Tap Holland broke records the day he died.  He beat the Chinese record for the fastest time from Earth to lunar orbit.  He survived first contact with the sentient machines that had turned America’s lunar outpost into a place where blood misted the air and slicked the floors.  And when he found himself outside that charnel house in the wasteland of the lunar surface on a last and hopeless mission, he was the first to see the cosmonaut standing on the Moon’s pale surface, helmet strapped to her hip, a Russian dog at her feet, as though that was the most natural thing in the world to see as he set off the first tactical nuclear device fired in anger since WWII.

 

He would see her again, when the alien called “the Emissary” brought him screaming back to life.

 

It’s 2055 and a humankind on the verge of exploring their own solar system, finds instead that they have been discovered by warring alien races.  They are forced into a fight for survival against alien machines that will not rest until the Earth is reduced to a cinder.  As the body count rises, and the Emissary’s promised aid fails to materialize, Holland has to find out if the Emissary views the people of Earth as allies, or as cannon-fodder, before his home is overrun.