"Duty-Honor-Obedience"
These words, written in the year 3150 A.D. by the Second Terran Chief of Staff, General Thomas Schurenburg, are the Creed of the Terran Military. For generations the proud citizens of any species who joined the Services strived to live up to the creed in the Empire's relentless march across the galaxy.
Nearly two thousand years later, a new, deadly enemy has made its presence known. Terrans by the tens of thousands on colonies along the Imperial borders are being kidnapped by an unknown, mysterious foe. The Fleet and Imperial Intelligence hunt this enemy, finally engaging its forces in battle at the Joeanmika 46-star system, just beyond the border.
Katy O'Hare, a disgraced Naval Officer now commodore of a small salvage fleet, leads it into the battlefield to rescue survivors and reclaim the debris of the action. On a battered enemy hulk, Katy finds thirty thousand of the missing colonists, doomed to a fate beyond imagination.
Katie is torn between her oaths of Loyalty to the Crown Prince, who has arrived on scene, and to the Creed written by the Warlord of the Great Angkor Khan. Should she follow her oaths to the Empire or listen to the calling of her conscience ...