The Praetorian Guard, elite of the False Emperor, have divided and fought amongst themselves. Those that supported the rebellion thought they had won with the death of the False Emperor, but they could not be more wrong. In the secession that follows, as the revolutionaries that used the Praetorians force them to dissolve, it transpires that some of the participants planned more than just the end of the tyranny. They want their own rule to prosper. Commander James Gavain has inherited command of his own ship, and into the maelstrom of the Dissolution of the Praetorian Guard he struggles to find a new future for his people. Lost and wondering where he is to go, and what he is to do, he is just one of many genetically-engineered creations who find they have destroyed their own reason for existence. In a galaxy where the treacheries of the dead Red Imperium of Mars are giving birth to a whole new host of tyrannies, temporary alliances, and plotting on a Machiavellian and life-changing scale, the abandoned Commander Gavain sells his services to the highest bidder - and in the process finds himself fighting a threat that he helped to create.