A soldier betrayed. Alien technology exploited. A mission to reach into the stars. The pandemic of 2044 redrew all the lines on the map and killed off a third of the global population. Authoritarian governments rose to power and a century of progress was lost while the rest of the world starved and devolved into violent chaos. After a lifetime of war, Liam Ward joined Valorus, a private military contractor serving the United Nations of America and its Nationalist Party. In his twilight years, he's assigned to a new contract with the potential to set him up for retirement. Instead, he finds ancient technology that will change the trajectory of his life and the world as a whole. Now Liam must make decisions that could affect the fate of the human race while beset on all sides by betrayal, geopolitical machinations, and assassination attempts from the forces that wish to maintain their stranglehold on power. This is a story of conquest, empire, and the progress of the human species as they reach toward the stars and evade the darker spirits of their nature.