Advancing up the tunnel, Gaunt could hear the sheer tumult of the nightmarish close-quarters fight in the chute. He looked down and saw that the trickle of water that ran down his boots was thick and red. Ten yards further, he found Trooper Gades. The water had carried his twitching form back down the smooth slope of the channel. He looked up at his commissar. "A real close fight, so it is packed in like fish in a can. The Ghosts will make ghosts tonight."
The action never stops for Commissar Gaunt and the Tanith First-and-Only, as Gaunt and his Ghosts must take to the air in an all-out attack on the towering cities of Phantine. Yet in the midst of the carnage, one atrocity does not go unnoticed - the helpless are being murdered and the finger of guilt points squarely at one of Gaunt's own men. War does not pause for justice, however, and as Gaunt defends his trooper before a court-martial the final, fatal, assault begins - and the killer is still out there.