Greg Bear

Anvil of Stars - Forge of God Greg Bear

A Ship of the Law travels the infinite enormity of space, carrying eighty-two young people: fighters, strategists, scientists, the children. They work with sophisticated non-human technologies that need new thinking to comprehend them. They are cut off forever from the people they left behind. Denied information, they live within a complex system that is both obedient and beyond their control. They are frightened. And they are making war against entities whose technologies are so advanced, so vast, as to dwarf them, against something whose psychology is ultimately, unknowably alien.