Showing results by author "Vaughn Heppner" in All Categories

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 Earth died when aliens rained thermonuclear warheads on her cities and sprayed the surface with a bio-terminator. A deadly poison drifted to every corner of the planet, threatening the last survivors with annihilation. For a soldier like Creed, there is only one way to keep breathing untainted air. He must bury his hatred of the extraterrestrials and join the Jelk Corporation as an assault trooper, leaving the planet for outer space. In return for his and other people's services, the corporation will house the last humans for as long as the assault troopers keep winning.

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.

We fought the invading New Men to a standstill and defeated the alien destroyer sent to obliterate Earth. The worst should be over, but it's not. Perfect android replicas are impersonating high-level officials so trust is failing. Worse, the New Men have found allies with an impenetrable stealth technology. This time, however, Earth is going on the offensive. Admiral Fletcher is headed to C Quadrant with a Grand Fleet. He's to liberate the captured planets and find the enemy homeworld.

We don't know when it happened. But somewhere an alien species built a strong artificial intelligence. The A.I. became independent, powerful, and it started killing biological infestations - life - any life, all life. It grew into a vast armada of death. Jon Hawkins and his team captured the A.I. destroyer invading the solar system. The genocidal assault should have been over, but it's not. An alien A.I. strand from the cybership survived in the distant Kuiper Belt. The strand has been multiplying and taking over by turning people into robots in order to build another supership.

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.

Long ago, the Builders ruled the stars, using a unique super-science to create marvels and wonders. But the Builders vanished - no one knows why - leaving many of their treasures hidden throughout the galaxy. Now, Captain Maddox and arrogant New Men learn about the fabled Library Planet. Legend holds it’s an ancient repository of Builder knowledge. The side that plunders the planetary vaults first will surely become the premier power in the Orion Spiral Arm.

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.

Androids used to mingle among us, pretending to be human. Then an alien puppet-master altered their programming. Unknown to us, androids began leaving human society, burning their clothes and peeling off their skin to reveal the chrome-colored bodies underneath. They gathered in a system were a star had exploded, blowing away the atmosphere of a Jupiter-like planet. The supernova had hurled heavy metals against the remaining core. The androids are mining supermetals that can turn ordinary ship weapons and shields into invincible armaments.

Starship Victory, a faithful alien spacecraft guarding its shattered system for 10,000 years, agreed to come to Earth. Now Captain Maddox and his crew have a new assignment. They must find Professor Ludendorff before the New Men do. The New Men need Ludendorff's help so they can capture the alien starship. Maddox needs the neglected superweapons repaired so he can rescue a Star Watch fleet trapped deep in enemy territory.

His code name is Nostradamus, and he’s an ancient alien super-intelligence awakened by pesky humans crawling upon his planet. He decides to use these low-grade morons, testing some, making the special ones his agents and sending them into Star Watch to make the military organization his own. It’s an insidious assault from within, run by a creature with fantastic predictive powers against what he considers an infantile species.

It came from deep space. It sent the signal. Now our computers are killing us, helping the enemy drive us into extinction. But some of us refuse to die. We fight back. We learn. Jon Hawkins revives from cryogenic sleep in a drifting SLN battleship. The crew is dead and the main computer has been destroyed. Jon is a soldier, the start of the resistance, the one man with the will to beat the alien death machines that have terminated 1000 races. This is our hour as we face the ultimate evil, the galactic destroyer of life.

Star Watch stands guard over the Commonwealth, having defeated New Men, massed Swarm fleets and android attackers. The victories have cost lost ships, slain crews, and smashed star systems. The accumulated damage means that Star Watch now strains to keep order as political instability, increased space piracy and rebellions stretch the stellar organization to the limit. Humanity desperately needs peace so Star Watch can rebuild and regroup. Unfortunately, Lord Drakos is searching the Beyond for a splinter Swarm colony world.

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.

You ever have one of those days? U.S. Marine Sergeant Jake Bayard did when he has to cancel a hot date to board a transport plane to the South Pole, which is hijacked by aliens with hostile intent to Earth. Bayard escapes into tunnels deep under the ice and stumbles upon advanced technology that teleports him to Epsilon Eridani. Desperately alone and on the run, Bayard falls back onto his combat training, soon discovering that these aliens keep human herds for meat. That’s it. He enlists some of the downtrodden and declares war against the hungry oppressors.

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.

Across the lonely depths of space from their spiral arm, Leviathan has begun infiltrating agents into Star Watch as a prelude to invasion. One team has cloned a kidnapped Captain Maddox, intending for the clone to take his place on Victory. The first Maddox learns of this is when his clone unfreezes him on a spaceliner. Maddox and his clone decide to team up.

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.

At Omicron 9, Professor Ludendorff unearthed artifacts of the fabled Old Ones. During a meeting in a subterranean chamber, a portal appeared and aliens attacked, perhaps to kidnap the professor or grab the artifacts. Maddox’s new intuitive sense gave him just enough warning. He saved Ludendorff and rushed into the portal to forestall any more assaults - and thus began his lonely odyssey from one strange place to another. Maddox eventually found a Builder potential unit, and they resolved to work together. But the unit betrayed him and then Victory.

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.