Ehoma Tuomitti is the feisty deck-watch chief of the Kertovan battleship Bybur, at war on the high seas of the island planet Kilmoyn. Tuomitti has her hands full fighting both fog and enemy ships as well as juggling an upstart lover--and then Sean Lincoln Borlund and his crew fall from the sky into the complex political upheaval on the Kilmoyn landscape. Kilmoyn has long been colonized by various other races and alien interests, but now the Native Kilmoyns are beginning to fight back, and the stranded humans are quickly pulled into the conflict. When Borlund rescues a Kilmoyn woman and her baby from certain death, he and his crew find themselves under fire. Desperate to repair their vessel and return to Earth, he has no choice but to accept the help of Tuomitti and her cohorts--and the responsibility that comes with it.