The twelfth novel in The Shadow Wars. Eric Starck is a man adrift. After fighting in the Systems Wars that ravaged the galaxy, he's spent the past three years drifting from one job to the next, never quite feeling comfortable. The latest in a long line of jobs is at least seeming like it might be a career he can attach to. Search & Rescue. His job is to fly through the deeper regions of space and offer assistance to any and all who need it. Everything is about to get thrown out the airlock, however, as he and his crew pick up a seemingly simple distress call from an isolated, asteroid-based service and repair station. The deep space equivalent of a lone truck stop. As they arrive, they find the facility in terrible shape, the inhabitants brutalized, and quickly become trapped in a truly isolated situation with a group of vicious, blood-thirsty alien creatures that seem to want nothing more than to brutally murder them all...