Captain Galvin Quintos, along with the love of his life, XO Gail Pristy, thought retirement meant a fresh start together within the Colorado wilderness—not being pulled into the latest galactic conspiracy by EUNF High Command. Quintos is given little choice but to spearhead a secret mission to the distant Tammarine sector. But things quickly go from bad to worse when he discovers he'll be skippering the notorious USS Ironfist—a rickety old dreadnought and running joke amongst all U.S. Space Navy personnel for being a career killer. Absolutely nobody wants to be assigned to this relic of a warship.

Quintos has been granted permission to bring together a small skeleton crew. Their mission is to deliver Ironfist to a burgeoning potentially allied alien race, the Tharokyns, dead ringers for Earth's own primitive Neanderthals. But this goodwill mission soon goes spectacularly off the rails.

This new enemy trumps all others—the Varapin, the Grish, even the insectile Krygians. Simply put, Techno-Mycoids are what nightmares are made of. With his hobbled-together crew who'd rather be anywhere else—ChronoBot Hardy, his niece Sonya, Max's small team of Marines, Science Officer Stephan Derrota, and a cherry-picked bridgecrew—it quickly becomes apparent they've brought what amounts to a slingshot to a gunfight.

Now, as the Techno-Mycoids’ fungal networks spread through local space like a plague, and the all-too-familiar cult faction, Inheritors of Tenebrosity, reveal their deadly ambitions, Quintos finds himself trapped between duty and survival. Making things so much worse, a devastating betrayal leaves him with an impossible choice—sacrifice his ship or watch an entire civilization fall. Quintos begins to understand that… sometimes, the only way to win is to become the very monster you're fighting against.