Captain Evgeny Lerner was already struggling to maintain his mastery of the pirate starship Scape Grace and her crew of pan-galactic rogues. He just wanted to guide her toward profit and away from disaster, by navigating the shrinking shadows of an expanding galactic Collective. Stuck with a giant, violent, authoritarian first mate, a half-computer communications officer, a xenophobic ship's doctor, a psychotic, saurian weapons officer, a genetically engineered engineer torn from his collectivist species, and a combat crew culled from the worst refuse of two systems, Captain Lerner faced plenty of challenges. But when a raid went wrong and Scape Grace was caught defenseless, they found themselves pressed into service escorting a lost ship from an unknown alien race. The unique ship with an untranslatable name proved that even in an increasingly civilized galaxy, surrounded by some of its oddest renegades, a weary ship's captain could still be surprised by something new.