Riding the Rock(2002)

Stephen Baxter

Eighteen thousand years have passed since the birth of the Third Expansion. Humanity spans the Galaxy ­ and has become locked in a titanic, unending battle with their ultimate foe, the Xeelee.

Luca is a novice at the Commission for Historical Truth. Based on E arth, young Luca is at the heart of the mesh of intelligence that controls and drives the Galaxy-wide war. But now into his life comes Captain Teel ­ a woman as young as he is, enigmatic, compellingly beautiful ­ but also a serving officer from the Front itself.

Luca is immediately captured by an infatuation for Teel. But Luca's duty to the Expansion sends him on an extraordinary journey to the deadly core of the Galaxy, where he must confront the truth of an interstellar war, a war that spans a hundred thousand light years and has endured for millennia.

In the midst of this superhuman conflict ­ even as he 'rides the rock' with Teel into the jaws of the ultimate darkness ­ Luca must strive to protect his own humanity from being crushed by the great events in which he is enmeshed.

This new story is set in Stephen Baxter's acclaimed future history The Xeelee Sequence. A remote sequel to Reality Dust (PS Publishing 2000), Riding the Rock is a story of love, war, and the destiny of mankind.