The civil war ravaged streets of Terra Primus are a hazardous place for a sixteen-year-old, but Joel is determined to make it to Arcadia to reconnect with his father’s legacy. Starving, injured and hunted by his father’s nemesis—a striker scout—Joel makes an unlikely friend in a magnificent Canine Maximus. Learning to trust and rely on each other’s loyalty and strength, they must navigate a world of ruin and treachery where every turn could mean capture by the Union police. An epic journey of survival, betrayal, mateship and love.

After years on the run, Joel, Max and Sam have spent a peaceful year living on Arcadia. Now their idyllic life is about to be thrown into disarray as Prime Bradley asks them to join Striker Force Raptor on a MOSAR mission to the jungles of Hikaru – a planet tidally locked to its host star, Daisuke. The objective – find a missing prisoner transport starship and rescue any survivors. For Joel, it’s a chance to put his parents’ killers in jail for life. For Sam, it’s a chance to find her missing father. But Hikaru proves to be a perilous environment, so when a mysterious toxin sends the highly trained striker force team into chaos, Joel and Sam are faced with terrifying life and death decisions. They say it’s always darkest before dawn, but in the jungles of Hikaru, under the perpetual light of Daisuke, a psychotic creature lurking in the shadows is about to prove things can always get worse.

For years, the ‘ghost ship’ – a monolithic Timberwolf starship – has been hidden from time. Now it’s about to reappear and Striker Force Raptor have been assigned to retrieve the vessel and return it to its rightful owners, once they’ve deciphered its incredibly advanced technology. But what seems like an exhilarating adventure is about to take a dangerous turn amid chance encounters with black holes, hidden planets and mysterious deaths. Striker Force Raptor have faced tough assignments before but never an invisible killer that threatens their survival by the second. Joel has to figure out why the ghost ship’s crew and their entire planet’s civilisation have been decimated. Forced to trace the culprit back to another planet – Blackrock, home of a most-wanted war criminal known for his psychopathic cruelty – Joel is about to face his worst nightmare. He and Sam may have been lucky to survive their last twelve missions with Strike Force Raptor, but on mission thirteen, has his luck finally run out?

The First Striker Pursuit have been tasked with hunting down war criminals. Joel and his team have the full resources of the Union behind them, and the Butcher of Blackrock is at the top of their list. The Butcher is as bad as they come—rumored to have killed hundreds and legendary for his brutal slaughtering of servicepeople, he’s the most prolific murderer in Talon history. Having once escaped the Butcher’s grasp, Joel learned long ago that when you go off-world, anything can and does happen. During this assignment to capture the Butcher, he and his team will be tested to their breaking point, but can they finally bring this psychopath to justice? And more importantly: can they survive the mission?