Mercury in Retrograde The books don't balance. Neither does the gravity. Rex Mercury used to be a big-shot VP for Sterling Interstellar, making million-dollar acquisitions over lunch. Now, he’s a disgraced smuggler of illicit oxygen and hallucinogenic fungi, wearing a three-year-old tailored suit and carrying a bounty on his head larger than the GDP of Phobos. His life hits rock bottom when his ex-boss is found dead—suffocated by a massive wheel of contraband cheese—and Rex is the prime suspect. Framed by his glamorous ex-lover and ejected into the hard vacuum by his own mutinous ship, Rex’s survival depends on the last person he ever wanted to meet: Cosmo "Moonbeam" Void, a cosmic hippie in a tie-dye spacesuit who thinks the universe is a glitchy beta-test simulation. Together, this cynical suit and data-druid must outrun a solar system-wide manhunt to uncover a conspiracy that goes deeper than murder: a corporate plan to privatize the fundamental laws of physics. In a galaxy where the corporate ladder is a literal space elevator, Rex is about to find out that "Down" is no longer a guaranteed benefit of employment. Space Opera Humorous