Gaius, a soldier of the Galactic Empire, is assigned to guard an observatory on the planet Mara, a planet famous for its storms. Its winds are the most powerful recorded in the galaxy; its poison air is deadly to life. But when a new storm arrives, swallowing the observatory whole, a storm stronger than any before it, new secrets are uncovered, and new perils are revealed—danger that will soon spread beyond Mara and threaten the very survival of the galaxy itself.