When Starwort Bacchus finds herself running from her landlord, skipping out on the rent, she jumps aboard an automatic repair vessel and hitches a ride to the next port. But the search for her father's legacy, the inheritance her uncle nearly decimated, takes her to planets where friends and enemies are hard to identify, and her best ally is a computer. With a pocket full of "Universals" and a ceramic blade strapped to her thigh, she travels the darkness looking for a home. Instead she finds a growing list of places she cannot go to again, including a place she has never been - Earth.