Unusual circumstances on a rural planet put Cassandra "Lucky" Luckenbach on a new path that she never would have expected. Serving as a temporary replacement on the freighter Rosebud, she finds herself tangled in an unexpectedly dangerous situation.

Lucky arose from a long and monotonous drive from El Paso, Texas, to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Too many hours on I-20 with too many different radio stations and too many donuts to keep my sugar high going led to images of far-flung mining colonies on planets around the galaxy. In the far future, freightliners and the occasional military vehicle will run the spacelanes, connecting each colony to another. A unified government on Earth rules the colonies from afar, benefiting from the products but doing little to manage the colonies. By the time the journey ended in Tuscaloosa, I had created Trigg Donner and Lucky in notes on napkins.