Showing results by author "Ryk E. Spoor" in All Categories

It was supposed to be a simple test flight, one that pilot Ariane Austin was on only as a last-ditch backup; intelligent, superhumanly fast automation would handle the test activation and flight of humanity's first faster-than-light vessel. But when the Sandrisson Drive activated, every automated system crashed, the nuclear reactor itself shut down, and only the reflexes and training of a racing pilot saved the test vessel Holy Grail from crashing into the impossible wall that had appeared before them.

Ariane Austin and her crew had learned these lessons the hard way, and - with luck, skill, and sheer will, had managed to survive so far. But now a debt of honor to Humanity's oldest, if sometimes self-serving, ally, Orphan, has come due. The threat of war looms with the xenophobic Molothos, one of the five Great Factions; the dark and omnipresent legacy of the Hyperion Experiment lingers. As Leader of the Faction of Humanity, Captain Ariane Austin had to deal with all of these problems, and deal with them soon.

Leader of the Faction of Humanity. It was a ridiculous title, but the Arena said that was what Captain Ariane Austin was since she'd led the crew of the Holy Grail in their discovery of the impossible, physics-violating place and their eventual return, and when the nigh-omnipotent Arena said something, it meant it. Ariane must discover what it means to be the Leader of Humanity, both for herself and for humanity, before her enemies - at home or in the Arena - depose her, kill her, or worse.

When the strange fossil she'd discovered ended up giving her a trip to Mars, Helen Sutter thought she'd gone about as far as any paleontologist would ever go in her lifetime. But when you've also married A.J. Baker, overconfident super-sensor expert for the only private agency in space (the Ares Corporation), and your best friend Madeline Fathom Buckley is a former secret agent who's just signed on as the chief of security for the newly created and already embattled Interplanetary Research Institute of the United Nations, there's always somewhere farther to go.

Madeline Fathom had miraculously landed the crippled Nebula Storm on Europa. She joined on that frozen moon of Jupiter the stranded crewmembers of the ill fated EU vessel Odin. The Nebula Storm's reactor was ruined in the landing, the Odin's shuttle can't make the trip back home, and the only vessel that could have make the journey to save them has just been destroyed by a renegade crewman, bad luck, and the remorseless forces of nature.

A daring and resourceful paleontologist uncovers something at the infamous K-T boundary marking the end of dinosaurs in the fossil record - something big, dangerous, and absolutely, categorically impossible. It's a find that will catapult her to the Martian moon Phobos, then down to the crater-pocked desert of the Red Planet itself. For this mild-mannered fossil hunter may just have become Earth's first practicing xenobiologist!

In a world of data manipulation and cyber spying, an information specialist finds that the supernatural lurks! A major revision of Spoor's first novel, Digital Knight, with all new material. Being an expert in information searches, image processing and enhancement, pattern matching, and data forensics earned Jason Wood a lot of money - from private contracts and working with the police. And it was a nice, comfortable job most of the time.

What would you give to be a hero? Stephen Russ never expected to have to answer that question; he went to work, he stayed in his apartment, sometimes had friends over, and the worst thing he'd had to face was looking for a new job after losing his old one.

Kyri, Tobimar, and Poplock had managed - barely - to thwart the plans of the mad alchemist-mage Master Wieran and defeat the monstrous Elderwyrm Sanamaveridion, saving the secret country of Kaizatenzei from the evil hidden at its core. Now they believe they have discovered the true architect of not just the fall of the Justiciars of Myrionar - god of Justice and Vengeance - but the unleashing of the forces of the Hells themselves against the other countries of Zarathan.

When Kyri Vantage, Phoenix Justiciar of Myrionar - with the help of her companions, Tobimar Silverun of Skysand and the unexpectedly dangerous little Toad, Poplock Duckweed - defeated monstrous killer Thornfalcon and unmasked a conspiracy of treacherous False Justiciars, she knew the job was only partly done.

A new breakout fantasy epic filled with strong world building, engaging characters, and wondrous adventure. Kyri: a highborn young woman whose life is shattered by the murder of her kin. But even as Kyri flees her beloved land Evanwyl, she knows that she is her family's only hope for justice, and Evanwyl's only chance to escape a growing shadow of corruption and destruction. Now Kyri must venture across Zarathan, a world on the brink of a long foretold Chaos War. It is a struggle that may usher in a long age of darkness.

Stranded humans must adapt alien technology to survive on a dangerous planet. Lost in the dark, half a year into their journey to the colony world of Tantalus, Sakura Kimei, her family, and her best friend, the alien "Bemmie" nicknamed Whips, are torn from the safety of their colony ship. In a crippled lifeboat, they have one chance to find a habitable world. But even then they will find that their apparent salvation is a world of a thousand secrets.

The Kimei family and a second group of castaways, led by Sergeant Campbell, had finally joined forces after both had been forced to land on the bizarre planet Lincoln, whose continents were huge floating coral colonies, inhabited by even stranger lifeforms. They had survived crash-landings and venom-filled bites and disease, their own despair, and even the destruction - and consumption! - of one of their floating islands, and had learned to live, even prosper, in their strange new home.

Sergeant Samuel Morgan Campbell had been in plenty of tight spots before, but nothing like this. It had happened in a few terrifying seconds: the starship he and his crew travelled on, the Outward Initiative, shattered to pieces before their eyes and disappeared, leaving them stranded in the endless night of deep space on Lifeboat LS-88 - all systems dead, light-years from any known colony.