In an attempt to cover this up, Lady Cecelia and Captain Heris Serrano are enlisted by the Crown into quietly returning the prince to the capital.
On the space station, Heris is having the yacht overhauled and redecorated, whilst her new ex-Fleet personnel are quietly engaged procuring military-grade equipment and installing it.
Brigdis Sirkin, meanwhile, has induced her lover (Amalie Yrilan) into taking up a temporary environmental tech job while Serrano decides whether to hire her or not.
Before the badly injured Sirkin is rescued by Oblo and Methlin Meharry, Yrilan is killed by a sonic weapon.
No sooner had this mess been cleaned up and the ship turned over to Spacenhance's redecorator than horrible news arrives from the planet: Lady Cecelia has suffered a "massive stroke".
They are further limited when the King summons Heris to an audience, and quite firmly insists that she and her crew steal the Sweet Delight, and while avoiding arrest by the Fleet, discovery of their identity and also any attacks by the Benignity and their agents, take the stupid prince to the Guerini Republic to seek an antidote to the poison.
As Lady Cecelia recovers and prepares to file for competency and thereby regain her estate, Brun works her way back to Rockhouse Major via low-level jobs aboard various commercial vessels; even with this ruse, she barely avoids Lorenza's hired assassins.
During this second trip to the Republic, Sirkin makes one mistake too many, and is relieved of her duties by Heris, who now suspects her of being a Benignity agent.
When bridge computers begin malfunctioning, Heris orders the relatively new crew-member Skoterin to break out the small arms in the Security lockers against whatever Sirkin might be planning.
Skoterin explains that her plan as a Benignity agent was to get revenge on Heris for killing two family members and to skillfully have it all blamed on Sirkin.
The internal revolt quenched, all attention is turned to the attacking Benignity ships, now being harried by Livadhi's cruiser.