Nightmares come to life for Shane when a sentry-duty assignment on an asteroid leads the 58th into a bloody confrontation with a battalion of rogue androids, among which are the AI's who murdered her parents.

The Saratoga becomes a pressure cooker of violence and political intrigue when an assassination on Earth forces a delegation of UN officials to use the craft as the site of an important conference.

After narrowly escaping the crippled alien battleship, the 58th finds itself imprisoned in the catacombs of a Chig penal colony. While Wang suffers in an alien torture chamber, Nathan encounters someone he'd only dreamed of seeing again.

On a planet overrun with Chigs, the 58th retreat with a tank driver of the US 7th Cavalry upon a tank named "Pearly". They encounter the eccentric Major Cyril MacKendrick, sole survivor of a battalion of the British Coldstream Guards. Wang encounters a Silicate of the same model that previously tortured him.