Captain Daniel Leary and his friend, the spy Adele Mundy, have been in thefront lines of Cinnabar's struggle against the totalitarian Alliance. Now thesegalactic superpowers have signed a peace of mutual exhaustion... but the jackalsare moving in! The Republic of Cinnabar was on the verge of collapse under theweight of taxes, casualties, and war's disruption of trade. That the Alliance ofFree Stars was in even worse condition helped only because it has made peacepossible. Years of war have been hard on Daniel and harder still on Adele, whoselife outside information-gathering is a tightrope between despair and deadlyviolence. Their masters in the RCN and the Republic's intelligence service havesent them to the fringes of human space to relax away from danger. But thebarbarians of the outer reaches have their own plans, plans which will bringdown both Cinnabar and the Alliance. Unless Daniel, Adele, and their unlikelyallies succeed, galactic civilization will disintegrate into blood and chaos. Sothey will succeed — or they'll die trying!

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