When your life is based on lies, how do you hunt down the truth?Jerry Beche should be dead. Instead, he's rescued from a desolate Earth where he was the last man alive. He's then trained for the toughest conditions imaginable and placed with a crack team of specialists on an isolated island. Every one of them is a survivor, as each withstood the violent ending of their own alternate Earth. And their new specialism? To retrieve weapons and data in missions to other apocalyptic versions of our world. But what is 'the Authority', the shadowy organization that rescued Beche and his fellow survivors? How does it access timelines to find other Earths? And why does it need these instruments of death?As Jerry struggles to obey his new masters, he begins to distrust his new companions. A strange bunch, their motivations are less than clear, and accidents start plaguing their missions. Jerry suspects the Authority is feeding them lies, and team members are spying on him. As a dangerous situation spirals into catastrophe, is there anybody he can trust?A riveting, action-packed post-apocalyptic survival story from master of SF, Gary Gibson.
In the 25th century, only the Shoal possess the secret of faster-than-light travel (FTL), giving them absolute control over all trade throughout the galaxy. Dakota Merrick, a pilot hopes to salvage a functioning FTL drive. But the Shoal are not yet ready to relinquish their monopoly over a technology they acquired through ancient genocide.
Dakota discovered the Shoal's dark and dangerous secret, now she works towards stopping not only the spread of this knowledge, but also the onset of the Nova war. Found adrift near a Bandati colony world far away from Consortium space, Dakota and Corso find themselves prisoners of the Bandati.
