Cantra 'yos Phelium isn't a quitter, but she has more than a little problem: the Enemy has accelerated its attacks and how do you fight an Enemy whose major form of attack is the de-crystallization of everything around itself?

A smuggler with a rogue soldier for a co-pilot, and a tree with an attitude for crew, Cantra is the only one who can get close to the man who holds equations that might -- that just might -- thwart the Enemy.

All she has to do is help a young pilot from a missing world, juggle a slippery promise she never quite made to a pair of wizards, and then forget who she is, along with everything, and everyone, she's ever known.