Commander Tait, Melissa and MAI are AIs. As advanced Artificial Intelligences, they have an advantage over their human counterparts. They can shut down and sleep through the evacuation of Home World. They do not need to witness the annihilation of that world as the sun goes nova and roasts its surface, turning it into nothing more than a huge cinder ball. However, the reality of what they awaken to five hundred years later is far more frightening then anything as simple as the devastated hunk of Home World. It was all a lie. No human could be this cruel. No AI could be this devious. Who could have conceived of such a Machiavellian plan and why? Tait, Melissa and MAI must find out the truth and then carve themselves a new place in the history of the universe.