Escape!
Captain Jacob Mercer and the USS Phoenix barely escape with their lives from the Imperial ambush at Liberty Station and soon find themselves orbiting the frontier world Destiny, a forbidding planet infested with pirate gangs. With critically unstable engines, Jake is forced to seek raw material for badly needed repairs before the ruthless Admiral Trajan tracks them down.

A mystery deepens....
As they negotiate with the pirates, the crew learns some uncomfortable truths about their hero, Admiral Pritchard, and that Trajan's plans may not stop at the destruction of the Resistance. Before long Jake and his team find themselves at the mercy of the most despised class in the Thousand Worlds: slavers.

And sacrifices must be made.
With the captain stranded on the dusty planet below, Commander Megan Po leads the Phoenix in one more deadly showdown with Admiral Trajan and comes face to face with her most dreaded nightmare: sending people under her charge to die.