Engineering corvette Copernicus One is down on the surface of Bayone Three. With her boat's crew missing, life support failing and nearly all her systems damaged, Chief Engineer Yili Curtiss must use all her scientific and tactical knowledge to practically re-invent spaceflight from the ground up before nearby enemies locate her crash site.

Meanwhile, with the entire crew of the battleship Argent also missing, a Sarn Invector destroyer squadron on the warpath and unusual readings coming from an abandoned planetary defense base near a civilian settlement on the planet, Rebecca Islington, skipper of the escort frigate DSS Minstrel, stands between Captain Hunter's enemies and the capture of a Skywatch capital ship.

Now, with the very fabric of space itself unraveling, a formidable enemy army pouring out of the Bayone Three base, and Jason Hunter forced to enlist the aid of the Condor Pirates and fugitive privateer Captain Cerylia L'Orleans, it is up to an enigmatic Skywatch Marine Intelligence officer, Commander Jayce Hunter's refitted Perseus Task Force, a battalion of 19,000-ton superheavy Razorback tanks and a malfunctioning Tarantula-Hawk gunship and its unlikely pilot to battle their way across Gunfighter's Quarry and learn the impossible secrets of the traitorous Colonel Atwell's dangerous plan to alter the destiny of the human race before it's too late!