Andrej Koscuisko, the <i>Ragnarok’s Ship</i>'s Inquisitor, is going home on leave. His ship of assignment is participating in training exercises, and when an observer station unexpectedly explodes –- killing the <i>Ragnarok</i>’s captain -– Pesadie Training Command has to come up with a cover story in a hurry or risk exposure of its black-market profiteering.<br><br>There is a conveniently obvious explanation: the <i>Ragnarok</i> did it on purpose. All Pesadie needs are a few confessions -- obtained by judicial torture, which creates its own truth. And a bitter enemy from Andrej’s earliest days in Fleet has been waiting for just such an opportunity to set a trap and bait it with the lives of people Andrej loves.<br><br>Andrej will have to fight Fleet itself to bring the <i>Ragnarok</i> the only thing that can save the ship and crew from destruction –- a single piece of evidence with the potential to change the course of the history of Jurisdiction Space forever.<br><br>At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).<br><br>A tightly woven space opera full of grand heroic gestures and characters strong enough to sustain all the action.<br>-<i>Booklist</i><br><br>Matthews' work here -- of projecting a concentrated vision of the horrors of the last hundred years into a space-operatic future -- is extraordinarily risky and emotionally difficult, but now that she has shown that the Judiciary universe holds hope as well as pathology and pain, I will be able to follow Koscuisko to whatever fate awaits him with an easier mind.<br>-<i>Locus Magazine</i>
