He used to believe the law was a shield. Now it's just another weapon.

Cal Ransom has barely survived his first repossession mission when TrustUs! sends the Hard Bargain to the Aralx system for what should be another straightforward recovery: the Oculus Finch, a battered freighter in breach of its lease.

Except the Finch isn't dodging a repo—it's trying to deliver life-saving equipment to a colony that's running out of everything. Its captain has a proposition Cal can't ignore… and a dead-man's EMP that makes "no" a very expensive answer.

Aralx is a pressure cooker: desperate colonists, hired guns controlling checkpoints, and alien ruins that turn a starving outpost into valuable real estate overnight. Cal came for a ship. He landed in the middle of a fight over who gets to claim the future. On Aralx, possession is the law.

To get his crew off-world, Cal will have to out-negotiate zealots, outmaneuver professionals with better guns, and figure out who's using contract enforcement as a weapon—before a repo job turns into a massacre.

Perfect for fans of: high-stakes space adventure with a sharp, wry edge; corporate intrigue and legal chess moves under fire; alien ruins, buried history, and mysteries with teeth.

Book two of the Ransom's Law series.