Twelve light-years from Earth, Lieutenant Commander Valory Jeanne, is alone in the astrophysics lab when an unexpected meteor storm strikes the United Earth Space Force ship Copernicus. After just four orbits around a newly discovered planet in the Tau Ceti star system, the ship is destroyed.

Now stranded onboard without any means of escaping to the planet below, the PhD astrophysicist must struggle against insurmountable odds to stay alive on a dead spaceship. Relying on ingenuity, perseverance, and hard-won knowledge, lone survivor Dr. Jeanne finally manages to revive the ship's state-of-the-art equipment and devises a method of sending a communication to Earth.

As the faster-than-light message speeds through the universe, she knows it is her last hope of rescue before the ship enters the atmosphere and crashes in a shallow sea. Unfortunately, Earth is not the only recipient of her message. As rescuers Chris Elliott and Caitlyn Carver race to the crash site in a problem-plagued newly commissioned spaceship, hostile aliens circle the crashed Copernicus, transforming Valory's predicament from bad to worse.

In this continuing science fiction adventure, an astrophysicist trapped in her spaceship awaiting rescue unwittingly makes contact with aliens, who quickly reveal the hazards and benefits of sharing the universe with other beings.