Spider Wars Series by Adam Christopher

Adam Christopher’s dazzling first novel, Empire State, was named the Best Book of 2012 by SciFi Now magazine. Now he explores new dimensions of time and space in The Burning Dark.Back in the day, Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland had led the Fleet into battle against an implacable machine intelligence capable of devouring entire worlds... moreAdam Christopher’s dazzling first novel, Empire State, was named the Best Book of 2012 by SciFi Now magazine. Now he explores new dimensions of time and space in The Burning Dark.Back in the day, Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland had led the Fleet into battle against an implacable machine intelligence capable of devouring entire worlds. But after saving a planet, and getting a bum robot knee in the process, he finds himself relegated to one of the most remote backwaters in Fleetspace to oversee the decommissioning of a semi-deserted space station well past its use-by date.But all is not well aboard the U-Star Coast City. The station’s reclusive Commandant is nowhere to be seen, leaving Cleveland to deal with a hostile crew on his own. Persistent malfunctions plague the station’s systems while interference from a toxic purple star makes even ordinary communications problematic. Alien shadows and whispers seem to haunt the lonely corridors and airlocks, fraying the nerves of everyone aboard.Isolated and friendless, Cleveland reaches out to the universe via an old-fashioned space radio, only to tune in to a strange, enigmatic signal: a woman’s voice that seems to echo across a thousand light-years of space. But is the transmission just a random bit of static from the past—or a warning of an undying menace beyond mortal comprehension? less

As the Spider Wars intensify and mankind remains trapped in a losing battle against a mechanical race capable of tearing apart entire planets, a group of hardliners overthrow their commander in a desperate bid to get the war back on track... moreAs the Spider Wars intensify and mankind remains trapped in a losing battle against a mechanical race capable of tearing apart entire planets, a group of hardliners overthrow their commander in a desperate bid to get the war back on track. But when the commander's replacement is murdered, Special Agent Von Kodiak discovers the prime suspect is one of the Fleet's own, a psi-marine and decorated hero a hero killed in action, months ago, at the same time his twin sister vanished from the Fleet Academy, where she was training to join her brother on the front. As Kodiak investigates, he uncovers a conspiracy that stretches from the slums of Salt City to the floating gas mines of Jupiter. There, deep in the roiling clouds of the planet, the Jovian Mining Corporation is harbouring a secret that will tear the Fleet apart. But there is something else hiding in the Jovian system. Something insidious and intelligent, machine-like and hungry. The Spiders are near. less

When the test flight of the U-Star Manhattan - the first of a new class of starship - goes wrong, the seven-person crew find themselves shipwrecked, trapped in the interstitial nothingness that separates our universe from the next. But as the crew start to disappear one by one and the true purpose of their secret mission is uncovered, the survivors make a startling discovery about the eternal void they are lost in forever. They are not alone.