[Kestrel Saga 01] • The Army of Light

It had started with an attack on a research station near the frontier region, the furthest portion of the Outer Sphere of Unified space. Then, one by one, subsequent border systems began to fall victim to the unknown attackers.

The Kafaran had arrived.

The fighting raged on for nearly five years. Tens of thousands of military personnel perished, and millions of innocent beings lost their homes… or their lives. Then, nearly as quickly as the war had started, the Kafaran’s inexplicably retreated to an unexplored region of space. Even with their once expansive foothold in the Milky Way now lying in ruins, it seemed to the once peaceful Unified Collaboration of Systems that victory was finally theirs.

Now, with the Galactic War five years in the past, retired fighter pilot Shawn Kestrel wasn’t nearly as content in his peacetime life and he should have been. Not only was his fledgling cargo business steadily losing customers, his interstellar transport was fatally incapacitated, the victim of a now all too common pirate attack.

Without warning, the prudish daughter of his former commanding officer appears, informing Shawn that William has mysteriously disappeared—apparently the victim of foul play. And, as if things weren’t difficult enough, a Unified Sector Command carrier quickly arrives to assert the UCS’s own self-guided interests into the disappearance.

As Shawn endeavors to put all of the pieces together, one thing becomes terrifyingly clear: the Kafaran's are no longer idle.

With the government suspiciously pressing down on him from one side, and the beautiful and enigmatic daughter driving him on from the other, Shawn Kestrel must search deep within himself to decide where his past and present loyalties lie before the universe once again erupts into all-out war.