Jack Morgan has had it rough. He was orphaned at three, then lost his
Uncle Virgil ten years later. But the plucky fourteen-year-old didn’t
know what rough was until he met Draycos, sole survivor of an advance
force of alien refugees that had been brutally ambushed over the world
where Jack was in hiding from the authorities. The K’da poet-warrior
needed to bond with a host, or he would die; the reformed boy thief and
con artist needed a friend, someone he could depend on as he tried to
clear his name. Since then they’ve formed a unique team, determined to
find and expose those responsible for the slaughter of Draycos’s team.
In the months since fate threw them together, they’ve been through a lot.
But when Jack tries to hack the computer in an office of the notorious
Malison Ring, their quest nearly ends in the jaws of that mercenary
organization’s trap.
Luckily, Alison Kayna, a girl Jack had
worked with as a reluctant mercenary for another outfit, comes to his
rescue. Evading pursuit, they escape to the primitive world of Rho
Scorvi, where she’s planned a rendezvous with friends.
But at
the edge of Rho Scorvi’s hundred-mile-wide forest, they make a shocking
discovery: traveling with a group of the planet’s native Erassvas is a
small lost colony of Draycos's own race, the K'da. But unlike Draycos’s
people, these K’da – known as Phookas – are slow, lethargic, and
unintelligent. When the Malison Ring tracks the Essenay to Rho
Scorvi, Jack realizes that unless he and Draycos and a reluctant Alison
can lead the Phookas to safety in the forest, these unfortunate
creatures will become the latest victims of the genocide that threatens
to wipe out their entire race.
Jack has already been a thief, a
soldier, and a slave. Now he must become a herdsman, protecting the
Phookas from danger as they travel deep into the unexplored forest. But
even more importantly, he must protect from the mercenaries and Alison
the dark secret of the herd and Jack's poet-warrior ally. Only if they
succeed do they stand a chance of surviving Rho Scorvi to continue their quest...
