ISBN 0-345-37449-5 (US pbk)

"Aksum Muse was a cyber-enhanced veteran -- an unhappy mix of man and machine -- who could never escape the chatter of interfacing AIs. Sole survivor of an intelligence mission gone disastrously wrong, Muse believed his survival had been a cruel mistake. And so he sought refuge from the din of computer language and the wreck of his military career on a low-tech planet called Second Thought. He wanted nothing to do with his past but had no real idea what to do with his future.

"But as a system-wide war geared up on the buffer planet Burst, Muse became the focus of a multiparty manhunt, traced and targeted by humans and machines alike. For buried somewhere in his tortured memory, Muse held the key to the coming war -- not only who was behind it and why, but exactly what would trigger the conflagration..." [jacket blurb, US pbk, 1993]

"A tour de force of wit and invention -- a cunning parable of modern warfare, full of satiric wordplay and high-tech spirituality. Anybody not reading James Luceno is missing the boat." --Lewis Shiner.