It just wasn't fair! Captain Pausert had defeated not only a villainous space pirate, but had also eliminated the threat that the Worm World had posed to the entire galaxy-still, his troubles just kept piling up. The Empress Haile herself sent him on a secret mission-so secret that, he soon found out, that he hadn't been told about the most important part of it: the nanite plague, an intelligent and self-aware disease that had devastated whole worlds eons ago, was back and spreading, and had to be stopped. And then someone convinced both the Imperial Fleet and the dreaded Imperial Interservice Security that he was actually a wanted criminal and his safe-conduct papers from the Empress were forgeries. Someone else managed to suspend the Imperial line of credit he had been given for the mission, and a set-to with Imperial ships had left his battered but serviceable ship, the Venture, damaged and in urgent need of repairs, which he could not afford. And while Goth and the Leewit, two of the notorious witches of Karres, could do some pretty amazing things, ship repair was not in their line. Furthermore, a lot of that now deceased space pirate's colleagues were convinced that Pausert had custody of their late partner's hidden loot. Pausert had to complete his mission, or the nanite plague would obliterate galactic civilization, so there was only one thing to do-join the circus! An interstellar traveling circus, that is.