The return of an ancient threat has rocked the galaxy. Pirates, the scourge of Terra's Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries, now ply the stars with the same fervor and madness as they did in those long distant times. Merchants fear them, Navies scorn them, but still, they appear, under holographic Jolly Rogers to strike at the heart of shipping across the Milky Way. But what happens when a group of these lowlives find the last living member of the ancient race which granted interstellar travel, true magic, and the vast network of Gaps that created the great states of the Milky Way? And worse still, what will happen if she joins them?