In Stealing Light, Dakota discovered the Shoal's dark and dangerous secret - now she works towards stopping not only the spread of this knowledge, but also the onset of the Nova war. Found adrift near a Bandati colony world far away from Consortium space, Dakota and Corso find themselves prisoners of the Bandati. It becomes rapidly clear to them that humanity's limited knowledge of the rest of the galaxy - filtered through the Shoal - is direly inaccurate. The Shoal have been fighting a frontier