Interstellar medic Melanie Mooney races against time to save her patients while unraveling cosmic mysteries and navigating the dangers of space, all while longing for the Earth she left behind.

Find a Way Home

Everything is relative. Einstein said so.

After years of traversing the galaxy as an emergency medic, Melanie Mooney is learning this in a personal way. With each run to a far-flung star system, she is taken ever farther from her former life, and not only in distance. The penalty for zipping around the galaxy at light speed means time is moving slower for her than it is back home, and the difference is adding up. If Melanie ever hopes to return, she must do so before the Earth she knew becomes as unrecognizable to her as the alien worlds of the Galactic Union.

Intergalactic travel is expensive, far beyond anything Melanie can afford with her Medical Corps pay. There may yet be a way to not only get a free ride home, but in a manner that would avoid the pernicious effects of relativity. It’s risky, and will force Melanie to place her trust in some unsavory characters, including the last person in the galaxy she wants to be caught dead with.

The trick will be not getting caught dead or hopelessly lost in dimensions of the universe where no human or alien belongs. That’s a lot for a woman who just wants to go home.

Knight Watch

by Tim Akers

Valhellions

by Tim Akers

Wraithbound

by Tim Akers

Frontier

by Patrick Chiles

Frozen Orbit

by Patrick Chiles

Escape Orbit

by Patrick Chiles

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 2023.

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.

Black Box by Sean CW Korsgaard

The Quail Runs by D.J. Butler

Awakenings by Patrick Chiles

The Last Temptation of the Outsider by Simon R. Green

The Witch, the Woods, and the Elf Queen by Gregory Frost

The Insomniac by Brad Zeiger

A Lesson to Those Who Survive by D.J. Butler

Requiem - An Honor Harrington Story by David Carrico

Being a paramedic is a tough job; it’s tougher when you stumble onto a crashed alien spacecraft.

Melanie Mooney thought she was just doing her job when she came upon an unusual accident in the deep woods late one night. Acting alone, what she found was nothing like she’d expected. What followed was even more unexpected.

Recruited by emissaries of a galaxy-spanning civilization, Melanie is thrust into a world she thought only existed in supermarket tabloids. As the first human in the Galactic Union Medical Corps, she cares for extraterrestrials in desperate need of a medic who can ignore the fact that they’re nothing like any patient she’s ever seen, even on their best days. And in emergency medicine, it’s a given that every patient is having the worst day of their life.

Each run takes her deeper into the galaxy and farther from home, navigating alien cultures that only get weirder with each call. It will take all of Melanie’s experience, instinct, and grit to prove herself—and the rest of humanity—to be worthy of the Union. That’s a lot to put on a woman who’d just like to end the day with a cheeseburger and a cold beer.

7 Ebooks, $18

Tower of Silence

by Larry Correia

Escape Orbit

by Patrick Chiles

Wraithbound

by Tim Akers

1637: The Coast of Chaos

by Eric Flint, Paula Goodlett, and Gorg Huff

Into the Real

by John Ringo & Lydia Sherrer

Valhellions

by Tim Akers

Floe

by Arlan Andrews Sr.

The Icarus Job

by Timothy Zahn

United We Stand

edited by John Ringo & Gary Poole

Interstellar Medic: The Long Run

by Patrick Chiles

What Price Victory?

edited by David Weber

Mission Critical

by Charles E. Gannon, Griffin Barber, Chris Kennedy, and Mike Massa

Wraithbound

by Tim Akers

Security Threats

by Bjorn Hasseler

A RACE AGAINST TIME AND A GATEWAY TO THE UNKNOWN AWAITS

Thrilling space adventure from a Marine vet

Five years ago, astronaut Jack Templeton took the spacecraft Magellan to the farthest reaches of our solar system, never to be heard from again.

Until now.

When the Magellan suddenly reappears where an undiscovered planet was suspected to be, it poses more questions than answers. How did Jack survive all this time? Can he be rescued before his life support runs out? And what is the object long thought to be the elusive “Planet Nine?”

In a race against time, Jack’s former crewmate Traci Keene spearheads a desperate effort to outfit a rescue mission. But she has competition. Agencies of both American and foreign governments have their own agendas, and rescuing rogue astronauts isn’t among them.

