Daily survival is a battle for Raykin Smythe, a fifteen-year-old cabin boy aboard a Sardonian slave ship. For years, he has learned to stay a second or two ahead of trouble. When the ten-ship armada raids the island of Rocky Cove for slaves, they are decimated by a little, pale girl named Minty Nothingmore. The Captain and the crew are now dead! Raykin flees for his life with a handful of the surviving raiders. They must sail The Last Red Ship to Sardonia and tell the king of a weapon so great it might threaten the whole empire. Getting home won't be easy with storms, mutinies, starvation, and sea battles threatening.