Tori Bertoletti, librarian and planet cataloger, and Raze Salen, mankind's emissary, aboard the Human spacefaring liveship the Aero have convinced their government of the dire need to negotiate formal alliances with the other cultures in the galaxy. The monumental task they're undertaking and the consequences of failure are mind-rattlingly clear. Complications muddle the mission in the form of uneasy truces and frustrating stalemates, long-held enigmatical cosmologies suddenly called into life-altering question, along with immediate and imminent threats that could tear apart the fabric of the entire universe and everything living in it.