Holtz Mitsumi is desperate.Mitsumi gambled everything to find lost tech on the First Stellar Civilization's dead, shattered worlds. Massive riches were his if he won. He lost. Instead of wealth, he was saddled with a mysterious alien artifact that invaded his mind and instilled an iron compulsion to find its origin. But the artifact did not communicate with anyone else and appeared to be common manufactured diamond-as common as dirt and worth as much. Broke and in debt, but driven to get back to the stars, Mitsumi is stuck. Mounting an expedition to find the object's origin is impossible. Then an enigmatic stranger corners Mitsumi. He claims to have solid leads to fabulous lost tech and offers to let Mitsumi captain a prospecting run, in exchange for a share of the voyage profits. After scraping a crew together, Mitsumi embarks on one last run to finance his search. But the crew has secrets, some of them deadly. Before he knows it, Mitsumi picks up the perfect accessory for a struggling prospector-an implacable foe. Chased across the galaxy, Mitsumi wrestles with his unruly crew in an impossible bid to survive and find the artifact's secret.