Showing results by author "Vaughn Heppner" in All Categories

Through desperate tactics and by deliberately keeping a low profile, we survived the machine assaults longer than any human or cybership thought possible. But now our luck has deserted us. The main A.I. brain-core has just given human extinction top priority. The robots are massing an armada to exterminate us. We’ve done what we could in expectation of this grim day, grabbing enemy factory planets to mass produce warships. And we found an ally, the Star Lords of Roke. But it’s just not enough, damn it.

This may be Victory’s eeriest voyage yet as the starship plunges into a bizarre nebula of weird compacted gases. They’re hunting for Valerie Noonan, last seen at the destroyed Adok homeworld searching for survivors. The nebula holds dark secrets, ones that fight back with mass hypnosis and heavy lasers, seeking the crew’s enslavement and worse. Maddox desperately needs his new intuitive sense and fighting skills as he negotiates the treacherous space reefs, alien deceit, and sinister technology. And he risks everything for what his AI companion Galyan desires most.

Starship Victory - Earth's ancient, alien spacecraft - has won a smashing victory against the New Men, driving them from "C" Quadrant. On their way home, Captain Maddox and his crew run into a vast machine trapped inside an ion storm. Maddox doesn't know it yet, but the meeting isn't an accident. There's a traitor aboard ship, implementing a secret plan, threatening to destroy everything Star Watch has achieved against the New Men.

In this controversial book, Vaughn Heppner explores the theme of a shattered America facing the onslaught of the new colossus in the East: Greater China. The time is 2032, and the Chinese are crossing the polar ice and steaming through the Gulf of Alaska. They have conquered oil-rich Siberia and turned Japan into a satellite state. Now a new glacial period has begun, devastating the world’s food supply. China plans to corner the world’s oil market and buy the needed food for their hungry masses.

Last voyage, Captain Maddox entered a distant star system with a Swarm fleet. The sheer numbers were staggering, a 100-1 advantage against all human spacecraft. If the highly aggressive, racist insects gained hyper-spatial tube technology - allowing them to cross 1,000 light-years in seconds - it would mean Armageddon for Earth. Star Watch desperately needs something powerful to offset the annihilating Swarm numbers. As if on cue, Professor Ludendorff declares he has discovered the whereabouts of ancient Builder technology, a tech so potent it could defeat the Swarm.

We defeated the invading death machines. But at a devastating cost, with smoldering radioactive craters on Mars, shattered moon-domes around Jupiter and floating junk where Saturn's satellite cities used to orbit. We know more killing machines are coming and that the ultimate outcome seems hopeless. To win this war, we need more warships, more soldiers, and a way to take the fight to the enemy.

Maddox and the crew are on their own, facing perils inside the ship and terrifying alien dangers outside in one of the remotest regions of the Orion Arm. Then they stumble upon the darkest secret of all. Unless the A.I. Galyan, Meta, Sergeant Riker and the others can help their beleaguered captain, Victory is doomed and Earth will never learn of the terrible threat gathering in the stellar darkness.

AD 2457. The longest space voyage in history has begun: 230 light years from a ravaged Earth to the pristine star system of New Eden - a beacon of hope following the Doom Star days. Aboard the ship are human colonizers, the Space Navy, fierce “Monitors” once bred to fight Cyborgs, and four “Specials” - humans with psionic abilities, capable of ripping holes in space to jump vast distances.

Captain Maddox is marooned on a harsh alien planet 6000 light years from Earth. He struggles alone, desperate to survive, knowing that failure will forever cost him his wife and daughter. But there’s more at stake than Maddox’s life. In the planet is a relic of unimaginable power and the secret to the Builders’ demise. The Mastermind has sent Iris, his human lover, and a team of intelligent canine killers, to retrieve the relic for his greatness.

Logan and the survivors of America’s Counter Alien Unit are stranded on an empty alien space station near Saturn. Luckily, a Galactic Guard dreadnought is coming. They believe the ship belongs to the Galactics that have quarantined Earth for over 6000 years. Logan hopes to join the Guard and see the stars, and escape those on Earth trying to kill him. But when the dreadnought arrives, the captain beams giant killer apes with laser rifles onto the station. The captain, a criminal hijacker, hopes to loot the Earth of lost Polarion technology.

