<p><b>A planet-eating plague. A hustler-turned-hero. Time is running out . . .</b><br><br>Orry Kent just wants a quiet life - but even a little R&R on the holiday planet of Halcyon turns wild when she accidentally sparks off a revolution amongst the downtrodden native workers. <br><br>But that''s small beer compared with the news footage being broadcast across the Ascendancy, showing Orry murdering the man she saved just six months earlier and destroying the Halstaad-Mirnov Institute, the heart of research into the aeons-dead alien race called The Departed. <br><br><b>''Dulley has made an amazing universe and I can''t wait to explore more of it'' <i>Words of a Paige</i></b><br><br>With her brother Ethan, the irascible spacedog Captain Mender and his intelligent spaceship <i>Dainty Jane</i>, not to mention the Kadiran exile Quondam, she sets off to prove her innocence. It''s just a shame that means teaming up with the woman she loathes more than anyone else in <i>any</i> universe: the s