Dalton Greaves agreed to join a Unity scout ship after a humiliating break up. Those who sign up to work for the galactic organization either come back to Earth rich or just don't come back. His job is to go down to newly discovered inhabited planets and explain that Unity is there to help them just like they helped Earth. His predecessor was eaten by a potential new member species, so he doesn't expect to survive his ten year contract. Their current assignment doesn't look promising since the horrifying looking insectoids live on a planet teeming with wildlife, so vicious even they stay behind city walls at night. But things start to go wrong even before they land when a rival galactic organization, the Assembly, shows up and the two ships destroy each other stranding their representatives on the planet. Dalton's counterpart is an alien whose race is famed for slaughtering Unity soldiers including humans and considers all humans to be conniving manipulative liars. Since it wastes no time convincing the local hive queen of this, Dalton thinks he's lost all touch with reality when she informs him that she's taking him as a husband, her Fourth Consort.