When the military transport Orion goes down in the Calderan wilderness, the Alliance hires botanist and tracker Jenny Black Wolf to help find the missing crew.

The job is supposed to be a routine search-and-rescue mission. But when Jenny reaches the Orion, it isn’t a crash site—it’s a crime scene.

The ship is intact, but everything of value has been stripped out by Karghan marines. The tracks tell her they were there yesterday—and that they didn’t find everything they were looking for. Now they’re hunting the Orion’s crew—and whatever they took with them.

Jenny has worked on Caldera before. She knows its patchy grasslands and forests, the red-orange glow of lava flows at night, the wind-blown grit, the isolation. Where most people see a wasteland, Jenny sees a living system—an old friend—dangerous and unforgiving, yet knowable, and as beautiful as it is uncompromising.

Partnered with Curran TaZarin, the Defender’s Deniban First Officer, Jenny begins the search expecting a professional alliance. But deep in the Hell’s Gate Lava Beds, a moment of shared terror forges an involuntary link between them—one neither wants and neither can break.

It threatens to expose their deepest secrets—and destroy both them and the mission. But the secret the Orion’s crew is carrying may be powerful enough to destabilize the Alliance itself—unless Jenny and Curran can survive long enough to stop it.

Perfect for readers who enjoy the ecological intelligence of Ursula Le Guin, the cultural depth of C. J. Cherryh, and the lived-in futures of Elizabeth Bear, along with the environmental storytelling of Barbara Kingsolver and Charlotte McConaghy.