Target: Terror, Book 1

Within a military that prides teamwork, strength in numbers, and camaraderie, the sniper is the outlier. The loner. The specialist whose talent can mean the difference between mission success and disaster. And often between life and death.

Kyle Monroe is one of this exclusive fraternity. Recovering from a mission gone disastrously wrong, Monroe is paired with new partner Wade Curtis and dispatched to Pakistan, where he’s been instructed to take out a prominent member of al Qaeda. But the local tribe to which he's assigned wants to use his deadly skills to settle a private war with a neighboring tribe. If Monroe and his partner want to get out of Pakistan alive, they will have to rely on their skills, their experience—and the unrelenting drive of those who are called to be the best of the best in a lethal occupation.

“Williamson's military expertise is impressive.”—SF Reviews

Destroyer of Worlds

by Larry Correia

The Waters and the Wild

by Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill

Her Majesty's Rebel

by Steve White

Knight Watch

by Tim Akers

Straight Outta Deadwood

Edited by David Boop

Albion

Albion Series, Book 1
by John Grant

There Will be Dragons, Second Edition

by John Ringo

Stellaris: People of the Stars

Edited by Les Johnson and Robert E. Hampson

Duncan corNial, the son of Clan Ailane’s warleader, has been exiled because of the enmity of other clans. Leaving the Highlands, he finds refuge in the nearby city of Nika, where he makes a new life for himself as a swordmaster and bounty hunter.

Meanwhile, back in the Highlands, his younger brother Llêw joins the Highland Guard, an elite body of guards assigned to the royal court in Nika. But before Llêw can get to Nika, Duncan kills a lord's son in a bar fight and flees, joining a caravan headed south to the country of Cantredd.

As a guard for the caravan, Duncan has further adventures in company with the caravan merchant, Guthsund. While defending a woman under attack, Duncan is badly wounded—and after help arrives from the Blues, the religious society she belongs to, he will discover that strange things happen around them.

NEW FICTION AND CLASSICS OF THE GENRE COLLECTED BY THE EDITORIAL TEAM BEHIND SPACE PIONEERS AND OVERRULED!

SPACE PIRATES!

Words that conjure up rousing tales of adventure, derring-do, brave heroes battling the scurvy vermin of the galaxy. Those vermin have taken to pillaging cargo ships and, even worse, space liners, relieving the helpless passengers of their valuables, and worse with the comely women passengers, then spacing the lot—unless one or more of the aforementioned brave heroes arrive in the nick of time, and turn the tables, making the spaceways safe again for the innocent and helpless. On the other hand, perhaps the pirate captain is a woman, and it’s the comely male passengers who need rescuing. And on the third hand (we’re talking space pirates here, possibly aliens with four or more arms), perhaps those ships traversing the interstellar void are not so innocent, and the pirates, fighting an evil despotic star empire and defending the freedom of the space lanes, are the good guys and gals. The possibilities are many, and the daring exploits set the blood racing in the veins of any reader with even a trace of buccaneering spirit in their hidden self.

So board a battered but spaceworthy fighting starship with such star-spanning and award-winning crewmates as Robert Silverberg, Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, Larry Niven, Fritz Leiber, and Sarah A. Hoyt, plus James H. Schmitz, James Blish, Gregory Benford, and more, and set sail—er, thrusters—for a universe of freebooting adventure!

THE BEST-SELLING RING OF FIRE SERIES CONQUERS THE NEW WORLD!

It has taken almost five years for the United States of Europe to stabilize its position in 17th-century Europe. Now it turns its attention to the New World, where the English have ceded their colonial claims to France. There are vast lands and rich resources across the Atlantic for any nations powerful enough to rule and control them—and equal incentive for other nations to block their path.

The time-displaced Americans know about the future path that led to their own United States in North America, in the other universe they came from. But do they want to repeat that history as it was? Yes, they had democracy—but they are helping to create that in Europe. And they have learned the bitter prices paid for chattel slavery and the near-extermination of the native populations.

