The edge of Imperial expansion Far from Earth and the other homeworlds Here lie the secrets of ancient gods Here…there be dragons Seeking to escape the shadow of Annette Bond’s success, Captain Morgan Casimir has taken a posting on the far side of the A!Tol Imperium. Here, she hopes to begin a legend for herself that stands apart from her stepmother the Duchess. A chance encounter introduces her to the xeno-archeologist Rin Dunst—and to the strange mystery cult that tried to silence him. There are darker secrets in these stars than the A!Tol and their human allies ever guessed…and if they can’t find answers, the Precursor’s mistakes might yet destroy the galaxy.....Again. Read by Hillary Huber.

Fifty thousand years ago, the Precursors broke the universe. Now great powers and small alike fight over their wreckage. But in the midst of the chaos, there is a question no one asks… Why? Morgan Casimir, commander of the A!Tol Imperial cruiser Defiant, has seen the works of the Precursor aliens known as the Alava. She has seen their accidents threaten worlds and consume entire star fleets. Charged by her Empress to prevent a conspiracy of profiteers from finding and using a lost fleet of Alava warships, she knows unimaginable catastrophe looms if she fails. With her lover, xenoarcheologist Dr. Rin Dunst, at her side, she is sent to a hot zone on the edge of war to once again achieve the impossible. But as they search along a border flaring in violence, Morgan discovers that if the worst comes to pass, her orders are to destroy the ships rather than allow them to be taken… and she realizes that there just might be a reason seemingly godlike aliens lost an entire fleet.

An ancient power unleashed from its prison. Fleets summoned by oaths old and new alike. A rising tide of war that may consume the galaxy! Captain Morgan Casimir’s mission to stop a war has ended in a nightmare. In the heart of an ignored nebula, trapped behind a ring of newborn stars, she has awoken a creature of another time: the horde of biological starships who call themselves the Infinite. Fifty thousand years ago, the Infinite drove the galaxy’s Alavan Precursors to a grave mistake that destroyed all that was. Unleashed once more by the very people Morgan Casimir sought to stop, the Infinite now threaten an entirely new era. The only thing standing in their way is a fragile alliance of old enemies, determined to keep them contained in the Astoroko Nebula. But when that ancient prison fails, the galaxy must stand together—or watch the beginning of a golden age dissolve into apocalypse…