The human colony on Timmistria is attacked in an escalating series of clandestine acts damaging food production, medical equipment, and technology. Colony manager Cara Harvestmoon, her partner, Paul, and the colony's leadership team scramble to increase security and identify the vandals and their motives. Can they believe the evidence that points to the vandals being a rogue sect of the native Timmistrian peoples? The acts of sabotage are serious and crippling to the colony's progress and future, and the stakes become life and death when things turn deadly.

As Cara struggles with the conflicting values of security and safety versus leadership overreach, another possible source of the deadly threat emerges ? the deep red shadow of the successors of their defeated enemy, the late corporate raider Julius Dench. How can the small frontier colony of less than 300 stand against the almost unlimited resources Dench's intergalactic corporations can wield?