On the trail of the Hive, the alien life-form that was swarming over the galaxy literally devouring everything it came across along the way, battleship class spaceship U.S.S. Merrimack found a still-active sign buoy at a far-distant globular cluster. And, against all chances, inside the cluster they discovered three colonized worlds known as the Myriad, which the Hive experienced apparently overlooked.

Also the Roman patterner Augustus, loaned to them with the Palatine Empire—their former about The Myriad foes and now their uneasy allies in the war against the deadly, seemingly unstoppable Hive—cannot foresee all of the perils that could await them when they made contact with the humanoids who had certainly colonized these worlds. But as paradox followed paradox almost too fast for the genetically and cybernetically enhanced patterner to follow— so that as the Hive closed in on both the Merrimack as well as the ships from the Palatine Empire—it became crucial to unravel the secret of the Myriad. For the price tag on failure may be the devastation of not merely the Myriad, but of Globe and Palatine as well….