Industrial Revolution

The asteroid belt is humanity's last best chance to start over. Michael Blades and Jimmy Chung are building Sword Enterprises, a station that could prove space colonists don't need Earth's chains. But Earth isn't ready to let go. When the battleship NASS Altair appears on their horizon with a mysterious missile in its hold, every assumption about freedom gets tested. The colonists face an impossible choice: submit to Earth's rule, or stand alone against a power that could erase them in an instant. Beneath the political machinations and the survival stakes simmers something more intimate and volatile Blades' fraught connection with Lieutenant Ellen Ziska, an officer sent to watch him. Written in 1963, this is frontier fiction transposed to the void: a story about what happens when the children of empire decide they want their own destiny. Anderson populates his asteroids with people who feel the weight of both hope and history, asking the question that never gets old: what are we willing to sacrifice to be free?