Showing results for "Rick" in First Contact

Contains books one and two of The Acheron series: The Acheron and The Prodigal. Sandi and Ash never set out to be heroes. She joined the Fleet to please her mother, the Admiral. He signed up to escape the grinding poverty of the Housing Blocks. And the unlikely friends envisioned boring, peacetime careers as shuttle pilots. The Tahni Imperium had other ideas.

Go to war or go to jail. For small-time street hustler Cam Alvarez, the choice is simple.... He has no family, no friends, no place in the world...nothing to lose. When his latest con results in the death of a cartel hit man, Cam opts to join the Marines and leave Earth to fight a vicious alien enemy. Drafted into the Marine Drop-Troopers, Cam discovers there’s one thing he’s even better at than running street-con games, and that’s killing the enemy.

As a sci-fi author with a hit TV show, I have a few ideas about what alien invaders are supposed to look like. In my stories, they’re technologically advanced monsters, with tentacles, and no faces. Turns out I was right about the technology. And about how angry they’d be. But the way they look is more terrifying than even I could have imagined. They look exactly like us. Because they are us.

All Cam Alvarez has known is war. For three years, he’s fought the marauding alien Tahni on one God-forsaken planet after another, leading a squad of armored Drop Troopers. But the war is about to change. Cam is an officer now, fresh out of OCS and taking charge of his old platoon, and things have reached a tipping point. Instead of fighting a desperate holding action against the enemy, the Commonwealth is finally ready to take back the human colonies the Tahni seized early in the war. To free the people the enemy have kept as human shields.

Cam Alvarez is a Drop-Trooper. A warrior-knight wrapped in the futuristic armor of a high-tech battlesuit, and he’s one of the best. When he’s promoted to sergeant and asked to become a leader, he faces a whole new challenge. The Marines are striking deep into enemy territory, and the casualties are mounting. Cam is torn, knowing his job is to follow orders and carry out the battle plan, even if he doesn’t agree with it. But his squad has become his family, and now he’s being asked to lead his family into battle, knowing it will mean their deaths.

For small-time street hustler Cam Alvarez, the choice is simple. He has no family, no friends, no place in the world...nothing to lose. When his latest con results in the death of a cartel hitman, Cam opts to join the Marines and leave Earth to fight a vicious alien enemy.

The Hive Mind has deceived the Americans and the Thacians into believing they had the strategy that would destroy it once and for all…and instead, they opened the gates through to Thacia and, from there, into the United States. And the demons streamed through by the tens of thousands, too many for artillery and air support to drive them back. The Army and Air Force keep pouring on the hurt, but it’s only a matter of time until they’re forced to do the unthinkable…nuke an American city.

It's the final showdown between Cam and a rogue Tahni general.... And it might be the end of everything. Cam and Vicky are chasing down Zan-Thint to his last fortress, a lifeless world deep in Tahni space. If they can't take him down before he activates an ancient alien weapon, a swarm of biomechanical killing machines will wipe out all life in the Commonwealth.

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. Neither thought the mission would be anything more than babysitting....Until the aliens invaded the colony. Implacable, relentless, merciless - the armored creatures will slaughter anyone. Survival will be the least of their challenges, as Jason and Shannon are forced to weigh the lives of the people they lead, and the ones they love, against their duty, honor, and planet.

The good guys won the battle, but the war goes on. Wash Williams has been recruited to help Brian Reeves and the Delta Force team close gates to the worlds controlled by the Hive-Mind, while back on Thacia, Valon does the same thing from the other side. But new gates continue to open, and unless someone can figure out how to stop the effect, it will keep spreading and the war will never end.

After his mom died from cancer, Wash gave up his girlfriend and his dream of being a career Army officer to stay home and take care of his father, a former Special Forces soldier stricken with PTSD. Wash works three jobs just to pay the bills, and one of them is at the ranch of the man who’s engaged to his exgirlfriend, Jimmy Bonner. Sound rough? He thought so too … until a portal to a hell-world of giant, insectoid aliens opens behind the ranch house, sucking Wash and Jimmy into the nightmare domain of the Hive Mind.

The war with the Tahni has dragged on for over two years, taking its toll on the lives of all involved. On the Aphrodite colony, Marine turned cybernetic commando Ryan Hendrix is readying his civilian militia to make one final strike against the enemy, in what they know could be a suicide mission. Back in Commonwealth space, Travis Miller and his task force have finally been given clearance to take back the occupied colony system, but the Tahni have had a year to prepare their defenses and the price in blood will be dear.

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.

Hausos is a peaceful farming colony. Once controlled by the Tahni, it's now settled by a collection of homeless refugees and war veterans, among them Cam and Vicky. Their life is pleasantly boring, quiet enough for demons from the war to nag at the corners of Cam’s mind on lonely nights. He fights the demons back with willpower and alcohol, determined to make this place home. But the peace doesn’t last.

Travis Miller, his image reformed from the moron who screwed up our first contact with aliens to one of the heroes of the Battle for Eden, is given a new assignment: Retake the occupied colony of Brigantia. Losing it would be a glancing blow to the Tahni Imperium, but it would be Earth’s first solid strike against them, a chance to go on the offensive. Ryan Hendrix and the Fleet Marines will be the tip of the spear, outfitted with their new Aegis-powered armor, while Jessica Leer and her Fleet Strike fighter squadron clear the way for the Marines and their landers.

They came in peace...or so they said. Here are 18 examples of how they lied. This is an exciting collection of first contact science fiction stories, all completely different! Take a risk - venture into the unknown with us. Who is out there? What will they want from us? Come join us in our adventure to find out how first contact pans out. It will be a great adventure!