Showing results for "The Ascent" in Adventure

When an unauthorized oil rig appears offshore of Ecuador, a military team is sent to investigate. The deep-water platform has no markings, no drilling rig, and no workers—but it's surrounded by a curious bank of fog. When their helicopter closes in, it's swallowed without a trace.

The Five Hundred, the elite families who rule the Terran Federation and control its political power and its wealth, have grown steadily wealthier and more powerful, thanks to the war against the Terran League. War may be hard on the people who get caught in its path, but it's very good for business in the short term, and the Five Hundred own the shipyards that build the Navy's ships. They own virtually all the industry that produces the weapons and material the war consumes so voraciously... and they've made damn sure someone else does the dying.

In their battle to save Earth from becoming another conquest of the alien Kasari Collective, Mark and Heather Smythe have struck crucial blows against the enemy. But their best efforts have still failed to derail the completion of the wormhole gateway that would give the insidious extraterrestrial invaders access to the planet - and doom humankind as helpless slaves of the Kasari hive mind.

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.