2105, September: Intelligence Analyst Caine Riordan uncovers a
conspiracy on Earth's Moon - a history-making 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 keen
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.
