Sergeant Thomas Beckett is teamed up with a death row inmate on a suicide mission to the Balkins. Their target is a rogue general accused of running a stealth operation that involves ethnic cleansing missions. But Beckett discovers that the government is using him as a pawn in a bigger mission and soon the body count grows and the bullet begin to fly.

Berkley professor Dr. Julian Rome is a former code-reader for a government project known as Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. His skills are needed to assist Dr. Alexi Gierach in the Antarctic, where strange radio signals are detected. As Julian tries to investigate the hidden messages in the signals of a large unidentified object, he comes into conflict with his fellow scientists Dr. Michael Straub and Dr. Kate Brecher.