Book Description

An epic space opera from Michael T. Kuester Once, humans were masters of their galaxy. Then they met the Others. They never communicated, or even showed their faces. They seemed driven by a single goal: the complete extinction of humanity. Amid their genocidal campaign, the survivors in the Sol system constructed the Lock: a Dyson sphere surrounding the inner planets, hiding them from the Others. Millennia later, what remains of humanity languishes within the Lock, oppressed by the shadowy Protectorate, which banned extrasolar travel. Now, their security forces work to uphold laws no one cares enough to break. Braylen Roads is content to serve as a ship captain, until a chance encounter with the enigmatic Declan March leads him to break the most inviolate law of the Protectorate: do not travel beyond the Lock. Banished with March for his crime, Braylen finds himself in command of an ancient and wondrous starship. With an unlikely crew including a tenacious reporter and a quasi-human child wise beyond her years, he must seek out survivors of the Others' purge, unravel the mysteries of the Protectorate, and restore humanity to its rightful place among the stars.