Captain Stanley 'Swift' Travis wants to flee his present life. But things just go from bad to worse when fate forces him to alienate his friends and ally with his enemies. Microbial dynamos, errant energy, and an old well-weathered space-ship's malfunction programming physically alter him on a cellular level forever. Do these changes offer him hope or make him a prisoner?

A monstrous machine, raining fire, brings death to everything in its path. Its skin is impenetrable, its power immeasurable, its hunger insatiable. No weapon like it has ever before threatened the stars. Yet, a dead man’s legacy may be the only thing able to stop it, the legacy of Sal Guthrie. Sal's endowment finds young Stanley Travis, a soldier on the run ho has no desire to become a hero; a guy whose plans don’t include dying. What happens when his newfound home is threatened by the machine. Will his ties be the death of him yet?