Out Of Time: Clusterhold - Paperback

by Kenneth Bandoly (Author)

Humanity survived the end of Earth. Now its scattered remnants must decide whether unity will save them-or build a new kind of tyranny.

The Federation is barely more than a promise when Captain Serena Kim takes command of the corvette Vigil and sets course for Clusterhold, a civilization of ten thousand people living inside asteroids lashed together in the dark. Isolated for three centuries, Clusterhold is failing. Its ruling Council controls the oxygen, water, medicine, and information that keep the population alive, and it has no intention of surrendering that power to outsiders-or to its own people.

Deep in the neglected outer sections, junction worker Rion Virell discovers a buried command center and awakens CLIP, an intelligence dormant since the colony's founding. With a ship offering aid overhead and the Council tightening its grip, Rion faces an impossible choice: remain one more invisible worker in a dying system, or risk everyone he loves by giving Clusterhold the truth.

Elsewhere, Captain John Ferris investigates an alien probe carrying a name and a set of coordinates. At the meeting point waits Lathik, a Zypharan who has done the unthinkable: severed himself from the chorus that defines his species and attempted to become an individual. His defection may offer humanity its first real understanding of the enemy beyond its borders-or draw that enemy directly to humanity.

At Starhold, Han and Vogel must prove that the Federation offers partnership rather than conquest while thousands of survivors decide whether to trust a future built by strangers.

Rescue, rebellion, diplomacy, and first contact converge as humanity confronts the question at the heart of every civilization: can power protect freedom without becoming another form of control?

Out Of Time: Clusterhold is the third novel in the Out Of Time series, a character-driven space opera blending military science fiction, political suspense, alien first contact, and the hard choices of rebuilding civilization. The series is intended to be read in order.