Book Synopsis
Calumet "Cal" Anton thought three years on Orbitas Prime would solve his crushing student debt: engineer a financial turnaround for a deep-space mining syndicate, earn a multiplier bonus, and go home. But when Earth’s UN environmental mandates crash the spot price of platinum, corporate mogul Maximus LaSalle hires Cal to save LaSalle Resources. Cal’s ruthless solution is to organize a deep-space cartel, hoard virgin ore, and starve Earth’s fuel cells until prices spike.
As brownouts plunge terrestrial cities into darkness, Cal’s cartel succeeds on paper—while sparking a powder keg on the station. Squeezed by wage freezes and predatory loans, Orbitas Prime’s workers embrace a radical gospel of anti-regulation populism and religious zealotry. When an impulsive driller's act of sabotage destroys a UN transport, Earth retaliates by completely severing all ties, subsidies, and transit guarantees across the outer system.
Abandoned to total autonomy, the station devolves into a hyper-privat