From acclaimed short-fiction celebrity Suzanne Palmer comes an action-packed sci-fi caper that launches a high-stakes space adventure trilogy.

Fergus Ferguson, repo-man, has a single work: find the spacecraft Venetia’s Sword and steal it back again from Arum Gilger, ex-nobleman turned power-hungry trade employer. Acquiring Gilger in the farthest corner of human-inhabited space, a gas-giant harvesting colony known as Cernee, was easy. The hard part will be obtaining past a field of space mines, hacking in to the Sword’s compromised AI, and fighting a crew of hostile enemies to manage the ship.

But when a wire car explosion launches Cernee right into a civil war, Fergus sees himself caught in the crosshairs. Repossessing the Sword needs him to side with Gilger’s opponents, risk death, and obtain abducted by aliens. Fergus must learn to set aside his pride-and confront a past he’s been working from his entire life-in purchase to get back the Sword and concurrently save Cernee from damage.