From the back cover: As a young doctor with a beautiful family and a promising medical career, Dr. McCoy thought he had it all. But when the woman he loved betrayed him, McCoy fled to Starfleet hoping to lose his pain in the depths of space. Now, more than forty years later, the USS Enterprise and her crew are ordered to transport a group of mediators to the planet Ssan, a world where assassination is a long and time honored tradition.