When humanity escaped to the stars,
greed and tyranny eagerly pursued.
From behind the face plate of his spacesuit, Tod Riley dreams of visiting other worlds. The life life of a farmer is just too quiet for him. The young colonist is a construction Tech, building Dritta's first space station — and a future for his people among the stars. In his spare time, he helps a marooned space trader fix his broken ship, a ship with a star drive that he hopes to learn to fly. As a crewman he can fly to distant planets.
Tod's dreams turn to nightmares when the Unity Starship Grissom comes crashing into the system bringing the tyrannical hand of the Unity government with it. When the captain starts making unreasonable demands for repairs , supplies and unquestioning obedience, conflicts arise. Drittans fled to the edges of Unity space to escape that kind of treatment. Violence soon erupts om the station and the colonists compel the warship to leave.
They do not leave alone.
Several colonists are abducted, Including Tod, and pressed into service onboard the Unity Warship.
Bound to obey the commands of a tyrannical ships captain, the colonists are forced into the nightmare of never-ending war. The unity crew treat them as criminals and they are subjected to degradation, injury and death. Every hour is a struggle to survive as the ship takes them further from home. The dream of eventual release and freedom is the Drittan's only comfort. A dream that quickly fades as the pressees are killed off one by one in battles that may be a little more piracy than patrol .
If Tod is ever going to see the rings of Dritta again, he must risk everything to escape the warship and the clutches of the tyrant captain. Even if that were possible, how will he ever find his way across the light years of empty space that separates him from the home world.