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For the past year, their close loss in the annual Boarding Games has haunted Interceptor Team: Zuma's Ghost. With this year's competition looming, they're looking forward to some payback -- until an unexpected personnel change leaves them reeling. Their best swordsman has been transferred, and a new lieutenant has been assigned in his place.

Maxine Carmichael is trying to carve a place in the world on her own -- away from the pressure and influence of her powerful family. The last thing she wants is to cause trouble at her command on Jupiter Station. With her new team in turmoil, Max must overcome her self-doubt and win their trust if she's going to succeed. Failing is not an option -- and would only prove her parents right.

But Max and the team must learn to work together quickly. A routine mission to retrieve a missing ship has suddenly turned dangerous, and now their lives are on the line. Someone is targeting members of Zuma's Ghost, a mysterious opponent willing to kill to safeguard a secret that could shake society to its core... a secret that could lead to their deaths and kill thousands more unless Max and her new team stop them.

Rescue those in danger, find the bad guys, win the Games. It's all in a day's work at the NeoG.

Zuma's Ghost has won the Boarding Games for the second straight year. The crew - led by the unparalleled ability of Jenks in the cage, the brilliant pairing of Ma and Max in the pilot seats, the technical savvy of Sapphi, and the sword skills of Tamago and Rosa - has all come together to form an unstoppable team. Until it all comes apart.

Their commander and Master Chief are both retiring. Which means Jenks is getting promoted, a new commander is joining them, and a fresh-faced spacer is arriving to shake up their perfect dynamics. And while not being able to threepeat is on their minds, the more important thing is how they're going to fulfill their mission in the black.

After a plea deal transforms a 20-year ore-mining sentence into NeoG service, Spacer Chae Ho-ki earns a spot on the team. But there's more to Chae that the crew doesn't know, and they must hide a secret that could endanger everyone they love - as well as their new teammates - if it got out. At the same time, a seemingly untouchable coalition is attempting to take over trade with the Trappist colonies and start a war with the NeoG. When the crew of Zuma's Ghost gets involved, they end up as targets of this ruthless enemy.

With new members aboard, will the team grow stronger this time around? Will they be able to win the games? And, more important, will they be able to surmount threats from both without and within?

Ensign Nell "Sapphi" Zika has been working hard to get past her trauma, but the unnerving pleas for help she's hearing in the Verge and the song she can't get out of her head are making that increasingly difficult. As Zuma's Ghost gears up for a final run at the Boarding Games, their expert hacker is feeling anything but confident. Plus, her chief's robot dog, Doge, is acting weird--a computer problem she can't find an answer to--and the increasing number of missing freighters is putting everyone living on or stationed around Trappist on edge.

It doesn't help the NeoG's mission that Dread Treasure is sidelined from competing in the Boarding Games, and Commander D'Arcy Montaglione is stuck on the front lines of the mystery of the missing ships while also stuck in his own head. Never good at trusting people to begin with, he's struggling to piece together his new crew in the aftermath of a great betrayal, knowing this may be his final chance at command. The last thing he wants to do is prove his enemies right and end up getting shoved behind a desk and forgotten. The easy answer to missing ships is pirates, but D'Arcy soon realizes the easiest answer is rarely the right one out in the vacuum of space. What's worse is that the actual pirates are scared of something out beyond the asteroid belt. Something that's been taking their ships too...

As the unknowns multiply and one of their mysterious enemies escalates by launching an attack on the NeoG itself, the Interceptor crews must brave both cyber and outer space to hunt down their foes, but no one is prepared for the truth that is revealed or the way it will shake the foundations of everything they believe about the universe.