Peace And Memory (The Secantis Sequence, 3)

Peace and Memory is the stand-alone third novel of Mark W. Tiedemann's ambitious and acclaimed future history, the Secantis Sequence. The Secant is a territorial boundary in space, a forbidden zone, a closed border between deadly enemies: the Pan Humana and the Commonwealth Republic. The Earth-centered Pan Humana forbids interaction with aliens--and with the people of the Commonwealth Republic, who trade with aliens. Worse, the Commonwealth Republicans use alien mind technologies. Are they still human? What does it mean to be human?

Commonwealth Shipmaster Tamyn Glass is a trader gaining success among the aliens when a man from her past sends her a stolen starship. The ship bears the news that the man, her old friend Sean Merrick, is dead, and wants Tamyn to recover his body and bury him on the other side of the Secant--on Earth. But is Sean truly dead? Signs indicate he may still be alive. Yet, if he is dead, Tamyn must steal his body before she can bury it. And if she succeeds in this grim task, she runs the risk of getting herself and her crew destroyed in the Secant or killed on the forbidden planet Earth--or worse. For the ancestral homeworld has brain-breaking punishments undreamed of in the Commonwealth Republic. --Cynthia Ward