Space Opera First Contact

Abducted. Forced to fight against her will. Darcy has a 10,000-year-old secret buried in her genetic code. The Druid Gene makes her a target, but it may also save her. As a second year medical student, Darcy's life revolves around classes, studying, and her boyfriend Adam - until she treks through the desert, touches some mysterious stacked stones, and a network of glowing blue lines radiates under her skin.

The McCormacks have been trying to keep a low profile so they can complete their plan to bring Earth to the club of spacefaring civilizations without creating a world war over the technology. But it’s hard to keep a low profile while building a space station, what with lifting all the material they need, designing new shuttles, and harnessing asteroids. Without any other choice, they go public.

While attempting to settle in as commandant of Starfleet Academy, Admiral James T. Kirk must suddenly contend with the controversial, turbulent integration of an alien warrior caste into the student body - and quickly becomes embroiled in conflict when the academy controversy escalates to murder. Meanwhile, Captain Spock of the USS Enterprise and Commander Pavel Chekov of the USS Reliant are investigating a series of powerful cosmic storms seemingly targeting Federation worlds - unstoppable outbursts emitting from the very fabric of space.

The first major alien offensive against Earth has been blunted, winning humanity time to deploy new weapons and prepare new tactics as Earth's space navies prepare to take the offensive. But the enigmatic aliens have plans of their own - a full-scale attack on Earth that will either win the war in a single stroke or lose it. The stakes have never been so high. The fate of humanity itself is in the balance.

During the day, he’s a South Chicago high school janitor, slopping a mop around from nine o’clock to three o’clock, five days a week. At night, hiding out in a boarded-up factory, he attends to his damaged interstellar spacecraft, making repairs and counting the days until he can return to his homeworld of Calunoth. All he needs to do is mind his own business and avoid any messy human dramas for just a few more weeks. But it is on one of those quiet nights when he hears them outside: the MP140s. Named for a police radio code for murder, they're among the most ruthless killers.

After initial contact with an alien entity leaves Kaylan unconscious, she wakes up to discover that she's now in command of the Athena mission stranded in a star system far from Earth. The ship's computer is malfunctioning, and former hacker and astronaut trainee Zack Quick is the only one who can fix it. If he can't figure out what's wrong, they have no hope of getting back home. In order to survive, the crew of the Athena must explore an alien star system to find the species that summoned them.

Journey through the stars with the "Firestorm" series, where each book is a gateway to extraordinary adventures and cosmic conundrums. Follow the Decosta family, seasoned warriors of interstellar conflict, as they navigate through a tapestry of alien landscapes and enigmatic space phenomena. Firestorm: Cash Crop is the fourth book in this series that is perfect for those who crave high-stakes battles, unexplored worlds, and encounters with bizarre lifeforms!

Wormhole technology has revealed that our sun will die in 5,000,000 years. A race of superbeings, the fabulous Xeelee, owners of the universe, are thought to be responsible. The bizarre and wealthy cult, the Superet, funds two projects aimed at combatting the force that will murder the sun.

When an intrepid explorer finds a lost temple, what’s inside will change the course of history. The planet is dying, and yet Jool is convinced there’s a way to save its people. The answer lies in a deadly mountain range that no one dares explore, but he doesn’t have a choice. The voice in his head proves insistent. With nothing to lose and everything to gain, Jool sets out to find the truth—and almost dies on his journey. When he stumbles upon a hidden temple, he won’t just find salvation and a cure for his wife, he’ll becomes the first prophet to serve the Mecha Gods. Are you ...

Pioneering director J. J. Abrams has delivered an explosive action thriller that takes Star Trek into darkness. When the crew of the Enterprise is called back home, they find an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization has detonated the fleet and everything it stands for, leaving our world in a state of crisis. With a personal score to settle, Captain Kirk leads a manhunt to a war-zone world to capture a one-man weapon of mass destruction. As our heroes are propelled into an epic chess game of life and death, love will be challenged, friendships will be torn apart, and sacrifices must be made for the only family Kirk has left: his crew.

