The mantis cyborgs: insectlike, cruel, and determined to wipe humanity
from the face of the galaxy. The Fleet is humanity's last chance: a
multi-world, multi-national task force assembled to hold the line
against the aliens' overwhelming technology and firepower. Enter
Harrison Barlow, who like so many young men of wars past, simply wants
to serve his people and partake of the grand adventure of military life.
Only, Harrison is not a hot pilot, nor a crack shot with a rifle. What
good is a Chaplain's Assistant in the interstellar battles which will
decide the fate of all? More than he thinks. Because while the mantis
insectoids are determined to eliminate the human threat to mantis
supremacy, they remember the errors of their past. Is there the
slightest chance that humans might have value? Especially since humans
seem to have the one thing the mantes explicitly do not: an innate
ability to believe in what cannot be proven nor seen: God. Captured and
stranded behind enemy lines, Barlow must come to grips with the fact
that he is not only bargaining for his own life, but the lives of
everyone he knows and loves. And so he embarks upon an improbable
gambit, determined to alter the course of the entire war.
