Overview

Klaus Amerman has a reputation. He's known as a lucky guy, but the Syndicate doesn't care how much ordinance their pilots have managed to dodge. They want their ships to complete their missions and to run their cargo, to seize their objectives, to hit their targets, and above all else, make money. Amerman wants to make money too, but his luck at staying out of the cross-hairs never seems to extend into the financial realm. He is side-lined by the Syndicate, but immediately pressed into service by the Union Republic Defense Orbital, the orbiting government of a Syndicate-sanctioned colony planet, articulated by an artificial intelligence unit known as Urdo. The Esteemed Unit, Urdo, defends the star system with an impenetrable missile screen, fosters the interstellar drug trade that supports the population, and rules its single planet dictatorially ... but it has a problem. Its makers, the alien Tasak, following a secret agenda of their own, have programmed Urdo to let a contract for its own destruction. Once certain criteria have been met, and Tasak agents arrive, the system, unbeknown to its citizens, is to be liberated from its AI Unit for the next phase of development. That time has come, and for reasons open to speculation, Urdo has selected Klaus Amerman to pilot the engine of its demise. Or perhaps not. Internal conflict is built into the Esteemed Unit, and it is unclear just how many shots, if any, Amerman will have at the target. The designated weapon is an immense, but antiquated ore-lifter with a rag-tag crew of Tasak agents and hardboiled revolutionaries. The enthusiasm of his co-conspirators fails to instill in him much optimism, and in the face of Urdo's military power, Amerman is put to flight immediately. It's kill or be killed as his mission quickly degenerates to little more than survival, and he is driven to employ every trick in the smuggler's book of trade. His odyssey will drive him into the darkest reaches of the Rim Nebula, and cause him to fall in with forces he never thought to encounter. He will be offered alliance with the century's most infamous war criminal in defiance of two great navies, as the bounty on his head turns every gunship in the spiral arm against him. There seems no end of enemies, great or small, and no one is quite what they seem to be. The monstrous ship is his, an object of great potential value, but the vessel has its own secrets. He must sort through all the demands and all the subterfuge to unravel his predicament. Most difficult of all, he must even discover what lies he has told himself. He will have to exceed everyone's expectations if he is to survive, or if he is ever to succeed in killing Urdo.

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