Telling a two-star general what she really thought of him was the mistake Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr made with General Morris. But as a battle-hardened professional, she took pride in doing her job and getting her troops back alive. So after she'd saved the mission to bring the Silsviss into the Confederation - instead of losing them and their world to the enemy known only as the Others - she let the general know exactly how she felt.

And Torin's reward - or punishment - was to be separated from her platoon and sent off on what might well prove an even more perilous assignment. She was commandeered to protect a scientific expedition to a newly discovered and seemingly derelict spaceship of truly epic proportions. And Confederation politics had saddled her with a commanding officer who might prove more of a menace to the mission's success than anything they encountered.

Only time would tell if the ship was what it appeared to be or a trap created by the Others - or the work of an as yet unknown alien race with an agenda that could prove all too hostile to other life-forms.