Book 1. Travis Fletcher is arrogant, brash, chauvinistic; the very embodiment of 1980's Britain. He finds himself paralysed and on life-support after a train crash that brings his efforts at reconciliation with his family to a tragic end. He is unable to tell anyone he is still alive inside his wrecked body, except for the two enigmatic and indifferent apparitions at the end of his bed. The Xi Scorpii were an ancient and proud race that numbered in the tens of billions that once spread across the planets of five suns and strode across the galaxy in huge ships. Now reduced to less than a hundred million living in one city on a dead planet after a genocidal war and dying from the effects of a genetic weapon. Searching for a cure they find Travis Fletcher, primitive, broken and dying, and make him an offer - save the Xi Scorpii from extinction and become more than he was.