Author(s): Orrin Hurlbutt

Science Fiction

It is 2436, Earth is a supposed wasteland, and an authoritarian regime-the Union of Sovereign Realms-is master of Andromeda. For disgraced marine Sara Hart, that means a prison sentence in the 227th penal battalion.

Her only out? Being kidnapped and enlisting into a disreputable covert security group committed to the protection of life by any means necessary. She's got a conflicted chain of command and a new team of untested genetically augmented and technically gifted experts.

But war calls from the depths of space: aliens reborn from the ashes of atrocity whose cries for justice demand the satisfaction of the sword, and they're willing to use all the forgotten weapons at their disposal. The price of victory is always high, but the real question is how high is acceptable when the cost is the life of all humanity?