"The Covenant is a star spanning theocracy. We have been fruitful and multiplied. We are happy. We are at peace. There is only one small problem. It's all a lie. Our culture was erased. Our minds were reprogrammed. Humanity became unwitting slaves. But we are not alone. We have secret allies that help us fight back, such as the alien Skaduwee, another of the Covenant's slave species. They altered our genome, attempting to increase the mutation rate so that our children might have a tiny chance to be born with special powers. It worked. We're awake now. Time to fight back." - Anonymous member of the resistance ----------------------------------------------------- In the Covenant, genetic mutation carries a death sentence. When sixteen-year-old Cheska Bellamy's mutation is exposed, she's forced to flee her starship to the partly-terraformed planet below. As she makes her way across a devastated landscape, she discovers that there had been a race of sentient creatures with a flourishing civilization. All that remain are battered ruins and a handful of Indigens who'd moved underground after Cheska's people began terraforming their planet. When she connects with the human resistance on the planet, she learns that her people on the starship have been secretly enslaved by an alien race; the most terrifying part (for her) is that she might be the key to her people's freedom. What if she doesn't want to be that key? Doesn't she get to decide her own future? Her people talk of self-determination, but Cheska learns one thing for sure: free will may be an illusion, but evil is very real. * This book is DRM Free by request of the author.