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Ship of Destiny – eARC

Advance Reader Copy
Unproofed

SURROUNDED BY DEATH, THE SECRET OF IMMORTALITY IS WITHIN REACH. A new novel of space exploration and alien contact from Chain of Command author Frank Chadwick.

Sam Bitka, a naval reserve officer, is recalled to wartime service and soon earns a reputation for aggressive tactics and insufficient deference to his academy-graduated superiors. His latest run-in with authority earns him a transfer to command of an armed transport, USS Cam Ranh Bay.

When a mysterious alien probe materializes from Jump Space and remotely reprograms The Bay's star drive, Sam and his crew begin an involuntary voyage that takes them three thousand light years out of known space, across the galactic rift to the Sagittarius Spiral Arm, and into the heart of an ancient, previously unknown civilization—the first encountered by Humans and the other five races of the Cottohazz—Stellar Commonwealth—in over a century. The genetically altered immortals known as The Guardians, a race so old they do not remember their own origins, soon turn murderously violent.

Now Sam and his crew must elude capture by the Guardians, find some means of reprograming their own star drive, and then return to the Cottohazz with the news of a powerful new civilization bent on their destruction. But they may also be carrying the secrets of the origin of their own star drive and of the path to immortality.

Cover Art by Don Maitz
USS Cam Ranh Bay diagram by Frank Chadwick

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This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Look for the final version on March 3, 2020

Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN-13: 978-1-9821-2443-4

Copyright © 2020 by Frank Chadwick

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
https://www.baen.com

Electronic version by Baen Books
https://www.baen.com

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