Knowledge is power. Perhaps a new course can be taken. Accordingly, an expedition is sent to the New World to see just what might be happening there and what might be done. They are armed with their technology, among which are a radio and an airship. More importantly, they are armed with the knowledge of future history and their determination not to repeat the errors of their past.

What could possibly go wrong?

A NEW NOVEL IN TOM KRATMAN'S HARD-HITTING MILITARY SF CARRERA SERIES

When Patricio Carrera’s family was murdered by Salafist terrorists aided and abetted by the fleet of alien Earth, the only restraint on his ruthlessness and ambition was also removed. Now, after decades of war and preparation for war in his adopted homeland of Balboa, the last of the Tauran Union Expeditionary Force collapses and is herded into prison camps and ships, where their re-education commences.

An Islamic rebellion explodes inside the Tauran Union, bringing the governments and the bureaucracies to their knees . . . except when they’re hauled up by their necks on lampposts. In neighboring Santa Josefina, the Taurans’ Task Force Jesuit is pinned into one small corner of the country, helplessly awaiting destruction. At sea, the Balboan classis and the remaining fleet of the Zhong Hegemony battle for the supply lines that keep the invading Zhong Army in Balboa alive, while the legions, now rid of the Taurans, redeploy against the Zhong, vengeance and massacre in their hearts and minds. And finally, Hamilcar Carrera, Patricio’s young son, stands poised on the bridge of a clandestine assault transport, ready to obliterate the last enemy base on his planet, even as a small ship is poised to remove the alien interstellar fleet overhead.

EXILED FROM IMMORTALITY! The third entry in McCarthy's groundbreaking, mind-bending Queendom of Sol series back in print.

Brash and idealistic, they were rebels without a cause in a world governed by science, reason . . . and immortality. Banished for their troubles to the starship Newhope, they now face a bold future: to settle the worlds of Barnard’s Star. Now King Bascal Edward de Towaji Lutui, former prince of the Queendom of Sol, together with Captain Xiomara “Xmary” Li Weng and her lover, first mate Conrad Mursk, face a perilous voyage with thousands of their fellow exiles. The journey will last a century, but with Queendom technology it’s no problem to step into a fax machine and “print” a fresh, youthful version of yourself. But what this crew of rebels will find is far from the paradise they seek. Before long, their optimistic young colony has started to show signs of strain. And worst of all, death itself has returned with a vengeance.

AWARD-WINNING AND BEST-SELLING AUTHORS CONTRIBUTE NEW STORIES: All-new fiction from Dragon Award winner and New York Times best-selling author David Weber, Dragon Award nominee D.J. Butler, best seller Jody Lynn Nye, indie best sellers Chris Kennedy and Mark Wandrey, and more. Also featuring an introduction by multi-award-winning and New York Times best-selling author Larry Correia.

It is 2185 CE. Humans now live throughout the Solar System, but their most ambitious adventure is about to begin. The starship Victoria will carry over 10,000 colonists to a new world outside the solar system. The larger-than-life exploits of those colonists will become legendary. The colonists will build a new civilization, and the actions of a few individuals will become famous—and infamous—forever marking their new colony with the Founder Effect.

Contributors:
Larry Correia
Mark H. Wandrey
Les Johnson
Christopher L. Smith
David Weber
Daniel M. Hoyt
Brad R. Torgersen
Monalisa Foster
Sarah A. Hoyt
Chris Kennedy
Vivienne Raper
Jody Lynn Nye
Brent M. Roeder
Catherine L. Smith
Philip Wohlrab
D.J. Butler

MEN IN BLACK AT THE REN FAIRE!

John Rast went to the Ren Faire looking for a fight. Well, a simulated fight, with blunt swords and safety equipment. But when his final opponent turns into a living, fire-breathing dragon, John finds himself in the fight of his life. It’s John or nothing stopping a disaster in its tracks—and the only real weapon at hand is his mom’s Volvo. So John decides to let it roll . . .

And that's when destiny comes to call. John is spirited away to the well-hidden base of Knight Watch, the organization that stands between humanity and the real nasties the rest of the world doesn’t know about.

