Know Thy Enemy

He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.

Patrick Murphy founded Corpus Ad Astra. Now he's dead — killed aboard his own expedition — and only three were there when it happened: Karl Holzhauser, the AI engineer MOMI drafted onto the mission at the last minute; Karl's daughter Lisbeth, whom four hundred years of enemies have learned, too late, never to underestimate; and UNCLE, the AI Karl built. And command of the ship has just fallen to the one man no one trusts.

Because no one believes it was an accident. To a crew Patrick hand-picked, the story writes itself: the outsider killed the man who built this expedition to take command of it. Now Karl leads people who want him dead, aboard the Elephans as it drives deeper toward HD 260655 — and the rival megacorporation Hipponike is closing on the system with a war fleet and no intention of taking prisoners.

To survive, Karl has to hold a mutinous crew together long enough to learn three things: who really caused Patrick’s death, what Hipponike is truly after, and why ATLAS — the artificial super-intelligence that rules Earth — is hiding humanity's fate from the billions who live on it. Yet the enemy bearing down from the dark is only half the danger. The other half is already aboard, sharing his air, waiting.

In the cold calculus of the 25th century, surrounded by hostile humans and colder machines, only one thing can keep a man alive: know thy enemy.