Somebody was testing a planet—killing weapon on Mars—and the next target was Earth

Mars is the staging ground. Earth is the target. A storm of invasion gathers as the Red Planet pales and Earth scientists � amateurs and professionals alike � race to discover what it portends. Worse news: the horde of self-replicating probes suspected as the cause � implacable and all-consuming in its own right � may be only the tip of a full-scale assault.

Ideas — the only useful weapon when facing an adversary an order of magnitude more advanced than you are. But against such an enemy, thought without action is as futile as war-making without a plan. Humanity's hope The "straddlers": intelligent soldiers who know their science — and fighting scientists who have no scruples about using their smarts to kick some alien butt. Yet even with the right people finally on the job, the hour is late.

For Mars glows red again. And the swarm is nearly upon us!

Multiple New York Times and USA Today best-seller John Ringo rocks our world as hard as he did with his ground-breaking "Posleen War" series, teaming with NASA and DOD scientist Travis S. Taylor, a specialist in advanced propulsion and space telescopes — and popular author of Warp Speed and The Quantum Connection — to usher in a new saga of invasion, resistance and heroism!

"If Tom Clancy were writing SF, it would read much like John Ringo."
—Philadelphia Weekly Press on New York Times best-seller John Ringo.

"[S]timulating and satisfying speculation."
—Publishers Weekly on Travis S. Taylor's The Quantum Connection.

Heed the Slammers Battle Cry!

A warrior's truth: "In the long run, everybody's dead. So screw the long run!" Patriotic hoo-ha may be well-and-good for recruitment parades, but David Drake's battle-hardened mercenaries know it takes tanks, guns and grit to win when the real fighting flares. Yet peace brings its own problems to old soldiers�for killing potential enemies in battle is self-limiting, but once the killing starts in peacetime, there may be no end to the madness.

Two new "Hammer's Slammers" adventures crown this masterful collection of hard-hitting SF tales from legendary military SF action-master and best-seller, David Drake.

Humans on the space frontiers may have enough problems with befuddled bureaucrats, rules that don't fit the realities of very dangerous situations, and general rear-echelon incompetence without bringing in unfriendly aliens, but it's that kind of universe. On the other hand, as master satirist Christopher Anvil makes clear, the aliens are anything but omnipotent and have plenty of problems of their own.

* Here for the first time the stories and short novels of the war with the Outs are collected into a novel-length chronicle. The Outs had mental powers they could use to make humans see illusions and convince them to change sides. Obviously, they were unbeatable-until some troublesome humans found their Achille's heel.

* Another set of aliens arrive to conquer the Earth with the promise of eternal youth and healthfulness, and might have won, if some humans weren't too plain ornery not to be suspicious.

* Who's the best human envoy to deal with aliens who can read minds and learn anything their opponents know-the man who knows little or nothing, of course, including why he was sent there.

* When an investigator was hired to find out the reason for the strange events in a palatial mansion, he quickly solves the case-until he wakes up and finds that his solution was only a dream and the case is still unsolved. And the same thing happens again every night.

* These and other stories of human/alien conflict fill this large volume by the master of wryly sardonic science fiction adventure.

ALIEN INVASION PLEASE COMPLETE
FORM J23-B, IN QUINTUPLICATE.

Victory! The triumphal return of the cyber-uplifted rats and bats is greeted with the reward the HAR Army traditionally gives its best:

Arrest, detention without trial, and a firing squad at dawn.

Chip Connolly, vat-bred other-ranker hero, comes home from conquest of several million alien Magh', to find that was the easy bit. The real enemy, the enemy within, has not yet even begun to fight.

Now, the rats and bats have to raise the revolution. Or, at least make sure that someone with opposable thumbs survives to open screw-caps. The alien menace lurks in their midst, since the aliens have harnessed that most dangerous foe against them: human bureaucracy. They have to take on the secret police and an alien starship armed with missiles and lasers. All they have is superglue, an armored golf-cart and a delight in mayhem. Surely, they are doomed.

