About the Book
New Science Fiction Adventure Series! National Bestseller in trade
paperback. An agent for a spy organization uncovers an alien alliance
in nearby interstellar space — an alliance that will soon involve humanity in politics and war on a galactic scale.
2105, September: Intelligence Analyst Caine Riordan uncovers a
conspiracy on Earth’s Moon — a history-changing clandestine project — and
ends up involuntarily cryocelled for his troubles. Twelve years later,
Riordan awakens to a changed world. Humanity has achieved
faster-than-light travel and is pioneering nearby star systems. And
now, Riordan is compelled to become an inadvertent agent of conspiracy
himself. Riordan’s mission: travel to a newly settled world and
investigate whether a primitive local species was once sentient — enough
so to have built a lost civilization.
However, arriving on site
in the Delta Pavonis system, Caine discovers that the job he’s been
given is anything but secret or safe. With assassins and saboteurs
dogging his every step, it's clear that someone doesn't want his
mission to succeed. In the end, it takes the broad-based insights of an intelligence analyst and a matching instinct for intrigue to ferret out the truth: that humanity is neither alone in the cosmos nor safe.
Earth is revealed to be the lynchpin planet in an impending struggle
for interstellar dominance, a struggle into which it is being
irresistibly dragged. Discovering new dangers at every turn, Riordan
must now convince the powers-that-be that the only way for humanity to
survive as a free species is to face the perils directly — and to fight
fire with fire.
