Showing results by author "Rick Partlow" in All Categories

Sanctuary. The perfect refuge from the enemy, the most closely held secret of the resistance, the planet has never been found, never been attacked. Until now. Charlie Travers has been preparing to strike at the Anguilar with the help of the US military, intent on going on the offense, but no battle plan survives contact with the enemy...particularly not when that enemy is General Zan-Tar.

Jack Bennet returns from the war to find the life he left behind has moved on without him. The only option he has to make ends meet lies in a military surplus junkyard starship. What’s a former Combat Search and Rescue soldier to do? Fix up the ship, hire the cheapest pilot—a notorious drunk—and take the first contract that comes up: collect a bounty on one of the most ruthless killers in the Pirate Worlds, a place crawling with thieves, cutthroats and con artists whose primary language is violence. Jack must abandon his nice guy persona, or exploit it, if he is to survive.

General Bradstreet and the American forces on Mars have defeated the incursion by the insectoid Seekers, but at a heavy cost. The Morrigan is nearly out of reaction mass and can’t make it back to Earth, both landers have been destroyed and they have greater than fifty percent casualties. They’re stranded on Mars, saved only by the shelter of the Visitor ship. Until, miraculously, help arrives in the form of a new alliance with the French Coalition government, which provides a resupply ship filled with food, fuel, and reinforcements… both US Marines and French Special Forces. They’re saved.

It was every starship captain’s nightmare, and for Travis Miller, it was his own personal hell. He’d done everything by the book, but when the Tahni had attacked him and his crew, there was no choice but to return fire and destroy the first alien vessel humans had ever encountered. Excoriated in the press, his career in shambles, Travis is exiled to a long patrol of the outer colony worlds. Forgotten, except as a bad example...until the Tahni prove him right by declaring war on the human commonwealth.

The war is over...or that's what everyone thinks. Cam knows better. The Skrela are wiped out, but only Cam and Vicky know the truth, that Dwight and the other AI like him created the monstrous enemy to destroy the Predecessors. Burdened with this terrible secret, Cam must somehow maintain the tenuous peace between the humans and the Tahni until he and his Marines can return home.

Charlie Travers figures his life can’t get much worse. He lives over a pizza restaurant, he’s lost his girlfriend, and has no prospects for a career. Then, he’s abducted by an alien robot and taken across the galaxy. When he wakes up, he finds himself stranded thousands of light-years away, and about to be killed by space pirates.

Hard times make for strong men, and Antonin Murdock’s childhood was as rough as it gets. Now, he’s a Ranger, the only law for colonists seeking their fortune far from home. Murdock’s investigation into a missing freighter takes him to Coracaesium, a world he discovers has been turned into a stronghold by brutal pirate forces. They are more organized than anything he’s seen before, equipped with advanced weaponry, and led by a tactical and strategic genius.

Charlie has accepted a commission in the US Army and the duty to build Earth's defenses before the Anguilar return for a larger attack to conquer his homeworld once and for all. But Giblet has other ideas. Obsessed with revenge against the Anguilar General Zan-Tar for the death of the woman he loved, Gib steals a starfighter and sets off on a suicide mission for the heart of the Anguilar Empire. Charlie is forced to make a decision: do his duty to his home and his people...or race to save his friend on the road of vengeance.

Go to war or go to jail. For small-time street hustler Cam Alvarez, the choice is simple.... He has no family, no friends, no place in the world...nothing to lose. When his latest con results in the death of a cartel hit man, Cam opts to join the Marines and leave Earth to fight a vicious alien enemy. Drafted into the Marine Drop-Troopers, Cam discovers there’s one thing he’s even better at than running street-con games, and that’s killing the enemy.

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.

After his mom died from cancer, Wash gave up his girlfriend and his dream of being a career Army officer to stay home and take care of his father, a former Special Forces soldier stricken with PTSD. Wash works three jobs just to pay the bills, and one of them is at the ranch of the man who’s engaged to his exgirlfriend, Jimmy Bonner. Sound rough? He thought so too … until a portal to a hell-world of giant, insectoid aliens opens behind the ranch house, sucking Wash and Jimmy into the nightmare domain of the Hive Mind.

Forced out of the Marshals and into the life of a freelance bounty hunter, Grant Masterson skirts the edges of the law, hunting down the ones responsible for framing him. When his latest hunt leads him to a conspiracy of cyborg cultists, renegade AI and genetically engineered psychics, Masterson may have to choose between his own survival...and his quest for retribution.

If you’re going to fight a space war, you have to have spaceships. Charlie has a headquarters, a purpose, and an army…everything you need to build a resistance. Except warships. The Anguilar have plenty, but they also know the resistance will be coming after them, and they’ve set a hardened killer to hunt down Charlie.

Charlie and the others hadn’t set out to free the galaxy, but fate had other plans...and so did the ancient AI robot, Lenny, who brought them together. And brought them to Sanctuary. Now, a whole planet of Copperell refugees looks to Charlie for leadership, and his first task as their commander is to find weapons to arm the AI-guided zoo ships that are their only military fleet. And only the Anguilar have the weapons they need.

The war with the Tahni has dragged on for over two years, taking its toll on the lives of all involved. On the Aphrodite colony, Marine turned cybernetic commando Ryan Hendrix is readying his civilian militia to make one final strike against the enemy, in what they know could be a suicide mission. Back in Commonwealth space, Travis Miller and his task force have finally been given clearance to take back the occupied colony system, but the Tahni have had a year to prepare their defenses and the price in blood will be dear.

You can’t fight a war without guns. Charlie and his friends need to arm their ship, but they have a small problem—black market particle cannons cost a lot of money. And they don’t have any. Which leaves them only one option. They have to steal the guns from the Anguilar Empire. It’s a daring plan, but it backfires when Laranna is captured by the enemy and taken back to her homeworld of Strada, which has been conquered and garrisoned by the Empire.

Travis Miller, his image reformed from the moron who screwed up our first contact with aliens to one of the heroes of the Battle for Eden, is given a new assignment: Retake the occupied colony of Brigantia. Losing it would be a glancing blow to the Tahni Imperium, but it would be Earth’s first solid strike against them, a chance to go on the offensive. Ryan Hendrix and the Fleet Marines will be the tip of the spear, outfitted with their new Aegis-powered armor, while Jessica Leer and her Fleet Strike fighter squadron clear the way for the Marines and their landers.

Murdock’s investigation into a missing freighter takes him to Coracaesium, a world he discovers has been turned into a stronghold by brutal pirate forces. They are more organized than anything he’s seen before, equipped with advanced weaponry, and led by a tactical and strategic genius.

Logan Conner has given up the life of a warrior prince to become Jonathan Slaughter, a mercenary captain of a rough-and-ready band of mech-jocks for hire. Already legendary throughout the Periphery, their next job brings them head to head with the Jeuta, militant aliens who seek to loot and plunder isolated human colony worlds. The fearsome Jeuta raiders will task Logan to his limits, but they’re only a sideshow to Wholesale Slaughter’s real operation objective - locating a treasure trove at the legendary Terminus Cut outpost.

Terribly wounded during the battle for Hermes, Ryan Hendrix was repaired with cybernetics, transformed into a weapon by Fleet Intelligence...and covertly dropped onto the enemy-occupied colony at Aphrodite to sabotage the enemy and build up a civilian resistance. While Ryan fights the real battle behind enemy lines, Travis Miller and Jessica Leer struggle with politics...and their new commands.