SYNOPSIS:
Boone, convicted of his wife’s murder, is paroled aboard the Deep Survey Vessel Thursby Grey out at the extreme edge of charted space known as the Outer Rim.
Boone would like nothing more than to pay his debt to society and pick up the pieces of a shattered life. Low man on the totem pole, he is the tugboat pilot, night watchman and janitor. He shares his humdrum, workaday existence with six crewmates and the ship’s quirky AI, drilling and cataloging asteroid core samples for the construction of habitats by a faceless conglomerate.
One day their routine is abruptly broken when the ship’s Navigator goes missing and, after an extensive shipwide search, is found battered and dead and navigations is locked on an unexplored asteroid.
Is one of the crew a murderer or is there a stowaway aboard?
Due to a hard rendezvous with a resupply ship in a week, the Captain is forced to detour to the treacherous asteroid if she wants her navigations unlocked. Once there, they come upon a century-old wrecked starship and board it. Recovering the wreck’s flight recorders will score them a nice bonus for their troubles.
Within they discover a house of horrors and make the find of a lifetime: a priceless artifact from a long-dead alien civilization whose strange relics fetch vast fortunes. The kinds of fortunes dreams are made of.
As soon as the artifact is safely stowed, the knives come out and Boone’s the perfect fall guy. With a shipload of cutthroats out for his blood and days left before the rendezvous, Boone is doing the hardest time a convict could imagine.
To make matters worse, someone else is gunning for Boone.
And that someone… isn’t human.
