author : Alex Stewart

Cast out by his well-connected family and exiled from the Rimward Commonwealth, young Simon Forrester must make a new life for himself as an apprentice to the powerful Commerce Guild. But others aboard the merchant vessel Stacked Deck have a hidden agenda that might lead directly to interstellar war.

Now, when rising tensions between the CommonWealth and the neighboring League of Democracies threatens to erupt into open war, Simon finds himself forced to choose between old and new loyalties—with the fate of an empire at stake!