This week’s roundup of the newest releases in science fiction features alien invasions, civil wars, space rogues, and, perhaps the most dangerous of all, an experience mercenary seeking to alleviate his boredom.

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Alliance Armada (The Alliance Trilogy #2) – Michael Wallace

After fending off the Adjudicator attack, the Alliance learns that the enemy is preparing a final, exterminating push against the human systems and their allies, the Hroom Empire. To buy time while building their forces, the allies send Captain Jess Tolvern and her sometimes rival, the former pirate Catarina Vargus, in command of a fleet to raid and reconnoiter the aliens’ own home worlds.

They cross the inner frontier into systems torn by novas and black holes to find the aliens, who have hidden themselves in a previously undiscovered system, where they are awakening an ancient machine with the capability of devouring entire starships.

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Civil War (Broken Worlds #3) – Jasper T Scott

Darius vaporized the Cygnian home world to end the war before it began. It didn’t work.

Little does he know, he’s been played for a sucker from the start. Terrible as the Cygnians are, there is a more ruthless enemy manipulating the Union to tear itself apart in a bloody war between the Revenants and the Cygnians.

Darius is surging up the ranks in the Revenant fleet, winning victory after victory, but they’re all hollow with his daughter, Cassandra, frozen in cryo and no way to safely wake her.

As the war draws to its bloody end, the puppeteers behind the conflict appear and reveal that they also hold the strings to Cassandra’s fate. Darius must deal with the Union’s real enemy and make a horrific choice: either save his daughter, or save the galaxy.

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Dogs of War (The Ixan Legacy #3) – Scott Bartlett

The Invasion Has Begun.

The Progenitors are here, and Captain Husher knows the galaxy isn’t ready. He spent his entire military career preparing, but it wasn’t enough.

As the Interstellar Union continues to flail and colony after colony is consumed, Husher must make some impossible choices. About what to save. And what to let fall to the onslaught.

If he can’t find a way to oppose the Progenitors, they will sweep through the multiverse like fire through a parched forest.

It all comes down to this.

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Legend (Four Horsemen Tales #1) – Christopher Woods

At a time when Humans were just starting to venture forth into the Galactic Union as mercenaries, Martin Quincy survived long enough to do something no one else had—he retired.

There was only one problem. He got bored.

After battling aliens for many years—killing aliens and getting paid—retirement didn’t suit him, and he decided to strap on the combat armor and go back to the stars. Along with his old friend Kal, Martin joined Cartwright’s Cavaliers, humanity’s best merc company. Life was exciting!

But he got bored. Again.

What does a ‘Legend’ do when even the merc life gets boring? He starts his own company! Can Martin form a merc company out of non-merc races and stand up for the downtrodden of the galaxy, or has his long string of good luck finally run out? One thing is for sure—with Torvasi and Andori troopers, and a Sirra’Kan princess as his partner, he won’t get bored again!

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The Legend Fulfilled (Seers of Verde #1) – M. L. Williams

Marauders from a renegade planet attack an Earth colony ship forcing landing parties to split into two groups in a desperate attempt to escape. The attackers are killed, but the colonists pay a terrible price—their vessels are destroyed, stranding them without their technology on either side of an imposing mountain range on the planet Verde Grande.

Descendants of a mysterious Seer now protect their people but become the bane of the hunter society on the other side of the mountain. All attempts to scale the mountain are thwarted for two centuries by the powerful Seers who want to preserve their religion and way of life no matter the cost.

One day, a party of hunters sets out to climb the mountain. To their dismay, the Seers cannot control a strange unreachable young woman who finds the passage to their protected valley. The reunion triggers a decades-long conflict between the Seers and the children of the “lost ones”—a struggle that forever changes the people of Verde Grande.

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Mercury Blade (Valyien #1) – James David Victor

On the run with a stolen alien artifact that could ultimately destroy humanity. Chased by the most powerful military force in the galaxy and the most notorious criminal overlord in the sector. No problem for the fastest ship in the known universe.

Eliard Martin is captain of the Mercury Blade, the fastest ship in the galaxy. With his small crew, he travels the stars looking for adventure and profit. When he tries to pull one over on a dangerous criminal overlord, he soon finds himself on a mission that will lead to more danger than he has ever faced before. With the help of a mysterious stranger, who is clearly more than she appears, they will fight to stay one step ahead of the most powerful forces in the galaxy. Can the crew of the Mercury Blade fly their way to freedom or will they be crushed by the opposing forces seeking their demise?

