The Galactic League of Planets has a plan to save a dying world, but Princess Anleen and Captain Dirk Roberts have plans of their own! Join them in this rollicking adventure as they hunt for an ancient treasure and find more than either of them was looking for.
The plan was simple. Evacuate the entire population of a planet orbiting around a dying sun to a terraformed world created just for them by the Galactic League of Planets. At least it was simple until Princess Anleen of Bastina decided the biggest and fastest space vessel ever built could be put to better use. She needed to recover the key to the ancient map. It didn't matter that the most important relic of the Bastinan people was the good luck charm of an earthling who fancied himself a pirate on the high seas of space and traded in only two thingsโgold and women. Fair maidens when possible.
When Captain Dirk Roberts, ex-Corporate Space Fleet colonel, now independent space freight haulerโa man who doesn't always have his papers or his life in orderโseeks safe haven at the doomed planet Aznate, he's only looking for a hot shower, a drink or three at the last spacer bar on the edge of known civilization, and repairs for his ship. What he finds instead is more intriguing than any tale of Blackbeard's adventures and more beguiling than the fair maiden Guinevere of Arthurian legend.
From a hijacked ark to a plundered heart to the writing of the final Chapter in the ancient children's fairytale of the legend of Bastina, only Haark, the god of the Bastinan people, knows how the story will end... But that doesn't stop Princess Anleen from trying to rewrite it.