A young fleet officer and a Marine stand together to defend their colony in the continuation of the powerful and action-packed Genesis Fleet saga from New York Times bestselling author Jack Campbell. In the three years since former fleet officer Rob Geary and former Marine Mele Darcy led improvised forces to repel attacks on the newly settled world of Glenlyon, tensions have only gotten worse. When one of Glenlyon's warships is blown apart trying to break the blockade that has isolated the world from the rest of human-colonized space, only the destroyer Saber remains to defend it from another attack. Geary's decision to take Saber to the nearby star Kosatka to safeguard a diplomatic mission is a risky interpretation of his orders, to say the least. Kosatka has been fighting a growing threat from so-called rebels--who are actually soldiers from aggressive colonies. When a "peacekeeping force" carrying thousands of enemy soldiers arrives in Kosatka's star system, the people of that world, including Lochan Nakamura and former "Red" Carmen Ochoa, face an apparently hopeless battle to retain their freedom. It's said that the best defense is a good offense. But even if a bold and risky move succeeds, Geary and Darcy may not survive it... Praise for Jack Campbell and his stunning science fiction novels "Jack Campbell's Vanguard starts a new series with a bang.  Honestly, it reads like first rate, action-packed, historical fiction—only this history is set hundreds of years in an all too believable future...I can't wait to get my hands on the next installment!"—Taylor Anderson, New York Times bestselling author of the Destroyermen series “ Vanguard is the book Campbell's Lost Fleet readers have been waiting for....Strong characters,  complex politics on multiple worlds,  battles against impossible odds,  this book has the whole package.”—Elizabeth Moon, Nebula Award–winning author of Cold Welcome “High-stakes action and deep-space intrigue that is deftly constructed, consistently surprising and thoroughly engaging.”— RT Book Reviews “An excellent blend of real science and space action. I enjoyed myself thoroughly from first to last page.”—Brandon Sanderson, #1 New York Times bestselling author “Combines the best parts of military SF and grand space opera.”— Publishers Weekly “Campbell’s genius is action in space.”—Tor.com “The visceral action comes fast and furious.”— Kirkus Reviews "Jack Campbell" is the pen name of John G. Hemry, a retired naval officer who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis before serving with the surface fleet and in a variety of other assignments. He is the author of the Lost Fleet and the Lost Stars series as well as the Stark's War series, the Paul Sinclair series and the Pillars of Reality series. Chapter 1 Billions of years before, a star much like the one humans called Sol had formed, nuclear fires igniting to warm a bevy of planets, asteroids, and comets orbiting its mass. Millions of years ago, the star, its fuel dwindling, had gone nova, hurling its outer layers into space and ravaging the worlds that had once orbited it. No longer a nuclear furnace, the star still glowed with bright white light created by the heat of its collapse into a sphere the size of a world like Earth. Over the course of another billion years, the star would expend that heat and gradually cool. Humanity arrived, in ships that needed the mass of stars to create jump points allowing those ships to cross light years of distance in a few weeks. The star was given a name, Jatayu, but with only a few battered rocks still circling it, humans went onward to other stars that still warmed worlds where men and women could find new homes. Jatayu was nothing but a waypoint, a place the ships of humans had to go through to get to places they wanted to go. But one day some humans came to stay. They brought a small outpost that they placed in orbit about the white dwarf star and claimed ownership of Jatayu. Billions of years after its birth, war followed humanity to the small, bright star. ÒLeaving jump space at Jatayu in five . . . four . . . three . . .Ó Commodore Erik Hopkins, formerly of Earth Fleet, braced himself for the familiar disorientation and dizziness that accompanied a drop out of jump space. He wasn't otherwise worried. Freedom of Space Navigation Operation. There was a checklist for that, and every item had been checked off. The destroyer Claymore, originally known as the Garibaldi when she was part of Earth Fleet, was at Standard Alert Condition Two, just as mandated by the checklist. The freighter they were escorting would come out of jump space behind Claymore, and they would proceed through Jatayu Star System, breaking the unofficial blockade of Glenlyon Star System. It had all been planned out. Scatha Star System had claimed control of Jatayu, a claim without legal merit but one that Scatha might try to enforce against any unescorted freighter. With o