Echoes of the Ancients

Lutéa is a stowaway on the cruise liner Tenzenai’s Gift. She’s also robot, programmed for obedience, made with an expiration date, and desperate to see something of the greater universe before she goes. After a chance encounter with a vicious socialite leaves her helpless, Lutéa is rescued by Tal—a tall, hairless biped from a species said to be nearly extinct, a species known locally as the Wanderers. Tal is a stowaway just like Lutéa, but he’s on a mission, and that mission turns deadly as hostile forces divert Tenzenai’s Gift toward the dwarf planet Shoroha. Under the ice of Shoroha, scientists have discovered something too radical and volatile for the universe to know. Tal and Lutéa must find it, and decide what to do with it, or empires will tear themselves apart over civilization’s most abiding question: who is the true heir to the Stargods?