The Fires of Freedom (A Learning Experience, #9)

To stop a war, they have to start one.

The Solar Union has honoured its debt to the Belosi by sending a covert fleet to liberate their homeworld and free their people from a rapturous alien power, but now the Galactics are mobilising, intent on crushing the Belosi as an object lesson to any other slave race thinking about making a bid for freedom. Given time, they will bring their immense power to bear and the Belosi will be exterminated.

Caught between the certainty of annihilation and the dishonour of abandoning humanity's allies to the fire, isolated from the rest of the Solar Navy, the Firelighters come up with a desperate plan to trigger the long-feared war between the major powers, a plan that can have only two outcomes. They will win the Belosi time to secure themselves ...

Or they will start an inferno that will burn the galaxy to ashes.