The Galactic Syndicate Security Service has assigned one of its best agents, Pavan Khadorov, to a mission to infiltrate a band of space pirates. But Pavan is having ginormous second thoughts about his career, his recent marriage to Margona Nukova, the niece of the Syndic of Gaelea, has changed his priorities. The mission rapidly progresses to a life-and-death struggle to rescue a group of children that can form a collective Mind which can control access to hyperspace. Pavan evades his genocidal orders from the GSSS by getting the pirates to kidnap the children. But the pirates decide to use them to control Syndicate trade by enslaving them, so Pavan must rescue them once again. Pavan finds himself on his own-battling both his GSSS superiors and the pirates for control of the children. Then his pragmatic alliance with the alluring pirate Dellatrix Devdan puts him at odds with his wife. All these conflicts converge on the pirate planet Khonoë, where Pavan must use every trick in his agent's toolkit to rescue the children and himself from fates worse than death.Galactic genocide, crimes against humanity, brutal piracy, mutiny, developmental psychology, bad sex, and true love struggle for supremacy in this humor-filled first novel in the space-opera series The Pirates of Khonoë.