The Dregs of Empire

Return to the world of the Sun Eater in this spin-off adventure set after the events of book five! For thousands of years, the icy planet of Belusha has served the galactic Sollan Empire as its most notorious prison planet. It is here the very worst men in the Empire are locked away: murderers, traitors, deserters--each condemned to toil on the oil rigs and scrapyards of the planet in bitter cold, preyed upon both by the men of the Martian Guard set to watch over them, and by the Outborn reavers whose fathers escaped the work camps to scratch a living from the icy wilderness. It is a hard world. A desperate world. And it is here that Lorian Aristedes finds himself: alone; friendless; betrayed even by his own failing, mutant flesh. It is here that Lorian Aristedes has been sentenced to work himself to death for the crime of abetting his master's escape from imperial justice. For any other man, it would be the end of his story ... but for Lorian Aristedes--once the left hand of the Halfmortal, Hadrian Marlowe himself--it is only the beginning.