America, 1996. Airships ply the transport lanes between the great cities of the continent - from the capital at Victoria on the Potomac all the way to New Liverpool on the sunny California coast. Everywhere the North American Union is at peace, safe under the dominion of His Majesty Charles III - a peace that has held since the 1760s, when George Washington and George III struck an agreement commemorated in Gainsborough's immortal painting The Two Georges. But now that peace is threatened. Styling themselves the "Sons of Liberty," separatists have brazenly stolen the Gainsborough painting - right out from under the nose of Colonel Thomas Bushell of the Royal American Mounted Police. Bushell knows his duty: he must recover the painting, whatever the cost. And prevent his superiors in government from paying the terrorists' ransom. But time is running out. And the painting could be anywhere in His Majesty's enormous North American domains...