In Our Stars

Auteur

“Jack Campbell” is the pen name of John G. Hemry, whose books have been translated into fifteen languages and sold four million copies worldwide. He is a retired naval officer who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis before serving with the surface fleet and in a variety of other assignments. He is the New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Fleet series and The Lost Stars series, as well as the Stark’s War, Paul Sinclair, and Pillars of Reality series. He lives with his indomitable wife and three children in Maryland.

Texte du rabat

Lieutenant Selene Genji has one last chance to save the Earth from destruction in this pulse-pounding science fiction adventure, from the author of the New York Times bestselling Lost Fleet series.

Earth, 2180

Genetically engineered with partly alien DNA, Lieutenant Selene Genji is different from ordinary humans. And they hate her for it. Still, she’s spent her life trying to overcome society’s prejudice by serving in the Unified Fleet while Earth’s international order collapses into war.

Genji is stationed on a ship in orbit when humanity’s factional extremism on the planet reaches a boiling point, and she witnesses the utter annihilation of Earth. When the massive forces unleashed by Earth’s death warp space and time to hurl her forty years into the past, Genji is given a chance to try to change the future and save Earth—starting with the alien first contact only she knows will soon occur.

Earth, 2140

Lieutenant Kayl Owen’s ship is on a routine patrol when a piece of spacecraft wreckage appears out of nowhere. To his shock, there is a survivor on board: Selene Genji. Once her strange heritage is discovered, though, it becomes clear that Genji is a problem Earth Guard command wants to dispose of—quietly. After learning the horrifying truth, Owen helps her escape and joins her mission.

Together, they have a chance to change the fate of an Earth doomed to die in 2180. But altering history could put Genji’s very existence in danger, and Owen wonders if a world without her is one worth saving. . . .

Échantillon de lecture
Chapter 1

12 June 2180

As the weapon detonated on the surface of the Earth, a collective, wordless moan of despair sounded from the crew of the Unified Fleet heavy cruiser Pyrenees in orbit near the Moon. Lieutenant Selene Genji stared, unable to accept what she was seeing, as the initial burst of weird, hideous light expanded with horrible speed, growing and racing across the surface of the planet. Oceans instantly evaporated, the surfaces of continents vanishing, billions dying in the blink of an eye as the weapon consumed all of human history and art and hope.

The Spear of Humanity had won. Earth had been "cleansed," destroyed in the name of saving it.

"We're getting odd readings on all of our instruments." The voice of the weapons officer sounded strange, choked by grief.

"Light is being bent," another officer gasped. "Like space-time is being distorted. Energy release is off every scale we've got."

Boring beneath the surface, the destruction reached Earth's core.

What remained of the planet exploded.

In the seconds remaining to her, Genji watched the enormous oncoming shock wave, part of her wondering at how the image warped mysteriously in places. More free quarks than the universe had seen since its birth, invisible to the human eye, and the remnants of the outer atmosphere driven outward by inconceivable energy, the death throes of Earth formed a tsunami of brilliant blue shading into ultraviolet as the explosion expanded at incredible velocity. Earth's dying moment was beautiful in a very strange and extremely frightening way.

She only had time to form two words in her mind before the shock wave hit.

If only . . .

6 February 2140

Ninety-nine watches out of every hundred were boring and monotonous, and often the one hundredth one was as well. Lieutenant Kayl Owen realized that he had managed to snag the watch with something "interesting" happening.

Hazards to navigation were not supposed to pop up out of nowhere. That sort of thing could happen on Earth, but not in space, not where the instruments aboard the Earth Guard ship Vigilant could spot everything within literally millions of kilometers. Something could pop out from behind the Moon or from behind the Earth, but in this orbit the Moon was nearly twenty-five thousand kilometers away, and the Earth almost ten times more distant, so nothing should suddenly appear less than a thousand kilometers from the Vigilant.

But there it suddenly was, stubbornly refusing to abide by common sense and experience, which said it couldn't be.

"Turn off that alarm!" At the best of times, Captain Garos seemed to regard the universe as a perverse thing dedicated to making his life difficult. He always seemed to regard the crew of the Vigilant, and Lieutenant Owen in particular, in the same light. "Why didn't anyone report that object to me before it got within a thousand kilometers of us?"

Everyone else on the bridge either tried to look busy or looked at Lieutenant Kayl Owen, who was the officer of the watch. Knowing the captain's wrath was already focused on him, Owen tried to keep his voice professional, calm, and assured. "Captain, the object did not appear on any of our instruments until now."

Captain Garos's glower grew deeper. "Meaning you didn't notice it until now!"

Sometimes, Owen let the captain's rants slide off him. But in this case, his whole watch team might also catch blame. He had to stand up for them. "Captain, the system backup records will confirm there was no indication of that object being there before the alert sounded."

"Then where did it come from and why didn't our instruments see it?" Garos demanded.

"I don't know, Captain."

"Of course you don't!" Garos switched his attention to Lieutenant Francesca Bond, who had just arrived on the bridge. "What is it? Maybe you can tell me something."

Bond squinted at the readouts. "It's definitely artificial, Captain. Uncontrolled tumbling. Visually, it looks like a wreck."

The executive officer, Commander Ilya Kovitch, had also arrived, and shouldered Lieutenant Bond aside to personally study the images. "A piece of a wreck, you mean. It looks like part of a larger ship."

"Where did it come from? What is it?" Captain Garos shouted.

Everyone looked at Owen again.

"I don't know, Captain," Owen repeated.

"Find out!" Garos pointed a rigid finger at Owen. "Take a boarding party, examine it, and give me a full report! Don't screw up!"

Kovitch gestured to Lieutenant Bond. "Take over the watch."

Owen rapidly filled Bond in on everything she needed to know about the ship's status. Normally, he and Francesca got on without too much friction, but right now she was on edge because of the captain's rant and because she knew he and the executive officer were watching, so she got through the turnover as quickly as possible with no wasted chat.

Before leaving the bridge, Owen called the deck division head. "I need the ship's boat ready to go and a boarding party assembled."

"That's going to take an hour," Ensign Vivaldi complained.

Owen took a quick glance toward the fuming Captain Garos. "The captain wants the boat to go without any delay. Would you like to tell him it'll take an hour?"

"No," Vivaldi said quickly. "Umm . . . we'll get it ready as fast as possible."

The Vigilant was a Defender-class cruiser, and at thirty-one years old was about the average age of Earth Guard ships. Because the Universal Space Treaty hadn’t been challenged for longer than the Vigilant had existed, her main armament of four Penetrat…