Operation: Vanguard - The Vanguard Directive (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798181509269)

In an alternate Cold War, the underground agency Vanguard fights a hidden battle against anomalous threats. Leo Vance, a kinetic-absorbing operative from Brooklyn, and Maya Rostova, a powerful telekinetic defector from the Soviet Red Star program, are thrust into a desperate mission. When a Soviet launch puts the first piece of Project Icarus into orbit, the stakes become global. The Soviet leader, an Anomaly named Volkov, plans to use a satellite network to broadcast the "Mind Fracture"-a frequency designed to overwrite human consciousness and create a unified, mindless hive.

Betrayed by their own Deputy Director, Arthur Thorne, Vanguard is left shattered and operating in the dark. Guided by their veteran Director, Sterling, Leo and Maya must infiltrate a Kazakh black site and ultimately hijack an experimental shuttle, the Daedalus, to breach the orbital command core, Zarya-Seven. Facing zero-gravity combat, elite Anomaly-powered cosmonauts, and their own past traumas, Leo and Maya must sacrifice everything to pull Volkov's artificial sun down from the sky and save humanity's free will.