When former mercenary commander, Imre Bergamasc, awakes in the 879th Millennium, 200 years after he died, he understandably has a few questions, such as: why are large chunks of his memory missing? And why is he now a woman? Resurrected from information stored in a partially destroyed time capsule, he finds that things have changed during the two centuries he was dead. Now, following a galaxy-wide disaster known as the Slow Wave, the Continuum has collapsed, the bright galactic empire reduced to millions of disparate systems in various states of disarray. Reunited with his old team-mates - or, at least, reasonable facsimiles thereof - Imre must piece together both the fragments of his memory and the story of civilisation's fall. The more he digs the more suspicion dawns that the two issues are far from separate. Was the Imre Bergamasc he no longer remembers an unwitting pawn in the fall of civilisation? Or was he, in fact, the architect? And if unknown parties have gone to such extreme lengths to resurrect him, why are they now trying to kill him? Again.