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In the realms of fantasy, the battlefield is where heroism comes alive, magic is unleashed, and legends are made and unmade. From the War of the Ring, Tolkien's epic battle of good versus evil, to The Battle of the Blackwater, George R. R. Martin's grim portrait of the horror and futility of war, these fantastical conflicts reflect our highest hopes and darkest fears, bringing us mesmerizing visions of silver spears shining in the sun and vast hordes of savage beasts who threaten to destroy all that we hold dear.

Now acclaimed editor John Joseph Adams is sounding the battle cry and sixteen of today's top authors are reporting for duty, spinning never-before-published, spellbinding tales of military fantasy, including a Black Company story from Glen Cook, a Paksenarrion story from Elizabeth Moon, and a Shadow Ops story by Myke Cole. Within these pages you'll also find World War I trenches cloaked in poison gas and sorcery, modern day elite special forces battling hosts of the damned, and steampunk soldiers fighting for their lives in a world torn apart by powers that defy imagination.

Featuring both grizzled veterans and fresh young recruits alike, including Tanya Huff, Simon R. Green, Carrie Vaughn, Jonathan Maberry, and Seanan McGuire, Operation Arcana is a must for any military buff or fantasy fan. You'll never look at war the same way again.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - John Joseph Adams
• Rules of Enchantment - short story by David Klecha & Tobias S. Buckell
• The Damned One Hundred - short story by Jonathan Maberry
• Blood, Ash, Braids - short story by Genevieve Valentine
• Mercenary's Honor [Paksenarrion Universe] - short story by Elizabeth Moon
• The Guns of the Wastes - short story by Django Wexler
• The Graphology of Hemorrhage - short story by Yoon Ha Lee
• American Golem - short story by Weston Ochse
• Weapons in the Earth [Shadow Ops] - novelette by Myke Cole
• Heavy Sulfur - short story by Ari Marmell
• Steel Ships - short story by Tanya Huff
• Sealskin - short story by Carrie Vaughn
• Pathfinder - short story by T.C. Mccarthy
• Bone Eaters [Tales of the Black Company] - novelette by Glen Cook
• Bomber's Moon - short story by Simon R. Green
• In Skeleton Leaves - short story by Seanan Mcguire
• The Way Home - short story by Linda Nagata

Germany Germany, a man who was free, a man who loved, now an instrument in their machine. They have turned him into the very thing he hates, what he and everyone he loved fought against, the world's greatest celebrity, a tool in the subjugation of man. But the memories of freedom and love remain, and he will fight and change the course of human history for the better, but at what end? As humanity progresses and turns to face the eternal black of the universe, the questions of free will and fate, of love and peace, of the riddles of time itself will arise, and Germany will be called upon. But is his will strong enough, is his mind ready to breach the void and provide us with salvation?

When malcontents from a utopian 21st century use their time gate to transform Hitler into an invincible conqueror, a band of freedom-fighting Americans launches the Proteus project and builds a second time gate.

Operation Terror, written by one of the giants of the golden age of sci-fi, is a thrilling tale about a rather unconventional type of alien invasion. The story tells of an unidentified, large object that touched down in Boulder Lake Park, Colorado. What had initially been perceived as a meteor turned out to be a large, unusual alien vessel carrying many strange beings with paralyzing rays that could render their victims blind.

Can the lone survivors who have yet to be caught by the aliens actually escape? And is it really an alien attack, or a coordinated offensive that is secretly based on a Russian agenda?

Snooping around a top-secret government installation, photographer Ray Osborne stumbled across an experimental time field. Suddenly the familiar Ohio landscape disappeared and Ray found himself transported to a prehistoric world where the dread priest of Atlantis waged a war against the Sun-born of Mu. So while the scientist of the Twentieth Century worked desperately to draw him back to the present, Ray Osborne was recruited by the people of Mu to win a war that could change the course of history, and trap him in the past forever!

OPERATION: MEGABLAST

No one could doubt the dander of the situation. The British Government has proof that the Red Chinese have secretly planted a five megaton thermonuclear bomb on the floor of the Malacca Strait, untimately threatening the world with nuclear destruction.

Only one man can perhaps divert the world from World War III--Dr. Mortimer Keilty, an astonishing super-secret weapon.

