Four hundred and thirty thousand years ago, the first Nephilim came to Earth in search of gold. After a perilous journey, the Stargazer, the Nephilim flagship, lands on the alien world. First contact with what is thought to be an intelligent creature doesn't go well.A decision to burn the surrounding grass, enrages the creatures, a large pack of dire wolves. Now, the Nephilim are being hunted, not for food, for revenge.Wolves are not the only hostile creatures they will fac...

Corbin Nash has a face the bounty boards can't stop broadcasting, a wallet that's always empty, and a knack for making enemies in every spaceport he lands. His ride—the Betsy Loo—is a rust-bucket patched together with duct tape, bad ideas, and blind luck. She's overdue for an inspection by about a decade… and her reactor's threatening to take them both out in a blaze of unpaid docking fees.Beside him sits Vex, a sentinel droid with more pessimism than programming. Vex calc...

Net Zero is a near-future cyberpunk tale where reality bleeds into the machine.Ariel, a streetwise edgerunner, accepts a beta invite from her fixer—an offer too good to refuse. Nexus Advanced Systems Technology, Inc. (NASTI) promises full-immersion simulations where everything you earn, you keep. Every sensation feels real. Every risk seems virtual.It's only a game. Right?What Ariel doesn't know is that NASTI's funding comes from DARPA and a secretive eugen...

Survival takes generations.When the CFP Serendipity crash-lands on an uncharted world, its crew survives the impossible—only to discover that rescue will not come in their lifetime.An emergency beacon is transmitting, but the nearest inhabited system lies seventy-four light-years away. By the time the signal is heard, the people who sent it will be history.As the crew assesses their damaged ship and the paradise surrounding it, survival becomes som...

A short story—One man. One AI. One broken ship. Three thousand lives in his hands.Jordan Peterson is supposed to be a steward—a glorified spaceflight attendant—on the interstellar colony ship CS Palomino. Instead, he wakes from cryogenic sleep alone, disoriented, and faced with a catastrophic systems failure. Cryopod Section Three is gone. Fifteen hundred passengers and crew are in immediate danger. And the only help available is the ship's AI—Lexi—whose av...

Freshly graduated and commissioned, Space Marine Lt. Carrie Piper, already contending with inter-service rivalry with the Navy crewmen with whom she serves, is tasked with retrieving an asteroid made of pure thorium from the asteroid belt and bringing it to Earth for use as fissionable material. She is opposed by agents of the Confederation of Peoples Governments, who will do anything, even risk starting an interstellar war, to seize control and take possession of the asteroid.

It is not his ship, or his problem……but suddenly Robert McClain finds himself behind the helm controls of the Earth's Last Hope, blasting off for the Sol System's most savage race—The Borman Classic. His brother Pete has planned on being the racer in the family, but an accident moments before the qualifying run to the moon takes him out of the running, leaving his little brother to carry on.Now he finds himself speeding from planet to planet, moon to moon, wrestling against...

Generations of war and environmental change have brought Nibiru to the brink of climate disaster. The population has moved into underground cities, and the search for a way to restore the climate has begun. Two brothers have entirely different ideas of how to rule the planet and save their people. Only one of them can be right.Anu wants to use the planet's resources to further develop the infrastructure of the underground cities, whereas Alalu wants to search for the legendary plan...

A short story—When Captain Alex Ryker takes his father's body back to their ancestral homeworld of Avalon Prime for burial, he enters Alliance space under a temporary permit—one he expects to use only briefly. But when the time comes to leave, the CS Lucky Star is trapped by bureaucracy, taxed into poverty, and brutalized by sadistic inspections. As Alliance soldiers torment his crew and violate his wife Tess, Ryker's requests to return to Confederation space are repeatedl...

Tales From The Galactic Rim is a collection of sixteen stories from author, Jay Toney. The stories span from near future Earth to distant star systems across the galaxy.Alien Cargo: Be very cautious with the space junk you pick up. It may not appear to be what it is, and the consequences can be…Blowups Happen!: A schizophrenic rockhopper and his imaginary companion discover an alien relic while prospecting.Deal Of The Century: Some deals are better left undone. If y...

When death in the simulation is death for real... loyalty is the only thing that keeps you alive.Ariel convinces her best friend Jenna to join NASTI—Nexus Advanced Systems Technology Inc.—for the final round of beta testing before their immersive combat simulations go public. It's easy cred, full perks, no strings… except one.Zeroed in cyberspace is zeroed for real!As Ariel's kill count climbs and her rank surges, she begins to realize the trut...

Steven Sinclair's life sucks. All he wants is a professional career, a strong union to protect him, and company housing far from the welfare slums he grew up in. As a senior engineering student at the University of California, Berkeley, he's on the verge of achieving everything he has worked for.His dreams shatter the night a street gang—the Crips—attack him. Steven kills one in self-defense and becomes a fugitive. Not from the law… from the gang. On Earth there is nowhere to hide,...