A 200-year blockade denies humanity the stars. Only an interstellar conspiracy can win them back.
When the mysterious Saar Commonwealth summons Earth on a diplomatic mission to a hostile alien world, the objective is clear: keep the peace. But the delegation is a powder keg of spies, fugitives, and politicians with hidden agendas—all one misstep from disaster.
If diplomacy fails, Lieutenant Jake Dawes will be the one to fight.
A cybernetically enhanced soldier and elite drone commander, he’s no stranger to violence. But something is bleeding through his systems—fractured visions, distant whispers, and memories that shouldn’t exist. His combat AI is the main suspect, but Dawes isn’t so sure. Because if the visions are real, the first shots of this war were fired an eternity ago.
As tensions spiral toward open conflict, Dawes must decide what’s real, who to trust, and whether the enemy he’s been sent to fight … is already inside him.
If he’s right, the mission was never meant to succeed.
Perfect for fans of The Expanse, Dune, and The Forever War.
A 200-year blockade denies humanity the stars. Only an interstellar conspiracy can win them back.
When the mysterious Saar Commonwealth summons Earth on a diplomatic mission to a hostile alien world, the objective is clear: keep the peace. But the delegation is a powder keg of spies, fugitives, and politicians with hidden agendas—all one misstep from disaster.
If diplomacy fails, Lieutenant Jake Dawes will be the one to fight.
A cybernetically enhanced soldier and elite drone commander, he’s no stranger to violence. But something is bleeding through his systems—fractured visions, distant whispers, and memories that shouldn’t exist. His combat AI is the main suspect, but Dawes isn’t so sure. Because if the visions are real, the first shots of this war were fired an eternity ago.
As tensions spiral toward open conflict, Dawes must decide what’s real, who to trust, and whether the enemy he’s been sent to fight … is already inside him.
If he’s right, the mission was never meant to succeed.
Perfect for fans of The Expanse, Dune, and The Forever War.
PART I: The Light
The Wow! Signal was a strong narrow-band radio transmission detected on August 15th, 1977, by Ohio State University’s Big Ear radio telescope. The signal appeared in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius and bore the expected hallmarks of extraterrestrial origin. After 72 seconds, it disappeared forever.
-FROM “FOUNDATIONS IN NOVEL AEROSPACE RESEARCH INITIATIVES: GRANT PROPOSAL TO THE U.S.A.F FOR STARTUP VENTURE FUNDING.” BY AERODYNE INDUSTRIES - 1978
CHAPTER 00: DeForest
(Year 2088)
The debris field was closing in around them. “You should call her back,” Hiro said. “Lawrence is taking too long.”
Colonel DeForest considered this while finishing his apple. “We need that flight recorder, Major.”
“It’s not worth the risk, sir.”
DeForest knew her request was a nonstarter. He was a veteran of a hundred missions, and a hundred anxious copilots. “A trillion-dollar asset is worth the risk to the board.”
“We won’t see a dime of that.” Hiro pushed off the crew compartment window and drifted into her chair, landing with a soft thump. She caught her harness just before the impact snapped her back into the cockpit. With a hint of resistance, she spoke through clenched teeth. “Computer, scan fifty thousand kilometers straight ahead for anomalies.”
The AI acknowledged with a sequence of beeps.
DeForest ignored the tone and released the half-eaten apple into the waste compactor. The first manned mission beyond the Solar System had taken their recovery vessel, the Trailblazer, four minutes to travel from Earth, through the Bulk, to Proxima b. The unmanned gate tug, the Chariot, however, spent thirty years in real space to reach the same destination.
Humanity’s future among the stars depended on safe passage through the hyperspace gates. Walking away wasn’t an option. Too many powerful people had wagered their fortunes on it.
Data flooded their interfaces, glistening as it scrolled across Hiro’s focused gaze. “All satellites accounted for. No local asteroids. Gravity stresses on the hull, negative. Residual energy ribbons from the vortex, negligible. Torch drives last reported inactive. Cause of destruction still undetermined.”
“The sensors are going to keep giving you the same answer.”
“I suppose I don’t like waiting, sir.”
DeForest peered into the star field as memory pulled him back to the Chariot’s launch ceremony at the Lagrange Five dock. He’d been a young officer then, but he had understood the weight of the moment. Faster-than-light travel would put dozens of nearby star systems within reach within his lifetime.
Now he was here and the first ship of the class, the first launched, the first to build a gate, the first to succeed, floated lifelessly before him.
What could destroy a 400-meter ship and leave no trace? he wondered.
