When a natural disaster destroys Charlie’s planet, she almost survives the carnage, dying just a few minutes before a rescue crew would have saved her.
When she wakes up again, a number of surprises await her, not the least of which is that she’s been brought back to life. In addition to that unlikely event, she’s also been taken to another planet and drafted into the Combined Service, a service composed of all the allied races—octopods, gu’ul, avians, and the upstart humans, who the others aren’t sure they can trust.
Being drafted does serve one purpose, though: it allows her to get off the planet on which she finds herself, giving her the only chance she has to get back to the planet of her birth, where she hopes to find her missing family. When she’s offered the chance to serve aboard the Magnetar, the first jointly operated cruiser of the Combined Service, she seizes the chance.
But the Magnetar is on a dangerous mission: to return an octopod terrorist, Praetori, to the home world of the octopods. No one has ever successfully held an octopod captive, and the only thing found of the last ship that tried—the Roggewein—were tiny pieces.
Will Charlie and the Magnetar see the prisoner transfer to its successful conclusion, or will they suffer the same unexplained and disastrous fate as the Roggewein?
