Daniel Leary is a lieutenant in the Republic of Cinnabar Navy with no money and no prospects since he quarreled with his ruthless, politically powerful father. Adele Mundy is a scholar with no money and no prospects since her family was massacred for conspiring against the Government of Cinnabar. Kostroma is a wealthy planet which depends on diplomacy to stay independent in a galaxy whose two great powers, Cinnabar and the Alliance, battle for supremacy.

On a planet that was once part of a vast interstellar civilization, humans survive on the edge of barbarism amid the ruins of the once-great empire.

Honor Harrington has been exiled to Basilisk station and given an antique ship to police the system. The vindictive superior who sent her there wants her to fail. But he made one mistake: he's made her mad....

New York Times best-selling author David Weber invites David Drake and S.M. Stirling, two of today's top writers of military science fiction, to join him in an exploration of Honor Harrington's universe.

In Northern India, the Malwa have created an empire of unexampled evil. Guided or possessed by an intelligence from beyond time, with new weapons, old treachery, and an implacable will to power, the Malwa will sweep over the whole Earth. Only three things stand between the Malwa and their plan of eternal domination: the empire of Rome in the East, Byzantium; a crystal with vision; and a man named Belisarius, the greatest commander Earth has ever known....

This two-story compiliation, read by Stefan Rudnicki, offers two stories from David Drake's popular Hammer's Slammers series. In At Any Price, Col. Alois Hammer's indomitable Slammers are called in to support human colonists against a native uprising in this novel-length adventure. But even though the natives' off-world weapons are no match for the Slammers, their ability to teleport gives them a frightening advantage! In Rolling Hot, the battle-crazed troop of recruits and vets, led by Captain Ranson, must cover 300 miles of hostile enemy territory.

The Star Kingdom's ally Erewhon is growing increasingly restive in the alliance because the new High Ridge regime ignores its needs. Add to that the longstanding problem of a slave labor planet controlled by hostile Mesans in Erewhon's stellar back yard, a problem which High Ridge also ignores.

Roger Ramius Sergei Chiang MacClintock was young, handsome, athletic, an excellent dresser, and third in line for the Throne of Man. So it wasn't surprising that he became spoiled, self-centered, and petulant. After all, what else did he have to do with his life?

There he was in his sailboat in the middle of the Atlantic, all alone and loving it. Well, there was a US Navy carrier group on his southern horizon, but he was a Navy guy himself, so he didn't mind. Then came the UFOs, hurtling in from the Outer Black to overfly the carriers at Mach 17. Their impossible aerobatics were bad enough—but then they started shooting at each other, and at the Navy, with nukes. Little ones at first, but winding up with a 500 megatonner at 90 miles that fried every piece of electronics within line-of-sight.

Growing up, Travis Uriah Long yearned for order and discipline in his life...he two things his neglectful mother couldn’t or wouldn’t provide. So when Travis enlisted in the Royal Manticoran Navy, he thought he’d finally found the structure he’d always wanted so desperately. But life in the RMN isn’t exactly what he expected. Boot camp is rough and frustrating; his first ship assignment lax and disorderly; and with the Star Kingdom of Manticore still recovering from a devastating plague, the Navy is possibly on the edge of budgetary extinction.

Stephanie Harrington had always expected to be a forest ranger on her homeworld of Meyerdahl until her parents relocated to the frontier planet of Sphinx in the far distant Star Kingdom of Manticore. It should have been the perfect new home - a virgin wilderness full of new species of every sort, just waiting to be discovered. But Sphinx is a far more dangerous place than ultra-civilized Meyerdahl, and Stephanie's explorations come to a sudden halt when her parents lay down the law: no trips into the bush without adult supervision!

Spacers call the warp point Charon's Ferry. No star ship has ever entered it and returned since a vengeful Orion task force pursued a doomed Terran colonization fleet into it in 2206. Almost a century has passed. The fiery hatreds of a quarter-century of warfare between the Terran Federation and the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieeee, the cat-like species humans called the "Orions", have eased at least a little.

This audiobook brings together 13 uproarious short stories and one novella, focused on Ciaphas Cain, Hero of the Imperium. His stories are celebrated as heroic propaganda pieces, but he’s simply trying to stay alive in a hostile galaxy.

In a universe run by corporations, where profit matters more than life, how can an orphan with no skills, no money, and no prospects survive? When Ishmael Wang's mother dies in a senseless accident, he's given a choice: leave the planet on his own, or the company will remove him. To avoid deportation Ishmael finds work as a mess deck attendant on an interstellar freighter.

An old friend. A new course. A deadly ship with a secret cargo. Ishmael Wang returns to Port Newmar, but ghosts from his past have followed him. His old shipmate, Phillip Carstairs, offers him the opportunity to track down the man who killed his lover. The catch? He must take command of the Chernyakova, a ship that still stinks of death and haunts Ishmael's nightmares. Together Phillip and Ismael begin a journey into unknown reaches of the Deep Dark to bring back the man who killed Greta.

Honor Harrington has been exiled to Basilisk station and given an antique ship to police the system. The vindictive superior who sent her there wants her to fail. But he made one mistake: he's made her mad....

New York Times best-selling author David Weber invites David Drake and S.M. Stirling, two of today's top writers of military science fiction, to join him in an exploration of Honor Harrington's universe.

