The epic story of the struggle to reestablish humanity as a spacefaring species after an interplanetary war whose only winner is the weapon it creates.

Mars was the New World of the solar system, the prosperous center of trade with the Belt and beyond, until a disastrous war with Earth resulted in a technological singularity that left both planets under control of weaponized lifeforms called tharks.

Long after the war, Maggie finds a recording of a dead man's mind in the ancient wreckage of an experimental ship. The discovery catapults her into a dangerous race with a psychopathic rival intent on stealing her find, and a hive of tharks bent on erasing its very existence. To survive she must resurrect the dead man in the body of a battered warbot.

Commander Gray of the United Colonies Space Force is a romantic born in the wrong era. His dreams of exploration are ruined by war with Earth, and ultimately he must sacrifice both his dreams and his life in service to Mars. But when he wakes a century later in the body of a warbot, he realizes he has been given one last chance, for his ship is the only remaining faster-than-light vessel in existence.

Maggie and Gray must enlist unlikely allies in a bid to rebuild Gray's ship before the tharks destroy all evidence it ever existed. The stakes have never been higher, for if they lose, humanity will remain planet-bound forever, but if they win, they stand to gain the stars.