It is the 32nd century and the Dragon’s Claw sailed through the energy paths between star systems called slipstreams. These highways of energy were the only way to go faster than light. With the proper sails to catch the energy, and the right ship, one could travel as fast as two light-years per hour. The Dragon’s Claw was a state of the art mining scout ship from one of the most powerful corporations in human space, the Sinclair Corporation. After the last world war on earth, only the space based mining corporations survived and for the past 800 years, they were the only political power the humans knew. Only the ship and her crew were no longer part of the Sinclair Corporation. They were thought to have died along with the entire crew of the star cruiser SS Hayden on a mission to the Andromeda galaxy. Among the seven survivors traveling aboard the Dragon’s Claw, there was the captain of the ill-fated Hayden, Captain Christopher Slone. Also aboard was the youngest daughter of Horatio Sinclair, the owner of the corporation, Alaya Sinclair. Since she was the result of an affair between his wife and another man, she was considered expendable. He thought he had sent her and her scouting crew to certain death to cement an agreement. Alaya Sinclair was shattered when she realized he thought of her only as a chip in a big business deal. Alaya’s biological father was a man named Strabo, the leader of the Nova Romae pirates, in the Matsua Rim arm of the galaxy. The Pirates called themselves the Romani. The Dragon’s Claw was moving ever closer to the pirate territory; Alaya was moving closer to the father she had never met …