The Xochicuzmal Enigma: Book One of Plata Worlds: 1

When a mysterious spacecraft crashes far from the settled regions of the Plata Worlds, Captain Mateo Valdés expects to find an accident. Instead, he finds a survivor wearing an unfamiliar golden protective suit, speaking an archaic form of a Plata language, and carrying technology centuries beyond anything known in the region. Before he loses consciousness, the stranger says only one word: Xochicuzmal. An eccentric historian recognizes the name-and immediately becomes frightened. What begins as an investigation into a mysterious visitor soon leads Mateo, the historian Dr. Tomás Arriaga, and their companions across ancient ruins, forgotten archives, and a buried structure that predates Plata civilization by thousands of years. The old legends speak of a lost city called Xochicuzmal. But there is no city where the ancient maps say it should be. There is something else. A door. And behind it lies a technology capable of connecting distant human worlds. As Colonel Rafael Borda and his forces close in, Mateo discovers that the legendary Long Fires-the disasters that isolated the Plata Worlds generations ago-may not have been natural catastrophes at all. They may have been the consequences of an ancient transportation network gone catastrophically wrong. Now the network is waking up. And someone, somewhere beyond the Plata Worlds, already knows it exists. The Xochicuzmal Enigma is a classic science-fiction mystery of forgotten civilizations, ancient technology, political intrigue, and exploration, and the first novel in The Plata Worlds series.