Once upon a time, Major Mick Gilligan, USAF, didn't believe in Magic. Nor, had he been told of it, would he have believed in the elf Lisella, or cared that she had cursed master programmer Wiz Zumwalt, later of Cupertino and now of an alternate world where magic works like a computer program.

But that was before he took his F-15 out over the Bering Sea on a top-priority intercept, came out on the losing end of a dogfight with a dragon, and found himself caught in a climactic battle that pitted Wiz and his fellow Silicon Valley hackers against a couple of computer criminals in alliance with the forces of primal chaos.

Before he was done, Major Mick Gilligan would join with an ulikely gang of programmers, wizards, elves, dragon cavalry, gremlins, demons and a stolen Russian super-computer in a desperate effort to save both the world of magic and his own.