Knight Watch would be John’s dream job—except for the storm goddess that destroys his parents’ house, the abandoned mall replete with too much dead, and the Fetch that aims to make John’s domain a final resting place. All this has John’s putative allies in the Knight Watch worried that John is the one bringing bad things into multiple worlds. John and his reluctant teammates have to figure out who, or what, is pulling the strings before all of Knight Watch falls prey to a well-concealed puppetmaster and far worse things enter this world.

NEW ENTRY IN THE LANDMARK LIADEN UNIVERSE® SERIES

The only bridge between past and future is a leap of faith.

Pursued by enemies, exiled Liaden clan Korval is settling into a new base on backworld Surebleak. Moving is expensive, as is war, and Korval is strapped for cash. Delm Korval has therefore instructed Master Trader Shan yos'Galan to design and implement new trade routes, quickly.

But this is no easy task. Dutiful Passage is targeted by Korval's enemies, denied docking at respectable ports, and cheated at those less respectable. Struggling to recuperate from an attack on his life, while managing daughter Padi’s emerging psychic talents, Shan is running out of options—and time. His quest to establish the all-important trade route puts him at odds with his lifemate, while doubting crew desert the ship. Facing the prospect of failure, Shan accepts the assistance of chancy allies and turns the Passage toward a port only just emerging from Rostov's Dust and awash with strange energies.

Without trade, Clan Korval will starve. Will a trader's leap of faith save everything—or doom all?

UNTANGLE THE PAST TO SAVE THE FUTURE. A NEW NOVEL IN THE WORLD OF THE BEST-SELLING THE GORDIAN PROTOCOL

TIME IS RUNNING OUT

Agent Raibert Kaminski and the crew of the Transtemporal Vehicle Kleio have made a shocking discovery out in the unknown reaches of the multiverse. They've stumbled across a temporal implosion that has claimed two whole universes, and neither Raibert nor his crew can figure out what caused this calamity other than it had something to do with reckless time travel.

The Kleio speeds back to their home universe of SysGov with this dire report, but an audacious plan is put into effect before they arrive. Old colleagues of Raibert's from the Antiquities Rescue Trust, together with a version of Samuel Pepys transplanted from the 17th century into the 30th, have proposed an expedition into the past. Their goal? To branch the timeline by preventing the Plague of Justinian, one of the worst pandemics in human history.

Meanwhile, SysGov's multiverse neighbor, the xenophobic Admin, is stirring. While their ambassadors put on a friendly show, the Admin is amassing a fleet of advanced, heavily armed time machines with SysGov firmly in the crosshairs.

Time is running out for Raibert and his team. But the crew of the Kleio won't go down without a fight, no matter where—or when—the threat to their home comes from.

IF IT'S WAR YOU WANT . . . The best of military epic fantasy as the bestselling Saga of the Forgotten Warrior series continues.

The Great Extermination has begun.

In the Capitol, Grand Inquisitor Omand Vokkan hatches a plot to kill every member of the untouchable caste in all of Lok, down to the last man, woman, and child. As a member of the Order of Inquisition, Vokkan has no official say in the creation of Law, but he has powerful allies willing to do his bidding. Through them, he has convinced the Judges that the genocide will be swift, complete, and without complication. Nothing is farther from the truth.

Lord Protector Devedas has sworn to uphold the Law. Once, he and the traitor Ashok Vadal had been like brothers. Now, he hunts Vadal and the Sons of the Black Sword, heretics and rebels who seek to live outside the rule of the Law. All Devedas must do is find and kill his best friend and order will be restored to Lok.

The rebels seek the secret kingdom spoken of by the Prophet Thera, a paradise where water is pure and food plentiful, where there are no castes, where the people rule themselves, and are not slaves to the Capitol. Ashok Vadal is not sure he believes in such a Paradise, but he—along with his allies—does seek refuge in the rebellion’s hideout in Akershan. But Vadal, a former High Protector who has turned his back on the corrupt Law, will not merely wait meekly, hoping that fleeing to Akershan will spare the rebellion from the clutches of the Great Extermination. No, if it’s a war the Capitol wants, Vadal, who has faced down gods and demons, will be all too willing to give it to them.

