chunk: On Limbo the archaeologists set up camp in the ruins of a Forerunner town, a trace of the people who ran a galactic empire long before humans ventured into space and who had wiped themselves out in an interstellar war. Dane and four others go exploring, to try to find intelligent life and potential trade goods. One of the group, Ali Kamil, disappears, apparently kidnapped by people using alien technology.
  Spooked, a group including Dane goes to the ruins to check up on the archaeologists and finds that they have disappeared. Suspicion has them return to Solar Queen by an alternate route and they begin to find wrecked spaceships, some from thousands of years previous, that show signs of having been looted. Approaching their landing site, they find Solar Queen under siege by pirates and they discern that the archaeologists are part of the pirate gang.