He pushed off the window and settled into his seat beside Hiro. Even the impact shield was gone, designed to survive interstellar dust strikes at a quarter the speed of light. Now, neatly sliced in two, its remnants tumbled end over end in unison.
Hiro pointed to an intact section of the Chariot, where a spiral of glittering particles dissipated above the beige-green world. “It’s still ejecting dust.” Her finger traced the trail. “This happened a few hours ago.”
DeForest cocked an eyebrow. “Right after it finished assembling the gate.”
She nodded. “Whatever happened here can happen to us, too.”
An alert message flared in the corner of Hiro’s interface. “Satellite just went down, sir.”
A moment later, an asset profile populated his display. “Strange. One of the deep-space probes.”
Hiro’s fingers tapped nervously. “No abnormal readings before we lost contact.”
“Is there a visual?”
“Line of sight blocked by the planet, sir.” A second cascade of warnings followed. “Lost a second satellite. Same pattern.”
DeForest raised a hand to his mouth, thumb pressing into the notch of his upper lip. “If we lose one more, we won’t be able to talk to the gate.”
Hiro turned toward him. “Sir, the Chariot. The probes. I think it’s that time.”
The air cyclers hummed as he weighed their options. “You might be right, Major.”
Another alert snapped Hiro’s attention back to her console. “Third satellite! This isn’t an accident, sir. We’re nowhere near critical mass for a Kessler effect. Something’s taking out the network.”
“Confirmed,” DeForest said. “Third link down. Gate connection terminated.” He tilted his head back. Three is an absolute impossibility. “Prep the engines. We need to get above the horizon.”
The probes, hyperspace surveyors, and planetary satellites occupied various orbits, thousands of miles apart. In his thirty years with the U.S. Space Force, DeForest had never seen a failure cascade of this magnitude.
He slammed his hand onto the intercom. “Lawrence, get back to the Blazer!”
“What the hell? I’m almost done here!” A voice at the other end of the radio answered.
“Forget the black box. We have a situation.”
“It’s always something. Never a goddamn break. Just make sure my eval report says ...”
“Now, Lawrence!” he told her.
“Okay, okay. Wilco, sir.”
He switched to Lawrence’s visor feed in time to see her make a crude gesture. Ignoring it, he watched her dash across the severed hull of the Chariot. At the edge, she pushed off the wreck’s spin and launched herself into open space.
Two minutes later, her suit’s arm thrusters fired, and she grappled onto the Blazer. Reassured by the dull thud of her boots against the bulkhead, DeForest exhaled.
“Engines online; all systems green. We are a go, sir.”
“I’m in the airlock,” Lawrence said over the intercom.
“Get up here and strap in. We’re leaving in twenty seconds.”
The check light signaled that the reactor was ready, and Hiro hit the ignition. Responding, the ship twisted away from the wreck and toward high orbit.
“Sir, I have a satellite. We can reconnect to the network.” A beat passed. “Oh shit! Correction: signal lost. We’re down to two.”
DeForest felt the dread settle in his gut. “Not chancing it. Forget the satellites. Adjusting course directly for the gate.” DeForest shot Hiro a look. “Send the codes.”
“Sent! Visual on the gate in ten. Reactor activation sequence underway. Planck threshold achieved. Ready on your order, sir.”
His fingers danced across the armrest console. “Activate.”
Acceleration pressed him into his seat as they cleared the planet’s horizon. Like a moonrise, the hyperspace gate rose above a storm system in the atmosphere. Small at first, the gate grew as they closed the distance.
Twelve fusion generators connected by a ring of nanocomposites measuring a kilometer long spun in front of them. Humming to life, each opposite pair fired lasers in sequence. Only when all the lasers connected at the center of the ring did the fabric of space rupture.
The generators cut off, and a whirlpool of color blossomed outward. Locked into place by the ring’s magnetic containment fields. After a couple more seconds, a dark red core appeared. DeForest likened the core to the eye of a hurricane. The eye expanded to the edges of the ring, pushing swirling energy bands over the sides of the gate like an overflowing pot of boiling water.
“Vortex stabilized!” Hiro said, just before Major Lawrence shot up into the cockpit.
“Thanks for waiting! I barely had time to get to a crash chair when you bozos took off!”
“Sorry, no time to wait!” Hiro said dismissively.
Lawrence rolled her eyes. “What’s our sitrep anyway? Why are we hauling ass out of here?”
Just as DeForest was about to answer, something stole his attention. An object pierced the horizon behind the same storm system in the planet’s atmosphere where the gate had emerged moments earlier. It slowly climbed until it cleared the planet just below the now-active gate.
