Introduction: Petty criminal and conman Nicholas North is just another faceless resident of Hyacinth, the oldest and largest station orbiting Mars, until he and his girlfriends Eastern and Selkirk are hired to steal a mysterious artifact. When the artifact turns out to be empty and inert, Nick and Eastern are given illegal cybernetics and alien nanotechnology to find what was supposed to be in the artifact.When the deposed Empress of humanity finds out that Eastern鈥檚 nanotech is the same that she uses to control her subjects, they go on the run. Escaping someone who can give orders that can鈥檛 be disobeyed turns out to be harder than they expected. What's worse, the AI that was supposed to be in the artifact is working for her....