Mars will be the battleground for the fate of humanity—and the future of an alien civilization—in this gripping science-fiction suspense novel.

Against all odds, Lt. Ryan Braeder has kept the colonists on Europa alive, forging the refugees into a community and the ice-covered moon into a home. After a biological plague wiped out Earth's population, the planet remains uninhabitable, leaving Europa the last bastion of civilization. And its inhabitants' continued existence is directly related to the ancient artifact discovered beneath the frozen landscape that's telepathically linked to Braeder.

When a distress signal unexpectedly arrives from a Martian settlement under attack by an army of bloodthirsty mutants, Braeder is forced to mount a rescue mission to save the colonists. Arriving on the Red Planet, he learns the culprit is his old enemy, Wilshire. The Ceres survivor intends to transform Mars's inhabitants into zombie soldiers, inoculating them against Earth's plague so he can conquer the planet and remake humanity in his own image.

Outnumbered and outgunned, Braeder must find a way to stop Wilshire once and for all. And he has an unexpected ally in this war: the entity that can not only communicate with him but infuse him with strange powers. But the alien consciousness has objectives of its own, and Braeder must determine if they align with his or if it's only using him to further its agenda. The survival of the human race depends on it.