For a Cadre Operator, the need to serve is bred in the bone and honed to a razor's edge...Thompson, Argo, and Maiella were once the inseparable Team Spectre, unequaled in lethality and stealth. But mistaken identity aboard the Colony Ship Europa led to seventeen human deaths. In a time where all mankind numbers less than two-thousand, taking human life is the only unforgivable crime.For Argo, nothing matters more than regaining his honorable place in the Operator Corps. For Maiella, subservience to authority is no longer enough, and she searches for a master even greater than the Cadre. But Thompson has not faced his demons from the Europa disaster. He must decide where his loyalties lie, and quickly, because the hellstorm unleashed during his mission to Earth is catching up with them all.