"Operation Interstellar" is a grand piece of space opera. For years men had struggled with the linking up of real-time planetary communications. They said the theory wasn't sound. It seemed impossible. But Paul Grayson had been working with the Z-wave in the hope of establishing the legitimacy of his own theories. But so far, success had eluded him. No one would give him a chance to test his findings. The closer he came to proving the validity of his theories, the harder multiple political factions worked against him--including his own boss!

This George Smith novel is riddled with intrigue, murder, and good old-fashioned space opera in this classic tale from the golden years of science fiction.

Operation Ares depicts a dystopian future, with the United States controlled by an anti-technological leftist regime. The story traces protagonist John Castle's conflict with the government and his increasing involvement with a rebellion backed by a Martian colony which has severed its ties to the U.S. government.

The Mercenary code was broken by the Gray Death Legion during their desperate fighting on planet Caledonia. At least, that is the ruling of the courts. And the judges decide to hit below the belt - Graysin Corlyle, revered leader of the now outlawed mercenary band, is stripped of his title and holdings, and the legion is banished from Glengarry, the planet they've called home for years.

His forces bloodied from recent defeats, deposed Prince Victor Steiner-Davion forms a daring plan to cut the offensive off at its core...

Part military SF, part cyberpunk, part grand-scale space opera, and part techno-psychological thriller, the Cassandra Kresnov novels transcend the recently narrow segmentation of the science fiction genre.

In 23 Years on Fire, Cassandra discovered that the technology that created her has been misused in her former home and now threatens all humanity with catastrophe. Returning home to Callay, she finds that Federation member worlds, exhausted by the previous thirty-year-war against the League, are unwilling to risk the confrontation that a solution may require. Some of these forces will go to any lengths to avoid a new conflict, including taking a sledgehammer to the Federation Constitution and threatening the removal by force of Cassandra's own branch of the Federal Security Agency.

More frighteningly for Sandy, she has brought back to Callay three young children, whom she met on the mean streets of Droze, discovering maternal feelings she had not known she possessed. Can she reconcile her duty as a soldier, including what she must do as a tactician, with the dangers that those decisions will place upon her family--the one thing that has come to mean more to her than any cause she now believes in?

Both America and Russia plan manned missions to the Moon to examine the wreckage of the structures destroyed in The Domes of Pico. The American astronaut, Morrison Kant, breaks his leg shortly before takeoff, so Chris Godfrey steps in. Both spacecraft arrive at the same time. Unlike Chris Godfrey, the Russian pilot, Serge Smyslov, is unable to leave his Lunar Rover vehicle and both head for the wrecked domes, leading to a tense standoff...

The book predates the first use of a Lunar Rover by 11 years.

Published in the U. S. as First on the Moon.

When Steve Austin, astronaut, crashed from the skies, he woke to find himself a fragment of a man -- no legs, one arm, one eye. But Science rebuilt his body, giving him physica powers no other man possessed.

Now, the world is threatened by a syndicate that sells nuclear destruction to the highest bidder. And Steve Austin who, from the moon, saw the Earth as fragile and precious, is the one man who can save that world from the ultimate blackmail of our times.

Major Jimjoy Earle Wright, secret agent of the Empire, is intelligent and highly trained. But he succeeds all too well in overthrowing a military dictatorship--and the result is a new government inimical to the Empire and disgrace for Jimjoy. After surviving two assassination attempts, Jimjoy realizes that it's his own imperial superiors who want him dead; that, in fact, his worst enemies could become his best friends. He fights his way to safety on the planet Accord, where the Ecolitan Institute wins his loyalty and changes his identity. Now he is James Joyson Whaler, Ecolitan, in the middle of a war of independence against the inconceivably superior forces of the Empire.

Jed Cochrane -- sophisticate in a world grown too crowded to breathe, newsman, interviewer, television personality -- begins this tale when he's sent on a wild goose chase (literally, to the moon) after the wayward son of one of his network's principals. But the path he follows will lead him to the stars -- and beyond them!

Rod Garvin just made too many waves for the Thought Control Board that controlled the Plastic Society of the 21st century. Throwing him in an insane asylum didn't restrain him, nor -- when that didn't work -- did sentencing him to a suicide job on Mars. Garvin was bright, driven, and stubborn, so the only thing Thought Control could was was get rid of him -- quietly and permanently.

