Search Worlds Without End

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Warriors (2010), edited by Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin, and was reprinted in Clarkesworld Magazine, #95 August 2014. I can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection (2011), edited by Gardner Dozois, Space Opera (2014), edited by Rich Horton, and Galactic Empires (2017), edited by Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Wilks was a space marine with a near-fatal flaw: he had a heart. Billie was a child, the only survivor of a far-flung colony outpost. Thrown together in the last hellish night of an alien invasion, Billie and Wilks helped each other get out alive. Thirteen years later Wilks is in prison, and Billie lives in a mental institution, the nightmare memories of the massacre at Rim seared into her mind.

Now the government has tapped Wilks to lead an expedition to the aliens' home planet to bring back a live alien. But the competition on Earth to develop the aliens as a new weapons system is brutal. When Wilks's team departs on their mission, a trained assassin trails them. And what follows is no less than guerrilla warfare on the aliens' planet - and alien conquest on Earth!

Wilks, Billie, and Bueller were the last survivors of a devastating assault on the aliens' home planet. But once their retum to the solar system made them refugees once more, fleeing Earth and its alien infestation in a desperate attempt to stay alive. Now, in an otherwise unmanned military transport, they hurtle through space. Destination: unknown.

Little do they know that the cargo they carry with them is a legacy of death that they will ultimately have to face. Nor do they know that they head toward a remote colony and military outpost. This pocket of humanity at the very edges of space is at the mercy of a general names Spears with an agenda all his own. Now Billie, Wilks, and Bueller face a new nightmare, and it is nothing they could ever have imagined: a gift of madness from an alien world, unbalanced mind, and the experiences of a mysterious pilot named Lieutenant Ellen Ripley.

Billie only wanted what all children want -- the warmth and security of family, the human connectedness that comes from belonging. What she got was a nightmare without end.

Ripley is a leader of humanity's forces against a new invasion where aliens have overrun the Earth--and the human population has been abandoned to alien appetites.

A prophecy is fulfilled when Peter Attis is rescued from the Cylons in order to save humanity with "the plague of the tongue." or so it seems...

While harvesting alge for conversion into food, the beleaguered human/refugee fleet is discovered by a small group of Cylon heavy raiders. A brief battle ends with the destruction of a Cylon heavy raider. A colonial issue escape pod found floating among the debrie reveals two survivors inside: Singer Peter Attis...and his captor, a Cylon Number Eight.

Soon after Peter's liberation, people begin babbling incoherently and dropping into comas. Unwittingly, Peter has been spreading a highly contagious, nerve-deteriorating Cylon biological weapon-and he just performed for half the fleet. As Dr Gaius Baltar begins work on a cure, word starts to spread that a fanatical sect believes that Peter is the religious leader who will save humanity and that this virus is their path to salvation. They are willing to do anything to keep Baltar's vaccine from being distributed.

While the fleet is in chaos, a larger Cylon force appears. A weakend humankind, now threatened on two fronts, may be unable to defend itself...

These are times that will test the bounds of the human spirit. A clone with no name or past awakens to a cruel existence, hunted mercilessly for crimes he may never know; yet he stands close to the pinnacle of power in New Eden. A disgraced ambassador is confronted by a mysterious woman who knows everything about him, and of the sinister plot against his government; his actions will one day unleash the vengeful wrath of an entire civilization. And among the downtrodden masses of a corporation-owned world, a man named Tibus Heth is about to launch a revolution that will change the course of history.

The confluence of these dark events will lead humanity towards a tragic destiny. The transcendence of man to the dream of immortality has bred a quest for power like none before it; empires spanning across thousands of stars will clash in the depths of space and on the worlds within. Those who stand before the tides of war, willingly or not, must face the fundamental choices that have been with man for tens of thousands of years, unchanged since the memory of Earth was lost.

This is EVE, The Empyrean Age. A test of our convictions and the will to survive.

We all crave a purpose. A fire to spark our lives into action. It’s this burning life within that drives us to our destinies. But when it burns too deep, or goes unchecked, it can shatter innocent lives in its wake.

A vicious attack on a deep-space mining colony rains death and destruction on nearly all its inhabitants. Only a handful survive. Among the shattered survivors is a young man, hell-bent on an impossible revenge.

In another part of the universe, a wealthy agent of death finds her tenuous grip on sanity slipping, and is forced to leave everything she’s come to know and love. But her last chance at redemption lies in the last place she ever thought to look.

Their respective paths take them through the vast universe of EVE, to galactic empires built on faith, hedonism, discipline, and rebellion. Their fates plunge them into the darkest parts of this galaxy, to encounters with denizens of the chaotic and dangerous pirate kingdoms. And all the while, as each draws closer to what they seek, they begin to realize that the only stakes worth playing for are the ones from which they’ve run so far away. . . .

"There will be neither compassion nor mercy;
Nor peace, nor solace
For those who bear witness to these Signs
And still do not believe."

