Arachne

Is this a dream... or a nightmare? The crew of the interstellar colony vessel Arachne is roused from artificial hibernation to face a horrific reality, as an alien boarding party takes them into custody to answer for the deaths of tens of thousands of sentient beings. But there is more to their trial than meets the eye, and the threads of intrigue weave a tight web as crewmates and friends are divided between those who feel they owe restitution for the actions of the ship's AI in their defense, and those who refuse to bow down to a judgment they see as persecution. What future can they hope to build among aliens who see them as mass murderers... presuming they have a future at all?

What a Tangled Web... When the colony starship Arachne unwittingly destroyed a deep-space habitat of the Chirrn, her crew committed themselves to a lifetime of penance to repay their debt. But a brutal act of vengeance has now forced them into exile in a distant part of the galaxy. Drawn into a cosmic conspiracy spanning millennia, the colonists learn that the Chirrn's ancient choices have exacted a terrible toll on human history. Now, their only way to win true freedom may be to carry out a perilous theft aboard an extraordinary megastructure orbiting a neutron star. Will Arachne and her crew pull off the heist of the millennium? Or are they being manipulated into committing a far more awful crime... one for which all humanity could pay the price?

What a Tangled Web... The crew of the interstellar colony vessel Arachne is roused from artificial hibernation to face a horrific reality, as an alien boarding party takes them into custody to answer for the deaths of tens of thousands of sentient beings. Her crew commit themselves to a lifetime of penance to repay their debt, but not everyone agrees. As tensions rise and opposing factions come into play, a brutal act of vengeance forces them into exile in a distant part of the galaxy. Drawn into a cosmic conspiracy spanning millennia, the colonists learn that the Chirrn's ancient choices have exacted a terrible toll on human history. Now, their only way to win true freedom may be to carry out a perilous theft aboard an extraordinary megastructure orbiting a neutron star. Will Arachne and her crew pull off the heist of the millennium? Or are they being manipulated into committing a far more awful crime... one for which all humanity could pay the price?