Mere seconds from certain destruction over the planet Calizan, General Das Kasan orders the small staff on his disabled space cruiser, the Slipstream, to blast into hyperspace to potentially trade one death for another. Why does the king want to kill him at all? Regardless, he and the Princess Calista can never return to their home planet.

When they pull out of hyperdrive, they find themselves and their crew being inextricable drawn into the gravitational pull of a lifeless wandering planet- an all-crushing ice giant, they are at the very edge of the galaxy, some saboteur still trying to kill them, spectral spirits invading their ship, and an imminent war is brewing between the four populated planets within this section of the quadrant. Survival seems like the same odds as threading a needle in the midst of tempest as all odds are stacked against them.

As they go crashing down on the Ghost Planet and are buried up in molten methane, they are all oblivious to their one saving grace- onboard is perhaps the most powerful being in the galaxy, except that not even he knows it. .