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More than a thousand years in the future mankind has abandoned Earth to conquer new worlds throughout the solar system; Luna, Earths only moon, has become home to the fierce and militaristic Deorum, a people for whom brutality is a way of life and service is every citizens duty.
Mars is a pleasant green world of wealth and luxury, but civil unrest simmers between the affluence of the surface and the poverty of the tunnels below.
Upon the immense space station Jupiter’s Halo, that encircles the mighty gas giant, the Ministry of Colonies fights to hold its tenuous grasp on the centralised governance of humanity.
The ambition of the Deorum, the desire for an independent Mars, pressures of overpopulation in the colonies and the ever growing need for water all threaten to fracture a peace that has endured for more than thirty generations.
Against this backdrop the Deorum Marines of First and Second Company are dispatched on a routine mission to investigate a supply station’s distress signal, under the command of Captain Titus Lanad. But when they arrive the reason for the signal turns out to be far from ordinary and the station itself becomes the centre of a mystery that could change the balance of power throughout the solar system.
Across the gulf of space Aitkin Cassini faces a test for his life at the torturous hands of the mysterious and feared Fatherhood. He can not, will not allow himself to fail, but to pass he will have to give up a truth that not even he knows is hidden within him.
Meanwhile, aboard an old and disused supply station Jav Hornwood must make an impossible choice between the lives of he has sworn to protect and the duty he has sworn to uphold. He cannot do both and if he chooses duty his people will surely die. But choosing to save them from an immediate threat might risk an even greater danger and the discovery of a secret that could plunge the human race into all-out war.
