Some starship captains explore strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilisations. Some lead missions of discovery through wormholes to the other side of the galaxy. Then there's Captain Iridius B. Franklin, someone who spent too long seeking out strange new bars and new alien cocktails. After graduating bottom of his class at Space Command Academy Iridius Franklin hasn't had the glamorous career he envisioned, instead he hauls cargo ships full of mining waste, alien land whale dung, and artificially intelligent toy dogs across the stars. Iridius does have talent though - he is exceptionally good at breaking starships. So, when not hauling freight, he is captain of a shakedown crew, a skeleton crew used to test newly constructed ships for faults before the real crew takes over. While on a routine shakedown mission aboard the FSC Gallaway, soon to be pride of the Federation Fleet, Earth is attacked by an unknown alien life-form. With the galaxy in chaos, Captain Iridius B. Franklin finds himself, unqualified, understaffed and completely unprepared, in command of the most advanced starship in the galaxy. Now, he just needs to not break it.

Captain Iridius B. Franklin accidentally destroyed the planet Earth, but then he totally on purpose saved the galaxy so you know, you win some, you lose some. Fresh in command of the advanced stealth ship the FSC Deus Ex, Iridius and his crew of misfits are sent on a reconnaissance mission to observe a suspected weapons development program being undertaken by the Federation’s long-time enemy, the Planetary Alliance. When they discover the Alliance has created an incredible weapon – a bomb capable of manipulating time - Captain Franklin must stop them from releasing it and changing the outcome of a war that happened a hundred years ago. But to infiltrate the station where the weapon is hidden Iridius is forced to go undercover as one of the galaxy’s biggest stars, the secretive DJ Chromium. Completely out of his depth, as usual, Captain Iridius Franklin must stop a literal ticking timebomb, hide from the real DJ Chromium, avoid a deadly team of assassins and maybe learn to spin some tunes. Plus, in the deepest darkness of space an existential threat unlike any other grows ever closer.

Through the skilful application of being barely competent, Captain Iridius B. Franklin and the crew of the FSC Deus Ex have managed to triumph in not just one adventure but two. Unfortunately, despite being assured this sort of thing doesn’t happen to space adventurers nearly as often as is assumed, Iridius and his crew have been flung almost a year back in time. Now, in order to stop an existential threat to the galaxy and ensure they don’t cause irreparable damage to the space-time continuum, the crew of the Deus Ex must set out to find their way back to the future. Things go about as well as expected and Iridius Franklin finds himself encountering Nazis, cyberpunks, the bureaucratic nightmare that is the Department of Historical Timeline Preservation and yet more time-travel paradoxes including finally coming face to face with the biggest mystery of his life.