Lessons of War

An untried captain. A battle-hardened marine. A hidden enemy.

As a boy, Ian Hadrian used to look up at the night sky and dream of commanding a starship.

As a man, he's one of the Interstellar Compact Navy's youngest battlecruiser captains-but dreams rarely match reality. His command, the Belisarius, is a star-leaping stallion leashed to a solitary and remote sun, watching over a long-suffering world the enigmatic Ciphers abandoned after the Great War. Far from straining at his leash, Hadrian...