CC Williams is a financial analyst who's on the fast track of life and is determined to stay there. She clawed her way out of the hell of the powerless underclass and keeps herself grimly focused, with nightmares of either being frozen into a shipsicle and sent to the Outer Rim or dying slowly as the authorities harvest her limbs and other body part to pay off the massive debts she accrued getting where she is.

When the multi-planetary company she works for sends CC to audit the far flung Vesta Colony to learn why assets keep hemorrhaging away, she knows this is her big chance to make the Ultimate Career Move and be finally free.

Vesta turns out to be unlike anything CC has ever seen and the deeper she delves, the more twisted things get until her life--not to mention her career--hangs in the balance. CC finds herself confronting not just insider trading and fraud, but attempted murder as well. Who's at fault? She's got a colony of suspects, including old friends, old rivals, and a dashing EarthServ pilot who knows a whole lot more about CC and her world than he's letting on.

Will CC find out in time--or will the takeover she fears turn not just hostile but deadly?