It's taken 400 years of travel, but the starship Venture has finally arrived at its destination. Beta Earth is an uninhabited, untouched planet that seventeen-year-old engineer Ursa has to colonise with her crewmates. The first night Ursa is on Beta Earth her world goes out of control when she encounters a dead body. She's positive she saw a large creature with sharp teeth, something that shouldn't even be on the planet, but nobody believes her. As injuries and bodies start piling up, Ursa must figure out who to trust when her fellow crewmates start taking sides between Venture's safety and the hope of creating a home on Beta Earth. If Ursa and her people can't find out what's really going on in the forest, their already fragile society won't survive.