Book of Reclaiming 25:10

New Eden: the celestial battleground of a catastrophic war that has claimed countless lives.

The immortal starship captains spearheading this epic conflict continue their unstoppable dominance, shaping the universe to their will and ensuring a bloody, everlasting stalemate.

But a powerful empire is on the verge of a breakthrough that could end the war and secure their rule over mankind forever. For deep in a prison reclamation camp, a secret program is underway... one that will unlock dangerous secrets of New Eden's past.

It all begins with inmate 487980-A... Templar One.

Prepare for DUST 514.

Private William Mandella is a hero in spite of himself -- a reluctant conscript drafted into an elite military unit, and propelled through space and time to fight in a distant thousand-year conflict. He never wanted to go to war, but the leaders on Earth have drawn a line in the interstellar sand -- despite the fact that their fierce alien enemy is unknowable, unconquerable, and very far away. So Mandella will perform his duties without rancor and even rise up through the military's ranks... if he survives. But the true test of his mettle will come when he returns to Earth. Because of the time dilation caused by space travel the loyal soldier is aging months, while his home planet is aging centuries -- and the difference will prove the saying: you never can go home....

In the year 2043, the Ngumi War rages. Limited nuclear strikes have been used on Atlanta and two enemy cities, but the war goes on, fought by 'soldierboys' -- indestructible war machines operated by remote control by soldiers hundreds of miles away.

Julian Class is one of these soldiers, and for him war is truly hell. The psychological strain of being jacked-in to his soldierboy -- and the genocidal results -- are becoming too much to bear. Now he and his companion, Dr Amelia Harding, have made a terrifying scientific discovery, which could literally take the universe back to square one. Except that for Julian, the discovery isn't so much terrifying as tempting....

This novella originally appeared in the collection Galactic North (2006). It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection (2007), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Starfleet's most sacred commandment has been violated. Its most honored captain is in disgrace, its most celebrated starship in pieces, and the crew of that ship scattered among the thousand worlds of the Federation...

Thus begins "Prime Directive", an epic tale of the Star Trek universe. Following in the bestselling tradition of "Spock's World" and "The Lost Years", Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens have crafted a thrilling tale of mystery and wonder, a novel that takes the Star Trek characters from the depths of despair into an electrifying new adventure that spans the galaxy.

Journey with Spock, McCoy, and the rest of the former crew of the Starship Enterprise to Talin-- the planet where their careers ended. A world once teeming with life that now lies ruined, its cities turned to ashes, its surface devastated by a radioactive firestorm-- because of their actions. There, they must find out how-- and why-- this tragedy occurred and discover what has become of their captain.

When Shuos Jedao wakes up for the first time, several things go wrong. His few memories tell him that he's a seventeen-year-old cadet -- but his body belongs to a man decades older. Hexarch Nirai Kujen orders Jedao to reconquer the fractured hexarchate on his behalf even though Jedao has no memory of ever being a soldier, let alone a general. Surely a knack for video games doesn't qualify you to take charge of an army?

Soon Jedao learns the situation is even worse. The Kel soldiers under his command may be compelled to obey him, but they hate him thanks to a massacre he can't remember committing. Kujen's friendliness can't hide the fact that he's a tyrant. And what's worse, Jedao and Kujen are being hunted by an enemy who knows more about Jedao and his crimes than he does himself.

"Tortoise and Hare", a novella by Kevin J Anderson, tells the story of Jorie Taylor, who has lived her whole life on the generation ship Beacon. Fleeing an Earth tearing itself apart from its exhaustive demand for resources, the Beacon is finally approaching Sarbras, the planet circling Tau Ceti which they hope to make humanity's new home.

But Earth has recovered from its near-death experience, and is now under the control of a ruthless dictator whose sights are set on Tau Ceti as well. President Jurudu knows how to get what he wants - and he wants Sarbras. He sends the military ship Conquistador, which uses newly-developed FTL (faster-than-light) technology, to ensure that he gets it.

In the sequel novelette "Grasshopper and Ants" by Steven Savile, Jorie is now the eleventh captain of the generation ship Beacon, which has at last reached its destination, the colony planet Sarbras. But one by one, the colonists come down with a mysterious, undiagnosible illness. And the Conquistador's arrival is imminent.

Tau Ceti won the 2013 "Lifeboat to the Stars" Award as the best work of science fiction contributing to an understanding of the benefits, means, and difficulties of interstellar travel.

Still reeling from the alien plagues that killed two-thirds of the planet's population, humanity now confronts the most deadly enemy Earth has ever known?the giant man-eating Chtorr. Lieutenant James McCarthy has grown to manhood under the shadow of the terrifying invasion of the Chtorr. As a student, he learned all he could to understand their alien behavior. As a Special Forces commando, he made violent first contact. Now this battle-hardened warrior faces a profound challenge. Captured by an anarchistic band of men and women known as renegades, McCarthy must secretly gather vital information while fighting indoctrination into their cult?which serves and worships the Chtorr.