In bestselling author Tanya Huff's second installment of the Peacekeeper series, the Confederation reckons with costs of war not paid on the battlefield…

When mercenaries attack an archaeological dig on a planet of pre-spacefaring ruins, Torin Kerr and her Peacekeepers can guess the aggressors are ex-military, just like them. Since Torin uncovered the "social experiment" that kept the Confederation at arms for centuries, she's seen plenty of warriors wounded in ways no autodoc can fix. But these renegades are more than disenchanted—they think the ruins hold the answer to defeating the mysterious civilization that manipulated both sides into generations of conflict. And they've recruited some of their most feared former enemies from the Primacy to help steal it.

With a ceasefire barely settled and a government on edge, Torin has no room for error. She and her team have to rescue the hostages, disable the hostiles, and play host to uneasy Primacy allies of their own—all on a planet dense with jungle and full of unknown dangers. There's no time to seek out the so-called weapon or investigate what lurks in the ruins. But that doesn't mean it won't be hunting them…