Showing results by author "Jay Allan" in All Categories

Blackhawk: a wanderer, a man running from a dark and sinister past. A genetically-engineered warrior, a capable and accomplished killer, he is also a lost soul, a man who has fled to the deepest reaches of space seeking his true identity. The Far Stars: the farthest extent of human habitation in the galaxy, a sector of a hundred inhabited worlds, it is a dangerous expanse full of pirates, mercenaries, and cutthroats.

The Confederation has fought three wars against the forces of the totalitarian Union. Three generations of its warriors have gone off to war, held the line against the larger, more powerful enemy. Now the fourth conflict is imminent, and the Confederation's navy is on alert, positioned behind the frontier, waiting for the attack it knows is coming.

Captain Tyler Barron and the crew of Dauntless are finally enjoying the rest they've earned while their aging battleship gets the repairs and refit it desperately needs. But their respite will be short-lived. In the Badlands, deep in the haunted vastness of pre-Cataclysmic space, a new discovery threatens to upset the balance of power. Orbiting a world in a distant system is an ancient battleship, vastly larger and enormously more advanced than anything possessed by the contending powers.

Tyler Barron and his associates are divided, split between two courses of action. Barron doesn't believe in the desperate plan to eradicate the Highborn, the strange virus that has been created for that purpose, but may or may not be the exact formula used by the empire 300 years ago. There are too many possible problems...a small difference in the virus, a cure created by the enemy...for him to accept the plan. Barron commits instead to a traditional defense, even though he knows the chances of ultimate success are almost zero.

Are you a high potential? Your managers and HR department are constantly wondering that about you - and assessing whether or not you have what it takes to advance. Here's how to get them to answer yes. Being seen as a high potential leader is essential to getting promoted and reaching an organization's upper echelons, but most companies keep their top talent list a closely guarded secret. And the assessment process they use to decide who is and isn't a future leader is an even greater mystery.

The Hegemony has launched the invasion Tyler Barron and his Confederation comrades have feared, and all the Rim is ablaze with the fires of war and destruction. The Hegemony has brought its vast fleets, its advanced technology, and its endless legions of grim cyborg warriors to impose its system of rigid genetic hierarchy over all humanity on the Rim. The Confederation fleet is outnumbered and outmatched, but they will fight nevertheless, struggling and dying to hold back the onslaught any way they can.

War. The word spreads throughout the Confederation...the long-expected Union invasion has come. The enemy is strong, their fleets larger and more powerful than intelligence reports had predicted. They have broken through the forward defenses, sent the Confederation's proud fleets into an ignominious retreat.

The human powers have been pushed to the brink, battered, and almost destroyed. The virus they have invented and deployed, their sole possibility for victory, seems to be too little, too late. Its usage has only spurred the enemy to quicker action, to finish the war before they have to deal with its effects. But the humans do not know that the Highborn are faced on another front, by a race they know little about but have battled for two centuries.

The war is over, but the struggle continues. Tyler Barron and his spacers have set out into the unknown, deep into the Badlands, seeking to discover the empire’s old tech and the secrets of its tortured history before Gaston Villieneuve and the resurgent Union can beat them to it. The White Fleet is a vast force, powerful, and crewed by the toughest veterans from the war. Barron and his people know the future of the Confederation, even its survival, depends on recovering the scientific secrets of the empire before the enemy can do the same.

The pulsar...an ancient weapon of unimaginable power, one that threatens the Confederation with total destruction. The Union is preparing for the final invasion, one that cannot fail with the great artifact at the head of their fleet. The clock is ticking quickly toward midnight. There is a chance to avoid annihilation, a small one. The Confederation has its own ancient device recovered from the Badlands, a stealth generator. It is not as powerful as the pulsar, but it just may be enough.

