Years ago an infamous couple had been executed for selling solar secrets to an extra-galactic enemy ... then the sentence was reversed and the victims resurrected. The two had stowed away a planet's ransom from their treason and their heiress had long disappeared with the loot. So Soldiers of Fortune, Inc., went to John Wesley Sand and asked him to find the missing maiden, who was last seen in the Hellquad sector.
To Sand, however, Hellquad meant, in his own words: "slavers, space pirates, welfs, mewts, madmen, psychotic cyborgs, lunatics at large, brokedown andies, lycanthropes, alfies, senile servos, zombies, the dregs of every other planet in the universe."
But the money was too good to pass up and so Sand took the job -- and found everything he expected, plus some mind-boggling things that he didn't!