The Praxis (Dread Empire's Fall, 1) [Williams, Walter Jon]

In the wake of the disintegrating empire of the Shaa, the tyrannical rulers of the universe, chaos threatens to erupt as various alien races struggle for power, and Gareth Martinez, a young Terran naval officer, stumbles upon an insidious plot by the Naxid, a warlike insectoid society, to replace the Shaa with their own despotic rule. Original.