The war against the Swarm isn't going well. The governments of the Sovereign Star systems are riddled with treachery, treason, duplicity and... defection. And the enemy is evolving. Enter the Imperator, an intelligent, technological alien entity unlike anything the USF has previously encountered. Commodore Richard Morian's mission is to capture the Imperator . . . . . . but it will take a planetary invasion on a grand scale to do so, a battle fought in space, in the air, and on the ground. And all this to a backdrop of political intrigue that threatens to bring the entire Sovereign system down.