In the years since his retirement, Dan Dare, newly reinstated in the Royal Navy, doesn't seem to have missed a beat. Called upon to engage a hostile force bearing down on Earth, Dare is still a master of his craft, despite traveling on a battered ship commanded by a green captain toward a battle of impossible odds. A man of principle to the last, Dare forces his ship to answer a distress call on a mining colony. Several people have disappeared, and are suspected dead. But what starts off as a string of murders will turn out to be something much worse-and much more gruesome-than anyone expected.