Joachim, captain of the starship Peregrine and leader of its far-ranging clan, commanded a people unlike any before them. The Nomads — space-faring descendants of Earth's gypsies and Vikings — lived not on planets, but aboard their mighty ships, free from the ties of any world. Once a year, their scattered fleets gathered at their secret haven, Rendezvous, to uphold the fragile web of laws binding their roaming society. This year, Joachim brought troubling news: five Nomad ships had vanished in a remote, uninhabited sector of space — and it was no accident. Meanwhile, Trevelyan Micah of Earth's Coordinating Service — the bureaucratic heart of galactic civilization — saw the Nomads as unruly wanderers, a destabilizing force in an already strained federation. But new, alarming evidence pulled him into uneasy cooperation. Across distant worlds, identical plants and creatures had appeared where they couldn't have evolved naturally. Somewhere in that same sector where the ships disappeared, something was at work. Among the Nomads was Sean, young yet hardened by personal loss. At Rendezvous, he encountered Ilaloa, a woman both haunting and mysterious — perhaps not quite human, perhaps something more. Their meeting would spark a deeper journey, one that entwined the fate of Nomads and settlers alike. As Joachim and Micah probed deeper, they both sensed the truth: an unknown intelligence, vast and purposeful, was moving through the galaxy — expanding toward human space. The Nomads feared being crushed between this alien force and Earth's rigid authority. Earth feared repeating its oldest mistakes: conflict born of fear and misunderstanding. In this sweeping tale of a distant tomorrow, as humanity reaches ever further into the stars, one truth remains: no matter how advanced, people still love, fear, and struggle as they always have — even when facing the cosmic unknown.