Showing results by author "Rick Partlow" in All Categories

Cloned from the genes of heroes past, tossed aside when the Army abandoned the program, Nate has seized his own destiny. Forming the Broken Arrow Mercenary Force, he leads a team of hired guns piloting cutting-edge mechs in a last-ditch effort to restore a United States he never knew. America is under siege by the Russians and Chinese, its major cities devastated by nuclear terrorism. The Army has retreated, the politicians have abandoned the east coast, and the only thing standing in the way of total devastation is a handful of mercenaries.

Caleb Mitchell is a human weapon, engineered into a biologically-enhanced killing machine in the war with the alien Tahni. The war is long over and now he just wants to live a normal life as a constable on his homeworld of Canaan...but his life is torn apart when a Corporate Council mineral scout comes to him with a tale of discovering incredibly advanced alien technology from the fabled race known only as the Predecessors. Someone in the monolithic, power-hungry Corporate Council doesn't want that story to get out...and they'll kill anyone to stop it.

From street criminal to war hero. From outcast to Marine officer. The journey has been a long one, but now it’s reaching the end. Cam Alvarez leads his platoon of Drop-Troopers into the Tahni Imperium, into the final days of the war and the bloodiest battles yet. The Tahni will throw everything they have into the defense of their core worlds, and when that includes using their own civilians as shields, Lt. Cam Alvarez will have to decide whether to follow orders and fire on civilians or follow his conscience and risk his caree...

Jason McKay and Shannon Stark, two young Republic Space Fleet Intelligence officers, are given the leadership of a new special ops unit. The mission? Guard the spoiled daughter of an important senator on a tour of the colonies. Neither of them thought the mission would be anything more than babysitting...until the aliens invaded the colony. Implacable, relentless, merciless, the armored creatures slaughter everyone who gets in their way. The team is forced to go on the run with the people they’re supposed to protect.

Caleb Mitchell gave up everything to protect his home. Shunned by friends and family for abandoning the pacifist beliefs of their religion, abandoned by the love of his life, he left his home world of Canaan to go to the Commonwealth Military Academy on Earth and train to fight in the looming war against the implacable alien threat of the Tahni Imperium. When a training mission with a crew of cadets winds up caught in the middle of one of the worst battles of the war, Cal and his fellow students are officially declared dead.

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.

Jack Bennet has done the impossible: collected on a bounty in the notorious Pirate Worlds. He’s earned himself a nice boost to his reputation, a hefty payday...and a cult of enemies hell-bent on revenge. Reaching out to a friend at Fleet Intelligence lands Jack an offer he can’t refuse, but to collect, he’ll have to take the plunge back into the viper’s nest.

The mission couldn't be simpler. It sounds like an easy, straightforward operation to take care of some small-time raiders hijacking black-market weapons shipments in the Pirate Worlds. Former Recon Marine war hero Randall Munroe doesn't need to know why his Corporate bosses care about one group of criminals stealing from another, he just has to do the job. But when Munroe is ordered to lead his crack squad of mercenaries into a gang war on the harsh, ice-covered, barely habitable battleground that is Peboan, he discovers that things are never simple.

Randall Munroe's past won't stay dead. Born Tyler Callas, the pampered heir of a Corporate Council scion, he fled that life and adapted the new identity of Randall Munroe so he could join the Commonwealth Space Fleet Marine Corps' elite Force Recon unit in the war against the alien Tahni Imperium. But when he returned from the war, his old life found him. His mother, Corporate Council Executive Patrice Damiani, tracked him down and tried to return him to her web of control, even if she had to have his personality altered by drugs and psychological brainwashing to do it.

Earth is in turmoil. The enemy is bearing down on us with every warship they have, and our only allies are in chaos. Our one hope for survival is Andy Clanton - a hack science fiction writer trying to convince some aliens that humans are worth saving. It’s an uphill battle, because to the aliens, we are the monsters. We look just like their sworn enemies, the Tevynians, who’ve sworn to wipe out both our civilizations. When everything falls apart and the fate of the galaxy is on the line, can Andy Clanton pull our fat out of the fire?

