Hard Space Opera

Welcome to future-shock. Hold on tight and buckle yourselves in, because the future is on a relentless onslaught, for better or worse. This is a collection of the short speculative fiction of Gabriel Walker Land. Most stories are flash fiction, meaning less than 1000 words. Each contains a story of mystery, action, romance, and suspense.

The complete Torchship series in a single volume! Includes: Tochship, Torchship Pilot, and Torchship Captain. A captain who’ll take any job if there’s enough money in it. A pilot with an agenda of her own. And a mechanic with an eye on the pilot.

Old Captain Orbus commandeered a ship to flee Spatterjay, desperate to escape the violent planet. Orbus’ alien enemy, the Prador Vrell, is also moving on. The Spatterjay virus mutated him into something even more dangerous. And he’s hunting the Prador King himself - who sought to kill him, to bury the secret of their similar transformations. Orbus and Vrell clash in the Graveyard, a lawless zone where the Prador have seized a key space station. Official action by humanity or Prador would end peace, as a centuries-long cold war simmers.

The year is 2085, and humanity has spread throughout the solar system, a stable lunar colony is agitating for independence, and lunar tourism is on the rise. Against this background, professional "Close Protection" specialist Scotty Griffin, fresh off a disastrous assignment, is offered the opportunity of a lifetime: to shepherd the teenaged heir to the Republic of Kikaya on a fabulous vacation. Ali Kikaya will participate in the first live-action role playing game conducted on the Moon itself.

When 17-year-old Toby McGonigal finds himself lost in space, separated from his family, he expects his next drift into cold sleep to be his last. After all, the planet he' s orbiting is frozen and sunless, and the cities are dead. But when Toby wakes again, he' s surprised to discover a thriving planet, a strange and prosperous galaxy, and something stranger still - that he' s been asleep for 14,000 years. Welcome to the Lockstep Empire, where civilization is kept alive by careful hibernation. Here cold sleeps can last decades and waking moments mere weeks.

John Bandicut and his company have been rewarded for their heroism in saving Shipworld. The prize: to be flung back into inhabited space — not to their home planets, as they had hoped, but to the bottom of an alien sea. Helpless and sinking, they are rescued by strange mer-creatures and brought to an undersea city, where a race of sea-people known as the Neri live in perpetual twilight. The Neri are well adapted to their world, but their survival is in jeopardy.

Kas is a junior researcher on a fact-finding mission to old Earth. But when a con-artist tricks her into wagering a large sum of money belonging to her university on the outcome of a manned robot arena battle, she becomes drawn into the seedy underworld of old Earth politics and state-sponsored battle-droid prizefights.

In outer space you can never feel sure that your adversary is altogether human. The runcible buffers on Samarkand have been mysteriously sabotaged, killing many thousands and destroying a terraforming project. Agent Cormac must reach it by ship to begin an investigation. But Cormac has incurred the wrath of a vicious psychopath called Pelter, who is prepared to follow him across the galaxy with a terrifying android in tow.

When the silent spacecraft arrived and took the light from the world, no one knew what to expect. When the Overlords finally showed themselves it was a shock but one that humankind could now cope with, and an era of peace, prosperity and endless leisure began. But the children of this utopia dream strange dreams of distant suns and alien planets, and soon they will be ready to join the Overmind...and, in a grand and thrilling metaphysical climax, leave Earth behind.

New Alliances After some terrible secrets come to light, humans must rethink their relationship with the Akkato. Nothing less than the continued existence of mankind is at stake. Will Dominic Porter and his comrades decide to forge new alliances, even if it means going against their conscience? NOMADS This is what humans are called by the many races of the Milky Way. As survivors and refugees, they try to assert themselves among the cultures of the galaxy, which is called ASGAROON by its inhabitants. Some of them have managed to make a name for themselves in the feudal society of ASGAROON. ...

Humanity's last encounter with aliens saw 16.2 billion people killed in a war with the Merkiaari that had spanned decades. Two hundred years later, the Alliance is cautiously exploring beyond its borders again, but the survey corp is considered a mere gesture by some. General Burgton of the 501st Infantry Regiment believes a lack of expansion is leading the Alliance into stagnation. So when one small ship discovers a new alien race, it should be an easy decision to make contact, but what if the aliens are like the Merkiaari?

Navigators, mutated by spice into beings far superior to normal humans, make space travel possible across the burgeoning Imperium. Their prescient awareness allows them to foresee safe paths through the universe as starship engines 'fold' space. Only industrial magnate Josef Venport knows the secret of creating Navigators, and he intends to build a commercial empire to span the galaxy.

Trapped on an alternate Earth, the combined crews of a crashed Russian spaceship, a British expeditionary force and a group of strays from the future must work together to survive, escape and discover what led them to this point. All are from parallel universes where small changes in history led to different realities, and the tensions between the groups are rising.

The epic conclusion to the trilogy that redefines what it means to transcend Five years after humanity stepped through the portals, consciousness itself is evolving—and something vast is coming to judge whether they deserve to survive. Thomas Millwright exists across seventeen dimensions as humanity's bridge to cosmic awareness. But their reality network is fracturing under explosive growth: spontaneous worlds erupting from collective dreams, consciousness evolving beyond recognition, and an ancient entity approaching with the power to erase civilizations. The Cosmic Gardener tends ...

The Valiant is a gripping saga that explores an untold chapter in the life of Jean-Luc Picard - and reveals the making of a captain! Go back in time to when Lieutenant Commander Picard was second officer on the Stargazer and suddenly finds himself and his ship under attack from a hostile alien species - on the wrong side of the Galactic Barrier, cut off from Starfleet!

Stranded in a hellish alien desert, stripped of their strategic systems, quick reaction force and supporting arms, and carrying only a day's water ration, Marine Staff Sergeant Charlie Bass and his seven-man team faced a grim future 75 light-years from home.

The Galactic Star Alliance has been alive and well for millions of Earth years. Hundreds of thousands of worlds and trillions of beings move across the many home worlds of the Alliance. This revelation invites many questions: How is faster-than-light speed travel possible, and could cohesive, interstellar civilizations exist without it? Is it conceivable to govern a coalition not of different countries but of different species?

Xander has betrayed Lyssa and the Weapon Born, and Alexander has initiated an attack on InnerSol. Now Andy, Lyssa, and the crew struggle to make sense of what is happening and warn InnerSol about the thousands of missiles that have launched from one of Neptune’s moons. Meanwhile, in InnerSol, Brit, Jirl, and Petral rush to safety in the wake of Clinic 13’s destruction. Their plan to destroy the Heartbridge clinics is thwarted, and now they must find another way to strike out at the massive corporation.

Nearly 100,000 years after first contact with the machines that dominate the universe, only a few hundred humans survive. Trapped on Snowglade, a barren world near the center of the galaxy, Killeen and his child, Toby, of the Bishop Tribe, are primitive scavengers, homeless and hunted by the ruling “mechs”. Then suddenly, a strange cosmic entity – neither organic nor cybernetic or living matter – reaches out from a black hole to speak with Killeen.

Facing the threat of their dark enemies, Gillian must also cope with his inner turmoil, as the madness of his nature threatens to consume his life. He discovers that he is a genetically modified creature whose purpose is to serve the needs of others, and that the course of his destiny is not in his own hands.