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Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death

In the end, the only political systems that seem to work are those based on freedom. The Inner World leaders of the Terran Federation seem to have forgotten this simple truth. After fighting the Khanate--with the Fringe Worlds to supply the raw material and the fighting men--the Inner Worlds found it hard to give up the powers they had seized during the war. So they decided not to--rather than allow the rapidly expanding Fringe Worlds representation in the Federation, they are inviting the Khanate in, to keep the colonial upstarts in their place. The Fringers have only one answer to that:

INSURRECTION

Spacers call the warp point Charon's Ferry.

No star ship has ever entered it and returned since a vengeful Orion task force pursued a doomed Terran colonization fleet into it in 2206.

Almost a century has passed. The fiery hatreds of a quarter-century of warfare between the Terran Federation and the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieeee, the cat-like species humans called the "Orions," have eased at least a little. The "Grand Alliance" forged by the need to fight side-by-side against the genocidal Rigelians remains, but there are those on either side who continue to hate, continue to distrust.

Now the strength of that war-forged alliance is about to be tested. For Charon's Ferry is about to give up the secret of its dead. A ship has emerged from the deadly warp point at last. A ship which responds to the challenge of an Orion star ship using ancient human communications codes... then opens fire.

The holocaust of interstellar warfare has been ignited anew, in a bloody crusade to free Holy Mother Terra.

Five thousand years after Sun Tzu writes The Art of War, his advice is followed during the Fourth Interstellar War between the terrible Bugs and the humans, who are aided by their catlike Orion allies.

The bugs have overrun planet after planet and they regard all sentient species as convenient protein sources. The Grand Alliance of Humans has been driven to the wall. When the only possible outcomes are victory or racial extermination, only one option is acceptable - The Shiva Option.