Sergeant Gastovsky—Gas to everyone but his superior officers—never wanted to be a soldier. Far from it. But when a con goes wrong and he needs a place to lay low for a while, he finds himself wearing the power armor of the augmented infantry. After three years on a six-year contract, Gas has found his groove running low-level cons and various illegal activities that make him good money on the side. He’s the guy who can get you what you need. But he’s always had his eye out for a big score—the one that might set him up for life after the military.

Lieutenant Kiera Markov is a scout platoon leader for a peacekeeping force on the remote planet of Tanara, where little has happened for decades, and the only mission is to keep the lithium flowing up the space elevator to feed the galaxy’s incessant demand. But when an unprecedented attack kills the entirety of the brigade’s leadership, the untested lieutenant suddenly finds herself in command.

In 2108, Colony Ship Voyager departed Earth for the planet of Promissa with 18,000 of the world’s best and brightest on board. 250 years and 27 light years later, an arrival is imminent. But all is not well. The probes that they’ve sent ahead to gather the data needed to establish any kind of settlement aren’t responding, and the information they have received has presented more questions than answers. It’s a time when the entire crew should be coming together to solve the problem, but science officer Sheila Jackson can’t get people to listen.

A secret buried in the Antarctic. A puzzle unsolved for thousands of years. And a Brooklyn-born master gunnery sergeant who's royally pissed that he has to babysit the researchers sent to figure it all out. But when Patrick "Wic" Finnegan finally sees what the team has uncovered, he can't believe his eyes, nor is he prepared for the violence to come. Soon, the portal opens and unleashes a storm of unbridled fury upon humanity.

Daniel Clay fought across the galaxy as a corporate soldier. He left the violence behind for a life of science, raising a family far from the bloodshed of the Corporation. With his wife, Sarah, and son, Michael, he studied the alien Tyr for years, hidden among their complex societies. Their mission should have ended with the arrival of a replacement team. Instead, the Clays’ corporate overlords choose a death sentence: an invasion fleet to conquer the Tyr.

A company of Army Rangers is sent on an interstellar colony ship to secure a foothold on a dangerous, alien planet through violence of action. Leaving behind a warring Earth flung headfirst into a conflict of mutual assured destruction, the Rangers and the accompanying crew of first colonists are guided on a 40-year journey by an unprecedented artificial intelligence. But when they emerge from the frigid embrace of cryosleep, they awake to a nightmare, finding themselves greeted by the same ruthless enemy that brought about the ruin of Earth.

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....

Engines. Genetically modified warriors that keep the great Nova Alliance war machine churning against the enemy Coalition. Most days, Engines are all that stand between salvation and chaos. Led by legendary Engine Captain Akira Hayashi, Shadow Squad has fought on the frontlines for a decade. They are on the brink of victory when the Coalition launches a series of desperate and devastating attacks that cripple the Nova Alliance restoration sites vital to save the dying planet.

Born on a forsaken desert planet, Cole Shaw has two options - perish from starvation and disease, or enlist in the New World Republic’s armed forces. He chooses the military. For the first time, he thinks he has a shot at a better life. But survival is not guaranteed. Leading an elite team of mech operators, he is deployed to a frozen planet called Ferrous where dangerous relics of a past war lurk beneath the ice and savage creatures prowl the barren wastelands. Scientists on Ferrous are chasing rumors of godlike technologies buried in the ruins of a long-extinct civilization.

The mission is simple. Escort an emissary to an intergalactic peace summit. Try not to get in the way. Lt. Magnus and his 79th Recon Team have certainly handled worse, after all. But when an explosion rocks the tower and sends everyone into a panic, Magnus and his asset find themselves cut off from the rest of the team. Worse still, a dying alien chieftain gives them a priceless drive of intel, marking them for death. The mission has officially changed. With enemies on all sides, Magnus must do everything in his power to protect the emissary and escape the tower.

More than two centuries after World War III poisoned the planet, the final bastion of humanity lives on massive airships circling the globe in search of a habitable area to call home. Aging and outdated, most of the ships plummeted back to Earth long ago. The only thing keeping the two surviving lifeboats in the sky are Hell Divers - men and women who risk their lives by skydiving to the surface to scavenge for parts the ships desperately need.

The Galahad, a faster-than-light spacecraft, carries 50 scientists and engineers on a mission to prepare Kepler 452b, Earth's nearest habitable neighbor at 1400 light years away. With Earth no longer habitable and the Mars colony slowly failing, they are humanity's best hope. After 10 years in a failed cryogenic bed - body asleep, mind awake - William Chanokh's torture comes to an end as the fog clears, the hatch opens, and his friend and fellow hacker, Tom, greets him...by stabbing a screwdriver into his heart. This is the first time William dies.

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.

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

Humanity has been banished to a distant star. Left to fight over resources rationed to them by mysterious machine-overlords known as Wardens. Commander Rylan Holt labors against inter-colony arms trafficking when an informant gives him horrific news. The ruthless cartel boss, Lilith, has stockpiled outlawed weapons of mass destruction. Worse, she claims to have permission from the Wardens to unleash them upon the system.

War heroes aren't usually called out of semi-retirement and sent to the far reaches of the galaxy for a routine investigation. So when Colonel Carl Butler answers the call from an old and powerful friend, he knows it's something big - and he's not being told the whole story. A high councilor's son has gone MIA out of Cappa Base, the space station orbiting a battle-ravaged planet. The young lieutenant had been wounded and evacuated - but there's no record of him having ever arrived at hospital command.

