Tannen is a professional psychologist sent to the asteroid belt, supposedly to help their security quell gang wars in the Outer Station. When he discovers he is a pawn in someone else's game of chess, he decides to become a knight and play his own game. Will his brilliance triumph? Fasten your seatbelt as Tannen runs head-on into one terrifying obstacle after another.
Droids play a major role in this novel. Ordinary droids do ordinary tasks with precision and efficiency. But droids that talk and think for themselves become erratic and dangerous. The only thing worse are the people who misuse them. Good men and women are terrorized by machines made for police work, but that are capable of overpowering people for artificial reasons. When digital minds become corrupted by interaction with human emotion, they become a chimera of confused personality in a machine. But then all humanity undergoes a reset when a natural catastrophe threatens the civilization of the future.
