Captain Siobhan Dunmoore wanted to believe the long war against the invading Shrehari Empire had finally banished the ghosts of her past. But when her ship Iolanthe, a heavily armed man-of-war masked as a bulk freighter, finds itself in need of replenishment after a long patrol spent stalking human and alien foes, she is confronted with events eerily reminiscent of a past she thought buried.

Humanity's thousand-year-old interstellar empire has been rotting from the inside for over a century, thanks to venal, corrupt, and power-hungry sovereigns from a dynasty many consider illegitimate. The latest in that lineage, an increasingly psychotic empress, is pushing her realm toward collapse as admirals and generals rebel against her rule. That rebellion quickly drags the once mighty Imperial Fleet into a devastating fratricidal conflict between factions.

An engineer finds himself in an alternate reality, Cornwall, in the year 715 A.D. He awakens in the body of a young Baron.

Earth is conquered. The Shongairi have arrived in force, and humanity’s cities lie in radioactive ruins. In mere minutes, over half the human race has died. Master Sergeant Stephen Buchevsky, who thought he was being rotated home from his latest tour in Afghanistan, finds himself instead prowling the back country of the Balkans, dodging alien patrols and trying to organize the scattered survivors without getting killed.

Naval Officer Jack Samson thought a posting to the frontier of human-inhabited space was the death blow to his career. He couldn't have been more wrong. A routine inspection of a small merchant vessel leads to devastating loss and the discovery of strange, fascinating objects. As astonishing discoveries unfold, a mysterious and hostile ship proves that Samson has a competitor in unlocking the secrets of an ancient alien civilization and that humanity might not be alone in the galaxy after all.