Tyler Callas is the pampered heir of a high-level Corporate Council executive, groomed from birth to take a seat beside her as a member of the ruling class of the Commonwealth society. But the bloody war with the alien Tahni has hit close to home and Tyler wants to join the military, something his powerful mother won’t allow. Desperate to escape her control, Tyler changes his identity to Randall Munroe, a product of the poverty-stricken Underground, and enlists in the Marines. There he flourishes, becoming a member of an elite Force Recon unit and striking deep behind enemy lines. But when his platoon is assigned to take back the colony on Demeter from the Tahni, the mission falls apart, most of his comrades are killed and Munroe is wounded, separated from his unit and left for dead on an enemy occupied world. With no other choice, he organizes the civilian colonists into a resistance movement and begins fighting against the occupation with limited supplies and no support. As the situation becomes more and more desperate, what began as a high-tech, interstellar conflict will become a war to the knife…

Randall Munroe’s past won’t stay dead. Born Tyler Callas, the pampered heir of a Corporate Council scion, he fled that life and adapted the new identity of Randall Munroe so he could join the Commonwealth Space Fleet Marine Corps’ elite Force Recon unit in the war against the alien Tahni Imperium. But when he returned from the war, his old life found him. His mother, Corporate Council Executive Patrice Damiani, tracked him down and tried to return him to her web of control, even if she had to have his personality altered by drugs and psychological brainwashing to do it. Narrowly escaping her clutches, he made a deal with the devil to stay free…and now the debt is come due. Cowboy, a former Space Fleet Intelligence commando who fought beside Munroe on Demeter, now works for one of Patrice Damiani’s rivals in the Corporate Council and he agreed to keep Munroe safe from her, in return for Munroe using the skills he learned as a Recon Marine in the service of Cowboy’s boss. Cowboy has tracked down rumors of an ancient alien artifact that has been discovered by one of the criminal cabals out in the desolate Pirate Worlds, and he needs Munroe to steal it. Munroe recruits a squad of former Marines and resistance fighters he fought with during the war and travels to Thunderhead, a world wracked by storms and hurricane winds, to a city run by the notorious crime boss known only as Abuelo. Their mission is to pass themselves off as mercenaries, try to get hired by Abuelo and then infiltrate his organization and discover where he’s keeping the artifact. Cowboy and his Corporate masters see the artifact as a valuable piece of lost technology they can use to strengthen their control over the Commonwealth’s economy. Abuelo sees it as a weapon to solidify his power among the other criminal cabals and use against Commonwealth law enforcement. But its true nature may be something none of them none of them can control…something that could destroy them all.

The mission couldn’t be simpler. It sounds like an easy, straightforward operation to take care of some small-time raiders hijacking black-market weapons shipments in the Pirate Worlds. Former Recon Marine war hero Randall Munroe doesn’t need to know why his Corporate bosses care about one group of criminals stealing from another, he just has to do the job. But when Munroe is ordered to lead his crack squad of mercenaries into a gang war on the harsh, ice-covered, barely-habitable battleground that is Peboan, he discovers that things are never simple and straightforward when you work for Andre Damiani, the Executive Director of the Corporate Council. And just when he thinks he knows what the battle is about, he’s thrown a new curve. Because if there’s one thing that every criminal, mercenary or Corporate executive in the Commonwealth is willing to kill for, it’s access to the lost technology of the mysterious Predecessors. The alien race known as the Predecessors or Ancients engineered hundreds of planets and moons to support life, created a system of wormholes that connected them and then simply vanished without a trace, tens of thousands of years ago. Opportunists search endlessly for any remnant of their world-shattering power, while others go so far as to worship them as gods. And when you’re fighting for the powers of the very gods, no price is too high.

It can really suck to work for relatives. Particularly when your uncle’s an egomaniacal, power-hungry narcissist who wants to take over the galaxy. Former Recon Marine Randall Munroe has been working as a hired gun for the Corporate Council for years, doing the dirty work of its Director, Andre Damiani because he’s had no choice—-and because Andre is his uncle. But when Damiani gets his hands on incredibly dangerous alien technology, it’s time to fight back. Munroe has seen the lost wonders of the ancient alien race, the Predecessors, who vanished tens of thousands of years ago after terraforming hundreds of planets and setting up a system of wormhole jumpgates to allow us access to them. He knows that Damiani plans to use the technology to take over the Commonwealth government, and he’s forced to go to the last person in human space he’d ever thought to ask for help: his mother. A powerful Corporate Council executive, Munroe’s mother Patrice Damiani, once tried to force him into the life she’d planned for him as her protégé, and his response was to join the Marines. Now, they have a common enemy: if her brother Andre takes over the Commonwealth, he won’t have any compunction about disposing of his rivals and enemies, and Patrice Damiani has been his rival since they were born. Munroe has his own problems, though. His handler, a former cut-throat mercenary officer named Calderon, has begun to suspect that Munroe and some of his team of door-kickers have been conspiring against Andre Damiani. Calderon didn’t need another reason to hate and resent Munroe, and if he catches him, he won’t hesitate to kill him and everyone he loves. This time, there’s no way out for Munroe except a fight to the death…