselves swept into a battle that spans galaxies. What begins as a simple game night in their basement sanctuary transforms into a reality-bending adventure, where virtual worlds collide with real dangers, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. As the trio is pulled into an interstellar conflict, they must confront grotesque alien forces intent on Earth’s destruction.

Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World electrified a global readership. A Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, and one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of the Year, it explored the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. In The MANIAC, Labatut has created a tour de force on an even grander scale.

War is a serious business - or is it? Christopher Anvil turns his sardonic sense of humor loose on the subject. Hard-SF legend and Analog regular Christopher Anvil brings together mind-bending ideas and grim-but-true black humor in the face of war's utter destruction in this mega-compilation.

Veteran Fourth Echelon Agent Sam Fisher has a new mission recruiting and training the next generation of Splinter Cell operatives for the NSA’s covert action division, including his daughter, Sarah. But when a lethal assassin from Fisher’s past returns from the dead on a mission of murder, father and daughter are thrust into a race against time as a sinister threat to global security is revealed.

Dantess wants to follow in the footsteps of his dead grandfather—a legendary priest of War—but his father forbids it. In fact, his father’s hatred of war lands him in a cell within the god’s temple. The only way to free him is from the inside, so Dantess must choose: let his father die or defy his upbringing, become a priest, and win his father’s freedom in the temple’s deadly Game of War. Torn between the legacies of his father and grandfather, Dantess finds that both paths hide secrets that threaten to destroy everything he cares about, including his sanity.

Driven from their woodland home, Caesar and his apes are still recovering from the takeover by renegade ape Koba. Caesar is desperate to avoid war with the humans, but it is a faint hope, as his enemies are about to receive military reinforcements headed by the ruthless Colonel McCullough.

When Justin's older brother, Kyle, is killed in Afghanistan, Justin can't believe that his brother is really gone. Except there's one thing that Kyle left behind.... Max is a highly trained military canine who has always protected his fellow soldiers. But when he loses his handler and best friend, Kyle, Max is traumatized and unable to remain in the service. Max is sent home to America, where the only human he connects with is Justin, and he is soon adopted by Kyle's family, essentially saving his life.

As kids, the three of them were inseparable; as soldiers, they would be torn apart. Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago fought alongside Dom’s elder brother Carlos at Aspho Fields in the epic battle that changed the course of the Pendulum Wars. There’s a new war to fight now, a war for mankind’s very survival. But while the last human stronghold on Sera braces itself for another onslaught from the Locust Horde, ghosts come back to haunt Marcus and Dom.