A washed-up fighter pilot’s 20 year secret is out, now he must stop at nothing to prevent his past being used as provocation to slaughter the remains of humanity.

Yep, this is one that has had me stumped for a while. Story wise I pretty much know the details, but want to nail a killer logline for it.

Basically: He is a former fighter pilot, now living, like the rest of the human race, on Islands around the world. Mankind has been separated from those who now rule the Earth, which are another group of humans from another universe, who escaped their world before it was destroyed. However, my former fighter pilot is the reason for this whole mess, the beings arrived with peaceful intentions, but my pilot panicked and fired on their craft leading to a full scale war.

Years later, where my story begins he is just trying to stay low and live out his life. Human controlled is maintained by the supply of a virus vaccine, and the rulers society is fractured by those who support the humans.

So the leader of these people finds out that "The man who started the war" is still alive, so using false flag terror attacks he gets enough support to rid humans from the planet, but better yet he thinks he has the perfect person to put all the blame on, someone who is hated so much for costing their people so much they'd never question if he was the right person or not.

So, struggling to get that into a sentence or two feel need to convey to current situation and think trying that gets too wordy.

Years after his mistake lead to a brutal war, that left the human race on the brink of extinction. A washed-up former pilot must stop at nothing to prevent those now in control of the planet using his past as provacation to eliminate the last of mankind.

Who is Sam Cunningham? Loglines rarely use names Rather, they describe characters and their roles in a plot. Who is this character? A spy, a guerilla fighter, a special ops, a soldier of fortune?

And does the plot entail a provocation or a pretext for a war of annihilation? A provocation would be something he did that was so horrible it invites -- it demands revenge. (From the alien POV, he's a war criminal; he and his species deserve a 'capital death' punishment.)

A pretext would be that he did something of minor consequence, but in doing so gives the aliens a flimsy excuse to do what they have really want to do all along.

But the most important issue is: what MUST he do when he discovers what the aliens plan to do? Is his dramatic goal to prove his innocence -- or to defend his species? Will proving his innocence stop the attack or are they damn well going to attack no matter what the facts on the ground were?