Tara Locke's leave, the only Star Patrol officer who survived the tragedy with the cruiser Horizon, begins very late. She suspects Homeland Security of hiding the truth about what happened to the crew. After going through a bunch of interrogations and inquiries, she needs to rest and figure it all out on her own. To help, she has a recorder data crystal secretly taken from the spaceship. The decision to go to Aldabra to visit his parents seems quite suitable in order to avoid unnecessary suspicion. A sudden travel companion from the logistics department disrupts plans with her intrusive questions. And the family themselves didn’t seem to be happy about her visit at all. Her brothers and sister and their friends plan to escape on a cargo ship to the “paradise” of Edemia in order to radically change their lives for the better, but in reality they find themselves in a death trap due to an unexpected fellow traveler. Tara Lok herself finds herself in a bind from which there seems to be no way out.