Masters and Bastards

With life on Earth long extinct, human DNA is cultivated to life in a solar system far from home. Human history begins to repeat itself on the new world of Poltervaut. Hundreds of years beyond their industrial revolution, the resurrected human race faces its greatest peril. Greater telepathy--found in a tiny percentage of human beings--has become the most valuable resource in the galaxy. An expansionistic alien empire has launched a mighty armada and invasion force to enslave the human race and harvest human minds. With the aid of telepathy, an empire can communicate at the speed of instantaneous thought, greatly surpassing the speed of light. The clock is ticking for the divided human nations to prepare their defenses. Old nationalistic rivalries flare between the superpowers of Iberia and Scythia even as the alien Vulgari move closer with a seemingly insurmountable force. Andreas Marset, a young unsuspecting legionary in the Iberian army, must discover his role in the wars to come. As an Arpathian, the conquered people living within the Iberian Empire's borders, Marset belongs to a lower caste of Iberia's residents. Inexplicitly, he is called before the Iberian Imperium and mated to Isabella Caravingian, the bastard daughter of Iberia's Emperor Constantine. Andreas knows only that this apparent break in imperial protocol is the result of years of secret telepathic breeding. Questions abound as to Marset's true identity. Exiled to obscurity in the wars of the colonial worlds in the Rubicon System, Marset begins to unlock the secrets of his gifted mind as he rises in the ranks of the army. Hannah Comzatava, a captured Scythian assassin sent to kill Andreas, may hold the keys to uniting mankind and helping Andreas discover his true destiny in the looming war with the Vulgari.