Something has travelled for a billion years to find us - and now it has.

In space, Commander Mitch Granger and his crew are nearing the end of their scientific mission - along with their covert satellite photography for the military. As they prepare for reentry, an unknown object emerges from the void: the name given to deep, dark space. The object proves impossible to evade. The crew have one option left - to bring the fragment aboard.

Immediately, all contact with the shuttle is lost. NASA watches helplessly as their craft breaks orbit and heads back to Earth, where it crashes high up in the Revelation Mountains of Alaska. The space agency puts together an emergency recovery team, but the Russians also want the US military photographic data on board.

The race is on to be the first to the crash site, nearly 10,000 feet up in one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. But there is another problem. Satellite images show that something else came down in the shuttle, something moving about when no one should be alive. And that seems to be growing at an alarming rate.

NASA needs help and protection. Send in the HAWCs. But even HAWC captain Alex Hunter, the last supersoldier of the Arcadian program, has never come up against a threat so old and from so far....