In the Lubasiri Empire, debts are not forgiven, and only those who control the flow of cargo—and their own fate—survive at the Edge of the Galaxy.
Artificial-born Ar Sen, who managed, during the transfer of a psychomatrix into a new body, to retain the reflexes and fragments of memory of a former Earth pilot, has broken free from the incubation tanks of the Imperial Colonial Administration Academy. Now he is the second pilot aboard a private cargo ship belonging to an independent captain. However, the relative stability of frontier logistics is collapsing. The presence on board of a runaway combat fighter-link operator, trailing a bloody wake and drawing the close attention of the empire’s special services, can only spell trouble.
Hard and pragmatic Captain Zhellya Hark pilots the starship through gray zones. Pirates are on the trail, while unstable hyper-corridors lie ahead. To protect the crew and avoid becoming a bargaining chip in the games of the Great Houses, Ar will have to take a risk. But in a world where a person is a function—and where the nervous system is interwoven with the ship’s artificial intelligence—the cost may prove to be too high.