The Mars colonists watch, helpless, as the Maelstrom anomaly swallows Earth. Yet Dr. David Hutchins's horror is offset by scientific curiosity, and somehow he manages to tether a probe connecting our solar system to the Maelstrom. Now David, pilot Raedawn Corona, a Neo-Soviet POW named Boris, and

In Central America, rebel forces are battling Union troops for control of Chiapas. But the guerrilla struggle becomes an interstellar war when a lethal energy sliver from the Maw crashes into the Mexican jungle...pursued by the Maelstrom's most vicious aliens. Now in the fallout, a wounded Shard is mutating into a horde of crystalline monsters, while an undead Pharon priest slaughters both Union and rebel soldiers to reinforce his zombie army. And as the fighting escalates into bloody anarchy, the deadly energies build and intensify, threatening a damnation worse than even the Maelstrom itself...

Torn from the universe by an insatiable cosmic vortex, Earth is trapped in the grotesque parody of reality called the Maelstrom -- along with thousands of other planets, millions of species, billions of warring creatures... all swirling toward ultimate destruction.

Sent to find the survivors of a crash landing on an unexplored planet, a company of Union Marines and medics are trapped on a hellish world of enigmatic ruins, where they find themselves hunted by an unknown enemy. But when space and time begin to warp, weapons and equipment vanish, and strange, murderous creatures haunt the Marines' every move, a simple rescue mission becomes a desperate death march....