At thirty-four, Captain Katya Cassius knew she faced the twilight of her military career as a Magistrate officer on board The Maelstrom. She just hadn't imagined she'd be jettisoning it into space. But no good deed ever goes unpunished . . . One simple rescue mission lands Katya and her two-person crew in the midst of a cover-up with the discovery of the Magistrate warship Aletheia's slaughtered crew. Among the dead, they discover one survivor, an Oneiroi toddler. Despite the species' reputation as the Magistrate's mind-destroying enforcers, Katya rescues him. This act of mercy only ends with her own comrades in arms turning their weapons on her ship. Caught between former comrades in arms and a terrorist organization, the lurking danger buried in the boy's genetic code might prove deadlier than both combined. An adopted child herself, Katya refuses to abandon or airlock the toddler, even as he reshapes her mind and uncovers her forgotten childhood.