Space Adventures Science

Less than two months into his ten years of active-duty service to the Hegemony of Velvet Stars as an adept, and Desmond McLaughlin has already gotten himself embroiled in even more trouble. He's settled in just fine aboard his ship, the Fist of Defiance, and made plenty of friends. But it wouldn't be life if there weren't a few bad apples mixed in. Having clashed several times—once in a very physical fashion—with Adept Windracer, Desmond can only hope that the overly aggressive Uth'ra will stop trying to force him into the mold that she believes a male should occupy.

When petty criminal Cal Carver is locked in a cell with a deranged, semi-naked cannibal, he suspects his life has hit its lowest point. He is mistaken. Abducted by aliens and whisked across the galaxy, Cal is thrown into a team of misfits and criminals and sent on a top secret mission for the president of Space. And that's when everything starts to go very, very wrong....

The newly renamed Vance Turbo has sabotaged his own career at Space Fleet Academy due to a desire to atone for a training accident. Unfortunately, his actions result in him getting press-ganged into an expendable crew of misfits recruited by a legendary starship captain. Their mission? To recover a collection of lost sun-destroying missiles that could restart a galactic war. Unfortunately, Vance is smart enough to know something is wrong with this picture. After all, no sane person would recruit this crew to save the universe.

Nora Devi is a xeno-archaeologist with a complicated past. She has buried more secrets than she’s dug up. Widowed in the recently ended twelve year war between Capitoline and Palantine, she now makes a living as an independent tagger in border space. Captain Liam Kimani could be credited with ending the latest royal war. Instead, he’s blamed for it. Dirty commoners aren’t meant to lay their hands on royalty. He has no regrets.

Expect fast-paced action, aliens, and more aliens, planet hopping, a mysterious quest, and a bossy spaceship who likes to meddle. Includes all four books in the Space Gypsy Chronicles.

Just hours after setting foot on a new planet, Cal and the crew find themselves caught up in an interplanetary kidnapping plot. Reuniting the suspiciously silent young victim with her parents on their far-off home world will make Cal rich beyond his wildest dreams. Unfortunately, half the pirates and bounty hunters in the galaxy have the same idea, and they're more than happy to take the girl by force.

The galaxy just called for help. Unfortunately, the wrong man answered. When small-time conman, Cal Carver, is thrown in jail and forced to share a cell with a semi-naked cannibalistic serial killer, he's pretty sure his day can't get any worse. Boy, is he wrong. It isn't until two-thirds of the human race is wiped out and Cal is mistakenly abducted by aliens that things really start to go downhill.

Ruthless bankers are breathing down their necks, vengeful warlords are promising to pursue them across the galaxy, and now a mysterious new client wants Rade and his Argonauts to escort her to a frontier planet. Problem is, the new client won't reveal her cargo. It's probably something illegal. Well, Rade needs the money, so a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. They arrive to find the frontier colony strangely deserted. When the shit hits the fan and the Argonauts face a possible alien infestation, it's time to pull out the big guns.

It's been eighty years since Thorn split his people into six societies spread across the galaxy. He's known all that time a timeline shift was coming, and the role he needed to play when it did. The mages of his world are ready, including his great-great nephew, Bud. For Bud, living in the shadow of his legend relative hasn't really been an issue, and his role in the timeline shift is supposed to be minor. But Kali has an agenda, magic has its own agenda, and since Thorn is old, and tired of his people's reliance on him, he too has an agenda.

With their vast cargo holds and a crew that could fill a city, the Greatships are the lifeblood of human-occupied space, transporting an unimaginable volume - and value - of goods from City, the greatest human orbital, all the way to Tradepoint at the other, to trade for xenoglas with an unknowable alien species. It has always been Marca Nbaro's dream to achieve the near-impossible: escape her upbringing and venture into space.

They were humanity's last hope. As the majority of Earth's population uploaded their consciousnesses to embrace digital immortality—free from illness and death in the simulated Metaverse—the Beta Explorers were tasked with expanding their presence throughout the galaxy. They terraformed worlds and created colonies so that humans could live and thrive in physical environments.

Sick of the stress, aggravation, and multiple genocides they've had to put up with lately, accidental space hero Cal Carver and his crew set off to start a new life in a distant corner of the galaxy. Six tedious days of warp-speed and board games later, they arrive in a sector filled with new hope, new opportunities, and new adventures. Too broke to take advantage of any of these things, they are forced to accept a series of increasingly demeaning jobs just to make ends meet.

Ex-Army paratrooper Griffin “Fin” Brooks thought he left danger behind when his battlefield injuries forced him to pursue a new career in marine biology. But one fateful night off the coast of South Africa, a ship nearly crashes into him and his loyal golden retriever, Jacques. Not just any ship. A starship. Though its alien pilot is dead, the rare extraterrestrial animal inside is not. Fin learns the creature is being smuggled across the galaxy when a pair of interstellar visitors respond to the crash. But those same investigators accuse Fin and his dog of crimes he didn’t even know existed.

Born to oppression, Siena is an ordinary young woman, until an act of defiance leaves her scarred and marked as a rebel. She's sold to Ero, a fallen Krey with a desperate plan to redeem his once-powerful family. He intends to enhance slaves by altering their genetic code, increasing their value through an illegal experiment.

Five years ago, the US Space Force became a reality. And while those writing the checks took things very seriously, the other military branches did not. As a result, Space Force was populated by undesirables. My name is Captain Ethan Stone, a decorated member of SEAL Team Six turned Space Force "recruit". Flash forward five years and between tenses. President West is in office. Power has shifted. And Space Force is defunded. With just a handful of us still living on base, we find ourselves being evicted. But before all of us can leave, aliens invade.

The Sa’Nerra were close to defeat, then everything changed. Armed with a neural weapon, the brutal alien warriors turned Fleet crew against their own. Entire warships went rogue. Suspicion and fear ran riot. Surrender seemed like the only option. But Lucas Sterling knows that in the fight against the Sa’Nerra there is only victory or death.

After failing the most important exam of his life, Kyle is forced into a VR war. Now, he fights on the front lines as cannon fodder for what he always assumed was the government, losing a little part of his memories with every virtual death.

When Ishmael takes a crew of academy cadets into the Toe Holds, he's unprepared for the level of trouble green hands can get into. Meanwhile, their academy liaison discovers what can go wrong when you learn the wrong lessons and try to teach the wrong students. Will they all make it back to the academy before somebody accidentally takes a short walk out the airlock without a suit?

Alien mysteries. Parental responsibilities. The scout ship Kangaroo has jumped into trouble. Nora Devi intended to leave her old life behind. But when a quick detour to acquire the funds for a new identity goes awry, she finds herself plunged ever deeper into the troubles she hoped to avoid.

A collection of short stories gathered from the far reaches of the Space Team Universe. Some of these stories have been available elsewhere over the past few months, while others are new for this collection.