Having been gifted fifteen worlds and the limited means of getting there by the enigmatic alien Jackaroo, as of the end of the previous book, humanity had stumbled across a fleet of ships left behind by a long-vanished race. In fact, the remains of long-vanished races are everywhere, that's pretty much the main theme of the book. The ruins of ancient civilsations and their technologies are scattered across space and a network of wormholes that allow humans to travel and dig up trouble and make other trouble of their own. A lot of the technologies aren't dead, but they are alien and incomprehensible and unpredictable and can literally get into people's heads with all sorts of interesting consequences.

In the past Lisa and her husband were infected by an alien eidolon which has lain dormant ever since, until one day it returns, bringing unwelcome attention from the Geek Police, who control outbreaks of alien technology, and sending her off on a dangerous and life-altering journey in search for answers and her missing husband.

In the future, a young freebooter, son of a powerful and wealthy, but slightly disgraced family, is chased from a planet with potentially lucrative findings by claim-jumpers, only to find himself enmeshed in betrayals and intrigues from within his family and without.

The stories move along at a fast pace, between the dusty archaeological sites of a frontier world to the more baroque settings across multiple wormhole worlds as plans and vendettas and deeply ancient hidden secrets all come to fruition.