Note: The Virinian Empire is also mentioned in The Monitor, the Miners and the Shree.

Synopsis: From Amazon: Teo Azkuharaz and his fellow archeologists expected to be answering scholarly questions in the ruins on the planet the team is bound for. But the questions become those of life and death when their ship is attacked and survivors taken prisoner by the yfel, a brutal reptilian race defeated millennia ago by the Virinian empire. Now returning to exact revenge...and refusing to believe their enemy no longer exists. As a linguist able to speak with the yfel, Teo is given a slow-acting poison, and promised the antidote in return for information that will allow them to destroy the Virinians and their subject worlds. Resigned to dying, Teo pretends to cooperate, only to find himself a pawn in deadly plots and schemes among the yfel themselves. Can he use those against his captors to save his ship's crew, fellow archeologists, and the countless lives on planets the yfel plan to destroy—before he dies?