Fergus is back on Earth at last, trying to figure out how to live a normal life. However, it seems the universe has other plans for him. When his cousin sends him off to help out a friend, Fergus accidently stumbles across a piece of an ancient alien artifact that some very powerful people seem to think means the entire solar system is in danger. And since he’s the one who found it, they’re certain it’s also his problem to deal with.

Morgan Casimir, commander of the A!Tol Imperial cruiser Defiant, has seen the works of the Precursor aliens known as the Alava. She has seen their accidents threaten worlds and consume entire star fleets. Charged by her empress to prevent a conspiracy of profiteers from finding and using a lost fleet of Alava warships, she knows unimaginable catastrophe looms if she fails. With her lover, xenoarcheologist Dr. Rin Dunst, at her side, she is sent to a hot zone on the edge of war to once again achieve the impossible.

Josune, Roystan, and Nika have escaped the company thugs trying to kill them. They've gotten a new spaceship to replace The Road (after it was blown up underneath them). And their new ship is armed to the teeth with dangerous weapons, courtesy of Josune. All that's left to do before they head out to find the legendary lode of transurides is to restore Roystan's memory. To do that, they need to collect the genemod machine Nika has ordered. But first, they have to shake off the Justice Department agent and the Companies tracking them.

Star humans were engineered to exist within the mantle of a star, mere tools of their Earth-evolved makers in a war against the Xeelee, owners of the universe. Stephen Baxter's third novel in his magnificent Xeelee Sequence is an exotic and endearing story of an abandoned people. Abandoned to their fate, their history lost along with contact with their makers, Star people survive in an environment that is possibly the strangest in science fiction.

Written in two parts, Triplanetary introduces the concept of two warring alien races: the Arisians and the Eddorians, whose battles on Earth are unknown to the human race, and in fact the humans are unaware that the Arisians have been secretly and selectively breeding the humans to use as weapons for these battles. From the time of Rome to World War II, the author takes the listener on a lightning-fast journey through Earth's history as the warzone for aliens.

Captain Tom Thrush is patrolling the Octagon Rift when his ship is attacked by a black destroyer that seems to predict his every move. Outgunned and outmaneuvered, he flees in a crippled ship to the only sanctuary he can reach—a den of thieves and spies called Lotus Station. His ship will be broken up for scrap. Half the crew are casualties. The rest are scattering, leaving Tom stuck on Lotus. As the black destroyer hunts down local freighters, Tom becomes obsessed with tracking it down and taking revenge.

It’s not easy being 16, especially when everyone expects great things from Tilly. It’s even harder when her mother and father are Federation luminaries, not to mention pressing her to attend one of the best schools the Federation has to offer. Tilly wants to achieve great things - even though she hasn’t quite worked out how to do that or what it is she wants to do. But this year, everything will change for Tilly, as she is about to embark upon the adventure of a lifetime - an adventure that will take her ever closer to the stars....

It’s been ten years since the Lunar Free State established itself on Earth’s moon. Since then, other Earth nations have pushed into space, but - thanks to the advantages provided by its gravity-driven spacecraft - the LFS has continued to prosper. When the research ship LFS Stephen Hawking encounters an alien probe near Saturn, though, the craft leads Hawking on a chase before vanishing into hyperspace. Now the Lunar Free State must face two facts: The humans of Earth are not the only intelligent life in the universe, and travel to other star systems is possible.

The Swath have returned. Humanity’s survival hangs by a thread. When a distress call rings out from Vulta Station—the last line of defense for the planet Corla—Captain Joan Everett and the crew of the USS Monolith respond without hesitation. But what begins as a rescue mission turns into a desperate battle for survival as the Swath, a deadly alien race thought to be defeated, return with vengeance. Jumping into hostile space, the Monolith engages the enemy—but the cost is catastrophic. With her ship crippled and crew on the edge of annihilation, Captain Everett faces a terrifying ...

As a sci-fi author with a hit TV show, I have a few ideas about what alien invaders are supposed to look like. In my stories, they’re technologically advanced monsters, with tentacles, and no faces. Turns out I was right about the technology. And about how angry they’d be. But the way they look is more terrifying than even I could have imagined. They look exactly like us. Because they are us.