Caleb Mitchell, Deke Conner, and Kara McIntire return in the latest novel in the star-spanning Birthright series. Travelling back from their mission to the Northwest Passage, having closed off that corridor into our part of space to alien invasion, Cal Mitchell and his friends are now faced by a threat closer to home. When the former DSI commando Robert Chang, known as Cutter, had deceived them into helping him find the legendary Northwest Passage, he'd used all of his resources for his set-up.

Chase and Angel have two of the three artifacts they need to access the ancient alien Archive—humanity’s only hope of defeating the Sunkillers. But getting that third one is going to be near impossible. Because their nemesis, the power-hungry Hart-Klein Consolidated, already has the third key to the Archive...and they won’t be giving it up without a fight. Who can Chase and the rest of the crew of the Tamar turn to for help when their own government thinks they’re outlaws and they have a price on their heads?

Chase Weston was a mercenary. Angel Cortez was an archaeologist. Neither one of them expected to be recruited to save the Earth by an ancient alien AI. But a doomsday machine, the Sunkiller, is heading for Earth at close to the speed of light. And unless they gather the lost alien artifacts needed to destroy it, humanity will be extinct. Unfortunately, those artifacts represent unlimited power - the kind that nations and corporations will kill to possess - and the next one they have to find just happens to be right in the middle of enemy territory.

I thought the hard part of helping the Helta defeat the rampaging Tevynians would be the fighting. How wrong I was. To the Helta, we Earthers look just like the Tevynians, their mortal enemies. And convincing their government to ally with humans may be even beyond the crew of the starship James Bowie. But the clock is ticking, because the Tevynian fleet is bearing down on the Helta homeworld. If we can’t talk the Helta into accepting our help to fight them off, then Helta Prime will fall.... And Earth will be next.

Former Recon Marine Randall Munroe has been working as a hired gun for the Corporate Council for years, doing the dirty work of its Director, Andre Damiani, because he's had no choice - and because Andre is his uncle. But when Damiani gets his hands on incredibly dangerous alien technology, it's time to fight back. Munroe has seen the lost wonders of the ancient alien race, the Predecessors, who vanished tens of thousands of years ago after terraforming hundreds of planets and setting up a system of wormhole jumpgates to allow us access to them.

Join the adventure through dystopian worlds, to outer planets and into a speculative future. Welcome to the Future Days Anthology. Seventeen authors imagine a future with thrilling tales, starships, unlikely heroes, and exotic aliens, all of which combine to make Future Days a must-listen sci-fi fantasy short story collection.

Charlie Travers has been away from home for a long time, fighting to free the galaxy from the tyranny of the Anguilar Empire. But now the Anguilar know where that home is...and it's only a matter of time before they set their sights on Earth, intent on conquest and enslavement. Charlie doesn't have enough troops or supplies to stop them. And there's only one place he can get them.

The Zha'-Rath can control the minds of sentient beings, can turn them into spies, drones and zombies, and nothing can stop them. Except Varnell. Gib's people are immune to the mind control and can deprogram its victims with just their voices. But the Varnell are exiles, treated like the con artists and criminals they've become, not likely to volunteer for a dangerous mission to save all the worlds who've oppressed them for centuries.

Cam is a Marine, not a spy. That’s what he keeps trying to tell Fleet Intelligence. But when he and Vicky signed back up, they agreed to follow orders. And their orders are to keep working for the Corporate Security Force, and find out what the private paramilitary force knows about Zan-Thint's plans to use Predecessor technology against the Commonwealth. Stuck leading a crew of cutthroat mercenaries - who want nothing more than to slaughter the wildcat miners, and take their rhenium ore - Cam and Vicky try to figure out why the Corporate Council is really interested in the mine. 

Cam Alvarez and Vicky Sandoval have pursued the renegade, Tahni Zan-Thint, to his refuge in the outlaw cartels of the Pirate Worlds. On a planet of endless ocean and volcanic fury, Zan-Thint is coming ever closer to learning the secrets of the ancient alien weapons he’s discovered. And if Cam and Vicky can’t stop him, he’ll unleash the wrath of a long-dead civilization on all humanity.