When Gal Fed investigators Dan Hale and Kait Gelaim are accused of abducting a government functionary on the poisonous mining planet of NuStrike, they find themselves pulled into a whirling vortex of greed, murder and corruption that will end with their destruction ... if they fail to break free. An autocratic security chief wants them killed. A band of shape changers wants them for a three-course meal. And a smiling, blood-thirsty alien who delights in playing one planetary power group against another makes both investigators an offer that will make them either rich, or dead. Kait, a large panther from NuStrike's polar forests, discovers she is more than the sum of her thick green pelt and carnivore instincts. Caught between worlds, she finds she's the only sentient life form tied to NuStrike's past and disintegrating present who can save the planet from oblivion. But her turbulent feline senses keep getting in the way.