John Gottschalk did not expect to be the sole survivor of a rescue mission to a habitat swallowed up a black hole years before. He did not expect to find the survivors of the banged-up colony enslaved by Ophelian mercenaries, the biggest, nastiest, and most studiously sociopathic soldiers in the galaxy. He did not expect to serve as a ping-pong ball in the Ophelians' endless enactments of their social contract, Survival of the Screwingest. Nor did he expect to be … adopted? claimed? — by an exuberant, six-and-a-half-foot blade-centric teenager who styles herself "Devray, Conqueror of Worlds!" ("Really, I'm just starting.") And for Devray, one world is not enough.