And that was fine with Garvin, since it meant he could make his dreamed-of voyage into deep space. But even beyond Saturn, Garvin couldn't avoid his talent for trouble. When his exploration ship stumbled onto an asteroid peopled by remnants of a starfaring race and possessed of incredible mineral wealth, it opened the possibility of unlimited loot for Earth and Thought Control -- if only Rod Garvin hadn't been the man to make the find...

In the twenty-first century, Avery Jarvis "Doc" Brandon lived in luxurious seclusion on subtropical Nameless Island. An immensely wealthy gene-engineer who dabbled in illegal baby-making, Doc was 186 years of age and looked thirty-five.

But a storm loomed on his horizon: Bureaucrats had blundered across Doc's real age. They wanted his "secret discovery" and would undertake anything -- including blackmail, kidnapping, and murder -- to get it.

Alexander Heflin, Imperator of North America, had his hands full: a war was brewing that could destroy the Imperium. Seeking to protect his wife, Lani, from their increasingly powerful enemies, Alex called on the one person he could trust: ex-war hero Rod Garvin.

Babysitting an Imperatrix seemed too easy a job for an adventurer of Garvin's caliber. After all, it kept him on Mars, while the action was happening on Earth. Little did he know that Alex was embarking upon a desperate ploy to save his nation by destroying it -- and it would be up to Garvin to pick up the pieces.

Rod Garvin, governor of North America and Mars, was supposed to be on vacation, spending time in France with his Number One wife, Flora, and Felix, the son he had never met. But where Garvin went, trouble followed. Alerted by a spy in Flora's household, his enemies awaited his arrival. And the war leaders of North America had a new assignment for Garvin: find Lani, Imperatrix of North America, and convince her to come out of hiding.

So, trailed by assassins, Garvin set out for the Egypt colony, where the incognito Lani was worshipped as the incarnation of Isis. But Rod Garvin was no longer on his own. Son Felix, a chip off the old block, insisted on accompanying his dad on this mission. Can this new father-son team complete their mission -- or will guards, assassins, and Lani herself prove their undoing?

In a world where magic is real, werewolf Steve Matuchek and powerful witch Virginia Graylock are paired together in the war to stop the invading Caliphate forces from taking over America. Their mission: stop the enemy from unleashing their superweapon--a genie in a bottle. And that is only the beginning of an adventure that will take them quite literally to Hell and back...

Now married with three rambunctious children, Steve and Ginny once again find themselves fighting for their country as they try to stop a plot to sabotage America's first manned mission to the moon (in an alternate history timeline, that is). But they will need help from a loyal cadre of magical allies if they hope to avert a catastrophe...

Sector General: A massive deep-space hospital station on the Galactic Rim, where human and alien medicine meet. Its 384 levels and thousands of staff members are supposedly able to meet the needs of any conceivable alien patient--though that capacity is always being strained as more (and stranger) alien races turn up to join the galactic community. Sentient viruses, interspecies romances, undreamed-of institutional catering problems--it all lands on Sector General's doorstep. And the only thing weirder than a hitherto unknown alien species is having a member of that species turn up in your Emergency Room.

Contents:

• 1 - Invader - [Sector General] - (1966) - novelette by James White
• 41 - Vertigo - [Sector General] - (1968) - novelette by James White
• 68 - Blood Brother - [Sector General] - (1969) - novelette by James White
• 103 - Meatball - [Sector General] - (1969) - novelette by James White
• 136 - Major Operation - [Sector General] - (1971) - novelette by James White

SEALS -- America's best just got better.

On the heels of a bloody first contact comes Earth's most important diplomatic mission in history: a summit meeting with the three alien empires vying for control of the galaxy. Assurance that Earth's first extraterrestrial ambassadors aboard the spaceship Pangaea will be safe means little to Lieutenant Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. After all, a job's a job. As escorts on the voyage, Jackson and his sixteen-man team of new-breed Navy SEALS (Sea, Air, Land, and Space) must be neither seen nor heard. Unless, of course, the op hits the fan.

While Jackson and his team respond to a distress call from an allied fleet, the Pangaea, with all its diplomatic passengers, goes missing, forcing the SEALS to follow the trail to an ice moon at the edge of the galaxy, a harsh environment crawling with crack commandos and hostile enemies. But for these warriors with their outrageous firepower, what seems an impossible quest is just another day in deep space.

