Showing results by publisher "Aethon Audio" in Anthologies & Short Stories

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.

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…that’s more terrifying than even I could have imagined. They look exactly like us. Because they are us.

Dave has been wandering through life for a long time. His day job bores him, and he never seems to be able to meet his family's expectations. The only escape he's ever had is his love of MMORPGs. But when he becomes the subject of a test without even knowing it, he's transported into a game-world called Eloria with no escape.

Opportunities there are few and far between…that is unless you're willing to put on a uniform. For ace-pilot Deborah Allen Riker (a.k.a “Admiral Dare”), life had never been easy. She's defended Earth against countless enemies, both alien and human alike. Now a civilian and academic living on the fringes of civilized space, she has committed herself to a life of solitude and studying a race of long-dead aliens. Everything was great…until she finds herself dragged into a new conflict. A conflict she never saw coming.

Adventurers seek dungeons for riches. Heroes storm great fortresses. Gods clash far above. Arek cooks lasagna and tops it with a dash of finely chopped basil. An orc who has seen more than his fair amount of fighting, Arek wants nothing more than to spend the rest of his days cooking and away from the chaos of combat. However, when Ming and her group of adventurers hire him as their full-time chef, his plans of avoiding violence crumble. He longs to leave his blood-soaked mistakes in his past, but old friends and foes have different ideas.

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.

The Terran Coalition faces repeated and brutal attacks from the repressive League of Sol. To defend his home planet, David trades his dream of becoming a rabbi for a battlefront in the far reaches of space. When particle beams fly, his courage under fire brings quick promotion. But in the lulls between battles when he must confront his soul, David finds a different enemy: the ghosts of those killed under his command. Yet in war, it’s kill or be killed - and the enemy shows no mercy.

The world isn't how they left it. When the bunker airlocks release them after 20 years in hibernation, the survivors find a silent, barren world outside. But they are not alone. There is a presence here, alive in the dust - spirits of the earth, benevolent and malicious as they interact with the human remnant.

Justin is excited to start his new job at an energy mine on a distant planet—until things begin to go wrong. Small things. Annoying glitches in the mining complex's tech. Enough to aggravate him. Enough to notice a connection. When the first miner dies from a tech-related accident, Justin can no longer turn a blind eye. But the mine's brass don't want him digging for answers even though something from the mine's past is lurking beneath the surface...and it wants blood.