Buckle up for nine short stories of exploration and adventure as humanity expands to distant stars, as told by John M. Olsen, with four debut stories never seen in print.
- Unacceptable Losses – (Mech short 1) The first of four unrelated adventure stories using the same suit of mechanized armor. Sergeant Carolyn Storm tries to get home alone through enemy territory.
- Mechanized Militia – (Mech short 2) Commander Jared Tucker must discover who is pitting two armies against each other.
- Maintenance Mode – (Mech short 3) The life of a mech maintenance tech gets interesting when the space station is invaded.
- The Order of Things – (Mech short 4) What do you do when Company 1337’s food shipment turns out to be a mech, and you’re the cook?
- Consolation Prize – Two teens get cut off from their settlement in the ever-present fog of Consolation, unable to call home.
- Three Strikes – How far would you go to defend your family? An orbital cargo inspector has her limits tested.
- Last Chance – A starship captain must chase down and eliminate rebels who escaped on a generation ship before he was born.
- Retirement Plan – All he wanted was to retire in peace on a backwater world, but no plan survives contact with the enemy.
- Adaptive Reasoning – Amidst an alien plot to conquer Earth, an android discovers what it means to be human.
- Sneak preview of Discovery: Polecat Protocol Book 1, an introduction to John M. Olsen’s new Polecat Protocol science fiction series. Space miners must save themselves after disaster cuts them off from all outside contact. Then they discover it’s much worse than they could have imagined.