Free Worlds - A Worlds Apart Anthology by Bolt Vanderhuge

Free Worlds is a collection of short stories set in the Worlds Apart Universe. If you think, "These are pretty good," then you could try the long-form books maybe. There are nine stories.

⦁ 'Fiddler's Green' - The crew of Pegasus gets more than they bargained for when they crash-land on Fiddler's Green and must negotiate with the planet's strange inhabitants for a "Spaceship Deswampificator."

⦁ 'Independence' - The crew of Pegasus get more than they bargained for when they get stuck in a weird zone of inexplicable madness.

⦁ "Cotopaxi" – The crew of Pegasus get more than they bargained for when they explore an ancient space station in search of parts for their damaged ship.

⦁ "Alpha Priori" – The crew of the survey ship Astra Cartographer gets more than they bargained for when they explore an abandoned (for a very good reason) research station in the ring system of an artificial planet.

⦁ "Triton Lyra" – Eccentric interstellar trillionaire Bernadette Keeler takes her ambitious new assistant on a journey to the remote and hostile Triton Lyra system, but the business deal turns out to be more than they bargained for.

⦁ "Cherchez La Femme" – Young Goneril Lear’s first exo-planetary mission turns out to be more or less what she bargained for.

⦁ "Pioneers" – How did the human race breed fast enough to colonize an entire galaxy in just 2000 years? This is how. Most of the people get what they bargained for except the poor saps in the colony ships.

⦁ "Electra IV" – When the Commonwealth of the Galaxy collapsed, a lot of struggling colonies died with it which was probably not what they bargained for. This is the story of one of them.

⦁ "Captain Hepburn Has Some Ideas" -- Katrain Hepburn of the Fast Attack Corvette Augustana crashes a meeting of fleet commanders to bargain for an array of outrageous and absurdly complicated strategies to defeat the Aurelian invasion fleet.