Showing results by author "Vaughn Heppner" in All Categories

It finally happened. Commander Thrax Ti Ix created a hyper-spatial tube for the Swarm Imperium. Across thousands of light-years, a vast armada of warships is heading for Earth to burn the homeworld down to its bedrock as the Swarm begins its genocidal campaign against the human race. No one - not the New Men, the Spacers, the Wahhabi Caliphate, or Star Watch - has faced such staggering odds. Alone or united, it makes no difference.

The Swarm is coming! This time, enemy science vessels study us as Hive Masters gather hundreds of thousands of starships for an avalanche invasion. Instead of facing massed bug fleets in hopeless battle, we have a desperate plan: use a Builder nexus, create a hyper-spatial tube and send suicide-ships thousands of light-years into Swarm territory. There, our ships must find and destroy the nexuses that are the only way back home, all in order to stop the bugs from using the nexuses to reach Human Space.

The strategists of Leviathan are cunning and devious. They also fear Captain Maddox because of his unusual luck, his ability to turn sure odds into a disaster for them. Before Leviathan begins its invasion of the Commonwealth, they want Maddox neutralized. Thus, using elaborate deception, the strategists convince Star Watch that ancient doomsday weapons lie in the Aquila Rift. It’s a region of space 700 light years from Earth. Thick molecular clouds and dense gases hide its stars and planets.

In the stillness of space, several asteroids disappear in the 82 G. Eridani System. Time passes and space wavers, and the missing asteroids reappear. They’re traveling at near-light-speed for the single populated planet. Nuclear-tipped missiles from the lone battleship fail to stop the asteroids, which crash against the planet, turning it into rubble and killing the 650 million inhabitants. Someone has found and now tested the perfect planet killer, an ancient device that turns asteroids and icy planetesimals into world-destroying projectiles.

Task Force 3 is Star Watch’s elite deployment unit against any surprise threats to the Commonwealth. A mysterious enemy appears 40.7 light years from Earth. Task Force 3 deploys but fails to defend a populated planet against a massive alien Annihilator. Then the task force is sucked through a rip in the space-time continuum, disappearing with the enemy.

Despite being all alone - the only one of his kind - Bast Banbeck has generously helped humanity time and again against the death machines, saving us from extinction. Years ago, Jon Hawkins promised Bast that he would hunt for and save the Sacerdotes in return. But the homesick Bast is losing hope, drowning his sorrows in extended drinking bouts. Now, Intelligence learns there are Sacerdote prisoners 162 light-years away. Jon leads the rescue operation, using the void to slip undetected into enemy territory.

Ten thousand years ago, a single alien super-ship survived a desperate battle. The vessel's dying crew set the AI on automatic to defend the smashed rubble of their planet. Legend has it the faithful ship continues to patrol the empty battlefield, obeying its last order throughout the lonely centuries.In the here and now, Earth needs a miracle. Out of the Beyond invade the New Men, stronger, faster and smarter than the old. Their superior warships and advanced technology destroy every fleet sent to stop them.

The Sovereign Hierarchy of Leviathan leaves nothing to chance. Their strategists are the greatest in the galaxy, utilizing the tiniest details. Before unleashing the perfect invasion, they send Senior Dax to Earth. The cyber spy will assassinate the Lord High Admiral, throwing Star Watch into panic as one after another of their highest officials die hideous, unstoppable deaths.

Imagine a ship the size of a planet. It has an atmosphere of methane, but there is no water. Mysterious and dark, it sails through a gateway, leaving a path open to the most implacable enemies that mankind and the aliens of the Milky Way Galaxy have ever face. Genetically tailored, symbiotic body armor protects the human commandos that are to be dropped on the metallic surface. A trooper in his armor, with surgically enhanced, neuro-fiber speed, is the deadliest grunt in the universe.

Last voyage, Captain Maddox entered a distant star system with a Swarm fleet. The sheer numbers were staggering, a 100-1 advantage against all human spacecraft. If the highly aggressive, racist insects gained hyper-spatial tube technology - allowing them to cross 1,000 light-years in seconds - it would mean Armageddon for Earth. Star Watch desperately needs something powerful to offset the annihilating Swarm numbers. As if on cue, Professor Ludendorff declares he has discovered the whereabouts of ancient Builder technology, a tech so potent it could defeat the Swarm.

