Ever since he was a child, Marcus Daimon has been cursed with a sense of duty. Dragged by its current all his life, only his loving family anchors him. But a political undertow soon takes him far away from that family. Called on by The United Federation of Earth and coerced by his powerful father-in-law, Marcus is put into cryostasis and sent on a mission light-years in distance and decades in duration. Bound by duty and forced to abandon his wife and daughter, Marcus wants nothing more than to finish the mission and go home. That's the plan anyway. But when Marcus wakes to find the UFE Arcadia silent and seemingly empty, he learns firsthand that no plan survives first contact with the enemy.