In January of 2011 we started posting free short stories we thought might be of interest to Baen readers. The first stories were Space Hero by Patrick Lundrigan, the winner of the 2010 Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Contest, and Tanya, Princess of Elves, by Larry Correia, author of Monster Hunter International and set in that universe. As new stories are made available, they will be posted on the main page, then added to this book (to save the Baen Barflies the trouble of doing it themselves). This is our compilation of short stories for 2024.

As is usual with such copyrighted material from Baen, the contents may be copied and shared but NOT sold. All commercial rights are reserved to Baen Books.

In January of 2011 we started posting free short stories we thought might be of interest to Baen readers. The first stories were "Space Hero" by Patrick Lundrigan, the winner of the 2010 Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Contest, and "Tanya, Princess of Elves," by Larry Correia, author of Monster Hunter International and set in that universe. As new stories are made available, they will be posted on the main page, then added to this book (to save the Baen Barflies the trouble of doing it themselves). This is our compilation of short stories for 2021.

As is usual with such copyrighted material from Baen, the contents may be copied and shared but NOT sold. All commercial rights are reserved to Baen Books.

APPLESEED: A Founder Effect Legend by Robert E. Hampson
Latuda’s Lady in White by Aaron Michael Ritchey
Misfits by A.C. Haskins
All Orca Go to Heaven by Joelle Presby
The Paoshi Puzzle by James L. Cambias
Of Shadows and Caves by David Weber and Richard Fox
Salvage Judgment by G. Scott Huggins
Murder in Space by Les Johnson
The Man Who Would be Dracula by Simon R. Green
Shattered Trust by Dave Bara
Echoes of Meridian by M. Elizabeth Ticknor
The Rot’s Last Laugh by Charles E. Gannon
Fire-Bright Rain by Jane Lindskold
From Every Storm a Rainbow by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller

For more than fifty years, the Terran Republic and the Terran League have been killing one another. The death toll has climbed ever higher, year after year, with no end in sight. But the members of the Five Hundred, the social elite of the Republic’s Heart Worlds, don’t care.

Rear Admiral Terrence Murphy is a Heart Worlder. His family is part of the Five Hundred. His wife is the daughter of one of the Five Hundred’s wealthiest, most powerful industrialists. His sons and his daughter can easily avoid military service, and political power is his for the taking. There is no end to how high he can rise in the Republic’s power structure.

All he has to do is successfully complete a risk-free military “governorship” in the backwater Fringe System of New Dublin without rocking the boat. But the people sending him to New Dublin have miscalculated, because Terrence Murphy is a man who believes in honor. Who believes in duty—in common decency and responsibility. Who believes there are dark and dangerous secrets behind the façade of what “everyone knows.”

Terrence Murphy intends to meet those responsibilities, to unearth those secrets, and he doesn’t much care what the Five Hundred want. He intends to put a stop to the killing.

Terrence Murphy is coming for whoever has orchestrated fifty-six years of bloodshed and slaughter, and Hell itself is coming with him.

A YOUNG HERO JOURNEYS BEYOND THE EDGE OF THE KNOWN UNIVERSE IN A DESPERATE BID TO SAVE THE GALAXY FROM THE POWERS OF EVIL

ADVENTURE BEYOND THE STARS

David Artan is a dock rat on a poor fringe world where he takes every job he can and prize-fights to earn enough money to get off world. When he’s hired to guide a boat crewed by an interstellar mafia, he comes face to face with an ancient power—the Veil—that was pivotal to a civil war that ended decades ago.

David is “Attuned” to this power and was almost killed by agents of the dead and defeated Tyrant who nearly enslaved the galaxy. He’s rescued by an Adept of the Paragon order, warrior scholars that study the power and seek to keep any from upsetting the balance that keeps all life in order.

David is given the chance to journey beyond the Veil and into another dimension where he can claim a stone of immense power and return it to base reality and wield it as a weapon against the Tyrant. The world beyond the Veil is nothing like what David knows, and he’ll be opposed by insidious evil, self-doubt, and sabotage from the very people who are supposed to help him.

While beyond the Veil, David learns that a Conjunction is nigh, an event that could sunder the galaxy if evil forces succeed. David must claim a Veil stone deep in the other dimension before the Tyrant’s agents can beat him to the prize.

New military science fiction from Dragon Award-winning author Richard Fox.

The soldiers of the 11th Bretton Infantry knew they were being dropped into a combat zone on Dharien. But they didn’t know just how bad things really were, with the entire planet about to fall to the rebel Flags. The orders from the Highest are clear: make their way to Tabuk and keep the city under the banner of the Hegemony.

For Mason Tellec, it’s one more combat mission—with a difference. Noah, his younger brother, is along for the ride this time, and Mason has promised his mother and father he’ll keep an eye out. Noah’s green, but he’s got the makings of a good soldier.

But the jungle of Dharien holds many dangers—something Felix Ibensen knows all too well. He’s alone, lost, and trying to find his way back to Hegemony-controlled territory, the only survivor of a Flag ambush.

Mason, Noah, and Felix are on a collision course, with each other and with their destinies—for the actions of the Men of Bretton may have implications that reach to the highest echelons of the Hegemony.

Book two in David Weber and Richard Fox’s Ascent to Empire series.

HE NEVER WANTED TO BE A REBEL

The Five Hundred, the elite families who rule the Terran Federation, control its political power and its wealth, and they’ve grown steadily wealthier and more powerful, thanks to the war against the Terran League. War may be hard on the people who get caught in its path, but it’s very good for business, in the short term, and the Five Hundred own the shipyards that build the Navy’s ships. They own virtually all the industry that produces the weapons and matériel the war consumes so voraciously . . . and they’ve made damn sure someone else does the dying.

True, there are a few flies in the Five Hundred’s ointment.

There’s the growing hatred and resentment of the Fringe Worlds, whose children do eighty percent of the dying in the Five Hundred’s war. But the Five Hundred have made sure the Fringe knows what will happen to any system that goes ”out of compliance.”

There are the lunatic conspiracy nuts who insist that the alien Rishathan Sphere is secretly aiding the League’s military, but the Five Hundred have forced them to keep their mouths shut where it matters.

And then there’s Terrence Murphy, a man of honor who loves the Federation, who springs from the Five Hundred, yet knows it for what it is and is determined to speak for its victims. But the five hundred have dispatched ample force to deal with him and his handful of lunatic followers.

Unfortunately, the Fringe has paid enough of its children’s lives, and it no longer cares what may happen if it dares to defy the Five Hundred.

Worse, the lunatic conspiracy nuts were right, and the Rish have planned carefully for the Federation’s destruction.

And, worst of all, the Five Hundred have fatally underestimated Terrence Murphy.