The last thing Sanda remembers is her gunship breaking up around her as her evac pod expanded, sealing her away for salvage-medics to pick up. She expected to awaken in friendly hands, patched up and patched back into a new gunship. Instead, she wakes up 230 years later on an empty enemy smartship, The Light of Berossus or, as he prefers to be called, Bero. The war is lost. The star system is dead.