Showing results by narrator "R.C. Bray" in All Categories

The darkest secrets stay hidden. Wraith, seeking to acquire intel on the mysterious Kill Team Ice, finds himself teamed up with an unlikely Nether Ops ally. Zora and Garret, in pursuit of a lost friend, will have their loyalty to Captain Keel tested. And the strain on Nilo and Black Leaf continues to grow, with unexpected intensity. For all of them, the path forward is a crooked one, weaving through House of Reason loyalists, Bronze Guild bounty hunters, brutal slavers, Legion operators, and the mysteries now emerging from the empty and foreboding space beyond galaxy’s edge.

When the Colonial Marines set out after their deadliest prey, the Xenomorphs, it’s what Corporal Hicks calls a bug hunt—kill or be killed. Here are fifteen all-new stories of such “close encounters,” written by many of today’s most extraordinary authors. Set during the events of all four Alien films, sending the Marines to alien worlds, to derelict space settlements, and into the nests of the universe’s most dangerous monsters, these adventures are guaranteed to send the blood racing—one way or another.

There’s no such thing as peace on Amir…but as long as the uneasy truce between the Osay colonists and the last of the RUPAC station directors endures, one thing is certain: Brody is bored to death. While the eccentric, action-movie-worshipping battle android does his best to stay occupied, Reach and the colonists contemplate whether to help a mysterious faction inside the RUPAC stronghold. The enemy colonists desire liberty, but is Amir willing to go to war to bring it to them?

B Company, 3rd Bat, 75th Ranger Regiment - a unit that's fought in every US engagement from D-Day to Black Hawk Down. They are the last American boots on the ground in the entire Syrian civil war...on the last day before the Fall of human civilization. When they are tasked with stopping a unit of Spetsnaz operators from inserting under the chaos, an advanced Russian Navy frigate becomes the last place left on Earth for the Rangers to find refuge.

Mark Hawkins, former park ranger and expert tracker, is out of his element, working onboard the Magellan, a research vessel studying the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But his work is interrupted when, surrounded by 30 miles of refuse, the ship and its high-tech systems are plagued by a series of strange malfunctions and the crew is battered by a raging storm. When the storm fades and the sun rises, the beaten crew awakens to find themselves anchored in the protective cove of a tropical island...and no one knows how they got there.

The Republic world of Kima has fallen with shocking speed to the renewed forces of the Mid-Core Rebellion, and General Chhun must lead the rebuilt and enhanced 131st Legion - along with Marines, Dark Ops, Navy, and Kimbrin Resistance - onto the planet to violently check their assault. But timing is of the essence, and Chhun can’t do it alone. Bear, working undercover, unearths the treachery of a resurgent Nether Ops still working their dark influence from the shadows. Masters has his hands full just staying alive while he evades deadly pursuers.

The battle to keep the undead tide from the walls of London is lost. Africa is a deadly hall of mirrors, leaving Alpha team riven with dissension and doubt. And the one man who might save the world is crashing to Earth half a world away. Only our greatest warriors can walk through this fire.

Homicide Detective Max Rupert never fully accepted his wife's death, even when he believed that a reckless hit and run driver was the cause. But when he learns that in fact she was murdered, he devotes himself to hunting down her killers. Most of his life he had thought of himself as a decent man. But now he's so consumed with thoughts of retribution that he questions whether he will take that last step and enact the vengeance he longs for.

As a crumbling Galactic Republic falls to the relentless assault of a merciless foe, so begins the rise of an enigmatic emperor intent on saving a corrupt galaxy-spanning civilization from itself…and from something much darker that lies beyond the reaches of the known. Just as the reins of power fall into his iron-fisted grasp, an assassination attempt by a hidden cabal within his own inner circle jeopardizes every plan he has set in motion for his Dark Legion, his Imperial Navy, and his ultimate conquest of the stars. But the assassins have no idea who they're actually dealing with.

Titus Briggs's second chance has become a first-rate, alien-crushing, rebel-stomping success. The MOCOM units are turning the tide of the war, and the Moonlight Rebellion is on the ropes. But if these treasonous humans, who worship alien invaders as gods, are to be finally defeated, it means cutting off the supply of weapons and equipment from their Thephari overlords... if Briggs and his team can find out how they are doing it.

