Description:

Four Earthyears before Signe drives Norman’s force of invaders off Gaea, Michael, Captain of a six-man Columbian military scientific team, docks a crippled ship on an isolated Gaean space station occupied by a team of civilian researchers. The Columbians capture a female Gaean life-support engineer, but fail to force her to reveal the location of the sole escape vehicle, before her comrades lift. Cleo’s feat provokes bitter anger in three of the six men now marooned on the isolated outpost, but most of all in Nigel, the dangerous and sometimes cruel second officer.