What do a paraplegic construction worker, a beautiful socialite, a stay at home recluse, a beggar from the streets and a United Nations refugee officer have in common?Only the mysterious starship which abducted them could say.Five strangers awaken on a ship over a billion light years from Earth, with no memory of how they got there. Even more mysterious, they have all been given new bodies in peak physical shape and skintight singlesuits equipped with inhumanly advanced technology. They quickly discover that they have been brought to a place called the Puzzle Box, the once-great mining jewel of an interstellar empire but now a shell of its former self. The cores of the nearby planetoids have nearly been mined out, and currently, the Puzzle Box holds only scavengers and a skeleton security force--as well as a growing population of alien refugees fleeing a devastating enemy known only as the Tempest.As the five abductees struggle to find out who, or what brought them there and why, they must deal with the criminals who want to plunder their technology and the indifferent security forces focused on the growing refugee problem. And all the while, the Tempest draws nearer--and an ancient enemy grows quietly in the very heart of the Puzzle Box itself...