Damien Montgomery is as much a nobody as a Mage of the star-spanning Protectorate of Mars can be. Trained as a Jump Mage, one of the elite who teleport ships across interstellar space, he lacks the connections to find a ship that will take him. Until pirates and politics strand Captain David Rice of the jump freighter Blue Jay in his home system. The two men's matching needs birth a choice and a partnership that will take them from high-end orbitals to prisons to alien graveyards in forgotten star systems. And in the shadows of the Protectorate, Damien is faced with a simple question: who is he in the dark?