And at the edge of all that is known, a gateway to the unknown awaits. . . .

Down These Mean Streets

edited by Larry Correia and Kacey Ezell

Among the Gray Lords

by D.J. Butler

Weird World War: China

Time Trials

by M.A. Rothman and D.J. Butler

Poor Man's Sky

by Wil McCarthy

Escape Orbit

by Patrick Chiles

A Matter of Security

by Bjorn Hasseler

A RACE AGAINST TIME AND A GATEWAY TO THE UNKNOWN AWAITS

Thrilling space adventure from a Marine vet.

Five years ago, astronaut Jack Templeton took the spacecraft Magellan to the farthest reaches of our solar system, never to be heard from again.

Until now.

When the Magellan suddenly reappears where an undiscovered planet was suspected to be, it poses more questions than answers. How did Jack survive all this time? Can he be rescued before his life support runs out? And what is the object long thought to be the elusive “Planet Nine?”

In a race against time, Jack’s former crewmate Traci Keene spearheads a desperate effort to outfit a rescue mission. But she has competition. Agencies of both American and foreign governments have their own agendas, and rescuing rogue astronauts isn’t among them.

And at the edge of all that is known, a gateway to the unknown awaits. . . .

8 books, $18

A New Clan

by David Weber and Jane Lindskold

ROBOSOLDIERS: Thank You for Your Servos

edited by Stephen Lawson

Target: Terror

by Michael Z. Williamson

The Shaman of Karres

by Eric Flint and Dave Freer

We Shall Rise

Edited by John Ringo and Gary Poole

Frontier

by Patrick Chiles

Requiem

by Marc Stiegler

Ode to Defiance

by Marc Stiegler

Governor

by David Weber and Richard Fox

We Shall Rise

Edited by John Ringo and Gary Poole

Frontier

by Patrick Chiles

1636: The Atlantic Encounter

by Eric Flint and Walter H. Hunt

Battle Luna

by Travis S. Taylor, Timothy Zahn, Michael Z. Williamson, Kacey Ezell, and Josh Hayes

The Legacy of Heorot

by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Steven Barnes

Futures Past

edited by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann

Marshall Hunter only wanted to fly: the faster, the higher, the better. But a life of rescuing wayward spacefarers and derelict satellites in the cislunar cruiser U.S.S. Borman is far from the adventure he’d imagined. But his fortunes change when a billionaire couple goes missing on their way to a near-Earth asteroid. Out of contact and on a course that will eventually send them crashing into Mars, the nuclear-powered Borman is dispatched on an audacious, high-speed interplanetary run to bring the couple home. As they approach the asteroid, however, the Borman itself becomes hopelessly disabled.

With the Borman suddenly out of commission and far beyond reach, cislunar space begins falling into chaos as critical satellites fail and valuable lunar mineral shipments begin disappearing in transit. Nothing is as it seems, and Marshall Hunter and the rest of the crew suspect none of it is by coincidence.

Marshall Hunter only wanted to fly: the faster, the higher, the better. But a life of rescuing wayward spacefarers and derelict satellites in the cislunar cruiser U.S.S. Borman is far from the adventure he’d imagined. But his fortunes change when a billionaire couple goes missing on their way to a near-Earth asteroid. Out of contact and on a course that will eventually send them crashing into Mars, the nuclear-powered Borman is dispatched on an audacious, high-speed interplanetary run to bring the couple home. As they approach the asteroid, however, the Borman itself becomes hopelessly disabled.

With the Borman suddenly out of commission and far beyond reach, cislunar space begins falling into chaos as critical satellites fail and valuable lunar mineral shipments begin disappearing in transit. Nothing is as it seems, and Marshall Hunter and the rest of the crew suspect none of it is by coincidence.

Domesticating Dragons

by Dan Koboldt

Council of Fire

by Eric Flint and Walter H. Hunt

Space Soldiers

edited by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann

The Apocalypse Troll

by David Weber

Frozen Orbit

by Patrick Chiles

Gunpowder & Embers

by John Ringo, Kacey Ezell, and Christopher L. Smith

Confirmed Kill

Target: Terror, Book 3 by Michael Z. Williamson

The Macedonian Hazard

by Eric Flint, Gorg Huff, and Paula Goodlett

Being a paramedic is a tough job; it’s tougher when you stumble onto a crashed alien spacecraft.

