All good things must end, and a reluctant Siobhan Dunmoore trades command of her battle group for a staff job ashore.

Yet her appointment to the headquarters of the 3rd Fleet, responsible for humanity's most restive frontier, is no accident. Things aren't quite right in what was once the most ferocious and effective formation in the Navy, and its control over the Rim Sector's outer edges is failing.

When Dunmoore investigates, she finds herself adrift on stormy seas with few allies and all too many foes, facing treachery, backstabbing, and corruption instead of guns and missiles. Will the Commonwealth's once victorious Navy revert to what it was before the Shrehari invasion, a politicized, ineffective force commanded by venal admirals? Or will Dunmoore and her friends arrest the decline as they fight for the honor of the Fleet and a future without war?