Lieutenant Commander Kris Longknife and her crew work to take down the pirates and slavers who are preying on millions of suffering refugees, especially after slavers kidnap a young girl, making the task personal as well as political.

For her own protection, Lieutenant Commander Kris Longknife is assigned to a backwater planet where her Fast Patrol Squadron 127 enforces immigration control and smuggler interdiction--and where she finds herself homeless, broke, and on trial for her life.

"The aliens attacking the planetary system of Alwa are an enemy unlike any Admiral Kris Longknife has ever encountered before. She doesn't know who they are, only that they worship a being known as the Enlightened One and are unafraid to sacrifice themselves against her fleet. But Kris faces more than just the fanatical behavior of an alien armada. A saboteur has infiltrated the military's medical facility and unleashed an epidemic that has spread...

Vice Admiral Kris Longknife's honeymoon gets cancelled when she hears that the space raider's home world may have been discovered. Finding where the raiders came from could be the key to saving humanity. If only uncovering their secrets was that easy! As Kris returns home, she ends up tangling with a mutinous crew determined to take off on their own. The dissident group leads Kris straight into a new mess--a system filled with strange, deadly enemies...

Commanding the Wasp, a space warship, Kris Longknife, hunting for pirates beyond the Rim, stumbles upon a plan to kill one of the members of the aristocratic Peterwald family and discovers that the would-be killers are setting her up as the assassin.