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The Directorate was run by the powerful few--genetically altered humans permanently linked with the Gi-net, the massive computer network which contained everything there was to know about the planets and space stations claimed by humankind. For centuries, the Directorate had ruled over countless star systems, its authority absolute and unquestioned. But now, stirrings of rebellion were being felt in this far-flung, commercial empire.

And at this crucial time, the Directorate had discovered a planet out beyond its farthest reaches, a place known only as World, where the descendants of humans stranded long ago by a starship crash had survived by becoming a race of warriors, a race led by its Prophets, men with the ability to see the many possible pathways of the future. Men who had already foreseen the coming of the Directorate's Patrol ship Bullet--and were preparing their warriors of Spider for this first contact in which even one wrong choice could destroy both World and empire...

Rebellion on Sirius was threatening to become the spark that would set the galaxy ablaze, bringing on the destruction of the Directorate-run empire--a tyranny powered by an elite corps of human, computer-linked brains. The Directorate's only hope of overthrowing the Sirian rebels rested with three of its once-mighty but now battle-damaged Patrol ships, three backup warships, and a race of primitive, long planet-bound warriors--the Romanans.

For the Directorate had spent many centuries breeding initiative and the capability for violent action out of the human race. And only on the lost colony of World did true warriors of spider still exist. But would the Romanans willingly join the cause of the star men who had once attempted to destroy their world? And even if they did, could warriors so newly exposed to the weapons of deadly technology defeat a world and a leader ready to utilize legendary tools of destruction more lethal than any humankind had ever known?

The Sirian rebellion had proved the catalyst for the rise of two powerful new forces in the galaxy. Ngen Van Chow, leader of the failed rebellion, had fled to a distant world from which he would launch an interstellar holy war of destruction, a war fueled by the discovery of a long-hidden technology which can transform ordinary men and women into fanatical soldiers of Deus.

While on the long-lost colony planet of World, the Romanans, known as the Warriors of Spider, and their Patrol allies--formerly part of the military and police force which kept order among the worlds and stations controlled by the computer network of the Directorate--prepared for civilization's final stand against this seemingly unstoppable conqueror.