Officers Ryan Matson and Sandy Rie meet on the Alpha Queen 9, furthermost outpost of the Alliance fleet. Sandy Rie, an eager newbie gunner, nurtures a secondary agenda: historical research to verify her failed college Master’s thesis that some of the first hundred colony ships sent out from Sol system 500 years previously, have indeed made planetfall.

The Kritsch, a race of sentient insects (‘bugs’), are inimical to all other sentient life. They are the bane of the Alliance’s advance up the arm of the galaxy.

Matson flies the Needle, a fast recon ship, into uncharted regions of deep space. Statistically, in number of missions flown, he has outlived his life expectancy. Sandy and Ryan establish a personal and professional relationship, which eventually develops into a first-class team flying updated Needle 2’s.

They find one of the old colony ships, where Sandy uncovers valuable information about what happened to those first exploratory flights. However, each mission they fly brings them closer to that last, fatal mistake that could be the end for them and would likely result in a pull-back of Alliance space exploration.