Sharrow and her team follow the trail left by Gorko and recover the Universal Principles. They demand the Gun be turned over to them and not the Huhsz. During these events, Sharrow is menaced by two unidentified bald-headed clones, who have the ability to inflict pain on her via a military virus embedded in her nervous system. Sharrow recruits the surviving members of her combat unit and sets out to make contact with the son of Gorko's butler. Breyghun tells her that their grandfather Gorko, a collector of rare artefacts, encoded information regarding the location of the Universal Principles into the DNA of his servants. She visits her half-sister Breyghun who is held prisoner in the Seahouse, a monastery run by the Sad Brothers. In order to do this, she must first find the Universal Principles, a long lost book rumoured to contain a clue to the Gun's hiding place. Sharrow resolves to recover the Lazy Gun, rejecting an offer of help from her cousin Geis, a wealthy industrialist and businessman. She is forced to choose between going into hiding for a year or recovering the last Lazy Gun, an ancient weapon of mass destruction that was stolen from the cult by her ancestor. A cult named the Huhsz is granted permission to assassinate her, believing that their messiah can not be born until the end of her family's female bloodline. She lives on Golter, a planet orbiting a star in an isolated planetary system with no nearby galaxies. The main protagonist is Lady Sharrow, a former military pilot and antiquities thief. It was his first science fiction novel not to feature, or be set in, the Culture. Against a Dark Background is a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M.

Look to windward by iain m banks