Medical researcher Jem expected the day to end with her execution. But when she's rescued, against all odds, she realizes she may have just stepped out of the frying pan and into the fire.

She's been assigned on a medical mission to a remote resource planet. It sent in a distress call a week earlier, and then promptly went silent. No one knows why, and no one can contact them to find out. And, Jem is increasingly beginning to realize, every person on this mission is politically unimportant--a perfect crew of disposables. Their mission is to go in and figure out what happened, and save whoever they can. But Jem's smart enough to realize that anything that could cause an entire mining colony to go silent is probably not something accustomed to leaving its victims alive. And after meeting the rest of the crew, she's not sure that they're any safer than what's waiting for them out on the planet ...