The Fleet, too, is restless and ill at ease; lurking and awaiting their chance is the Benignity of the Compassionate Hand (the "Black Scratch"), which has begun preparing an invasion.
Heris's desperate pleas for assistance against the coming strike to the local Fleet headquarters succeeds only in roping in a cruiser and two patrol boasts - all commanded by traitors in the pay of the Benignity.
When closeted away with the traitors, she quickly kills them and takes over the cruiser using the hidden computer authority which her aunt Admiral Vida Serrano had had created specifically for her to use in such a situation.
Through a lot of luck (such as mechanical problems for the foe) and some excellent micro-jumping tactics by the defenders and the unexpected assistance of the Despite, whose crew had mutinied, and now captained by a jig named Esmay Suiza (who figures more prominently in the next three books), the invading fleet is destroyed and the system held until it is relieved by a Familias battle group under Admiral Serrano, who reveals to Heris that she had been deliberately maneuvering and aiding Heris to use her as a lightning rod to flush out traitors and blunt Benignity incursions.
At the end, Brun decides to take Fleet training; George begins following after his father in law school; Raffaele and Ron quasi-elope to a frontier world colony to build a life of their own; Heris and her crew rejoin Fleet, while Heris finally is reconciled with her parents over their betrayal of her during her court-martial, and Cecelia decides to captain a new vessel on her own while continuing to raise horses.