A washed-up captain. A worn-out dispatch. A staff of green cadets. And they’re Earth’s only hope.

The Alexander is the last true warship, a relic from the times of interstellar battle. She’s destined for the scrapyard, and her captain, Richard Hammett, is going to stop working. Their last mission is an exercise run having a ship full of cadets.

It’s said to be a routine hop through a wormhole Gate. But Gates have already been heading offline, one after another, and Hammett knows in his bones it means problems. The type of difficulty only a real warship are designed for.

Defying purchases, he calls for the Alexander through another Gate, and puts the deliver smack dab in the road of an alien invasion. Now a captain by the end of his career must take a large number of terrified cadets and forge them right into a team of warriors, because the Alexander is usually all that stands between the Earth and the swarming ships of the Hive.