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Theirs is a world of opposites. The privileged live in sky manors held aloft by a secretive magic known only as the Mysteries. Below, the earthbound poor are forced into factory work to maintain the engine of commerce. Only the wealthy can afford to learn the Mysteries, and they use their knowledge to further lock their hold on society. Cettie Pratt is a waif doomed to the world below, until an admiral attempts to adopt her. But in her new home in the clouds, not everyone treats her as one of the family.

Rika is mech-meat, a cyborg killing machine, created by the Genevian military and cast aside when the war was lost. Now she slings cargo on Dekar Station, falling deeper in debt as she struggles to make enough money to keep her cybernetic body functioning. The local gangs would love to have her join their ranks, and the takings would pay her bills, but the only thing Rika hates more than what she's become, is killing for others. But morals don't buy repairs and she's at the point of utter desperation when her loan holder cashes in her debt and sells her to the highest bidder.

Terrorism. Acts of oppression. The threat of nuclear war. The US Navy-designed Goliath is a futuristic nuclear stealth submarine in the shape of a stingray. Simon Covah, a brilliant scientist whose entire family were the victims of terrorism, has hijacked the sub. Believing violence is a disease, Covah aims to use the Goliath and its cache of nuclear weapons to dictate policy to the world regarding the removal of oppressive regimes and nuclear weapons. Could the threat of violence forge a lasting peace?