Lieutenant Kiera Markov is a scout platoon leader for a peacekeeping force on the remote planet of Tanara, where little has happened for decades, and the only mission is to keep the lithium flowing up the space elevator to feed the galaxy’s incessant demand. But when an unprecedented attack kills the entirety of the brigade’s leadership, the untested lieutenant suddenly finds herself in command.

In 2108, Colony Ship Voyager departed Earth for the planet of Promissa with 18,000 of the world’s best and brightest on board. 250 years and 27 light years later, an arrival is imminent. But all is not well. The probes that they’ve sent ahead to gather the data needed to establish any kind of settlement aren’t responding, and the information they have received has presented more questions than answers. It’s a time when the entire crew should be coming together to solve the problem, but science officer Sheila Jackson can’t get people to listen.

Sergeant Gastovsky—Gas to everyone but his superior officers—never wanted to be a soldier. Far from it. But when a con goes wrong and he needs a place to lay low for a while, he finds himself wearing the power armor of the augmented infantry. After three years on a six-year contract, Gas has found his groove running low-level cons and various illegal activities that make him good money on the side. He’s the guy who can get you what you need. But he’s always had his eye out for a big score—the one that might set him up for life after the military.

A secret buried in the Antarctic. A puzzle unsolved for thousands of years. And a Brooklyn-born master gunnery sergeant who's royally pissed that he has to babysit the researchers sent to figure it all out. But when Patrick "Wic" Finnegan finally sees what the team has uncovered, he can't believe his eyes, nor is he prepared for the violence to come. Soon, the portal opens and unleashes a storm of unbridled fury upon humanity.

Jordan McKell has a problem with authority. Unfortunately for him, the iron-fisted authority of the powerful Patthaaunutth controls virtually every aspect of galactic shipping. In order to survive, Jordan ekes out a living dabbling in interstellar smuggling for outlaw concerns that represent the last vestiges of free trade in the galaxy. So when Jordan and his partner, Ixil - an alien with two ferret-like "outhunters" linked to his neural system - are hired by a mysterious gentleman to fly a ship and its special cargo to Earth, they jump at the job.

Po Abbato turns to crime in a desperate attempt to free his younger siblings from debt slavery. He's caught, and offered a choice: Spend 25 years in a digital prison while his body rots...or join the Marines.

My name is Kazimir Wolfe. People call me "Kaz", except they don’t. I never use my real name; it’s too dangerous, for me and for anyone I meet. I’m on the run from the law, who think I killed my aunt, and from whoever did kill her, because they want to finish the job. So, I move around a lot, working construction or whatever job I can find. It’s a lonely life. I don’t let anyone get close...people who get close to me end up dead. Why? I’m a wizard. The world’s only wizard, as far as I know.

Neither cosmic philosopher Lars Soren, hotshot pilot Bianca Petrescu, nor the high priestess Jessica McHugh—Lady Death herself—can say quite where in the galaxy they are. But after an experiment gone horribly wrong, one thing is clear: Asphodel Station isn’t in orbit around Jupiter any longer. Worse, the monsters that live out here—ancient eldritch beings thought only to exist in stories and nightmares—have now been alerted to Earth’s existence.

A massive solar flare. A devastating global blackout. Amid the pandemonium, a ship loaded with fuel faces the ultimate threat: mutiny. The desperate captain will do anything to maintain order while he races to get his precious cargo to the safety of homeport, but time is running out. On land, in cities without power, violence rules the streets as society crumbles into chaos.

A company of Army Rangers is sent on an interstellar colony ship to secure a foothold on a dangerous, alien planet through violence of action. Leaving behind a warring Earth flung headfirst into a conflict of mutual assured destruction, the Rangers and the accompanying crew of first colonists are guided on a 40-year journey by an unprecedented artificial intelligence. But when they emerge from the frigid embrace of cryosleep, they awake to a nightmare, finding themselves greeted by the same ruthless enemy that brought about the ruin of Earth.

The mission is simple. Escort an emissary to an intergalactic peace summit. Try not to get in the way. Lt. Magnus and his 79th Recon Team have certainly handled worse, after all. But when an explosion rocks the tower and sends everyone into a panic, Magnus and his asset find themselves cut off from the rest of the team. Worse still, a dying alien chieftain gives them a priceless drive of intel, marking them for death. The mission has officially changed. With enemies on all sides, Magnus must do everything in his power to protect the emissary and escape the tower.

The Wizard's Council of Tarador was supposed to tell young Koren Bladewell that he is a wizard. They were supposed to tell everyone that he is not a jinx, that all the bad things that happen around him are because he can't control the power inside him, power he doesn't know about. The people of his village, even his parents, are afraid of him, afraid he is cursed. That he is a dangerous, evil jinx.

When an EMP attack wipes out the nation’s power grid and communications, college freshman Maddie Langston is forced to run for her life. Stranded in a Chicago airport when the lights go out, Maddie is in a race against time. According to her father, she doesn’t have long before the city descends into chaos. She must leave the airport before it is too late. The perilous journey out of the city becomes even more complicated when Maddie takes responsibility for an orphaned ten-year-old girl. Together, as chaos fills the streets, they must fight to survive in a Turbulent new world.

For dinosaurs, it was a big rock. For humans: Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). When the Earth is hit by the greatest CME in recorded history (several times larger than the Carrington Event of 1859), the combined societies of the planet's most developed nations struggle to adapt to a life thrust back into the Dark Ages. In the United States, the military scrambles to speed the nation's recovery on multiple fronts including putting down riots, establishing relief camps, delivering medical aid, and bringing communication and travel back on line. Just as a real foothold is established in retaking the skies (utilizing existing commercial aircraft supplemented by military resources and ground control systems), a mysterious virus takes hold of the population, spreading globally over the very flight routes that the survivors fought so hard to rebuild.