John Spark is finding his feet after returning from the disaster-plagued mission to Aemilia. Mars is reeling from the catastrophic attack of the Von Neumann 'bugs'; that followed the Coromandel home.

John is accompanying a friend and her child on the Great South Line, when the train is hijacked by the enigmatic Knights of Great Enoch – aka the 'Wreckers'. Kaia's daughter is kidnapped.

Waiting for police assistance, they are stranded in an arctic Martian town when the city comes under devastating assault. The Knights have a history of pilfering, petty vandalism and pirate radio, not acts of kidnap and terror. Are the Knights under a brutal new leadership, or are they patsies, as they claim?

John doesn't like coincidences, and searches for a connection when the bugs return, wreaking havoc in orbit. But something about them is different. The machines are now in possession of bleeding edge tech and tactics, straight from the Martian Navy's playbook. Onboard the Samarkand as 'consultants', John and friends find themselves in the firing line.

John must decide if an enemy's enemy is necessarily a friend, and just what he is prepared to do for them. The answers lie somewhere between the gleaming asteroid Psyche and the Cryptic geyser fields of the southern Martian pole. With friends, allies, frenemies and lovers, John must find solutions before the next hammer falls.

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