The warrior culture of the Alliance has fragmented, and comrade fights comrade, brother kills brother. The Red Alliance forces, backed by the Union and its propaganda machine, have the advantage in numbers and position, and they are pushing forward, driving relentlessly toward the final attack. The Gray Alliance forces are weaker, trapped in the great Sentinel-2 fortress where they've established their headquarters. Their enemies have the larger fleets and armies, and control of the homeworld...but the Grays have Tyler Barron and Dauntless.

On the worlds of the Iron Belt, the heavily industrialized sector near the Confederation's Core, massive shipyards operate around the clock, producing the great vessels that can end the war. The Union knows it cannot win the economic struggle with its wealthier, more productive enemy, and Sector Nine, its feared spy agency, is not idle. Their focus is not on the front lines, the ravaged border between the two nations, but far off, beyond the Rim, in the strange, militaristic realm known as the Alliance.

When the Far Stars came under imperial attack, Astra Lucerne - the daughter and successor of the Far Stars’ greatest conqueror - Marshal Augustin Lucerne - rallied her father’s confederation forces to defend their worlds. They were joined in the fight by former imperial general Arkarin Blackhawk, a warrior whose skills and brutality made him infamous, and who has, for two decades, sought the redemption he knows is unreachable.

The mysterious enemy has come, and Tyler Barron and his allies prepare for the final battle, the desperate struggle to save the Rim. Barron’s spacers are ready to fight, as always, but this time they know little of the enemy, and they face technology far beyond their own. They will fight to the end if necessary, battle with their final breaths to hold back the deadly enemy. They will stand alongside their old enemies, the Hegemony, united for one massive battle, one all out effort to stop the Highborn.

The White Fleet had been an expression of optimism, a grand expedition to explore the vast reaches of the long-dead empire. Tasked to uncover the secrets of the devastating Cataclysm and to seek and recover the advanced ancient technology that humanity had once possessed, it found something else instead. A new enemy. A vast domain, one with advanced technology, massive fleets, and a genetically-ordered society and hierarchy it intends to impose on all humanity everywhere. The Hegemony is like nothing Tyler Barron and his comrades have ever encountered - but the veteran admiral must find a way to fight the far superior enemy....

Night is falling. The unstoppable Hegemony invasion has reached the very heart of the Confederation. Battle after desperate battle has been fought, and each time, the Confeds have been pushed back, columns of battered and blasted ship retreating from system to system. Now, they prepare to grimly defend the capital world of Megara, the very center of the Confederation. Tyler Barron prepares for what could be his final battle, a final desperate defense, one last chance to stem the tide of Hegemony conquest and subjugation.

Earth has been a scarred ruin for three decades, its scattered people struggling to survive amid the poisoned and radioactive wreckage of the final war between its despotic superpowers. While the people of Earth struggle to survive, out on the frontier, on a thousand worlds, mankind thrives and grows, building new civilizations and looking boldly to the future. But man has never been able to live in peace, and even Earth's sad fate has failed to slow the call to war.

Hugh McDaniel lives in Queens, New York. He's a genius, and he has been struggling to pick one area to focus his life’s work on. His brother and best friend, Travis, is a marine officer. They get along very well, despite their differences. When aliens suddenly invade and destroy their entire culture, they are forced to struggle together in the ruins. At first they just tried to survive; to collect food, medicine, weapons, and to find other survivors. But now, they've set their sights higher: on resistance and reclaiming their planet from invaders.

In the 23rd Century, the Superpowers of Earth vie for control of occupied space and the vast resources of the colony worlds. Darius Jax is a senior officer and hero of the Marine Corps, veteran of countless battles fought throughout occupied space. But once he was a raw private fighting his first battle on a planet so deadly, so hellish, its own occupants called it Tombstone. This is his story, before fame, before glory. The fighting on Tombstone is brutal and deadly, and Jax must find his inner strength if he is to survive.

A battered group of human ships, fighting for survival, fleeing deeper into the far unknown, pursued by the deadly forces of the genocidal artificial intelligence known as the Regent. A legendary commander, the man who has saved his people time and time again, struggling to lead the fleet ever forward, fighting through every attack the enemy throws at them.