Stripped of his authority by the Emperor of Mankind and assigned to duty in deepest space for failing to prevent the greatest robbery in history, Ezekial Tamerlane believes his career as a soldier is over. But strange forces are at work, urging the Emperor to set out on a journey fraught with dangers into a nightmare realm a universe away from our own; and Tamerlane, like it or not, is going along for the ride. What he and his high-tech super-soldiers find along the way will shake the Empire to its very foundations, and unleash a crisis of galactic proportions that not all the armies in creation can hold back...