But wait: who is this hero leaping through the darkness He's a macho hidalgo without peer. His voice is like thunder. . . . His lemur-like body would fit in a soup-cup. However, his waistcoat is immaculate.

Only Fluff can save them now, with a bit of help from Elvis. And some burnin' love.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dave Freer, author of The Forlorn (Baen) and of many articles in scientific journals, is an expert on sharks, an accomplished rock-climber, a wine-taster, a chef and was an unwilling conscript in the "undeclared" South African-Angolan war. With Eric Flint, he has co-authored Rats, Bats & Vats, prequel to The Rats, the Bats & the Ugly, and Pyramid Scheme. He has also collaborated with Mercedes Lackey and Eric Flint in a sweeping alternate history-fantasy set in the Renaissance. The first two books in the series, The Shadow of the Lion and This Rough Magic have been enthusiastically received by the critics and readers. He lives in KwaZulu, South Africa with his wife Barbara, two sons and far too many dogs and cats.

Eric Flint is a popular new star of military and alternate history SF. His first novel for Baen, Mother of Demons, was chosen by Science Fiction Chronicle as a best novel of the year. His next novel, 1632, a major novel of time-travel adventure and alternate history, was a strong commercial and critical success, and has begun a popular series. With David Drake he has collaborated on five novels in the acclaimed "Belisarius" series, the latest being The Tide of Victory. A longtime labor union activist with a degree in history, he currently resides in northwest Indiana with his wife Lucille.

SHE WAS RUNNING FROM A RUTHLESS CRIMINAL
ACCOMPANIED BY SOMEONE MORE THAN HUMAN . . .

When the shipwrecked stranger washed up, nearly drowned, on the beach near research scientist Samantha Bryton's home, she was unaware that he was something more than human: an experiment conducted by Charon, a notorious criminal and practitioner of illegal robotics and android research. The man said his name was Turner Pascal—but Pascal was dead, killed in a car wreck. Then she found that Charon was experimenting with copying the minds of humans into android brains, implanted in human bodies to escape detection, planning to make his own army of slaves that will follow his orders without question.

Samantha and Turner quickly found themselves on the run across the country, pursued by the most ruthless criminal of the twenty-first century. In desperation, Samantha decided to seek help from Sunrise Alley, an underground organization of AIs that had gone rogue. But these cybernetic outlaws were rumored to have their own hidden agenda, not necessarily congruent with humanity's welfare, and Samantha feared that her only hope would prove forlorn. . . .

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Catherine Asaro is a Nebula Award winner for her novel The Quantum Rose, part of her popular Skolian Empire series. Her novels have three times been named the best science fiction novel of the year by Romantic Times Book Club. She has also won numerous other awards, including the Analog Readers Poll award, the Homer, and the Sapphire. She has an M.A. in physics, and a Ph.D. in chemical physics, both from Harvard, and has done research at the University of Toronto, The Max Planck Institute, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. A former ballet and jazz dancer, she founded the Mainly Jazz Dance program at Harvard and danced on both the west and east coasts. She has written eleven novels in the popular Skolian Saga, the latest being Schism: Triad, Book I (Tor, 2004), several fantasies, including The Charmed Sphere, as well as two near-future technothrillers, The Veiled Web and The Phoenix Code. She currently runs Molecudyne Research and lives in Maryland with her husband and daughter.

HE HAD A STRANGER'S FACE—AND A DEAD MAN'S MEMORIES!

Richard Jarrow was a mild and unassuming teacher who was sure that the government knew best, with its strong environmental controls on industry and its equally stringent control of education and the media. He knew that the countries of the former Eastern Bloc, who now claimed to have more freedom than the United States, as well as booming economies fueled by their exploitation of the resources of space, were only spreading ridiculous propaganda, and they either would soon collapse, starved by their diminishing natural resources and choked in their own pollution - or else they would attempt to steal the resources of the rest of the world, and have to be destroyed. Didn't the government say that was so

And then his world went mad...