As a smaller vessel, with the capacity to land and explore the surface of a planet, the USS Brontes and it’s junior commander James Miller, find that nothing is simple in the Grandin Belt. Especially with a strange new phenomenon blooming Blood Dilithium among the chasms and canyons of a settled planet. It is a test that the Academy may have prepared them for, but will they find success far from the classrooms and watchful eyes of their instructors.