Ascent to Empire

For more than fifty years, the Terran Republic and the Terran League have been killing one another. The death toll has climbed ever higher, year after year, with no end in sight. But the members of the Five Hundred, the social elite of the Republic’s Heart Worlds, don’t care.

Terrence Murphy is a man who believes in honor. Who believes in duty—in common decency and responsibility. Who believes there are dark and dangerous secrets behind the façade of what “everyone knows.”

He doesn’t much care what the Five Hundred want. He intends to put a stop to the killing…