The 'Verse is a big place.

After the Unification War, many of the Independents who had fought and lost drifted to the edges of civilization, far from Alliance control. The frontier is awash with these pathetic rebels, who've turned to smuggling and murdering and worse as they hide from justice in the darkest parts of the 'Verse. Someone has to reign them in.

This is the story of an unlikely band of bounty hunters who stepped up to meet that challenge. Some of them were members of an Alliance dropship crew- a pilot/commander, flight engineer and loadmaster- and the officers and men of the unit they dropped into combat a dozen times over during the Unification War.

After the fighting was done, one of them- the loadmaster, Seb Masters- managed to lay hands on a scow of an antiquated merchant ship, too small to haul modern cargo, and figured there was money to be made in bounty hunting. Lots of criminals out there and the Alliance pays big rewards, and so do the criminal syndicates. He rounded up his old mates and picked up others here and there until he had a crew.

They all came aboard for different reasons - family, survival, duty, riches. They believed, like most folks from the Central Planets, that if you obey the law, keep your head down, and do your job, things work out better for everybody. The Alliance takes care of its own, after all. What they came to find is that things aren't so black and white out on the Rim- sometimes the law isn't the same thing as justice, and some jobs just can't be done without getting dirty. Bounty hunting is no exception.