Dakota and Corso are taken prisoner by the Bandati in the second book of The Shoal SequenceDakota discovered the Shoal's dark and dangerous secret, and now she works toward stopping not only the spread of this knowledge, but also the onset of the nova war. Found adrift near a Bandati colony world far away from Consortium space, Dakota and Corso find themselves the Bandati's prisoners, and it rapidly becomes clear to them that the humanity’s limited knowledge of the rest of the galaxy, filtered through the Shoal, is direly inaccurate. The Shoal have been fighting a frontier war with a rival species, the Emissaries, with their own FTL technology for more than 15,000 years. Realizing that the Shoal may be the Galaxy's one chance at sustained peace, Dakota is forced to work with Trader to prevent the spread of deadly knowledge carried onboard the Magi ships—but it seems that the nova war is inevitable.