The Order

Across the cosmos, a network of strange portals has begun to open, linking warring civilizations and pushing their conflicts into widespread disorder. Some species collapse under the strain, while the Chut'un bind themselves to the red Europhids in a symbiotic alliance called The Order. This vast hive intelligence, spread across the far reaches of the universe, craves structure and dreads the unknown, so it destroys anything that stands in the way of its plan. Its campaign against the blue Europhids has been so thorough that only one survives, hidden inside Moses Montgomery, known as Dark Horse.

In 1989, Dark Horse was a Marine in a Rapid Reaction Force. He and his team were hurled a thousand years into the future, where they toppled the Union, an evil fascist empire. Back in the present, the Union never forms, and Dark Horse and his crew of operatives from the past and future finally have time to relax, play some music, and enjoy the world they saved. But as the last obstacle to The Order's designs, Dark Horse has become an alien target.

Dan Delgado and Wini Finch, from The Others, and Owen McCoy, from Flux, join Dark Horse as the team tries to understand the gates. The first gate appeared in New Hampshire and has since surfaced in Antarctica. Although the team has faced the strange and otherworldly before, nothing prepares them for what happens next. Three members are abducted and taken to another planet, and no one knows whether they are alive. Dark Horse and his now ragtag group must search for their missing teammates while they themselves are being hunted.

With his friends and all of Earth at stake, Dark Horse must take extreme risks, stir up chaos, and do whatever it takes to bring his people back, even if saving humanity means giving up his own life. The story draws its characters from Robinson's earlier novels The Others, Flux, and Exo-Hunter, and blends science fiction, horror, and high-stakes action with humor that is sometimes unpredictable and sometimes outlandish, shifting between moving moments and laugh-out-loud absurdity.