Stellar Showboat

When hard‑boiled investigator Billy Neville finally lands a moment of rest, he’s rerouted to the glittering yet tense Showboat of Space, a floating theater orbiting the Asteroid Confederation’s capital, Pallas. A string of high‑profile disappearances, bankruptcies, and suicides has the whole system on edge, all traced back to a mysterious black‑mail racket. Colonel Frawley, the stoic head of Interplanetary Police, hands Neville a sprawling dossier of stolen secrets and demands he untangle the conspiracy before trust evaporates completely.

Neville’s reputation for crushing jungle gangs on Venus and cracking diamond‑mine heists on Mars makes him the perfect fit, yet the case feels more personal than any crime he’s faced. The files hint at a single mastermind—a corporate lawyer with access to industrial formulas, credit reports, and intimate personal data—who is selling the information to a shadowy network of extortionists. As the clock ticks, Neville must navigate glittering decks, dubious allies, and a trail of buried scandals, promising a chase that could reshape alliances across the solar colonies.