A no-nonsense starship captain and a billionaire financier, Fairfax and Cavendish are the ultimate odd couple. Until an insidious government conspiracy leaves them with nothingexcept each other. When financier Harrison Fairfax boards the EarthFed starship Starchild, Captain Trieka Cavendish knows he'll bring trouble. Earthlubbers always do. But she has no idea "trouble" will come in the form of a vast government conspiracy that will turn her whole world upside down. Harrison Fairfax has spent the past seven years trying to find out what happened to his wife, an investigative journalist. But his wife's disappearance is only the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath is biggerand much, much worse. It's a conspiracy reaching to the highest echelons of EarthFed. Government strongmen, who are on to Fairfax's meddling, drive him and Cavendish into the wilds of the colony planet Denahault, where they discover even more secretsand a passion that may be the only thing that can save them.