Classic Space Opera

It began at the dawn of history, when a darkness rose from deep within an Egyptian tomb. For thousands of years - long before earth was plunged into an intergalactic battle for its survival - four deathless creatures sowed seeds of destruction and chaos. Surviving on the spilled blood of warriors and innocents from ancient Greece to the ashes of Nazi Germany, the creatures have played a role in conflicts great and small.

Upon awaking from their multiyear cryostasis sleep, Rebecca, commander of the ESRS Carl Sagan, and her crew quickly discover that what exists in the Sirius system isn’t what scientists had predicted. Their journey to the brightest star in the skies of Earth has now become a dreadful catastrophe with the potential to reach Earth if left unchecked. With innocent colonists at risk and no means of communicating with Earth, Rebecca must abandon her primary mission of exploration in order to take on a new one - survival.

The Patrol has a strict policy of pushing any star ship infected with unknown plagues straight into the sun, no questions asked. When the crew of the Queen start dropping like flies with no explanation, rival traders start crying, 'Plague Ship!'

Within a year, Earth would be a vassal world, with the Sirian invaders triumphant. Only Standish, Earth's Defense Engineer, could halt that last victorious onslaught — and he was helpless, the lone survivor of a prison shipwrecked in uncharted space!

Across Earth's radiant civilization lay the death-shot shadows of the hideous globe-headed dwarfs from Mars. One lone Earth-ship dared the treachery blockade, risking the planetoid's peril to find Earth's life element on mysterious Saturn of the 10 terrible rings.

For nearly one thousand years, the Core Empire has held together thousands of star systems and billions of citizens. But a coup attempt has broken the empire into pieces. Some planets and systems have survived and still have law and order. Others have fallen to barbarism and piracy. For young Hugh Cascade, this is but a history lesson, even if the nightmares of kinetic weapons exploding have followed him through most of his childhood. Ten years later, the war finds Hugh, now a military cadet.