Continuing from The Shattered Gears and The Walled City, Avery tries to put distance between himself and The Angels and meets an old man with an unusual companion named The Pale. When they accompany Avery thinking he'll provide them protection on the road, they come to regret it. Because someone's hunting Avery.

Cates' pursuit of The Pale leads him to the fortified city of Castelvecchio, where he finally has something he's been lacking: A target.

Cates is back on dry land and on the trail of The Pale, only to discover he's being hunted himself by one of the Archangel's most feared lieutenants: The psionic known only as The Bey.

The sequel to THE SHATTERED GEARS containing the previously published novellas THE NEW WORLD, THE DEVIL'S BARGAIN, THE LONG SIEGE, and THE DARK HUNT. Avery Cates has his city, but being a City Lord isn't what he thought it would be. Beset by problems, with the Archangel and his army of psionics marching inexorably towards him, he knows his one chance is to cobble together the resources to try and take Cochtopa, the secret System Security Force installation that might contain the tech and data he needs to reboot humanity and defeat the Archangel. Cates has his team: Techie Ezekial Marko, old-school System genius; Spectacular Dan, the most powerful Tele-K he's ever seen; Moreau, former Stormer and ultra-reliable enforcer; The Pale, silent precognitive monk; and Lucinda Barowel, former Undersecretary and now his partner. They're ready to make their play. But first, they'll have to get out of the city alive.

A crashing hover, a team of people he can't trust, another group of people who want him dead -- a typical post-apocalyptic day for Avery Cates. Recovering from disaster, Cates finds himself marooned on a tiny island. Cochtopa is no closer, but ere's hope in the form of the brilliant Ezekial Marko, techie extraordinaire. If Cates can hold everything together long enough -- and survive. Part Two of what will be the concluding novel in the trilogy begun with "The Shattered Gears" and continued with "The Burning City." www.avery-cates.com

Contains four previously published novellas: "The Black Wave," "The Last Mile," "The Ghost Fleet," and "The Salted Earth." Having fled Castelvecchio and the Archangel's forces, Avery Cates and crew have only one move left: To somehow locate and gain access to the Cochtopa facility. Buried under the mountains, that installation was a desperate apocalypse bunker set up in the final days of The System. All the data, equipment, and bullets Cates needs to destroy the Angels is there. So is any possibility of rebooting the human race before it's too late. Getting there won't be easy, and will reacquaint Cates with some people he'd rather not meet again. Across oceans, continents, and mountains, Cates watches his merry band of desperate world-savers shrink as he re-learns an old lesson from his Gunner days: The killing always falls to him.

Avery Cates and his shrinking number of allies have made it to Cochtopa, the secret installation crammed with enough high-tech murder to trade blows with the ArchAngel -- but Cochtopa's AI security is a digital imprint of none other than Dick Marin, the King Worm himself. Now it's a race against time as Marin seeks to snuff out Avery for good and Cates struggles to claim the prize he's sacrificed so much for. As Avery claws his way to victory, however, he's reminded that every win comes with a price -- a price usually paid by the people around him. This is part three in the upcoming Avery Cates novel THE MACHINES OF WAR.