The year is 2326, and the settlers of the extrasolar colony of Transterra lead a quiet existence. They spend their days farming and maintaining the equipment they need to survive forty light-years from Earth, and they spend their nights watching the stars, watching for any sign from the homeworld with which they've had no contact for almost two-hundred years...
...until, one evening, they hear one, hidden amidst a meteor shower. A few seconds of audio, foretelling a conflict beyond their direst dreams.
White Scar Across the Firmament is a 2024 Space Opera novel, written by A.N. Milne and independently published through Otherworlds, Inc. The story switches back and forth between Jonah Harrison in the 24th century, once Captain of the starship Prospice and leader of the Transterra settlers; and Jean Harrison in the 22nd century, a security consultant who encounters the global conspiracy that precipitated the loss of contact to begin with. Their fates are obscurely linked; with each other; with the transhuman Archangel Insurgency; and with the Collective, the alien hive mind that has spent centuries hounding humanity across the stars.
White Scar Across the Firmament contains examples of:
- Action Girl: both Victoria and Jean, in spades.
- Antimatter: The Archangels' main power source
- Applied Phlebotinum: the molecular platelets that make up Archangel frames
- Assimilation Plot: The Collective's main organizing principle.
- Comm Links: The characters are able to communicate through the use of their cybernetic implants; common in the 22nd century and beyond.
- Faster-Than-Light Travel: The cast are able to travel between the quantum relays between the stars. These are jealously guarded by the side that holds them at any given time.
- Self-Destruct Mechanism: When all other options are off the table, the Archangels can "drop core": turning off the magnetic containment for the antimatter powering their frames, and die ina fashion that might take out a few of the Collective with them.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: On both sides.
