It is the first and final duty of any warship to put herself between the innocent... and the enemy. Henry Wong and Sylvia Todorovich have gathered the interstellar powers of the Ra Sector into a tentative alliance-an alliance that is tested by the return of the Sector's former rulers: the Kenmiri Remnant. The Sector's only hope of withstanding a genocidal faction of the Kenmiri is the Twelfth Fleet of the United Planets Alliance. But when Wong's scouting flotilla collides with the Kenmiri, he discovers they now have a weapon that could easily destroy Twelfth Fleet. Wong and Todorovich are stranded on the wrong side of a world the Remnant have burned, and they only have one way to meet their allies before it's too late. If Henry Wong is to save his people and his allies, he must take his ship on a deadly run into the hostile star systems of the Kenmiri Remnant: the very species he doomed to a slow death.