Publisher's Synopsis
The distant outpost in the newly prospected Dharman System has gone dark and does not respond to signals traffic. This sends Special Services Agent Lieutenant Timothy Scott Ryan to the main colony holding on Dharma VI. Ryan reaches the "Safe Zone" only to find out its facilities have come under attack and are mostly destroyed. He joins with three robotic aids to hold the Zone until more help can arrive from Frigate Achilles in orbit. Yet Ryan soon discovers the alien threat that ravaged the colony, and faces another terrible attack.
With help from Achilles, he then ventures into the Wild Zone to determine the fate of the original colony science and security team. One threat leads to another when he learns the primary predator on the planet is not the one he was attacked by, and that an insidious virus now threatens Dharma VI and many other colonies in the Cyonid spiral extension. In time, the real threat emerges as the Navy musters a fleet in the Dharman system to meet the arrival of a sinister new alien race they come to call the Shadows.
With themes involving bioengineering, robotics, AI, a riveting first contact scenario, and interstellar war, the story becomes a depiction of humanity's first active conflict with a hostile alien species. It is a war fought on two fronts, both within the very bodies of those infected by the alien virus, and in the vast deeps of interstellar space where the Federal Navy faces a strange new enemy, unlike any life form ever encountered.
