Percival is an inconsequential lad stuck in the most disgusting, humiliating, and dangerous job on the planet Landis who flees to find a future at sea. Aboard the Fisher King, a run down, undercrewed, interstellar cargo ship, he learns important lessons such as being in the vacuum of space without a spacesuit makes his tongue itch, how to fend off a pirate attack with a mining tool, and make new best friends who poison him and cut his throat (but not without apologizing profusely). But his old life won't him go. After being drug home for a murder he didn't commit-creating a technical state of war between the Fisher King and the governments of Landis-he finds strengths he didn't know he had. But is the personal cost just too much to save himself and his friends?