An engine malfunctions, a computer miscalculates, and in a flash, life ends for countless souls aboard the starship Atlas. For the bridge crew, a new kind of life is just beginning. Objects move with no hand guiding them, and thoughts fly between them as fast as words. For Colonel Dillon Tracey, the weather is now a plaything, and what is a toy with no one to share it?

  The remaining colonists, still cocooned in the Atlas' belly, are jettisoned to a nearby planet. They eke out an existence for over two-hundred years, aided by the bridge crew in orbit. Doctor Simon Lazlo'S power to regenerate living cells has kept the crew alive and elevated them to the status of gods. Shunned by his crewmates and operating out of misguided love, Lazlo slowly becomes Dillon's pawn. He turns Dillon's fantasies into realities, bringing out psychic powers in Dillon's worshipers on the planet below. Dillon convinces Lazlo to genetically augment the boggins of the swamps below, creating a slave race. Soon after the boggin experiment begins, test subject B12 escapes, imbued with preternatural intelligence. She recruits her wild cousins and vows to annihilate those who tortured her.

  Paladin Cordelia Ross serves the Storm Lord without question, and when she is sent into the swamp to investigate the disappearance of a research team, she thanks God for the opportunity to test her battle skills. She consults the leader of the arboreal aliens known as drushka. Even though humans and the lithe aliens haven't always seen eye to eye, something about them attracts Cordelia. Equally drawn to her, they offer help where they can, but have problems of their own, a split within their own kind.

  Another schism is taking place in the heavens, where the other members of the Atlas pantheon are jealous of Dillon's power and plan for him the worst punishment they can think of, casting him down to the planet to die. Cordelia's faith and trust in God is absolute until she discovers that the Storm Lord was once human, as petty and devious as any person she has known. As he plunges her people into war with the boggins, Cordelia must choose between duty and honor, between her deity and the people who depend on her to protect them. Will she stay alive for the living or die for the dead?