Louise “Lou” Meagher is an unlicensed private investigator in the city of Stalktown on the planet Kestrel. Down on her luck, she ekes out a living solving petty crimes. One day, a neuro-enhanced and abused beagle named Dog asks (yes, asks) Lou to find its master, a biological android boy named Kid. This wouldn’t be so unusual, except for two things. The first is that the planet Kestrel is to be destroyed in less than ten days by a planet-sized rock heading its way. Lou wants nothing more than to start over elsewhere. She can’t do that, because the second unusual thing is that Lou is clinically dead, and the dead have no rights. Having inhaled a nasty nanovirus when she was younger, she is kept alive by an expensive, and extensive, nanobot treatment. Lou is overdue for another treatment.

As time goes on, Lou discovers that a man of questionable reputation named Etienne Tourignon is also interested in Kid, along with a synthetic mind named Otaru. Lou is unable to find Kid before D-Day, so on one of the last ships off Kestrel, heading toward an orbital station, she watches Kestrel’s last moments. When the rock is only minutes away, it suddenly starts shrinking, until it actually disappears.

On the orbital station, Lou shoots and kills (so she thinks) another member of the Tourignon family. At her trial, in front of a religious court, Lou is looking at a one-way trip in an airlock. Otaru gets her out of jail, due to her not-exactly-alive status. Lou is now the property of Otaru, and gets her nanobot treatment.

For a while, Lou and Dog thought Kid was dead. Their only connection with Kid was through a psychic connection with Dog. Finding that Kid is not dead yet, and is on the station, doesn’t answer the overriding question: Why is this defective biological android so important?

This one is surprisingly good. It’s interesting and well done, it has plenty of Strange and the author does a fine job at making the characters into real people. This is a gem of a story. ( )