In the near future, women’s rights are eroding, and those who buck the system are hunted as gender criminals by the authorities and rogue militias. This harrowing dystopia is seen through the eyes of a woman cast into a resistance group by circumstance, and a newly minted gender crimes detective tasked with bringing them to justice, as he grapples with whether or not that word still has meaning.

As national governments cede society to international and soon-to-be intergalactic corporations, Sontem launches the Nexus and the Argus, two intergenerational starships sent as emissaries to the cosmos, but whose sole mission is to secure mining rights for the parent company. The ships are armed with the best of mankind's minds and technology, and a sense of manifest destiny. Captain Anderson Grant of the Nexus, the second starship in Sontem's budding armada, prepares to boldly fight and screw where no man has before. But Anderson and his crew struggle to maintain their humanity in the face of deception, exploitation, (sexually) aggressive aliens, and a system that ultimately respects its crew more for their genetic capacity than their individuality.

Dagney Morgan, a sarcastic Department of Agriculture employee with an affinity for paperwork, has a chance run-in with a farmer covered in toxic chemicals, and walks away with a genetically modified baby, along with the seeds of a military-industrial conspiracy. Dagney and her makeshift family scramble to stay ahead of artificial soldiers and megalomaniacal businessmen long enough to reap the truths behind an international web of corruption and intrigue. They also stop for pie, at one point.