The three watched in stunned silence. A light-blue reflective surface formed the shape of a diamond one might see on a deck of cards. The elongated octahedron resembled a kite until it turned toward the Blazer. DeForest realized that what he had assumed was the front of the object was significantly narrower than its side. With no frame of reference against the blackness of space, it could have been a kilometer tall, or a meter. There was no sign of any engines, windows, ports, or anything beyond eight flat sides.
“What in the …” Lawrence said in slow motion before trailing off.
“That’s our bogey.” DeForest pointed, barely able to get the words out. “Active and passive scans, get as much intel as you can.”
Hiro hesitated, shaking her head to snap herself back. “Scans say nothing is there. Completely blank on the scopes.”
Lawrence slapped the backs of their chairs. “Well, it’s goddamn there, so let’s get the fuck out of here!”
The object shifted its trajectory, angling toward their second to last satellite before launching forward. “Holy hell! Look at that thing move!” Lawrence said.
DeForest twisted his neck to follow as the object cleared the distance to the satellite in under ten seconds. He expected the decades-old solar sail probe to disintegrate into a cloud of shrapnel when the two collided. Instead, the octahedron appeared to absorb the ancient explorer. The collision left nothing behind except ripples across the surface, like a pebble dropped into a pond.
Part of DeForest couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The other part, the officer and scientist ran the numbers. The probe provided a frame of reference. Their bogey stood roughly two kilometers tall and three hundred meters at its widest.
“That was an intentional ram!” Lawrence said, gaping out the cockpit window.
“I think we can confirm what’s taking out the probes,” Hiro said.
DeForest pushed the engines harder, redlining what the torch drive could handle. “We need to get to the gate before that thing does. I don’t plan on sticking around here and ending up like the Chariot.”
Their course toward the spinning vortex shortened the distance to the octahedron. Drawing closer, DeForest noticed that its course remained unaltered, seemingly unconcerned as the Blazer rocketed past it. Then he understood. “It’s going for the last satellite.”
“That’s the least of our problems.” Lawrence pointed past their heads. In their haste to escape, DeForest hadn’t been able to line up a perpendicular approach. The vortex seemed to reach for them, its energy ribbons stretching out one by one before snapping back to the far side of the gate like a carousel engulfed in flames.
“We’re coming in too steep,” Hiro said. “If we hit those bands …”
“I got this.” Muttering under his breath, he gripped the control stick until he felt the bones in his hands shake. He aimed for the dark heart of the vortex as the Blazer shot above the edge of the whirlpool. Skimming above the waves of energy, the ventral thrusters struggled to clear the bands. The ship shimmied, and a powerful rattle roared around them. It struck with such intensity that, for a second, he thought the Blazer would tear itself apart.
Then, before he could blink, the tremors vanished, and they were through.
If DeForest hadn’t seen the gate flash past the window, he wouldn’t have known they crossed. It still appeared as if they were trapped within the glowing swirl of charged tendrils. Only the shrinking black orb of real space retreating in the rearview cameras told a different story. Moments after the gate shut down, the vortex dissipated, and the chaos of the Bulk closed in around them.
The infinitely distant red edge of hyperspace offered DeForest a rare comfort, until Lawrence interrupted. “This entire mission is fubar, man. What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know,” Hiro admitted. “We noticed the deep space probe network start to go down halfway through your EVA.”
“Halfway?” Lawrence struggled with her harness in the seat behind them, trying to get comfortable. “I’m glad you two took your time in letting me know!” “First ever crewed extrasolar mission, and this thing shows up. Don’t tell me that’s a coincidence!” Her voice dropped. “And I’m out there EVAing like a fucking idiot.”
Hiro’s mouth twisted as she weighed her words. “Sir, we’re looking at a first-contact event.”
“Aliens … really?” Lawrence threw her hands up after giving up on her buckles. “We don’t even have a protocol for that!”
“We all saw it go for the satellite,” DeForest said. “It had plenty of room to maneuver around it. That wasn’t an accident. It chose to hit it. That implies intelligence.”
“A hostile intelligence,” Lawrence shot back. “That thing swallowed the probe. It’s either studying our tech or digesting the damn thing.”
“That isn’t what worries me the most,” DeForest continued. “The Chariot wasn’t struck, and it wasn’t swallowed, it was sliced open. There may have been some secondary explosions creating the debris field, but it started with a clean cut. We know it’s fast, we know it’s intelligent, and we know it’s dangerous. What we don’t know is how it sliced the gate tug open. If it’s a weapon, and they’re aggressive, we have nothing back home that can match that level of tech, save a nuke.”
