Traces the events of the First Formic War a century before the events of Ender's Game, following the unsuccessful attempt of Victor Delgado to warn skeptical Earth governments of an imminent alien invasion and the efforts of Mazer Rackham and the Mobile Operations Police to meet unprecedented threats.

Card and Johnston continue the fast-paced hard science fiction history of the Formic Wars--the alien invasions of Earth's Solar System that ultimately led to Ender Wiggin's total victory in Ender's Game. A coalition of Earth's nations barely fought off the Formics' first scout ship. Now it's clear that there's a mother-ship out on edge of the system, and the aliens are prepared to take Earth by force. Can Earth's warring nations and corporations put...

The story of the Fleet in space, parallel to the story on Earth, told during the time that Peter Wiggin and Bean are consolidating the Hegemony on Earth. The terraformed Formic worlds are open to settlement by humans, and the International Fleet becomes the arm of the Ministry of Colonization, run by Hirum Graff. MinCol now runs Fleet School on the old Battle School station, and still recruits very smart kids to train as leaders of colony ships and...