Jowitt, a mercenary without recluse institutes a totalitarian regime in a small mining city of an arid planet, Ordessa, helped in that by androids incapable of any emotion. The young Lorca and his android professor, Kid, are both in this tended situation. To find the liberty, they must at any costs seize a spaceship, the "Red Star", but they quickly have to face an android killer...
After a traffic accident Kaylie is in coma for months and her doctors want to try a new procedure on her. To regain her consciousness, they stimulate her brain with the neural patterns of a woman who has just died. It works and Kaylie fully recovers. However, she begins to relive the dying moments of her donor and realizes that she was murdered! Along with her husband and mother, she tries to find out what happened.
Whatever tycoon R.C. Mallon wants, he takes. Obsessed with money and power, he crushes all who stand in his way. But now, the woman who was once the object of his desire has dared take away the most precious of all Mallon's possessions, his ten-year-old son — the heir to his corrupt and violent empire. And all hell has been let loose.
