Cowed into appeasement by the threat to destroy their home planets with antimatter warheads, the Federated Worlds are a spent force. Only a ragtag rebel army stands between the Hammer of Kraa and total victory. The consequences of that triumph are too terrible to contemplate. Thousands of worlds will be subjugated, millions murdered, and billions enslaved by an empire spanning hundreds of light years, an empire fuelled by blood, an empire built on the bones of its enemies.The rebels...

The Mendozan Guild. A criminal cartel. Ruthless and violent, it has killed almost everyone Samira Anders has ever loved. But she fought back, ripping the life out of the Guild's boss of bosses in a storm of 40-mm cannon fire. Now, humiliated and angry, the Guild knows it must kill her too. It has to. Not to would be show weakness, and the Guild has too many enemies waiting to tear it apart. And Samira knows it.Samira's choices are not good. Running is a really bad option; the Guild...

“A planet-stomping space opera that bursts off the page like a tactical nuke.”—John Birmingham, author of Weapons of ChoiceThe Hammer Worlds—the most brutal and oppressive interstellar government in the universe—have hijacked the Federated Worlds cruise ship Mumtaz, seizing its valuable terraforming cargo and damning its passengers to mining the moons of the prison planet known as Hell.For Junior Lieutenant Michael Helfort and the crew aboard deep ...

Some call it revenge; she calls it justice . . .Samira Anders is young and out of control; drugs, alcohol, and a prison sentence are just the start.But when Samira's mercenary father is murdered, she has to change, and change she does, starting her new life with two promises: to take over from her father as command pilot of the family's antiquated assault lander and to track down his killers.Samira discovers that promises are easy to make and hard to keep. Worse, they ...

A death machine . . .Thousands of light-years from humanspace, an ancient culture has created the Shield, a malignant, mindless machine with one task: to annihilate every sentient being it encounters.The Shield has already slaughtered billions.And now it is the turn of humanity to die.

Ladaki-6 is a terrible place, a planet controlled by the Assembly of the All-Knowing One, a fundamentalist cult with a fondness for hangings, a severe shortage of cash, and an unshakeable belief that faith, not science, will keep its devotees safe.Kal Kariuki never planned to go anywhere near it, but Ladaki-6 is one of the few places in humanspace willing to employ an out-of-work marine with an addiction problem and no money.Only to find that the Fates have other plans for he...

If he survives, hell just may freeze over.The savage Hammer Worlds are not only near invincible but almost certain to win their war to crush the Federated Worlds and control humanspace–unless the Feds can find and destroy their secret antimatter warhead facility.Only dreadnoughts, the lone Federated ships able to withstand antimatter missile attacks, can do the job, and only Lieutenant Michael Helfort has the skill to lead them. But skill may not be enough, because Helfort ...

He thought Hell was the worst they could throw at him.He was wrong.Back from tangling with the Hammer of Kraa, the most brutal, trigger-happy tyrants in humanspace, Junior Lieutenant Michael Helfort is assigned to the Federated Worlds heavy cruiser Ishaq, which is struggling to rise to the threat posed by a newly resurgent Hammer. Aboard the floundering ship, Helfort is coming to grips with a painful injury and the unpleasant truth that nobody likes a young hero–least of all...

America is drowning in debt, its leadership of the Free World compromised, its allies isolated and weakened, its position as the globe's most powerful nation under attack from a relentless China.A China that sees the 21st Century as its century. A China determined to become the world's only superpower. A China whose manifest destiny is to stand astride a humbled America.But what so many accept as inevitable, a group of ultra-nationalist Americans refuse to accept. If the Unit...

It was insane, it was suicidal, it was wrong—and by God he was going to do it.The Hammer Worlds have Helfort exactly where they want him. The ultimatum is brutal and precise. Unless the Federated hero surrenders, the Hammer World’s prisoner Anna Cheung—the only woman Helfort has ever loved—will be handed over to a bunch of depraved troopers to be violated, then executed by firing squad.Helfort can obey, or he can do what the crew proposes: sail his t...

There he was in his sailboat in the middle of the Atlantic, all alone and loving it. Well, there was a US Navy carrier group on his southern horizon, but he was a Navy guy himself, so he didn't mind. Then came the UFOs, hurtling in from the Outer Black to overfly the carriers at Mach 17. Their impossible aerobatics were bad enough—but then they started shooting at each other. And at the Navy. With nukes. Little ones at first, but winding up with a 500 megatonner at 90 miles that fried ever...

The planet Attica has two continents: Lambda and Delta. The indigenous alien population being restricted to Delta, Earth's colony was planted on Lambda. Before the arrival of the Daedalus, two sailing ships had set out from Lambda to cross the ocean separating the two continents, and neither had returned. Now a third is on its way, and Mariel Valory and Alex Alexander of the Daedalus have hitched a lift, in order that Mariel might use her talent to try to make contact with the aliens. Unfo...