The Kassa Gambit
Prudence Falling and her crew of misfits head toward Kassa with plans to sell their cargo and visit friends. They arrive to find mines in orbit and narrowly escape destruction only to discover the planet decimated. Kyle Daspar, a lieutenant and undercover double agent, appears soon after, following an anonymous tip. Nobody knows who is responsible, although Falling and Daspar see a crashed ship of unknown design in the course of their aid missions. They’re both canny and a little paranoid, for their own reasons, so they don’t tell anyone about it—leaving it to the agents of the major political power to find. The long political game Daspar’s been playing finally comes to a head when he discovers the devastating truth about Kassa’s attackers, and Falling is entangled by virtue of having been on Kassa. Although the storytelling has some rough edges, the plot itself is a nice piece of political intrigue set in a classical world of space-faring adventurers. --Regina Schroeder