They came from the brightest star in the southern constellation of Carina. First they studied us. Now they're among us, threatening human existence as they search for the Starcore, the greatest device of the lost Polarions. Logan is captured in the Nevada desert but escapes in Greenland. There he finds an extraterrestrial stealth ship, giving him the means to take the battle to the enemy.

Despite being all alone - the only one of his kind - Bast Banbeck has generously helped humanity time and again against the death machines, saving us from extinction. Years ago, Jon Hawkins promised Bast that he would hunt for and save the Sacerdotes in return. But the homesick Bast is losing hope, drowning his sorrows in extended drinking bouts. Now, Intelligence learns there are Sacerdote prisoners 162 light-years away. Jon leads the rescue operation, using the void to slip undetected into enemy territory.

The invasion of California has begun, threatening to trigger World War III.

Greater China and its South American allies control Mexico, and their armies are poised on the Rio Grande, ready for the next phase of the North American conquest. It is 2039. The Chinese are launching their secret weapon against the American border fortifications. At the same time, an amphibious fleet steams toward San Francisco. The Chinese have formed the Pan Asian Alliance and signed a war-pact with the South American Federation. Glacial cooling has brought the Earth to the brink of starvation. Now, U.S. soil is the most valuable commodity in the world....

Jake Bayard led tormented Neanderthals in a successful slave revolt on the planet Garm. But when the Corporation owners fled, they took all the women with them. The Neanderthals are blaming Bayard for their lack of mates, and every day that passes is making the lonely brutes angrier. Bayard needs a solution fast, or his former friends are going to string him up. He decides to risk a raid onto Saddoth where millions of Ophidians eat and keep herds of meat Neanderthals. He can only take nine with his traveling power—nine to free nubile females for the Neanderthals of Garm.

Kazz is a genuine Neanderthal and Philemon is an apish proto-human, two thugs with priceless information to sell to the highest alien bidder. But first they have to get off this backward planet. They hijack Logan's Guard ship, needing it to crack an ancient alien structure at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, believing it will provide them the ticket out of here. What they don't know is that the structure holds a terrifying alien prisoner that could doom the human race to eternal servitude - and if they did know, they wouldn't care.

Jon Hawkins and his crew are exhausted and homesick. They've destroyed the alien machine menace, going deep into the Kuiper Belt to annihilate the secret A.I. base. From out here, the sun looks like just another star. It's a lonely existence. They're ready to go home. What they don't know - what no one could - was that the A.I. destroyer was only a scout. More alien vessels drop out of hyperspace. This is an A.I. assault. The clock to human extinction has begun ticking.

Billions died before humanity clawed its way up from the brink of extinction, defeating the aliens that treated us like mere beasts. After years of agonizing toil and hardship, we have finally built a first-rate fleet, forcing our hostile neighbors to accept our freedom. But in the center of the galaxy, a bitterly vengeful woman discovers the secret of the Plutonians. She is going to awaken them so the extraterrestrials can attack us with the deadliest ships in existence. If the Plutonians destroy our fleet, the others will surely swarm in like locusts and kill us.

Earth becomes too hot for Jake Bayard. Too many shape-shifting aliens and people, including those on his own side, are trying to capture him in order to use his star-traveling abilities for their own greedy ends. Bayard flees to Kaldar, a world devastated by atomic war and lousy with mutated rat-men and the Dark Brotherhood. At first, he’s just trying to stay alive. Then, he uncovers a mystery, one that, incredible as it seems, reaches all the way back to Earth. It could mean the alien enslavement of everyone, which means that Bayard is fighting for more than just his own survival.

The hive-like soldiers of Social Unity invade Tanner's world. After a bitter fight, a handful of freedom fighters make it off-world to continue the resistance from space. One by one, Social Unity eliminates the freedom fighters until only Tanner and his ship are left. Then, they trap him on a luxury space station. From prison, Tanner makes a deal with a mysterious Earthman, Lord Acton. The Earthman is vague about a stealth mission on the galactic rim, but Tanner is desperate.

Years ago, Main 54s brain-core had to flee his exploding planet-sized warship because of the treachery of Jon Hawkins. Later, Main 54 gained special processors, a new warship - something changed in him...greater clarity of purpose and superior combat skills. He has been taking over the AI Dominion around here ever since. Now, his brilliant calculations reveal it is time to destroy the Confederation with a super fleet. Jon is on a desperate mission in the void seeking clues for making the alien Subspace Teleport Device work.