It is three years after the second launch of the aethership "Excelsior"; the Ettercap War has ended and Trowth has returned to a traumatized semblance of normalcy, but is now menaced by an unseen adversary. A terrifying, merciless hand has seized control of the heresies in Trowth, and is using them to bring down the Empire itself. The city's unsung hero--diseased, drug-addicted, Detective Inspector Elijah Beckett--is the only man who can save Trowth from herself, but his own mind and body have begun an inexorable spiral into decay, from which he may never be able to recover.

The gray, icy city of Trowth is hollowed out by war, and now haunted by the degenerate spawn of a monstrous science. Only a drug-addicted detective and a young man with a gift for mathematics have the means to solve an enigmatic murder--a murder that may be the key to saving Trowth from certain destruction. Featuring three new stories, including one never-before-published