In the twenty-seventh year after humanity entered the interstellar age, a starship carrying the ultimate technological legacy of the ancients launched from Earth's orbit. This was no favor from fate, but a curse from the cosmos. A civilization-cleansing program known as the Great Filter had quietly devoured 87 percent of the Milky Way's intelligent species. When the Directorate of the Stargate Project unearthed the long-dormant prototype of the Destiny beneath Mars's polar ice cap, humanity finally understood: the ark left behind by the ancients was no vessel of salvation, but a sword of Damocles hanging over every civilization.
This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.
