Plot summary
Exultant is set in Baxter's "
Xeelee Sequence" twenty thousand years into the Third Expansion of Mankind, "a titanic project undertaken by a mankind united by the Doctrines forged by
Hama Druz after mankind's near extinction." The human-supremacist Interim Coalition of Governance has conquered almost the whole
Milky Way — all but the alien Xeelee concentrated at the galactic core around a
supermassive black hole called Chandra. The mysterious Xeelee are far more advanced but less numerous than the humans, and the war has been at a stalemate for three millennia even though the entire Coalition has been directed toward the war effort and ten billion humans die at the front every year. In a war fought with
faster-than-light technology (i.e.
time travel), each side has foreknowledge of the other's actions and can develop counter-measures to plans before they are made.
Pirius is a fighter pilot stationed at the front. When a battle turns to disaster for the Coalition forces, he disobeys suicide orders to stand and fight, choosing instead to risk survival. In a desperate gamble to outrun a pursuing Xeelee, Pirius captures a Xeelee fighter for the first time in history. Returning to base via FTL travel, he arrives two years previous to the battle, when his younger self is still a cadet. Rather than being lauded as a hero, both instances of Pirius are court-martialed for disobeying orders.
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