First contact was not supposed to be like this. The first intelligent species to encounter Mankind attacked without warning and swarmed locust-like through the solar system. Merciless. Relentless. Unstoppable. With little hope of halting the savage invasion, Earth's last, desperate roll of the dice was to send out three colony ships, seeds of Earth, to different parts of the galaxy. Earth may perish but the human race would live on . . . somewhere.
150 years later, the human colony on the planet Darien has established a new world for Humanity and forged a peaceful relationship with the planet's indigenous race, the scholarly, enigmatic Uvovo.
But there are secrets buried beneath the surface of Darien's forest moon. Secrets that go back to an apocalyptic battle fought between ancient forerunner races at the dawn of galactic civilisation. . .
Michael Cobley was born in the city of Leicester, has lived in Perth (Australia) and Glasgow but now resides in North Ayrshire. His previous works have included the Shadowkings trilogy(a dark and grim fantasy epic),Iron Mosaic(a collection of short stories) andSeeds of Earth, Orphaned WorldsandThe Ascendant Stars,comprising the Humanity's Fire trilogy.Ancestral Machinesis a stand-alone novel set in the universe of Humanity's Fire.