Empath Kayla John Reed's rebel forces, the War Minstrels, had struck a crucial blow at the heart of Yates Keller's empire, conquering the Alliance capital, Vardalia. It should have been Kayla's moment of triumph. But Vardalia was a shambles, and not only had Yates himself escaped, he claimed to have her friends and shipmates in his clutches. Kayla had no choice but to agree to the terms he'd left in a holographic message. Meet him on their home world, the mining colony Styx, surrender the fabled Mindstone to him, and Keller would release her friends. Yet even as she set off for the rendezvous point, trouble was brewing among the War Minstrels - trouble that could transform their successful revolution into the deadliest kind of anarchy if she didn't make it back in time. And what Kayla had no way of know foreseeing was that Styx itself hid a peril far greater than any trap Keller had planned for her...