Thrown into their past by failed attempts to weaponize time, a small fleet of stranded future warships struggles to stop millennia of war and suffering before it starts, helping to guide us into a peaceful, technologically advanced future. To their growing frustration, we, their distant ancestors, seem determined to resist that vision.
Then, success! They defeat the enemy who first attacks earth, but he is not where and when he was supposed to be. How can that be? Has history changed? Or was their history wrong?
All of their plans rely on that history!
Frustration builds and conflict grows as they struggle to find a path forward while the planet gets worse and worse. They know another attack is imminent, it must be, their history says so. But they can't do it alone and they can't rely on the planet. Some argue to take over outright, using their growing military power to impose order, exploiting the population's growing populism to take over. Others say they should reach out to their long-time allies, involving them in a struggle for their survival much earlier.
To make things worse, after decades of ignoring the signs, some people on the planet begin to suspect something is going on. Sure they are alone in the universe, they turn to their enemies on Earth. Tensions rise as fear and populism push the planet closer to the brink.
Then history changes again ....
The second book in the Circle of Time series, this book continues the struggle to save Humanity.