“Save a nuke?” Lawrence let out a laugh. “Where the hell am I right now?” Only the familiar hum of the engines answered her as they sat in silence.
After a few steadying breaths, DeForest decided that focusing on anything other than navigating through the Bulk safely was a useless worry. “Halfway point reached, commencing deceleration.” He keyed in the command to orient the aft of the ship toward home. “Flip and burn initiated.”
The g-force of rapid acceleration fell away, replaced by the disorienting uncertainty of weightlessness. The view outside the cockpit spun, and his stomach lurched. Having any sense of direction in space was hard enough without the ship flipping over, now it made the old spacer queasy.
Looking out at the fluctuations in the Bulk, DeForest thought they moved like glittering waves under the moonlight, dark but reflective. Swells rolled past in every direction, flowing out of the abyss and into their cockpit. He tracked a soft red glow of shadowy ripples advance over his hand and onto the surface of every part of the darkened cabin.
A physicist once explained that real space was like the walls of a house, while hyperspace was the pipes, wires, and insulation hidden within. It was what made the home function. Newtonian physics made little sense here, and quantum physics didn’t quite explain it either. However, the only thing the Aerodyne board cared about was that the Bulk worked as a shortcut to the stars. He lingered on that thought, wondering whether the Proxima encounter was an alien entity’s intervention in humankind’s newfound ability to break the light barrier.
The flip concluded, and the dancing shadows of velvet and gold terminated their migration across the interior. Thrust gravity returned, and DeForest felt steadied, his stomach grateful for it.
“Two years of training to reprogram the tug for Benard’s Star wasted,” Lawrence muttered. Lost in thought, she stared out at the mayhem of hyperspace, then her eyes widened with realization. “Hey … do you think that thing made it through the gate? What if it followed us and locked onto the Luna beacon?”
DeForest shook his head. “The odds of anyone finding the frequency are about a quadrillion to one. It’s simple math. Everything flies blind in the Bulk without the beacon.”
“I didn’t see anything follow us through,” Hiro told Lawrence. “I was watching the vortex the entire time.”
“Yeah, but we don’t know what these guys are capable of.”
“Even if they did make it through,” Hiro said, “hyperspace distortions bend reality itself. Like sunlight hitting water, but the refraction is random. You can never be sure where anything actually is.”
Lawrence didn’t look convinced, busily tapping her hand on her leg as she stared at the headrest in front of her.
“Speaking of which, we’re in range of the buoy,” Hiro said.
All eyes shifted to the magnified projection of the hyperspace buoy on the cockpit window. The buoy and the gate were tethered together, one anchored in real space, the other in hyperspace. Its fusion reactor fought constantly against the Bulk’s shifting currents. Fixed in place, the buoy cast a rotating flare like a lighthouse. Intended only for close-range docking, the flare was useless beyond that. The beacon was the only true path to safe harbor.
“Confirmed gate connection, vortex forming, preparing for reentry.”
On their approach, DeForest noticed a faint black orb traced with a wisp of silver drifting lazily into view from the port-side window. The star looked nothing like it did in real space. The Sun, like anything with mass, leaked gravity into the Bulk, manifesting as distortions like the one before him. Within hyperspace’s condensed membrane of spacetime, those gravitational echoes from stars and planets compounded into a disorderly sea of energy.
As they passed through the gate and into real space, the edges of the ring withdrew from their peripheries. The vast dance of colors gave way to the blackness of space, marking the border with the Bulk. Only after the vortex collapsed was it fully replaced by a field of glittering stars.
“The moon never looked so good.” The slightest bend of a smile emerged on DeForest’s face.
“Don’t act like this isn’t over,” Lawrence huffed. “That thing is still out there, probably wondering who the hell we are and where it can zap us. The nerds at Mission Control will lose their minds over this. You know, one of those guys said Godspeed to me before the mission?”
Hiro gave a crooked glance. “Godspeed?”
“Yeah, can you believe it? Serendipitous right. Well, we just broke God’s speed limit, and now she is pissed.”
“Armstrong is just up ahead.” Hiro turned to Lawrence, trying to calm her frenetic energy. “We can be on an Earthbound shuttle in a few hours.”
“You think that makes us safe? Who knows what that thing was? It could be hunting for us right now! And then we’ll have the G-men interrogating us for days, poking us with needles, sending us to shrinks to see if we’re crazy. That’s a hard pass.”
“Lawrence!” DeForest snapped. “I know you’re on edge, but try to control yourself until we get back to port.”
