Book excerpt: ""I picked up a life form reading. Someone's alive over there."" With that short phrase, Captain Marcus Drake's partner, navigator Solomon Keys, will drastically alter the course of their lives. After picking up the signal of a distress beacon far into the galaxy, the two ex-smugglers decide to investigate the source-a large ship with a gaping hole in the side of the hull. Aboard the derelict spaceship floating millions of miles from the nearest civilization, a single woman-undercover Earth Force Agent Iaka Kazumi-survives in a sealed cryochamber. When Captain Drake wakes her, he inadvertently steps into a conspiracy that could destroy the Earth's government. The Omni Corporation from Earth has been engaged in the strictly forbidden practice of conducting medical experiments on sentient life forms. But Omni's scientists aren't working alone. Drake, Keys, and Kazumi soon find themselves on the run from enemies, new and old-all of whom want them silenced. Their only chance for survival takes the trio to a primitive jungle planet where they must convince the shaman of an alien tribe to trust them when every human encounter has caused the tribe nothing but destruction. Can the shaman survive long enough to bear witness to the atrocities threatening his people?