A WarSpell Novel

Lady Jane Alexander should be a monster with no control at all over its desires. A blood-sucking corpse, animated by pure evil.

But The Merge went both ways.

Now Sir William Deforest has the memories of Bill Goldman, a school teacher who played WarSpell with his friends, and those memories tell him that Lady Jane Alexander may still be Lady Jane. Suffering under a terrible curse, but still Lady Jane.

Sir William's certainty in the righteousness of his and his friend Alen von Helsing's cause as vampire hunters is challenged by the knowledge The Merge brought, but that's nothing to what it did to Jane Alexander.

In a moment she went from a very young vampire living on the blood of rats in the sewers of Paris into a moderately healthy young woman who knew that she needed to eat and who could once again feel her body as her body. All because she Merged with Alice Blake, a sixty-two-year-old nurse who had read the Vampyre Compendium IV cover to cover.

As she remembered her fellow gamers' casual dismissal of the fact that she was still alive, Jane became one p****d-off vampire.

She was going back to Londinium to have words with Sir William and Alen van Helsing.

Words, and maybe a snack.

And that's just the start of how the memories of a grandmother, plus the other effects of The Merge, turned a scuttling, skeletal wretch of an immature vampire into . . .

The Vampiress of Londinum

In February of 2011 we started posting free nonfiction we at Baen thought might be of interest to our readers. The first article was "The Size of it All" by Les Johnson, a Baen author and space scientist. As new nonfiction is made available, it 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 nonfiction for 2020.

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.

Beamed Energy for Space Exploration: Giant Leap or Incremental Steps? by Les Johnson
The Bridge of Sighs: Are We What Might Have Been? by Robert E. Furey
Notes on the Carreraverse (A Concordance, More or Less), Part 1 by Tom Kratman

Ever since the assassination of King Louis XIII and the overthrow of his chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, France has been in political and military turmoil. The possibility—even the likelihood—of revolution hovers in the background.

The new king Gaston, whom many consider an usurper, is no friend of France’s Protestants, known as the Huguenots. The fears and hostility of the Huguenots toward the French crown have only been heightened by the knowledge brought back in time by the Americans of the town of Grantville. Half a century in the future, the French king of the time would revoke the Edict of Nantes of 1598, which proclaimed that the rights of Huguenots would be respected.

At the center of all this turmoil is the universally recognized leader of the Huguenots: Duke Henri de Rohan. He knows from the same up-time history books that he is “scheduled” to die less than two years in the future and he has pressing problem on his hands.

His estranged wife and brother are siding with the usurper Gaston and plotting against him. Still worse, his sole child and heir is his nineteen-year-old daughter Marguerite. He believes he has less than two years to find a suitable husband for her—but acceptable Calvinist noblemen, French or foreign, are sparse at the moment.

What’s a father to do?

Splinter Universe Presents!
Something a little bit different

What this collection is--it's Something A Little Bit Different. We will explain. We'll try to be brief. And we'll start with what it isn't.

It isn't a Liaden Universe® novel
It isn't a collection of Liaden short stories
It isn't an Adventure in the Liaden Universe®

So what is it, you ask.

Well, it's this: bits of novels or stories that stalled; outtakes from published novels; character sketches; and discovery drafts. All of these bits and bobs are Liaden in nature, but they are not—not one of them is—complete. They are of possible interest to devoted fans of the Liaden Universe®; they are not guaranteed to be everyone's cuppa.

Also? Every single one of the said bits and bobs included in this collection has been previously published on Splinter Universe, for the amusement of the authors and the interest of those same devoted fans. There is nothing new here, save the Authors' Introduction.

All of the material in this book has been removed from Splinter Universe; the only place you will find them is in this collection. Why? Because we promised those devoted readers that the material would not be Lost Forever.

Having read this, If you've decided to continue—we welcome you, along with those devoted fans who traveled with us down the years.

