Kirjahaku

Amaeric and its allies have been at war with the world for thirty years. Thirty long, terrible years during which nearly entire generations of young men and women have been wiped out and the world has fallen into ruin. It all started with a surprise attack from the south, an inevitable explosion of rising tensions, and now...well, now it continues because the people don't know how to do anything else. War is a cultural cornerstone, a part of every rising generation's identity. But what none of them yet know is that this is the last year. These are the last twelve months of the thirty year war. The tide is turning fatally against Amaeric, its allies are dropping away - all this generation of foot soldiers has to do is survive until the end. Don't die. It's simple enough in theory, but for twenty-one year old Private Tristan Byrne, nothing could be harder. Despite spending the last four years drafted at the Amaeric War Academy, he's unprepared for the hell that awaits him, and he knows it. Unprepared for the brutality and desperation. Unprepared for his monster of a captain - a man driven mad by thirty years of combat and determined to get everyone under his command killed in the name of valor. The only anchor in this storm is Tristan's boyfriend Jack - a corporal on his fourth tour who braves the world with a grin and swagger. But war is cruel, and its masters even crueler. And as the months drag on under Captain Howell's command, the simple rule of don't die becomes harder and harder to follow until Tristan is forced to face the unthinkable. What if none of them come back alive? What if they do?Because Howell is not the only monster lurking in the dark, and war doesn't always end on the front lines.

Starlight isn't the best ship in the Peacekeeper's fleet. Captain Oren knows this. He takes pride in it, because while his crew may not be galaxy-renown like he is, they're a family with potential-especially his bridge officers. Until a brutal blood feud seventeen years in the making rears its ugly head, and their ruthless puppeteer of a foe uses Oren's own crew as weapons, turning four crewmen into an unwillingly sleeper cell to do his bidding. Oren doesn't know who they are, how to detect them, or that they're even there-which is exactly how his opponent wants it. In the middle of everything is Rin, a rescued human abductee who's far more involved than she or anyone else realizes. In their brushes with death, Starlight's colorful and eclectic crew shows Rin that family lies in name, not blood, and that while the stars are beautiful, monsters lurk between them. And Rin may very well be one of them.

The massacre of Sahmot is underway. The town's fleet is in ruins. Horizon is barely functional but racing for home nonetheless, and Starlight is her closest ally-two hours behind her sister ship. Oren prays to his Ancestors for a miracle or mercy, but when they finally reach his home, they are met with an incomprehensible tragedy. The face of the quadrant irrevocably changes in a single moment. As the reeling survivors grieve and struggle to regroup and retaliate, Rin Cooper realizes what Matzepo meant when she warned her, "Do not lose the horizon line." Her grief is drowned by a rage that rivals her father's, and now more than ever, she is sure she was put in this universe to kill Jon Bledsoe. But every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and as Rin and her family brutally learn, the cost of bravery is steep.

It has been four months since Rin Cooper was abducted from Earth and rescued by the Peacekeeper Corps vessel Starlight. Four months since she was thrown headfirst into a wondrous world of aliens both beautiful and terrifying, including Jon Bledsoe-an Alympan with the power to control people with nothing more than his voice. He is hell-bent on destroying Rin's newfound family through any means possible, and his rage and thirst for destruction has only increased after learning that Rin is his daughter and that she possesses Alympan powers of her own that are capable of going toe-to-toe with Jon himself. So for now, he's fallen back, evaluating his options and planning his next attack.For Rin, life is now focused on trying to find her place in this new universe as a Corps civilian asset, and it seems she's found her chance. A research station has gone silent, and Rin is excited because this is her first mission with Oren's crew. It's probably just a repair job, but the half-human is eager to see Paetana-Jaeda-a planet whose orbit has split it into a permanent dichotomy of blistering day and frigid night. However, she's the only eager one. The mission is top secret, and nobody can stop talking about the monsters that live beneath the planet's surface-or a mission that failed two years ago at a now-abandoned base on the other side of the planet. So when Rin and Strike Team Leo reach the station on day-side Paetana and find it eerily empty, her excitement dies. Something is watching them in that deserted garage, and Rin can't help but feel like the darkness has eyes. She and her friends are soon in far over their heads, fighting to escape the station alive. And only estranged siblings Lieutenant Acoua and Lieutenant Commander Byrone-and the story of what happened two years ago-can save them.

Captain Oren Galaxa and his crew are stretched thin. For the last six months, Jon Bledsoe has terrorized the quadrant with ruthless Encarta attacks, equipped with an army of the genetically engineered beasts and an impenetrable cloak that renders his ship invisible to any sensor. His body count stands in the hundreds with no end in sight. After months of arriving to nothing but gruesome aftermaths, Starlight is ordered on leave. But while Oren and his family help Rin Cooper prepare for her coming-of-age celebration in Sahmot and the rest of his crew plans their own vacations, President Lokar has convened the Summit. Behind closed doors, five people will decide the quadrant's fate, and Oren feels nothing but foreboding when he discovers his mother is involved. To make matters worse, Rin has become increasingly secretive as of late, fixated on growing her powers at any cost-including her own life. The pressure is building, and soon, it's going to blow. When it does, nowhere and no one will be safe.