And when she discovers a genetically engineered soldier smuggled onto the surface, Vashti must face the nightmare of her husband's murder all over again. As she negotiates her grief, Vashti struggles in her role as one of the few colonists licensed to carry deadly weapons, just as she struggles with her history of using them. Haunted by the violent death of her husband, the heroic and celebrated Lasse Undset, Vashti must balance the needs of Ubastis against the swelling crush of would-be settlers. For xenobiologist Vashti Loren, this means bringing Offworlders on safari to hunt the specimens she and her fellow biologists so desperately need to study.

To acquire the tools and supplies they truly need, the colonists are relegated to selling whatever they can to outside investors. The Ubasti colonists barely get by on their own. But such an influx of people threatens the planet's unstudied ecosystem-before these settlers arrive, a tenuous research colony must complete its essential and desperate analysis, lest humanity abandon one planet only to die on another. Our hopes are pinned on Ubastis, an untamed paradise at the edge of colonized space. 'Earth is dying, and we have begun the search for a new home. To acquire the tools and supplies they truly need, the colonists are relegated to selling.

Archangel by Marguerite Reed