AD 2457. The longest space voyage in history has begun: 230 light years from a ravaged Earth to the pristine star system of New Eden - a beacon of hope following the Doom Star days. Aboard the ship are human colonizers, the Space Navy, fierce “Monitors” once bred to fight Cyborgs, and four “Specials” - humans with psionic abilities, capable of ripping holes in space to jump vast distances.

Earth becomes too hot for Jake Bayard. Too many shape-shifting aliens and people, including those on his own side, are trying to capture him in order to use his star-traveling abilities for their own greedy ends. Bayard flees to Kaldar, a world devastated by atomic war and lousy with mutated rat-men and the Dark Brotherhood. At first, he’s just trying to stay alive. Then, he uncovers a mystery, one that, incredible as it seems, reaches all the way back to Earth. It could mean the alien enslavement of everyone, which means that Bayard is fighting for more than just his own survival.

In a desperate fight, we captured one of the machine empire’s factory planets. Can we now defeat an interstellar superpower that has exterminated thousands of sentient races across the galaxy and slaughtered billions of us in the solar system? Not bloody likely, but Captain Jon Hawkins is on a mission. Using new warships from the factory planet, he’s searching for alien allies, more battle stations to storm, and death machines to kill. He’s buying us time to turn the solar system into a fortress...if he can stay alive long enough.

After endless years of fighting in a galaxy-wide war, the most decorated super-soldier of the Old Federation was granted leave, sliding into a stasis tube aboard a sleeper ship. The ship never reached its port, and the soldier woke up a thousand years later on an operating table. The Old Federation was gone, most planets hurled back into the Stone Age. A devastated Earth used spies instead of spaceships to compete against the tougher, richer worlds.

The invasion of California has begun, threatening to trigger World War III.

Greater China and its South American allies control Mexico, and their armies are poised on the Rio Grande, ready for the next phase of the North American conquest. It is 2039. The Chinese are launching their secret weapon against the American border fortifications. At the same time, an amphibious fleet steams toward San Francisco. The Chinese have formed the Pan Asian Alliance and signed a war-pact with the South American Federation. Glacial cooling has brought the Earth to the brink of starvation. Now, U.S. soil is the most valuable commodity in the world....

They came from the brightest star in the southern constellation of Carina. First they studied us. Now they're among us, threatening human existence as they search for the Starcore, the greatest device of the lost Polarions. Logan is captured in the Nevada desert but escapes in Greenland. There he finds an extraterrestrial stealth ship, giving him the means to take the battle to the enemy.

Star Watch defeated the Swarm Invasion Fleet, but at a terrible cost in destroyed star systems, smashed battleships and billions of dead. In the aftermath of the costly victory, chaos threatens as worlds leave the Commonwealth of Planets, face mass starvation or succumb to increased piracy. The war against the Swarm Imperium has just begun. Humanity needs unity or each planet will fall alone. Brigadier O'Hara of Star Watch Intelligence stumbles onto a secret conspiracy. Someone is trying to destroy the Commonwealth from within, and they have an alien artifact of incredible power. O'Hara summons Captain Maddox. Although she fears to lose him, she knows that Maddox and his crew have the best chance of finding the hidden enemy. If the captain fails, the Commonwealth will be powerless to stop its destruction.

Through desperate tactics and by deliberately keeping a low profile, we survived the machine assaults longer than any human or cybership thought possible. But now our luck has deserted us. The main A.I. brain-core has just given human extinction top priority. The robots are massing an armada to exterminate us. We’ve done what we could in expectation of this grim day, grabbing enemy factory planets to mass produce warships. And we found an ally, the Star Lords of Roke. But it’s just not enough, damn it.

Alvor the Sleek—a Krekelen shape-shifter—hates Jake Bayard because the Galactic Marine slew the others of his plotting brood. Bayard wants to wring Alvor’s neck because the alien tricked him into teleporting to deadly Canopus instead of Saddoth to help his friend. Bayard’s teleportation opens the way for Alvor to reach Canopus so he can board an ancient, orbital sleeper ship and collect a cargo that should give the Krekelens ultimate victory everywhere.

Jon Hawkins and his crew are exhausted and homesick. They've destroyed the alien machine menace, going deep into the Kuiper Belt to annihilate the secret A.I. base. From out here, the sun looks like just another star. It's a lonely existence. They're ready to go home. What they don't know - what no one could - was that the A.I. destroyer was only a scout. More alien vessels drop out of hyperspace. This is an A.I. assault. The clock to human extinction has begun ticking.