Book description
In the first, desperate days of the Human-Covenant War, the UNSC has
enacted the Cole Protocol to safeguard Earth and its inner colonies from
discovery by a merciless alien foe. Many are called upon to rid the
universe of lingering navigation data that would reveal the location of
Earth. Among them is Navy Lieutenant Jacob Keyes. Thrust back into
action after being sidelined, Keyes is saddled with a top secret mission
by ONI. One that will take him deep behind enemy lines, to a corner of
the universe where nothing is as it seems.
Out beyond the Outer Colonies lies the planet Hesiod, a gas giant
surrounded by a vast asteroid belt. As the Covenant continues to glass
the human-occupied planets near Hesiod, many of the survivors, helped by
a stronghold of human Insurrectionists, are fleeing to the asteroid belt
for refuge. They have transformed the tumbling satellites into a
tenuous, yet ingenious, settlement known as the Rubble-and have come
face-to-face with a Covenant settlement of Kig-Yar . . . yet somehow
survived.
News of this unlikely treaty has spread to the warring sides. Luckily
for the UNSC, this uneasy alliance is in the path of the Spartan Gray
Team, a three-man renegade squad whose simple task is to wreak havoc
from behind enemy lines in any way they see fit. But the Prophets have
also sent their best-an ambitious and ruthless Elite, whose quest for
nobility and rank is matched only by his brutality. . . and who will do
anything to secure his Ascendancy and walk the Path.
Tobias S. Buckell is a Caribbean-born speculative fiction writer who
grew up in Grenada, the US, and the British Virgin Islands. He now lives
(through many strange twists of fate) in a small college town in Ohio
with his wife, Emily.
Buckell was a first place winner for the Writers of the Future, and has
been nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and
the Nebula Award. He is also a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction
Writing Workshop.
