What do you do when one of your deep space survey ships discovers a fertile, Earth-like planet that isn't currently occupied by humans or any other intelligent species?

If you're the Lunar Free State, you make plans to put a colony there—and try to keep it secret so the Confederated Nations of Earth don't do the same. Unfortunately, though, the secret gets out, and the CNE scrambles to launch their own colony project, starting a race by both nations to make their claim to the planet.

But when exobiologist Kim Jin Li discovers that the planet does, in fact, have native intelligent life—a race of feline predators that communicate telepathically—the discovery sets up a confrontation between LFS and CNE warships in orbit, and the LFS Marines and CNE Peacekeepers on the ground.

Is this the beginning of the long-expected final war between the Lunar Free State and the Confederated Nations of Earth?