For the charismatic and wily young aristocrat Seela Atherton, it sounded like a trivial, innocent favor: Acquire two VIP passes for her home planet of Concordia’s most exclusive celebration at the request of a former lover. Now, the Presidents of both Concordia and of its bitterest enemy are dead, victims of terrorists who used Seela’s passes to sneak in; interstellar war is imminent; and Seela, the consummate political player, finds herself played after all. Disowned by her family, and on the run from both the authorities and the real assassins, Seela hides in the only place no one will think of looking: As a lowly Navy technician on a Concordian spaceship on its way to the war she unwittingly helped start.

Alone, desperate, and out of her depth, Seela must now reinvent herself as a member of the lower classes she used to dismiss while she looks for a way to clear her name and regain her position. But as Seela makes friends and learns how to survive in the cutthroat, class-segregated world of the lower decks, she realizes that poverty can be deadlier than war, and that you don’t have to be a noble to be noble. Now, as she finally has the opportunity to unmask the conspirators and avert the bloodiest space battle of the war, she must find a way to alter the fact that, no matter which faction she helps win, the destitute members of her society always lose.