An intrepid space pilot is drawn back into her family's orbit—to track down her mother's assassin—in this classic space opera series debut.
Freebooter at heart, spacer by trade, Beka Rosselin-Metadi doesn't want to hear about her father whose rugged generalship held back the Mageworlds—or her highborn mother whose leadership has held the galaxy together ever since. As a pilot, Beka prefers to fly her spacecraft as far from her famous family as possible.
Then Beka's mother is assassinated on the Senate floor, and her father offers her Warhammer, prize ship from his own freebooting youth—if she'll use it to deliver the assassins to him "off the books." It's a deal too good to pass up.
But looking for assassins tends to make assassins look for you. In short order, Beka fakes her own death and adopts a new identity. Now all she has to do is leave a trail of kidnappings and corpses across five star systems, and blow the roof off the strongest private fortress in the Galaxy. If her own family can just get off her case long enough . . . !