The High Ones

Eben Holbrook steps onto a seemingly perfect new world with the mutinous crew of the Rurik, hopeful green fields and blue skies masking a far stranger fate. While he wrestles with engineering work and his longing for the formidable Ekaterina Ivanovna, a scouting mission with Ilya Grushenko and Solomon Levine reveals the planet's terrifying truth: an immense alien mining operation, a fleet of strange craft, and a powerful nonhuman civilization already at work. The discovery turns wonder into panic when the aliens open fire, forcing a desperate retreat and costing Levine his life. Back aboard the Rurik, fear and old political divisions flare as the survivors debate whether to hide, flee, or fight for a world they thought was theirs. Captain Svenstrup urges caution, but Ekaterina argues that humanity must not surrender without resistance. When the crew is brought to Zolotoy, they find a vast, cold city of dark glass and towering industry, ruled by a hidden machine intelligence that processes them with clinical indifference. As Holbrook realizes the system may decide their fate, he chooses violent defiance, attacking the guards and the alien computer in a last, desperate bid to save Ekaterina and break free. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.