The Light of Terra

The A!Tol Imperium and their new human subjects have had 15 years of relative peace. New colonies have been founded, new worlds explored, new ships built. Formal and informal alliances have been built with the ancient powers of the Core, leaving humanity and the Imperium seemingly on the brink of a new dawn. The devastation of one of the newly-founded human colonies sends ripples of shock through the Imperium, and a battle fleet under Fleet Lord Harriet Tanaka is dispatched to the edge of the Imperium to find the culprits and bring them to justice.

A dozen inhabited worlds of the Kanzi Theocracy and the A!Tol Imperium are ash. Millions of sentients of a dozen species are dead, including humans from the brand-new colonies built under the Imperium's watch. Despite the losses, the strange Taljzi fanatics have been defeated - but everything suggests that more will be coming. The Empress of the A!Tol has resolved that the cold war between A!Tol and Kanzi must end. She sends Duchess Annette Bond to the heart of the Kanzi Theocracy to negotiate a new alliance.

When the Taljzi’s genocidal invasion brought promises of aid from the oldest and greatest of the Core Powers, humanity and the Imperium looked to the Mesharom for salvation. But that salvation turns to ash as the Mesharom demand the surrender of the very weapons that saved the Imperium. Defiance leaves the Imperium facing the Taljzi without the aide of the galaxy’s wisest race, but with their old enemies the Kanzi at their side, they have no choice but to end this war at any cost.