When I lost my low paying, dead-end job, a friend offered me a one-way ticket to Val Segas. I didn't want to take advantage of his generosity, but we both knew that that ticket was probably the only way I'd ever get off Cenclare.

He surprised me with a ticket on the Lady Elizabeth, InmonCorp's newest luxury spacecraft. Even the cheapest, smallest cabins were supposed to be loaded with luxuries. When my elevator made an unscheduled stop on an unfinished deck before I'd even made it to my cabin, things got complicated fast.

After finding a dying man in what was meant to be an empty corridor, I found myself being bribed with a long list of upgrades, clearly designed to get me to keep quiet about what I'd seen. The bribes might have worked, too, if it wasn't for the man I'd been sharing the elevator with when it made its unscheduled stop.

Colonel Jonathan Brazee is determined to conduct his own investigation into what he is convinced was murder, and he seems equally insistent on dragging me along for the ride. All I know is that I'll be a lot happier if I don't have to spend the next twenty-six sectors traveling with a killer.

I've been keeping myself busy studying coding and playing with my cat, Singer. Long distance space travel has turned out to be incredibly boring, but at least the food on the Lady Elizabeth is good. When we finally reach the second sector of our twenty-six sector journey, I think everyone on board is ready to celebrate.

Everyone except the couple in the cabin across the corridor from me. They've had their privacy screen in place since we left Cenclare. Galactic regulations mean that someone has to inspect their cabin as we enter Beta Sector, though.

I should have skipped breakfast the first morning in Beta Sector. That would have been far better than being in the corridor when the door across the hall was finally opened. The last thing I wanted to see was another dead body and this time there were two of them. Now I'm tangled up in another murder investigation and everyone on the Lady Elizabeth knows it.

I suspect everyone on the Lady Elizabeth was excited when we finally reached Chaos Sector. For the first time since we'd left Cenclare, the ship actually stopped for a planetary excursion. Odontotyrannos is famous throughout the galaxy for its shops, restaurants, and other entertainments.

I knew that most of the planet was covered with buildings, but I took the shuttle down to the surface hoping to find my way outside. Dreaming of walking on real grass in an outdoor park, I spent ages trying to find an exit.

Unfortunately, when I finally found one, all that was outside the door was a parking lot filled with construction vehicles. Oh, and a pair of dead bodies. At this rate, I'm starting to think I'm not going to get through a single sector without finding someone dead.

When the Lady Elizabeth stopped on Odontotyrannos, it added a few extra people to the crew. Actually having some security on board was nice and we all knew that Becca needed another pair of hands in the medical wing, but I don't think anyone was excited to learn that a photographer had joined us.

Troy Dyffryn spent his days wandering around the ship snapping photos of the passengers and then trying to sell them his pictures. I was polite to the man, but I wasn't interested in having my picture taken, and I didn't have the credits to buy unnecessary photos of myself. But when he offered me a free photo session for Singer, my tiny cat, I couldn't resist.

We chatted about life while Singer posed beautifully. Some of the things that Troy said were worrying, but I was still shocked when I found him unconscious and wounded in a corridor two days later. At least this time, the person I'd found was still alive. That didn't mean that I was going to be able to avoid being dragged into the investigation into what had happened to him, though.

It was time for another planetary excursion, and I was really excited to see my very first beach planet. Caboluxous turned out to be everything I'd expected it would be and more - sunshine, sand, sea, fancy cocktails, and expensive food. It wasn't long before I found myself getting bored with the planet, though.

I was thinking about heading back to the Lady Elizabeth when someone shouted my name. Jason was the very last person in the galaxy I'd have expected to see on Caboluxous. When he said he and his wife, Tara, had taken the Express Shuttle to the planet just to surprise me, I was more than a little shocked. Jason had bought my ticket for the Lady Elizabeth and we'd said our goodbyes. I hadn't expected to ever see him again. And I knew very well that Tara hated me, so it was difficult to imagine why she'd agreed to the journey.

They were busy soaking up the sunshine, so we agreed to meet for dinner later. I spent the rest of the day trying to find the perfect outfit for a fancy dinner with the man I'd once thought of as my closest friend, and his jealous wife. Dinner went better than I'd dared hope, but Tara cornered me in the bathroom after we'd finished and warned me to stay away from Jason. Since my ship was supposed to be leaving soon, I didn't think that would be a problem.

The police woke me the next morning. Tara was missing and it looked very much as if I'd had a hand in her disappearance. Over the next few days, it became obvious to me that I was caught up in a complicated plot to frame me for Tara's murder. Unfortunately, the police didn't necessarily see it that way. While I knew I'd been framed, they seemed to believe that I was guilty. I'd already known that Tara hated me, but maybe I had another enemy, one who'd killed Tara and then framed me for the murder.

[Released on 13th September 2024 and available for pre-order now.]