Whither the Whales: A novel of Q'ma

"They traveled 150 light years... not to conquer a new world - but to give one away." >Commodore Patricia Bailey leads a small expedition to a distant star system in search of a new ocean world capable of sustaining Earth's whales, dolphins, and porpoises. Sailing with her are the survey ships Narwhal and Beluga, each carrying a handful of elite officers and three dolphins whose knowledge will be essential to the success of the mission. The A-Dam-Ah system appears to offer everything they need-warm, living oceans on a scale that could support the great whales for generations. But as the crews begin their surveys, they uncover something far older and more significant than a new home for the cetaceans. On the twin planets lie the ruins of a lost civilization, a place the ancients called the City of t'Zion. What they find there forces them to confront truths about humanity's past that have been deliberately erased across millions of years. Whither the Whales is a story of duty, sacrifice, and the long memory of the deep. It follows both the humans tasked with preserving a species not their own and the cetaceans who must decide what kind of future they are willing to fight for. Set in the universe of Shiva Comes, this is a tale of two peoples bound together at the end of an age, carrying what they can of Earth into an uncertain future among the stars.