Life on Hera has taken a turn since Terran colonization, but the new Herans survived an incursion from a destructive alien race and repurposed the attacking ships into their own defenses. Robots. Pilot-driven robots saved the first Herans, and their engineers kept the weapons ready for action.

To keep the robots from being taken over by unqualified personnel, they were locked to their pilot’s bloodline and each engineer born for the next two hundred years had the same DNA in their bodies. Burning Day is the day that the engineers prove their maintenance and their community gains supplies from the city, two hundred kilometers away.

Burning Day is when the aliens return and Burning Day is where our story begins…