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Negation Force (Obsidiar Fleet #1) – Anthony James

The human Confederation has known an unprecedented time of peace, unheard of in a universe where every other species is not only technologically advanced, but also incredibly hostile.

The good times are about to end.

Out on the fringes, the planet Atlantis is attacked by an alien foe remembered only by the oldest members of the Space Corps. These aliens – known as Vraxar – have conquered thousands of worlds, fighting without cessation against every life form they discover. Now it is humanity’s turn.

The lives of strangers are intertwined and together they must try and salvage something from this first exchange in a war that will not end until one side is utterly defeated. Luckily, the Tillos base holds secrets of its own…a warship with an exceptionally powerful Obsidiar core is contained within an underground bunker. It is the only hope for Atlantis…

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Obscura – Joe Hart

In the near future, an aggressive and terrifying new form of dementia is affecting victims of all ages. The cause is unknown, and the symptoms are disturbing. Dr. Gillian Ryan is on the cutting edge of research and desperately determined to find a cure. She’s already lost her husband to the disease, and now her young daughter is slowly succumbing as well. After losing her funding, she is given the unique opportunity to expand her research. She will travel with a NASA team to a space station where the crew has been stricken with symptoms of a similar inexplicable psychosis—memory loss, trances, and violent, uncontrollable impulses.

Crippled by a secret addiction and suffering from creeping paranoia, Gillian finds her journey becoming a nightmare as unexplainable and violent events plague the mission. With her grip weakening on reality, she starts to doubt her own innocence. And she’s beginning to question so much more—like the true nature of the mission, the motivations of the crew, and every deadly new secret space has to offer.

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Stones of Silence (Cochrane’s Company #1) – Peter Grant

The secret is out – the Mycenae system is the hottest new mineral find in the spiral arm. Now it’s about to become ground zero in a gold rush by every crooked company and asteroid thief in the galaxy.

Andrew Cochrane, with his crew of the finest veterans and cunning rogues, have an even better scheme. They’ve conned the owner into hiring them as a mercenary security company to defend the system. With no oversight but their own, Cochrane’s Company plans to seize the richest pickings for themselves.

But nothing ever comes easy. If they want to keep their loot, they’re going to have to outwit and outfight every smuggler, bandit and renegade after the same prize – and their boss, too!

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Tales from the Canyons of the Damned #24 – edited by Daniel Arthur Smith

This twenty-fourth issue of Tales from the Canyons of the Damned consists of four sharp, suspenseful, thought provoking short stories and one poem-each from a different featured master of speculative fiction.

Mephisto—Hunter C. Eden
The Food Police—Lara Frater
The Three Ds—C.C. Ameel
Ash—Ian Garner
The Lost Tapes–Aubrey Blackburne—Daniel Arthur Smith

Tales from the Canyons of the Damned is a dark science fiction, horror, & slipstream magazine we’ve been working on since 2015. What is Dark Science Fiction and Horror? Think of it as a literary Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, or Outer Limits, it’s Netflix’s Black Mirror and Amazon’s Electric Dreams in the short story format. And it’s a bargain. Each monthly issue has three-to-five sharp, suspenseful, satirical tales from today’s top speculative fiction writers.

These are Dark Sci Fi Slipstream Tales like you’ve never read before.

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Vigilante (Vigilante Chronicles #1) – Natalie Grey and Michael Anderle

One man leaves the life of a lawman behind him and works to clean up a new area in space.

On the planet now known as High Tortuga, the mine workers are far too close to being slaves so the ruler of the planet shut them down. Except for the mine owned by Venfirdri Lan.

He’s taken his mine off the grid and decided to keep everything running. With no need to pay the workers, profits should be good. After all, who’s going to stop him?

He had no idea there was a new type of man working for justice on the planet. A man named Barnabas.

In fact, he didn’t even know who Barnabas was. But he’s about to.

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Once Upon a Time in Gravity City – presented by RiffRaff Publishing

In the far reaches of space, the celestial body known as Nebuna is the home to a metropolis with a bad attitude and an expansive wasteland filled with legends and mystery. The tales you are about to read will give you an unflinching ride through the crime-infested gutters and corruption of GRAVITY CITY and the wondrous world that lies beyond city limits!