Melanie Mooney thought she was just doing her job when she came upon an unusual accident in the deep woods late one night. Acting alone, what she found was nothing like she’d expected. What followed was even more unexpected.

Recruited by emissaries of a galaxy-spanning civilization, Melanie is thrust into a world she thought only existed in supermarket tabloids. As the first human in the Galactic Union Medical Corps, she cares for extraterrestrials in desperate need of a medic who can ignore the fact that they’re nothing like any patient she’s ever seen, even on their best days. And in emergency medicine, it’s a given that every patient is having the worst day of their life.

Each run takes her deeper into the galaxy and farther from home, navigating alien cultures that only get weirder with each call. It will take all of Melanie’s experience, instinct, and grit to prove herself—and the rest of humanity—to be worthy of the Union. That’s a lot to put on a woman who’d just like to end the day with a cheeseburger and a cold beer.

Interstellar medic Melanie Mooney races against time to save her patients while unraveling cosmic mysteries and navigating the dangers of space, all while longing for the Earth she left behind.

Find a Way Home

Everything is relative. Einstein said so.

After years of traversing the galaxy as an emergency medic, Melanie Mooney is learning this in a personal way. With each run to a far-flung star system, she is taken ever farther from her former life, and not only in distance. The penalty for zipping around the galaxy at light speed means time is moving slower for her than it is back home, and the difference is adding up. If Melanie ever hopes to return, she must do so before the Earth she knew becomes as unrecognizable to her as the alien worlds of the Galactic Union.

Intergalactic travel is expensive, far beyond anything Melanie can afford with her Medical Corps pay. There may yet be a way to not only get a free ride home, but in a manner that would avoid the pernicious effects of relativity. It’s risky, and will force Melanie to place her trust in some unsavory characters, including the last person in the galaxy she wants to be caught dead with.

The trick will be not getting caught dead or hopelessly lost in dimensions of the universe where no human or alien belongs. That’s a lot for a woman who just wants to go home.

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.

THE BEGINNING OF LIFE AWAITS AT THE END OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM.

When a tiny space probe hurtled past Pluto in 2015, no one could know that its most amazing discovery would remain hidden for years. Only when a long-lost Soyuz is destroyed in the skies above Siberia does the truth begin to emerge.

About to embark on NASA’s first expedition to the outer planets, the crew of the spacecraft Magellan learns someone else has beaten them by a few decades: a top-secret Soviet project codenamed Arkangel. It was a mission that began before most of them were even born, and the Kremlin believes it drove their most trusted crew mad.

During their long race to the Kuiper Belt, astronauts Jack Templeton and Traci Keene unwind a decades-old mystery buried in the pages of a dead cosmonaut’s journal. Challenging their own beliefs about the nature of humanity, they will soon confront the question of existence itself.

Infoquake

Jump 225 Trilogy
by David Louis Edelman

Penric's Progress

by Lois McMaster Bujold

Arkad's World

by James L. Cambias

Frozen Orbit

by Patrick Chiles

Black Triumph

by Brendan DuBois

Gunpowder & Embers

by John Ringo, Kacey Ezell, and Christopher L. Smith

All the Plagues of Hell

by Eric Flint and Dave Freer

THE BEGINNING OF LIFE AWAITS AT THE END OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM.

When a tiny space probe hurtled past Pluto in 2015, no one could know that its most amazing discovery would remain hidden for years. Only when a long-lost Soyuz is destroyed in the skies above Siberia does the truth begin to emerge.

About to embark on NASA’s first expedition to the outer planets, the crew of the spacecraft Magellan learns someone else has beaten them by a few decades: a top-secret Soviet project codenamed Arkangel. It was a mission that began before most of them were even born, and the Kremlin believes it drove their most trusted crew mad.

During their long race to the Kuiper Belt, astronauts Jack Templeton and Traci Keene unwind a decades-old mystery buried in the pages of a dead cosmonaut’s journal. Challenging their own beliefs about the nature of humanity, they will soon confront the question of existence itself.