Orry Kent may not have stopped the war between the Ascendancy and the alien Kadiran, but at least she saved the Grand Fleet from annihilation. Now she just wants to get on with her own life - until a con turns sour and a dying agent of the emperor's Seventh Secretariat tells Orry there's a traitor at the highest levels of the Ascendancy. Which is how she finds herself stranded among the floating bubble habitats of Morhelion, searching for a Kadrian exile who has information critical to the war effort - and the survival of the Ascendancy itself.