[1] It is set in the author's Alliance-Union universe, in which humanity has split into three major power blocs: Union, the Merchanter's Alliance and Earth.

Merchanter's Luck was reprinted in 2008 along with Cherryh's novel Forty Thousand in Gehenna in an omnibus volume entitled Alliance Space.

When he was a young boy, all but two of his relatives were killed or taken by the renegade Mazianni, once soldiers in the service of Earth, who had refused to accept the end of the Company War and turned pirate in order to keep on fighting.

The three remaining Krejas had continued to run their aged freighter, Le Cygne, as best they could, but an accident had killed one and a shady deal gone bad the other, leaving Sandy both impoverished and preposterously wealthy—the sole owner of a starship.

At Viking station, as Edward Stevens of Lucy, Sandy has a chance sleepover with another merchanter, Allison Reilly, which proves to be pivotal to his future.

At that moment, Mallory's Norway, the armed Alliance superfreighter Finity's End, and Dublin Again rush in to engage the fleeing Edger (although he gets away) and free the station.

His crew now trust him wholeheartedly and Sandy has the nucleus he needs to revive the Kreja family, returning his ship to its original name, Le Cygne.