Caught in the middle of a simmering interplanetary cold war, Commander Paul Druhan is ordered to a secret rendezvous near Jupiter where a powerful fleet waits. His superiors mean to end the stalemate, but plans for conquest go terribly awry when sabotage catapults the entire battle fleet across half the known galaxy. Yet the architect of the black deed has travelled with the fleet, in a twisted effort to transcend his mortal limitations, an act that condemns a thousand others to a violent, lonely death. And through it all, though injured himself, Paul finds he must fight to keep a rag-tag group of survivors alive against an ancient terror, hungry and malevolent, older than the stars themselves. Can these few, facing treachery from a terrestrial enemy on one side and the unbridled power of an interstellar civilization on the other, find the strength to survive?