Space Military Science Fiction

Keeping up-to-date with the most buzzworthy and cutting-edge science fiction requires sifting through countless magazines, e-zines, websites, blogs, original anthologies, single-author collections, and more - a task accomplishable by only the most determined and voracious readers. For everyone else, Night Shade Books is proud to introduce the latest volume of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, collecting the finest that the genre has to offer, from the biggest names in the field to the most exciting new writers.

Sergeant Richard Stavos was a Technomancer, capable of creating stronger than normal mental links with nanites. But that alone wasn't enough to keep him alive. Not when the Ka Empire wages wars across the galaxy. Death was supposed to be his release...an end to the constant fighting that plagued his life. But gifted beings like Richard are assets, and almost a decade after his death, the Ka overlords bring him back from the grave as a "reward" for his good service.

A century ago, the Sentience Wars tore the galaxy apart and nearly ended the entire concept of intelligent space-faring life. In the aftermath, a curious tradition was invented - something to cheer up everyone who was left and bring the shattered worlds together in the spirit of peace, unity, and understanding. Once every cycle, the civilizations gather for the Metagalactic Grand Prix - part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past.

Almost 400 years the Terran Imperium has languished, an Empire in name only. The young colonies exploded out of the Diaspora Era, supplanting the homeworld in importance as they left a broken world in their wake. Earth's people, guided by the Conwin line, have clawed and climbed from the darkness left the night the lights went out. They built and rebuilt the weary and weakened world they inherited, even when it seemed bent on killing them from sheer spite.

Zac was the most senior REV alive, a miracle of science and a legend in the Corps. His job was to be the battering ram for the Marines, the first in while revved up on NT-4. During a Run, he was a mindless killing machine, dangerous to both foe and friend alike. But something was happening to Zac. Long after most other REVs were dead, burned out or "retired", Zac was growing stronger, more powerful. He was also doing what no REV had ever done before during a Run. He was beginning to think.

Although the exciting military career she hoped for never got off the ground, Ky Vatta ended up seeing plenty of combat when she took the helm of one of the commercial transport vessels in her family's fleet...and steered it into a full-blown war. Now the lessons she learned in that trial by fire are about to pay off---because this time, the war has come to her. Someone has launched a full-throttle offensive against Vatta Transport Ltd., Ky's father's interstellar shipping empire.

Caleb Mitchell gave up everything to protect his home. Shunned by friends and family for abandoning the pacifist beliefs of their religion, abandoned by the love of his life, he left his home world of Canaan to go to the Commonwealth Military Academy on Earth and train to fight in the looming war against the implacable alien threat of the Tahni Imperium. When a training mission with a crew of cadets winds up caught in the middle of one of the worst battles of the war, Cal and his fellow students are officially declared dead.

With the invading aliens temporarily driven from Human-and-NeHaw-occupied space, all the races are using the pause to recover and rebuild, both friend and foe alike. For the NeHaw, that means pressuring the Earth to allow them to rebuild and rearm their fleet from the Wawobash shipyards, a risk that could easily backfire. For Jake, the lingering concerns of a lost crew with the un-activated Artificial Life installed in the captured saucer still dominate his thoughts.

The Unified Civilized Council, which has ruled for over a hundred million years has discovered new species in the Long Dark. A strange and unknown species that seem to have no rhyme or reason about them with strange technology and hints of even more in the shadows. Compounding the problem is the reappearance of the ancient Precursor Autonomous War Machines, woken up from tens of thousands of years of offline status due to incursions into their territory. Even worse is the fact that the newly discovered Terran Confederacy of Aligned Systems appear to be the only force capable of stopping the...

Captain Jacob Thomas, USMC, is a divorced combat veteran just trying to get his life back on track. Returning to the marine corps after a failed attempt at reconciliation with his estranged wife, Jake volunteers for a DARPA experiment that catapults him into a future where humanity has been stripped of 200 years of technological advancements and more than half its population. With the help of a faceless benefactor named Alice, he escapes the confines of an abandoned lab facility.

When the Terran Union has a mission that must not fail, it calls upon the Strike Marines. They are trained to improvise, adapt, overcome and win every fight. Terran Strike Marines: Publisher's Pack is an action-packed military science-fiction adventure set in the best-selling Ember War universe. This pack includes The Dotari Salvation and The Rage of Winter.

In the distant future, humans and several other races have been granted membership in the Confederation - at a price. They must act as soldier/protectors of the far more civilized races who have long since turned away from war.

Earth in 2064 is politically corrupt and in economic decline. The Long Depression has dragged on for 56 years, and the Bureau of Sustainable Research is hard at work making sure no new technologies disrupt the planned economy. Ten years ago, a band of malcontents, dreamers, and libertarian radicals bolted privately developed antigravity drives onto rusty seagoing cargo ships, loaded them to the gills with 20th-century tunnel-boring machines and earthmoving equipment, and set sail - for the moon.

Earth is conquered. Sol is lost. One ship is tasked to free them. One Captain to save them all. When an alien armada destroys the United Earth Space Force and takes control of the human homeworld, newly reinstated Captain Annette Bond must take her experimental hyperspace cruiser Tornado into exile as Terra's only interstellar privateer. She has inferior technology, crude maps, and no concept of her enemy, but the seedy underbelly of galactic society welcomes her so long as she has prizes to sell and money to spend.

Two hundred years ago, a fleet of colony ships left Earth and started a settlement on Proxima Centauri. Centurion Space Force pilot Nathan Stacker didn't expect to return home to find his wife dead. He didn't expect the murderer to look just like him, and he definitely didn't expect to be the one to take the blame. But his wife had control of a powerful secret. A secret that stretches across the light years between two worlds and could lead to the end of both. Now that secret is in Nathan's hands, and he's about to make the most desperate evasive maneuver of his life.

A cease-fire that has lasted seven years... Worlds half-destroyed that have been rebuilt anew... Friends and crewmates scattered light-years apart... New leaders that would be kings... The Jung threat has been renewed, in ways not imagined. It will take a new savior to inspire the masses, and once again lead those willing to fight against oppression. But who will the new savior be?

My name is Simon Jackson: former soldier in the Elynese Special Forces and current fixer for mob boss Krahmin the voidtouched. Myan Station is my home. Dwarves, goblins, gnomes, grays, fey, even humans make up the melting pot that is Myan Station. When Malak the half-ork and I stole an ancient starship, we set off a chain of events that could spell the end of Myan Station.

Major Jake Thomas is on a roll. With the help of the Artificial Life: Intelligent Computing Environments, or ALICE, systems, he has successfully faced off with the hostile NeHaw three times. With continued support from his inner circle of female recruits, all handpicked by the ALICEs to further their own agenda, he continues to try to help Earth return to glory.

After being court-martialed by the Space Legion for ordering the strafing of a treaty-signing ceremony, multimillionaire Willard Phule receives his punishment: He must command the misfit Omega Company on Haskin's Planet, a mining settlement on the edge of settled space. At his duty station, he leverages his personal money and a knack for managing people to get the company to come together as a unit.

Duty, love and war are a lethal mix. Val Standish is a farm girl on Nadolo Prime, and everyone knows there's only one way off that backwater planet: joining the Imperial Fleet. When an empire-spanning civil war breaks out, the peaceful life she knows is shattered. With war engulfing the Empire, Standish will do whatever it takes to survive, never knowing that her adventures will take her to the very heart of power, while exposing her to more danger than she’d ever imagine. Standish is a full-length standalone space opera novel in the Earth Saga series. Start here for thrilling space ...