In the years following The Cull, England has fractured into various fiefdoms, each fighting for survival in this harsh new world. There are those who would exploit this weakness, people like De Falaise, the new self-proclaimed Sheriff of Nottingham. But there are also those who would stand against tyranny. In a post-apocalypse England a legend is being re-born.

A DROID AND HIS BOY, ON A SEARCH FOR A LEGENDARY WEAPON

Daslakh is an AI with a problem. Its favorite human, a young man named Zee, is in love with a woman who never existed -- and he will scour the Solar System to find her. But in the Tenth Millennium a billion worlds circle the Sun--everything from terraformed planets to artificial habitats, home to a quadrillion beings.

Daslakh's nicely settled life gets more complicated when Zee helps a woman named Adya escape a gang of crooks. This gets the pair caught up in the hunt for the Godel Trigger, a legendary weapon left over from an ancient war between humans and machines--which could spell the end of civilization.

In their search, they face a criminal cat and her henchmen, a paranoid supermind with a giant laser, the greatest thief in history, and a woman who might actually be Zee's lost love.

It's up to Daslakh to save civilization, keep Zee's love life on the right track--and make sure that nobody discovers the real secret of the Godel Trigger.

Torn from the universe by a cosmic vortex, Earth remains trapped in the Maelstrom, swirling toward ultimate destruction. Now, a company of Union Marines and medics, sent to find the survivors of a crash landing on an unexplored planet, find themselves trapped in a hellish world, hunted by an unknown enemy. When weapons and equipment begin to vanish, and strange, murderous creatures haunt the Marines' every move, a simple rescue mission becomes a desperate death march...

Into a world on the brink of chaos comes a bold new breed of warrior!

Part-human, part-machine, they are the WARBOTS. America's awesome first line of defense in a volatile future. Indestructible armored giants with computer minds inseparably linked to the brainwaves of their human masters. They bring an explosive new brand of technology warfare to the deadly battlefields of the 21st century!

With the help of a treacherous alliance of left-wing South American states, renegade U.S. Army officer Austin Drake has seized control of the island of Trinidad and its vast petroleum resources. And as Drake's engineers begin construction on an ultra-modern space weapons launching facility, Captain Curt Carson's Robot Infantry springs into action.

Battling hostile terrain and corrosive environmental conditions, only the Warbots can halt a madman's deadly power-play as they race against time to obliterate a terrifying threat to global security that looms on America's doorstep.

High-tech warriors, half human, half machine roam the bloody battlefields of tomorrow's war-torn world.

This is the battle: the ongoing struggle for survival in a world still ravaged and torn by warfare. And these are the soldiers: massive, armored, half-human, half-machine super warriors - The Warbots. Awesome instruments of devastation with computer brains intimately linked and instantly responsive to their human masters' brainwaves, they are America's first and last line of defense.

Civilization is under attack! A "virus program" has been injected into America's polar-orbit military satellites by an unknown enemy. The only motive can be the preparation for attack against the free world. The source of "infection" is traced to a barren, storm-swept rock-pile in the southern Indian Ocean.

Now, it is up to the forces of freedom to search out and destroy the enemy. With the aid of their infantry - The Warbots - The Washington Greys mount Operation High Dragon in a climactic battle for the future of the free world.

The most awesome force in military history on guard for freedom!

In the ongoing struggle for survival in a war-torn world, a new breed of super-warrior explodes onto the international battlefield. Terrible instruments of destruction born in top secret government laboratories, half-human and half-machine, they are the WARBOTS - freedom's first and last line of defense against the world's evil overlords of terror and death.

Russia's centuries-old ambition to conquer lands along its southern border erupts in a savage show of force that pits a horde of Soviet-backed Turkish guerrillas against the freedom-loving Kurds in their homeland high in the Caucasus Mountains. At stake: the rich oil fields of the Middle East. Facing certain annihilation, the valiant Kurds turn to the robot infantry of Major Curt Carson's "Ghost Forces" for help.

But the brutal Turks, supported by a deadly Soviet Spetsnaz battalion, far outnumber Carson's desperately embattled Washington Greys - and on the blood-stained slopes of historic Mount Ararat, the high tech warriors of tomorrow must face their most awesome challenge yet!