Special operations officer Jason Thanou of the Temporal Regulatory Authority must once again plunge into Old Earth's blood-drenched past to combat the plots of the Transhumanist underground to subvert that past and create a secret history leading up to the fulfillment of their mad dream of transforming humanity into a race of gods and monsters.

Jason and his companions travel to the seventeenth century to encounter the real pirates of the Caribbean—including a beautiful she-pirate who turns out to be Transhumanist renegade. To Jason's horror, he also learns that the Teloi aliens who were the grim reality behind the pagan pantheons of antiquity—aliens Jason believed he'd successfully destroyed—are still active, and aiding the Transhumanists in founding an unspeakable cult. What's more, these are a different—and far more dangerous—breed of Teloi than before.

Jason must somehow thwart the plans of the sinister allies while at the same time preventing reality itself from falling into chaos. In the end he finds himself venturing into space with a totally unexpected ally: Captain Henry Morgan.