Maxima Library

As the world moves into the next millennium, the United States finds itself at the forefront of this new age, policing not only its own shores but the rest of the world as well. And spearheading this overwatch are the men and women of America's armed forces, the "troops on the wall," who will go anywhere, anytime, and do whatever it takes to protect not only our nation but the rest of the free world.

Now, for the first time, Combat brings the best military-fiction authors together to reveal how war will be fought in the twenty-first century. From the down and dirty "ground-pounders" of the U.S. Armored Cavalry to the new frontiers of warfare, including outer space and the Internet, ten authors whose novels define the military-fiction genre have written all-new short stories about the men and women willing to put their lives on the line for freedom:

Larry Bond takes us into the wild frontier of space warfare, where American soldiers fight a dangerous zero-gee battle with a tenacious enemy that threatens every free nation on Earth.

Dale Brown lets us inside a world that few people see, that of a military promotion board, and shows us how the fate of an EB-52 Megafortress pilot's career can depend on a man he's never met, even as the pilot takes on the newest threat to American forces in the Persian Gulf-a Russian stealth bomber.

James Cobb finds a lone U.S. Armored Cavalry scout unit that is the only military force standing between a defenseless African nation and an aggressive Algerian recon division.

Stephen Coonts tells of the unlikely partnership between an ex-Marine sniper and a female military pilot who team up to kill the terrorists who murdered her parents. But, out in the Libyan desert, all is not as it seems, and these two must use their skills just to stay alive.

Harold W. Coyle reports in from the front lines of the information war, where cyberpunks are recruited by the U.S. Army to combat the growing swarm of hackers and their shadowy masters who orchestrate their brand of online terrorism around the world.

David Hagberg brings us another Kirk McGarvey adventure, in which the C.I.A. director becomes entangled in the rising tensions between China and Taiwan. When a revolutionary leader is rescued from a Chinese prison, the Chinese government pushes the United States to the brink of war, and McGarvey has to make a choice with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.

Dean Ing reveals a scenario that could have been torn right from today's headlines. In Oakland, a private investigator teams up with a bounty hunter and F.B.I. agent to find a missing marine engineer. What they uncover is the shadow of terrorism looming over America and a conspiracy that threatens thousands of innocent lives.

Ralph Peters takes us to the war-torn Balkan states, where a U.S. Army observer sent to keep an eye on the civil war is taken on a guided tour of the country at gunpoint. Captured by the very people he is there to monitor, he learns just how far people will go for their idea of freedom.

R.J. Pineiro takes us to the far reaches of space, where a lone terrorist holds the world hostage from a nuclear missle-equipped platform. To stop him, a pilot agrees to a suicidal flight into the path of an orbital laser with enough power to incinerate her space shuttle.

Barrett Tillman takes us to the skies with a group of retired fighter jocks brought back for one last mission-battling enemy jets over the skies of sunny California.

15 all-new stories of tomorrow from 15 of the best sci-fi writers of today

The challenge and lure of space exploration has long been fertile ground for some of the finest science fiction stories. Here, fifteen of the best chroniclers of the day after tomorrow present unique tales of space stations both in our own solar system and far beyond.

This neat little theme anthology contains a satisfying mixture of old hands’ and newcomers’ stories. In the opener, Timothy Zahn’s “The Battle of Space Fort Jefferson,” a space fort that is crumbling into disrepair as an unpopular tourist destination wins its first battle—finally—though only by means of the vagaries of decaying equipment. In Jean Rabe’s “Auriga’s Streetcar,” a gem of a piece, an old “spacer” finds herself on the way to a distant star in the belly of an even older space observatory towed by unknown aliens. Robert J. Sawyer’s “Mikeys” relates the work of those who go almost to the target and the unexpected event that brings them to the forefront. The closer, Gregory Benford’s “Station Spaces,” is a doozy about what happens when human merges with machine, and the building of human habitation on Luna. Despite, or possibly as a result of, a literally (i.e., spacially) limited topic, these stories cover a lot of ground.

On a desolate island deep within the Canadian Arctic, a scientific expedition photograph the wreckage of a bomber on a mountain glacier. To the world at large, the half-century old aeroplane is merely a relic of the early Cold War. Only a handful of insiders know that it still represents a major threat to civilization, as the aircraft is a Soviet Air Force biological warfare platform, still armed with two tons of active weaponized anthrax. Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith of Covert-One – the personal action arm of the President of the United States – is assigned to lead CIA agent Randi Russell and the lovely, but lethal, weapons expert, Professor Valentina Metrace to secure the site. But on the island Smith and his team find themselves confronted with a traitor from within their ranks. Cut off from all outside aid, the operatives must struggle against both betrayal and the brutal polar environment. Gradually they become aware that something else exists within the hulk of the ancient bomber: a secret potentially more devastating than even the plane's warload, and one that could bring about both a cataclysmic revision of global history and serve as the trigger for a Third World War.