One starship will either save Earth or destroy her. A century ago our star erupted, destroying Earth's wormhole network and closing off trade with her colonized planets. After being out of contact with the younger worlds for so many years, humanity is shocked when a huge ship appears at the edge of the solar system. Our outdated navy investigates, both curious and fearful. What they learn from the massive vessel shocks the planet.

As a lifer in the Imperial Navy, fighting in a war that has lasted generations, Lieutenant York Ballin's only hope for an honorable discharge is the grave. Neither the Empire nor the Directorate seems to care that millions have died or that millions more are doomed as hostilities continue. Ballin's only option is to hunker down, keep his crewmen and women in top condition, and try not to get them all killed.

When humanity reaches for the stars, our probes are destroyed. They crash into an incredibly advanced piece of technology: a massive force-field. Unknown beings have placed a barrier around our star and planets, enclosing us within. We’re locked inside a Great Sphere. Was this invisible obstacle built to imprison us - or to protect us? No one knows the truth, but it soon becomes clear the barrier has leaks. Aliens infiltrate and try to sabotage our efforts to escape our cage.

It is the 32nd millennium, and the Imperium is at peace. The Traitor Legions of Chaos are but a distant memory, and the many alien races that have long plagued mankind are held in check by the Space Marines. When a mission to exterminate one such xenos breed on the world of Ardamantua draws in more of their forces, the Imperial Fists abandon the walls of Terra for the first time in more than a thousand years.

In AD 2600, the human race is finally beginning to realize its full potential. Hundreds of colonized planets scattered across the galaxy host a multitude of prosperous and wildly diverse cultures. Genetic engineering has pushed evolution far beyond nature's boundaries, defeating disease and producing extraordinary spaceborn creatures. Huge fleets of sentient trader starships thrive on the wealth created by the industrialization of entire star systems, and throughout inhabited space the Confederation Navy keeps the peace.

The first book in an action–packed new SF adventure series. Vulcan is a factory planet, centuries old, Company run, ugly as sin, and unfeeling as death. Vulcan breeds just two types of native: complacent or tough. Sten is tough. When his family is killed in a mysterious accident, Sten rebels, harassing the Company from the metal world’s endless maze-like warrens. He could end up just another burnt–out Delinquent. But people like Sten never give up.

In the future, the terminally ill can prolong life by surrendering their consciousness to a cybernetic life form that is then recruited into the notorious Legion of the Damned, an elite fighting unit charged with protecting humanity.

This two-story compiliation, read by Stefan Rudnicki, offers two stories from David Drake's popular Hammer's Slammers series. In At Any Price, Col. Alois Hammer's indomitable Slammers are called in to support human colonists against a native uprising in this novel-length adventure. But even though the natives' off-world weapons are no match for the Slammers, their ability to teleport gives them a frightening advantage! In Rolling Hot, the battle-crazed troop of recruits and vets, led by Captain Ranson, must cover 300 miles of hostile enemy territory.

Growing up, Travis Uriah Long yearned for order and discipline in his life...he two things his neglectful mother couldn’t or wouldn’t provide. So when Travis enlisted in the Royal Manticoran Navy, he thought he’d finally found the structure he’d always wanted so desperately. But life in the RMN isn’t exactly what he expected. Boot camp is rough and frustrating; his first ship assignment lax and disorderly; and with the Star Kingdom of Manticore still recovering from a devastating plague, the Navy is possibly on the edge of budgetary extinction.

The Hundred Worlds have withstood invasion by the relentless Hok for decades. The human worlds are strong, but the Hok have the resources of a thousand planets behind them, and their fleets attack in endless waves. The long war has transformed the Hundred Worlds into heavily fortified star systems. Their economies are geared for military output, and they raise specialized soldiers to save our species. Assault Captain Derek Straker is one such man among many.

Mars is supposed to be dead. Bizarre quakes are rumbling over the long-dormant tectonic plates of the planet, disrupting its trillion-dollar mining operations and driving scientists past the edges of theory and reason. However, when rocks shake off their ancient dust and begin to roll seemingly of their own volition carving canals as they converge to form a towering structure amid the ruddy terrain, Lt. Jain and her JSC team realize that their routine geological survey of a Martian cave system is anything but. The only clues they have stem from the emissions of a mysterious blue radiation, and a 300-year-old journal that is writing itself.

The plot by the Galactic Union’s Mercenary Guild against the Four Horsemen has culminated in an invasion of Earth. Faced with an overwhelming force, the human mercs had no choice. They’ve fled, leaving Sansar Enkh to go to the Mercenary Guild headquarters on Capital Planet to stand trial for humanity. On the run, Jim Cartwright and Nigel Shirazi have travelled to the Winged Hussars’ secret base of New Warsaw, in an effort to convince Alexis Cromwell to join the fight, while the other mercenaries who escaped the fall of Earth have gone to the perceived safe haven of Karma.

Mankind was beginning its third leap into the Galaxy, but Old Earth had so long kept to herself that her people were unable to travel safely among the rough-and-tumble cultures that had evolved on distant worlds. That annoyed Earth's rulers, for Hobart Floyt--a minor Terran bureaucrat-- had been left a mysterious inheritance by the deceased ruler of a small but wealthy interstellar empire.