Embark on a flight of discovery with ten stories from the fertile mind of M.E Owen, including:A group of extraterrestrials finds an exciting new venue for date night—Earth.A Seattle bar houses a clandestine interplanetary waystation nicknamed the "Vortex of Hell."An alien discovers that the small child of the powerful human she was sent to observe may hold the key to initiating peaceful relations.A generation ship's engineer wakes up as a clone o...

Zion Station. Decrepit, nearly forgotten on the edge of human space, and harboring a secret that could shift the course of humanity.Eight months ago, the Earth-based Consortium committed genocide against the AIs, destroying thousands of sentient beings, along with hundreds of thousands with the potential.Only six humans know that Zion Station's sentient AI, Max, survived the purge.Even as they rush to complete Max's move from the Consortium-built neural network to Z...

Non Plus Ultra is the first story in M.E Owen's exciting new Zion Station series.Old, poorly maintained, and sliding into decrepitude, Zion Station orbits a gas giant in a backwater of human space. Originally purposed for scientific research, and then as support for the methane mining industry, its scientists are long gone, and its transfer pods have been decommissioned.Police Chief Pilar Jones y Garcia has enough on her plate dealing with rowdy gas miners on shore...

Zion Station. Slowly decaying in a backwater of human space, now only useful as support for the methane mining industry that operates in the atmosphere of the gas giant planet below.But Zion harbors secrets that could topple the Consortium, Earth's oppressive, genocidal empire.Zion's saga continues, as Police Chief Pilar Jones y Garcia and her friends continue to protect those secrets with their lives and work toward bringing down the Consortium.The stories within b...

Pilar Jones y Garcia, Zion Station's police chief, still mourns her husband's death years later. She, and everyone else with a radio, heard his last transmission moments before his small ship incinerated in the toxic atmosphere of the gas giant below.But Emilio Garcia y Jones had secrets that he kept even from the woman he adored. Secrets that hunted him down, forcing him to make the hardest decision of his life.Join us for a story set before the Consortium's AI genocide, w...

A mysterious distress signal sends Zion Station police chief Pilar Jones y Garcia, along with the crew of the Far Trails and a downsized copy of Zion's rogue AI Max, four billion kilometers away to the system's ship graveyard.The signal originates from the Suyash, a state-of-the-art gas mining ship that mysteriously disappeared four years ago, presumed lost with all hands in Galtus's tumultuous atmosphere. And now just as mysteriously reappeared in the graveyard.

Nine months before the AI Purge, Cray Solnik, newly hired onto the Far Trails, accepts an invitation to Zion Station's null-grav arena to celebrate Police Chief Jones's birthday with an experimental virtual reality experience. He and his new friends become characters in a throwback sci-fi story, run by the station's AI Max, complete with rocketships, ray guns, and evil Martians who want to steal Earth for themselves.But the fun ends when the birthday treat goes arwy, threa...

Former cop Daniel Bennett has survived a brutal jail sentence only to find himself stranded on a backwater colony planet. Outcast, homeless, and desperate, his survival depends on becoming a host for parasitic juvenile aliens.The juveniles look like spiders – an arachnophobe's worst nightmare.And when he discovers that his only friend on the planet stands accused of a grisly double murder, Daniel must unravel the truth before his friend is shipped back to the hellish penal ...

Four peaceful alien dirigibles, living in the upper atmosphere of the gas giant Galtus, find themselves sucked into a flying metal behemoth and left to starve.Max, stripped-down copy of Zion Station's rogue AI, temporarily installed in the ghost ship Suyash, discovers the two surviving aliens in the ship's gas pod. Given command of the ship by Police Chief Jones, he's tasked with returning the dirigibles home without detection and then forging a partnership with their cult...

Captain Skip Thompson, cargo specialist without a ship. It's been stolen right out of Davadas Station's space dock. His ship, its cargo, its other cargo, in order of increasing importance.And heading fast for the nearest Jump point. If it goes through, it's gone for good. The ship and cargo can be replaced, but the losing the other cargo will get Skip killed.With his crew in the brig and the Davadas sheriff refusing to help, his only assistance comes from ...

This third volume of Zion Station stories brings us old friends and new, human and not. The newly born and the unfathomably ancient.Alien cultures found, lost, and saved. Engineering wonders big and small.Ships and stations, pirates and sabotage, danger and bloodshed. Life-changing decisions against a backdrop of uncertainty.Relationships rekindled, new, and fraying.And secrets. From the highly personal to the far-reaching secrets that could take down a geno...

This prequel story to Survival Instincts finds Daniel Bennett serving hard time on the Holt penal station. Outed as a former cop, he doesn't stand a chance. His survival requires that he give up who he is - a good cop and honorable man - and become even more ruthless than the dregs of humanity that surround him. Instead, he attempts a precarious balancing act between Bennett the cop and Bennett the convict. But when an asteroid mining accident leaves him and two convicts adrift and short o...