Have fun.

AN EPIC FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE ON OUR MOON

Something has been uncovered on the Moon that might have great scientific and economic importance. The Lunar colony is a mining colony with only internal security capabilities. Nobody had even considered that there might someday arise a need to defend the colony from the Earth! But that day has come.

The Lunar colonists made this great discovery and perceive it as their own. Finders keepers and possession being nine tenths of the law is how things are seen on the Moon. But the governments of the Earth don’t quite see eye-to-eye with the Lunarian’s philosophy. As far as the Earth is concerned, they paid for everything on the Moon, so it belongs to them.

There is only one solution: Battle Luna!

The Mask Cycle, Book Two

Thief and swordsmaster Sonata Diamante is now Sacudente do Mundo, the World-Shaker, with god-like powers she can’t control. Perhaps her wizard uncle, Borshen Galo, can help. But he’s missing, and the streets of Cragsport have changed. Martial law has been declared, but Sonata refuses to keep the peace. She wants answers, and her quest brings her into contact with Duke Ernesto and his Night Watch.

The duke hires Sonata as the security lead for a delegation heading north. He wishes to forge an alliance with the island kingdom of Corodana so that Cragsport can survive a war with its rivals Agadano and Pontaboro. Sonata finds her uncle in Corodana, but his answers to her questions are not helpful. Soon, the attempts of assassins and fantasma wizards on the life of the Corodana king force her to use her powers in ways that make it clear: Sonata is no longer human.

She returns to Craigsport, but her growing number of enemies threaten her life. To survive, she calls upon her newly-discovered father, Taigo Guerra do Dorecao, but he and the powers he represents have their own plans for the world of Mirada. War has begun, and Sonata may be the only person standing between the city she loves and the gods that would see it fall.

Charleen Dreesen is stranded on Casa Verde station without the proper ticket to ship out on an interstellar spaceship. With no berths in the offing, she's looking for any way she can find to make a credit. Then she meets Joey, his sister Darleen, his father Mike and his pet rat Mister Rodent—who are all worse off than she is. Mike's behind in his kickbacks to the local crime boss, and neither he nor the kids have interfaces or much in the way of education.

So Charleen's now in bad company as well as stranded and broke. Before you know it, people are trying to kill her. She's left with no choice but to start climbing the ladder of La Causa, the organization that controls crime in the Casa system.

And if she's not careful she’ll wind up in politics. The Cordoba and Drake Combines are being challenged by the rising Alliance created by Jenny Starchild and the crew of her starship Arachne. Their control over the Pamplona sector is starting to crack and the Casa system is caught in the middle. Charleen may have to raise the bloody flag of revolution . . .

In the world the West Virginians of Grantville came from, the borderlands between France and Germany had been a source of turmoil for centuries. In the new universe created by the Ring of Fire, the situation isn’t any better. The chaotic condition of the German lands has been ended—for a time, at least. And the near-century long war between Spain and the Netherlands has finally been resolved.

But now France is unstable. The defeat of Richelieu’s forces in the Ostend War has weakened the Red Cardinal’s grip on political power and emboldened his enemies, Foremost among them is King Louis XIII’s ambitious younger brother, Monsieur Gaston. An inveterate schemer and would-be usurper, Gaston’s response to the new conditions in France is to launch a military adventure. He invades the Duchy of Lorraine.

Soon, others are drawn into the conflict. The Low Countries ruled by King Ferdinand and Duke Bernhard’s newly formed Burgundy, a kingdom-in-all-but-name, send their own troops into Lorraine. Chaos expands and spreads up and down the Rhine.

>It isn’t long before the mightiest and most deadly army enters the fray—the legions of pestilence. Bubonic plague and typhus lead the way, but others soon follow: dysentery, deadly and disfiguring smallpox, along with new diseases introduced by the time-displaced town of Grantville.

The war is on. All the wars—and on all fronts. Can the medical knowledge of the up-time Americans be adapted and spread fast enough to forestall disaster? Or will their advanced military technology simply win one war in order to lose the other and much more terrible one?