“Sorry, sir,” Lawrence rubbed the tension from her temples before adding, “I’ll leave the flying and higher-dimensional stuff to you two.”
The chalky gray drum of Armstrong Station spun in the distance. DeForest fixed his gaze on a cab ascending the station’s space elevator from the lunar surface. He wasn’t sure if they would be going up or down when they arrived. Up meant California and home. Down meant quarantine and Lawrence’s G-men. He pushed the thought aside. None of that mattered now. Only the docking. “Hiro, signal the station to prep for …”
A high-pitched tone from Hiro’s interface disrupted the Colonel’s chain of thought. “Stand by, sir. I’m getting some weird data. Looks like a hyperspace reading?”
“Hyperspace reading?” DeForest grimaced. “The gate is inactive. How’s that possible?”
“The distortions aren’t coming from the gate. Something is definitely transiting the brane.”
“Something? Our bogey?” DeForest’s confusion hardened into shock as a vortex tore open and the same massive structure rushed to a halt between them and the moon. Its immensity filled the entire cockpit window, sending his stomach into his throat. Gazing up, the top of the craft seemed to point straight at him. The moon vanished as the midsection of the structure eclipsed it, replacing it with an expanse of crystalline oblivion. Armstrong Station suddenly felt impossibly distant as they drifted in the behemoth’s presence.
“The gate though …” DeForest stammered. “But it’s inactive. It can’t … it’s not possible to form.” A chilling realization took hold. He just put the entire human race in danger. “The damn thing found the beacon. It followed us back to Earth.”
“Armstrong Station is messaging us.” Hiro’s voice trembled. “It’s communicating with them.”
“With the station? Why not us, back at Proxima?”
“Lieutenant Bennet from station control is confirming an open channel. He’s sending the data.”
“I don’t like this. We need to get out of here.” Lawrence tugged at her harness, some animalistic part of her brain impulsively urging her to escape.
“What are they saying?” DeForest asked, already dreading the answer.
“Coming through in text.”
The Saar demand submission to these articles:
The astral is forbidden without our consent
You will not make war unless summoned
A citadel of light will give you worlds and remain as our envoy
Three will be taken as witness
DeForest stopped breathing, trapped in thought. What does it mean? What war? What’s a citadel of light? Who are the three witnesses?
Hiro cut through his train of thought. “Something is happening.”
A second later, a soft blue light poured into the cockpit, bathing all three in a radiant glow. He raised his hands, watching them disintegrate into glimmering particles of crystalized dust. Vertigo washed over him, and then he felt nothing at all.
The Saar Commonwealth has prevented Earth and the other planets from venturing beyond the solar system for 200 years but now they've invited Earth to send a delegation to the Szczari in a distant star system on what is supposed to be a peace mission. The delegation includes Ambassador Collins, Defence Secretary VonBrink and his assistant Olivia, as well as accompanying military personnel. Lieutenant Jake Dawes, a cybernetically enhanced soldier and elite drone commander, has been personally selected by VonBrink but is sworn to secrecy for reasons he doesn't understand. His old friends Priya and Miguel from the military academy are part of the delegation, Miguel becoming VonBrink ‘s attache, while Priya pilots one of the delegation spaceships. Jake remains in training under the colourful Captain Rodrigues but during an initial session with his AI combat assistant Saucier, a canine-like robot, he suffers terrifying visions of a previous war, triggered, he believes, by the sealed information packets stored in Saucier’s cache. And he also has serious doubts about the Saar’s real intentions.
The novel's structure is built on the mystery of what VonBrink and Olivia are up to and their links to the strange monoliths, the Finarri. In fact, most of those involved in the delegation apart from Jake's friends have hidden agendas, with cross and double cross in play. In addition, the tale is told from multiple points of view – that of Jake, Olivia, Priya, Miguel and others - so the reader never gets the full picture. This is intriguing and makes the ultimate denouement satisfying. As a whole the characters come over clearly, some lightly sketched and some in bold tones, like Captain Rodrigues, apparently a hard-nosed bully but with a great sense of humour. Jake himself is an attractive character, as are his friends, and the military style banter is engaging, VonBrink's initial interview with Miguel as a case in point.
The world building – the political landscape, the spaceships, the medical cybernetics, the science behind the FTL drives - is all credible. It must be said that sometimes the research showed – as when Miguel is listening to an info dump on how FTL drives function and yawns heartily throughout. But despite these occasional blips the reader can easily relate to the characters who carry the story along. The intriguing mystery and an exciting incident-filled narrative make for a space opera that lovers of hard science fiction will thoroughly enjoy.