Tvar. Project Necessity, #1

In the universe's ultimate strategy game, humans are not players - we are unsuspecting pawns.  When the gameboard erupts in violence, survival against overwhelming alien forces demands heroes. Project Necessity scoops up teams of misfit geniuses as humanity's last hope. There's Zach, a paraplegic prodigy who reimagines the boundaries of mind and machine.  Dick, a magician whose sleight of hand is surpassed only by his mastery of the sciences.  Vicky, an uber paranoid risktaker, will do anything to finish her faster-than-light railgun.  The rest of the team has their own half-baked ideas, drowning in paranoia and fear.  And then there's Max, a very independent AI - perhaps the most human of them all.
 To make matters worse, the paranoid are correct; there might be an alien agent. In this cosmic contest, where invention is humanity's only hope, the clock is counting down. Time is not on our side.yet.