author : Adam Rakunas

Labor organizer Padma Mehta is on the edge of space and the edge of burnout. All she wants is to buy out a little rum distillery and retire, but she’s supposed to recruit 500 people to the Union before they’ll let her. She’s only thirty-three short, so when a small-time con artist tells her forty people are ready to tumble down the space elevator she checks it out – of course, its all a set-up.

As Padma should know by now, there are no easy short-cuts on this godforsaken planet. Suddenly retirement seems farther away than ever: she’s just stumbled into a secret corporate mission to stop a plant disease that could wipe out all the industrial sugarcane in Occupied Space. If she ever wants to have another drink of her favorite Windswept rum, she’s going to have to fight her way through the city’s warehouses and sewage plants, and up the elevator itself to stop this new plague.