Fight to win. Survive the future. With the galaxy in turmoil, the Legion initiates Article Nineteen, a hard reset designed to halt the corruption and ineptitude that continues to spill forth from the Galactic Core. But when the House of Reason aligns itself with the bloodthirsty zhee extremists, the Legion has no choice but to commit to a savage campaign of Total War. As Legion Commander Keller attempts to coax the Republic and Black Fleet into a winner-take-all battle at the heart of the Galactic Core, Wraith uncovers secrets from Tyrus Rechs’s past.

Mission complete, Alpha team enjoys their first chance to breathe and tend to their humanity. But the darkness leaves them alone with their demons - and those who have found love may yet learn that it is fatally incompatible with duty...

Miah Gray is a 27-year-old former army soldier living in rural New Hampshire with his sister, mother, and her boyfriend. He is plagued by PTSD, finding solace, but not redemption, with the aid of prescribed cannabis. All he wants to do is get high, relax with a good sandwich, and watch a meteor shower with his neighborhood crush, Jen. When the sun's light is blotted out the following morning and the world is plunged into darkness, Miah finds himself locked down with his family, covering windows with trash bags, lighting candles, and following the arcane rules of an ancient prophecy.

On the isle of Big Tancook, Collie Jones is making plans. She informs her fellow islanders that it’s time to resume her original mission: to find other survivors of the apocalypse, screen them, and bring them back with her. Every person who joins them is another valuable addition to their skill and gene pool. But first, Collie must return to the place from whence she originally came and secure the elaborate government bunker known as Whitecap as well as its vast store of munitions.

"I've been told that the entire continent of Antarctica groaned at the moment of my birth. The howl tore across glaciers, over mountains and deep into the ice. Everyone says so. Except for my father; all he heard was Mother's sobs. Not of pain, but of joy, so he says. Other than that, the only verifiable fact about the day I was born is that an iceberg the size of Los Angeles broke free from the ice shelf a few miles off the coast."

Before he slid into the MRI machine, Jake Bronson was just an ordinary guy with terminal cancer. But when an earthquake hits during the procedure, Jake staggers from the wreckage a profoundly changed man, now endowed with uncanny mental abilities. An ocean away, Luciano Battista wants a piece of Jake's talent. The terrorist leader has been conducting cerebral-implant experiments in a sinister quest to create a breed of super jihadist agents...and Jake's altered brain may be the key to his success.

Following their first victory against a rogue unit of Repub Marines, Magnus finds his newly trained gladias pinned down by a squadron of Talons. But when he discovers that their prisoners may hold critical answers to bringing down the enemy, Magnus must stop at nothing to get his team to safety and interrogate the enemy combatants.

Mysterious gateways are appearing throughout the universe, bridging violent civilizations, leading to war, and sowing chaos. While some species succumb to the pandemonium, the Chut’un forge an unholy symbiotic relationship—The Order—with red Europhids, a vast hive intelligence populating the universe’s far reaches. Desiring structure and fearing the unknown, they cull everything opposed to their plan, including the Europhids’ blue counterparts, carrying out a galactic genocide until only one blue Europhid remains...inside Moses Montgomery, a.k.a. "Dark Horse".

Their foothold established, Reach and the soldiers sent to secure Amir have only begun to repair the destruction inflicted on them by hostile neighbors when a terrifying new threat emerges from the deep woods and dark jungles of Amir itself. Something so lethal and evasive, not even Brody can seem to take it down. New threats and old enemies arrive as more mysteries of this new home world are uncovered, and with them, clues to humanity’s own mysterious past.

Udo's biggest problem isn't being a digger (that's low class), or staying drunk (that's damn expensive), or avoiding the Dwergaz (they're monsters), or even pissing off the supposed Gods. It's that his reality...well, it isn't what he thought. And now, he can't even afford to drink because his so-called friend Nicz is cutting into his business, digging up tin, iron, and copper. So Udo forms a new plan: clay. After all, clay jars are used to store everything: meat, herbs, and, his personal favorite, ale.