Rigel Dilemma

When strange beings referenced in the Chronicles of Planet Archon begin to appear in the frigid North, Fedorov helps lead a mission to recon deep ice caves beneath the frozen Mountains in the north. There they discover row upon row of sleeping entities that can only be the Ice Men they first discovered on Earth, and later on Mars-the Kroth. This hidden peril begins to awaken, and it will soon need the entire Earthforce 1st Marine division on the ground to face and stop the Ice Men. Then after capturing one of their weapons, Fedorov makes an stunning discovery concerning the true origins of the Kroth, the sinister alien race that first forged two exotic elements into the dread "Devil's Teardrops."

Seeking samples of the Dark element in that alchemy, Troyak leads his Marines into the hidden warren of the Underworld to look for Black Onyx, or Coalstone. Then Apollo is alerted to a ship emerging from Tython, the newly discovered White Hole, which sends Apollo and Kronos on a hunt to find the alien ship. It leads them to a star system Fedorov has long wanted to visit, where he learns the fate of yet another sentient culture that existed there in ages past.

Then, after years of construction time in the Daedalus Shipyards, the Explorer Class CSS Rigel was a bit of a monstrosity. At two million tons gross mass, only the Fendi Scavenger ships were bigger, but few of these remained after the Fendi War ended. Rigel wasn't built for looks, but for utility during long range missions where it could serve as a mobile space station in distant star systems, and CSS Rigel was going for a very long ride.

Humanity had created a web of 57 colonies on within 30 Light Years of Sol, but in the course of that exploration, strong tidal forces had been discovered in space that could take them so much farther, the Startides. After Fedorov documents the existence of a fourth Startide, Epsilon, a Mayday call is received from CSS Rigel that has been caught in the new Startide. Soon its crew of 2,000 engineers, scientists and military personnel will find themselves in a dilemma, exiles in space that can never go home.