Showing results by publisher "Hannon Books, Inc." in Science Fiction & Fantasy

The conclave continually pressures the Imperium Empire by ousting peacekeepers and Radag mercenaries from imperial territories. This interdicts resources bound for Krackus worlds from the suborned races and exacerbates Imperium distribution protocols. On Jegstrat, a populous Krackus world, declining grain shipments lead to favoring distribution to large companies. Saboteurs plan to slow production at Imperial Grains, the largest processing plant. The goal is to rebalance grain distribution, but the attack goes terribly awry, causing death and great damage.

Trouble infiltrated the Harakens' capital city of Espero, in the form of New Terra criminal gangs who grew wealthy and powerful on the moons of Ganymede, hiding behind the cover of an ill-conceived mining charter. The gangs brought stims and addictive hallucinogenic drugs to Espero, distributing them to the young on the planet.

Opportunity is presented to Admiral Cordelia. Imperium’s Presiding Executor Gaketork sends emissaries to establish communications with her, and she responds by installing a comm system aboard the executor’s transport. The Imperium governor, who has become sentient, uses the new comm system to send her critical data. Cordelia shares the governor’s information with newly assembled Trident squadron commanders. She directs the commanders to scour another executor’s territory and free suborned worlds of mercenary Radags and Krackus overseers.

Outpost One: Resistance, the peacekeeping station in alliance space, is mired in political turmoil and dangerous conditions from the Colony, a race of giant devouring insectoids. Commander Jess Cinders and Admiral Lucia Bellardo fight the troubles besieging the outpost from multiple directions. Sand serpents, Usaanans, are suspected of undercutting outpost contracts, necessitating Major Sam Fleetfoot investigate the source of their production.

The sisters’ leader, Miriamal, and three mining chairpersons investigate an unexplored wormhole for possible economic expansion. Aboard the Dominance, they exit the wormhole and are stunned to find the nearby system inhabited. More troubling, technologically advanced warships hold station above the system’s exoplanet. SADEs witness the hasty return of the Dominance and the cessation of messages between Miriamal and Lisa Dyehouse. The Truth Matters partners race against time to save Samuel, and they’re not above leveraging an unreliable criminal hacker.

The Omnian expeditionary fleet sails for the faraway place they call "the wall". The worlds of humankind have consolidated their resources to create a powerful armada to confront the alien federation. During the Omnians' previous encounter with an alien fleet at the wall, the Nua'll comm sphere spoke to them in multiple languages. When the messages were deciphered by SADEs, the humans' digital friends, the Omnians realized two things. One, they would face a vast empire composed of hundreds of races, and, two, the Nua'll were not the leaders of the federacy. They had spoken of masters.

The Queller race has lived for millennia in isolation. However, a secret kept by the Queller senior elder and a few associates drives the elder to make contact with another race. Little do the Quellers know that they send a QASAP ship, an autonomous search ship, to engage the conclave. Not detecting an aggressive society, Julien chooses to accept the autonomous ship’s invitation, and a small fleet commanded by Commodore Tocknicka follows the QASAP’s star map to the Queller home world.

Cremsylon and his companions visited the center of the Imperium Empire. That provided an opportunity for Kreus, the first Krackus SADE, to contact the Imperium governor, an AI who controls the planet’s communications. It’s also the repository for the empire’s critical data. The visit to Imperium happens, not once, but twice. Each time, Kreus spends time perusing the governor’s records, invasions that the AI is incapable of stopping. These intrusions initiate an odd sequence of events.

Tensions escalate across the Imperium Empire. Dwerves hunt for new Krackus worlds to raid. The Imperium executors hope to put an end to the huge armed ship’s rampage, and they delegate the duty to those imperators with the most experience against the empire’s invaders.

Dangerous forces are at work across galactic space that the Omnians are attempting to stabilize, but their resources are severely strained. The SADEs, self-aware digital entities, express to Alex Racine and Renée de Guirnon their desire to know the method of their creation. Alex and Renée, the Omnian co-leaders, want to obtain the knowledge for the SADEs, who are humans’ closest allies. Alex, Renée, and Julien, a friend and a SADE, board the giant city-ship, Freedom, which sails for Méridien, the home world of the far-reaching human colonies of the Confederation.

Until the Confederation created Allora, it had produced SADEs (self-aware digital entities) for hundreds of years with enormous consistency and harnessed their capabilities to power the society. But this particular young SADE was disturbed by her confinement. Trapped in metal-alloy housing on the bridge of a luxury passenger liner, Allora sought to possess the same freedom enjoyed by humans, who came and went from her starship with abandon.

The great spheres and probes of Artifice, humankind's enemy, haunt every inhabited world near and far. The Omnians' long and arduous search for Artifice has ended. They've located Artifice's lair in the Talus system.

The Imperium executors are incensed. They thought to expel the empire’s invaders in a massive onslaught of powerful battleship fleets, the peacekeepers, but the attack failed miserably. Blame is tossed among the assembly.

Escalation is the watchword for the dangerous contest between the Imperium and the conclave. Executors seek the means to push the conclave out of the empire, and desperate measures are taken to design and construct new ships, which are armed with a terrible weapon.

Alex Racine, who led an elite group of humans and SADEs (self-ware digital entities), left the newly discovered planet of Celus-5 under difficult circumstances. Few of the Harakens with Alex thought there was little he could do to bring peace to the embroiled planet. From their viewpoint, the demands of the Celus-5 Swei Swee, the six-legged aliens of the ocean, and the Dischnya, the warring, doglike, intelligent creatures who inhabited the dry plains, were too convoluted to solve.

Talus, the system comprised of Toralians and the Sisterhood, is under siege. Massive battleships, each ferrying an envoy from a federacy race, surround the Talusian home world Toral. Two wedges, each comprised of nine federacy battleships, wait outside the system. The sisters, whom the SADEs created during the fight to defeat Artifice, possess advanced tech.

After the passage of two decades, the Omnians discovered a second, critical clue about the Nua'll, humankind's enemy, while investigating Celus-4, the home world of the intelligent, canine-like aliens, the Dischnya. This striking discovery, combined with the final broadcast of the Nua'll sphere at Libre, prior to its detonation, gave Alex Racine and company the means to narrow the search for the Nua'll home world. Alex has a consuming desire to locate the point of origin of the Nua'll before another gigantic sphere arrives to destroy more human colonies.

The descendants of a fourth Earth colony ship, Destiny, successfully establish a foothold in unoccupied space. Naiad, the home world, is a frozen ball, but the colonists persevere and expand through wormholes to remote systems. Navigating the time-space anomalies requires Axis-ships. The expensive vessels are constructed by corporations, and remote worlds are claimed by the companies for their valuable ores and gases.

Artifice, the great enemy, has been defeated. The sister SADEs, Omnian sentient digital entities, are free from their boxes. Most humans are unaware that the sisters have duplicated themselves many more times than suspected. They now constitute a sizable, powerful group, calling themselves the Sisterhood. The elimination of Artifice’s rule should be a time of relief and recovery for Alex Racine’s Omnian fleet and for the Toralians, whose home world was Artifice’s lair. Instead, it’s a chaotic period.

The Sisterhood’s dangerous militarist sect finds a foothold in a broad swath of space inhabited by the descendants of Earth’s fourth colony ship, Destiny. They’re welcomed by the mining corporations, whose leaders see unbridled opportunity in the sisters’ advanced tech. Five powerful corporations own six mining planets. One company, CenGas, mines Delhart, an ice-covered body, and struggles against the planet’s natural challenges to deliver timely orders to the other companies.