Zen is a loyal officer of the Protection force, a subsidary of the Police which was absorbed by the military many years prior. After an arrest of a fellow officer Zen comes under fire from higher up and is send to the outer colonies to sit out his punishment. Here he finds out that the people as his work need a little getting used to, life on a slow background planet with virtually no crime is a death sentence for someone like Zen. But the longer he stays on the planet the more he notices something is inherently wrong with this backwater planet.
