"Captain Laurent Zai of the Imperial Frigate faces a suicide mission: stopping the next thrust of the Rix invasion with just his own ship. While ship-to-ship combat rages among the stars, Zai's lover, Senaotr Nara Oxham, is caught in a deadly political fencing match with the Emperor himself. The Emperor has a terrible secret, a secret Nara is in danger of finding out, a secret for which he would countenance the killing of worlds"--Back cover.