The Crimean War rages on. Determined to break the stalemate, the British decide to send a spy into Odessa. And who better for this perilous mission than Captain Phillip Hazard, newly promoted to command of the steam-powered Huntress and fluent in Russian? Hazard bravely takes on the task, but saddled with a surly first lieutenant whose previous captain died mysteriously and with his crew plagued by an unknown illness, Hazard soon finds he must depend on his own resourcefulness to survive.