Condition: Acceptable. Please see the images for more details. May show signs of wear such as:
• Shelf wear or scuffing on the cover
• Creases, marks, or tears on pages or dust jacket
• Possible remainder marks or previous owner’s name/notes inside
Cover art: A.C. Farley
Blurb: “In the early twenty-second century, the Great Bust destroyed Earth's valiant attempts to colonize the solar system. Abandoned by a homeworld on the verge of ruin, the scientific team of Salii, a space station orbiting Mars, somehow managed to sur-vive. So when Earth was pulled back from the brink of destruction by the creation of the UCN, the first effective worldwide government, Salii, unlike the asteroid-based space station, High-land, refused to renew its allegiance to Earth. And while the UCN and the so-called Salian "pirates" competed for the rapidly diminishing resources of the solar system, a new player suddenly joined the game: the alien T'Raijek, a three-sexed race far more technologically advanced than humankind Though the T'Raijek soon established embassies on Earth, Highland, and Salii, no one was sure why they were there, what they truly wanted from the human race or what they might be willing to give in return. For the T'Raijek were still warring within their own clans over the advisability of dealing with the human "apes," and many deaths, both T'Raijek and human, would occur before the question was decided
Holder Jemi Charidilis, owner and captain of a Highland tramp freighter, had never wanted anything to do with the politics and intrigues of Salii, the UCN, or, for that matter, the mysterious T'Raijek. She'd been perfectly content to haul cargo, traveling with her young son and her vivi-cate pilot Doni - a man brought back from death to serve on Highland, where manpower was woefully low since plague had devastated the station.
Then her 4-year-old son had died in a freak accident on Highland, and within months of that terrible loss, Jemi's ship had been attacked and completely disabled. Badly injured herself, her vivicate destroyed, she'd been captured and released only after the powerful drugs her captors had used to question her had erased her last two years worth of memories. Jemi was suddenly verv interested in what was going on in the greater universe.
thanie finale tolled Ardent, who had saved her life in a dark Earth alleyway, Jemi was determined to discover why she had become the target for various UCN, Highland, and Salii forces.
And
though at first all she wanted was to reclaim her stolen memories of her son, she was soon driven to bid for far higher stakes
For Jemi had been used as an innocent pawn in this multi-world game, where losing could spell the slow death by attrition of all humankind, and winning could at long last give her race the stars and their resources
But unless Jemi and Ardent could separate ally from enemy while at the same time striving to locate a priceless T'Raijek crystal which everyone, including the T'Raijek would kill to possess -
- both they and their races would pay the ultimate price. Because there was one piece of dire knowledge the TRailek had carefully neglected to share with any of the humans...”