An untried captain. A battle-hardened marine. A hidden enemy.As a boy, Ian Hadrian used to look up at the night sky and dream of commanding a starship.As a man, he’s one of the Interstellar Compact Navy’s youngest battlecruiser captains—but dreams rarely match reality. His command, the Belisarius, is a star-leaping stallion leashed to a solitary and remote sun, watching over a long-suffering world the enigmatic Ciphers abandoned after the Great War...

Shaara never asked to be in charge.Since taking command of the mysterious AI warship Warden, and the eccentric mercenary company that calls him home, she’s only accepted jobs that let her conscience sleep at night. The trouble is, those jobs don’t pay too well. After more than a year of fighting for the downtrodden, the exploited, and the oppressed, the Wardens’ coffers are running dry.So when they get a suspicious but lucrative offer from a pariah republi...

Shaara is running out of friends.The sacrifices she and Warden made two years ago bought the League time, not victory. The war against the Undying has left them exhausted, drained of everything but hope—and precious little of that. The simple fact is that the Undying are going to win. Warden knows it, Shaara knows it. The Undying sure as hell know it.Until, out of the black, the Eternal comes to Shaara with an offer she can’t refuse, however much she’d like to. The threat h...

First Lieutenant Shaara was dead this morning.Her captain is furious at her. She wasted company resources getting herself killed, and it’s coming out of her paycheck. Now, she’s sitting across from the first other human being she’s seen in six years. His name is Adnan. He claims to come from Earth—but that’s impossible. Earth died a long time ago. If Adnan’s telling the truth, he and the decaying ship the captain pulled him off are nearly a thousand years old.Wherever he’s ...

First Lieutenant Shaara was dead this morning.Her captain is furious at her. She wasted company resources getting herself killed, and it’s coming out of her paycheck. Now, she’s sitting across from the first other human being she’s seen in six years. His name is Adnan. He claims to come from Earth—but that’s impossible. Earth died a long time ago. If Adnan’s telling the truth, he and the decaying ship the captain pulled him off are nearly a thousand years old.Wherever he’s ...

An untried captain. A battle-hardened marine. A hidden enemy.As a boy, Ian Hadrian used to look up at the night sky and dream of commanding a starship.As a man, he’s one of the Interstellar Compact Navy’s youngest battlecruiser captains—but dreams rarely match reality. His command, the Belisarius, is a star-leaping stallion leashed to a solitary and remote sun, watching over a long-suffering world the enigmatic Ciphers abandoned after the Great War...