The Overseers have enslaved humanity, and only Adrienne Parker has the cure. Maybe. If the test on the next-to-last free human colony goes smoothly. Adrienne was given one task when she came to Holton Station: Develop a drug that will take humans off the Overseer menu. It didn’t hurt that her research partner, Dr. Bryan Landry, was hotter than the surface of Alpha Centauri. But that romantic distraction proved fatal. Bryan and Holton station were destroyed, leaving Adrienne alone with Space Marines and two thousand doses of the Landry Enzyme—humanity’s last hope against the Overseers. There are only two free human colonies standing between the aliens and Earth. If the Landry Enzyme doesn’t work, everyone is doomed. Then Adrienne and the Landry Enzyme are captured before testing can begin. Stranded on a hostile planet with an Overseer renegade, Adrienne is given a terrible choice: help her enemy destroy Bryan’s research, or die as a monster’s midnight snack. Adrienne swears to be defiant to the last; at least she’ll give the alien indigestion. But when a plague strikes the humans on the renegade’s world, she realizes the space between stars isn’t always so black-and-white…

The story of Bryan and Adry continues in this exciting sequel to Starbleached.Bob Harris never forgave himself for letting his best friend, Bryan Landry, become an Overseer captive. And he won't forgive Adrienne Parker for letting a transformed Bryan get away. Overseers are cannibalistic monsters. Bryan is better off dead. Now the aliens are threatening a human world. Adrienne has her chance to redeem herself, and Bob has his chance to put Bryan out of his misery. The question isn't if he'll take the shot. It's when.

There's no hope for Bryan Landry. The Overseers have invaded human worlds; with superior numbers, better technology, psychic powers and a strong desire to have humans on the menu, they're not interested in peaceful coexistance.And they've turned Bryan into one of their own.There's no hope for Adrienne Parker. She's Bryan's only link to his human past, and the Overseers have abducted her off an interplanetary battlefield and given Bryan an ultimatum. If he runs, they'll destroy Adry and an entire planet in the process. If he tries to rescue her, he returns to the monsters that transformed him, and this time the Overseers won't let their convert go without a fight. There's no hope for humanity's distant colonies, but this is the Rim.Out here, resistence is everything.

With a return to Holton Fleet, converted Overseer Bryan Landry faces an ignoble death at the hands of his old allies. Be it a bullet from of a PCR 3 rifle or explosive decompression out the nearest airlock, the result would be the same. Overseers might start out as humans, but as far as Holton Fleet is concerned, the best way for them to end is dead.But Holton Fleet is the only way to save Adrienne Parker. The Overseers dosed her with an infective agent and left her to die. Bryan may not remember much of his human life, but trading Adry's life for his own seems like a fair trade.Then a stray laser cripples the Fleet's mothership on the edge of an Overseer battleground. The lives of several thousand human beings are now in alien hands.Lucky for them, those hands are Bryan Landry's. Too bad he doesn't share their confidence...