This is a synopsis of the Death or Glory books.
Twenty-three years later, two brothers, Magnus and Bjarni Erlingmark, happen upon the drifting Pencil, which has automatically returned to the remote system where the research base was originally after Wojciech's death. They board the wreck and find the bodies and the box. They learn that Wojciech was paid a million just before embarking on the journey and decide to see if they can get paid, so they use the comm system on the disk to contact the alien. The alien pays them a million and requests to make sure the box is intact. Afterwards, he offers them the same terms as Wojciech. He insists they use the Pencil, as he doesn't want the box moved to their ship, the Landgrave. The brothers spend the next two days fixing the ship. Afterwards, they flip a coin on which of them will go on the Pencil and which will stay to fix the Landgrave's navigation system. Bjarni wins the coin toss and departs. Six hours later, an Aczanny battlecruiser arrives in the immediate vicinity of the Landgrave, and the arrival vaporizes the Landgrave and Magnus. Meanwhile, after nearly two weeks of constant jumping, Bjarni begins to feel paranoid about the sarcophagus and notices that the lights remain turned on in the cargo hold even after he leaves, which might indicate that the sensors are picking up neural activity in the box. He finds that a few scales have fallen off the box, so he finds a portable analysis lab and runs a molecular scan of a scale. The analysis is inconclusive, so he runs an atomic scan with the same result. He collects several scales, hoping to find a fully-equipped lab to run a quark analysis. After a few days, he realizes he's not far from a human star system called Scarza. He decides to take a two-day break on one of the inhabited planets in Scarza called Roma. He lands there, has some fun with a pair of twins. On day three of his stay, he remembers the scales and decides to stop by a lab on the way to the spaceport. A truck on the highway loses control, swerves, and knocks his rental car off the road, killing everyone inside.
Four months later, Sergeant Inessa Fribus of Scarza rescue service (who prefers to go by Skadi Fri) is tasked by her boss to investigate the Pencil, which has been sitting at the spaceport since Bjarni's death. After getting aboard, she decides to contact the number listed in the instant comms and talks to the alien. He asks her to make sure that no one else is present aboard the ship and that no ones tries to open the sarcophagus. As before, he gives her a million pangals and promises another forty-seven upon delivery. For Skadi, it's less about money and more about the adventure, so she readily accepts. The alien, who asks her to call him "the Colleague", tells her that Scarza law allows her to buy out the abandoned yacht from the spaceport, thus avoiding an inspection. While the spaceport director is suspicious, he's willing to sell the yacht. He does, however, ask for triple its value (nearly half a million), hoping to learn why Skadi wants the yacht and whether the box is valuable. But Skadi, following the Colleague's instructions, agrees to whatever price they set and signs the contract. After lifting off and jumping, she calls the Colleague back and agrees to the terms of the deal. She starts jumping but soon begins to experience strange things, like doors opening on their own, or the cargo hold door apparently being sealed from the other side. She starts carrying a blaster with her, fearful of whatever may be inside the sarcophagus. She begins to wonder what's inside the box and eventually comes to the conclusion that it may be an Imperishable, an ancient enemy of the Alliance. She resolves to find a research center and learns that she's near the Baguta system, which is owned by the Shat-Tzoors. Furthermore, a sizable Aczanny fleet maintains a presence in the system. She jumps to Baguta, intent on finding the Aczanny flagship and requesting assistance. But she somehow ends up in restricted space with two Swarm starships and a controlled asteroid nearby. The asteroid changes course to catch up to her, and she eventually finds herself in a gravity clamp. Swarm workers board the Pencil and try to remove the sarcophagus. She calls the Colleague, who tells her not to interfere. As the workers are moving the sarcophagus to the asteroid, the same Aczanny fleet jumps in all around it and immediately blasts the Swarm ships and the asteroid to smithereens. The Pencil is damaged by the weapons fire and is left adrift. Shortly after, the Pencil is brought aboard an Aczanny cruiser, cut open, and Skadi is stunned by Aczanny soldiers. She wakes up on an examination table with Aczanny interrogating her. When she can't answer the questions to their satisfaction, she it subjected to deep mentoscopy, but the brain scan yields no results, while her mind is destroyed. The yacht is inspected and then abandoned on Baguta IV, while the sarcophagus is nowhere to be found.
Fourteen years later, a Shat-Tzoor asteroid miner named Shat Ungen (AKA Plowshare) is prospecting an asteroid with his partner Shat Urima (AKA Dove) when they find an artificial tunnel and dead Swarm workers inside. They report to their crew chief, who tells them to look deeper and report what they find over radio. After they find a chamber with a dead queen, the crew chief tells them to stay put. Soldiers arrive not soon after with several scientists in tow. Meanwhile, Urima finds another chamber with a giant cocoon. Two Aczanny arrive and take charge of the situation. They scan the cocoon and have the scientists cut it open, revealing the sarcophagus. The two miners are called to their superior's office and offered a chance to escort the asteroid to its destination in a special habitation module that has been built into the rock. They agree despite some reservations. Not long after they arrive, they start experiencing strange auditory and visual hallucinations. Dove eventually realizes they're almost like bait and decides to leave the asteroid while it's near a remote human system. He and Plowshare don spacesuits and prepare supplies, while Dove reprograms the navigation computer to hide the asteroid in the uninhabited Morita Griffin system. They jump with an antigrav and prepare to wait for months as they're drifting through space. Unfortunately, they end up missing the target system. Over a year later, they're picked up by human rescuers. Plowshare has died of multiple organ failure, while Dove has lost his mind and commits suicide several days later. Bagutan representatives arrive to identify the bodies and take them away.
Two months after the arrival of the asteroid to the Morita Griffin system, the authorities of the small human colony two and a half light years away send a scout ship with Lieutenant Ángel María de Roberto to investigate the arrival, seeking to appropriate the giant x-drive on the asteroid. Ángel picks up only one life sign and lands. He makes his way into the underground chambers and finds the bodies of the Swarm queen and the drones. He finds the sarcophagus but decides to investigate the habitation module first. While he's walking around, a tiny Swarm-made scout ship arrives and lands near the module. Just when Ángel manages to overcome the module's outer defenses and enters the airlock, a humanoid figure comes out and shoots him in the head.
The humanoid figure is an Oaonsz shapeshifter named Yiri-Yovasi, a space pirate hired by the same individual to go to Morita Griffin and recover the sarcophagus and the disk. Yiri finds the sarcophagus, attaches antigrav units to it, and drags it back to the Swarm-made ship he was given for the job. Along the way, he starts seeing the Angel of Death, which Oaonsz religion claims only appears to those about to die. Ignoring the hallucination, Yiri brings the sarcophagus to the ship and leaves before more humans arrive to claim the asteroid. After being told to head for the human Amazon system, Yiri jumps away and goes to sleep. He's awoken by loud thuds coming from the cargo hold. He sees the sarcophagus floating and slamming against the walls. Assuming that artificial gravity must somehow not be working in the hold, Yiri goes there, only to find that it is. Narrowly avoiding being crushed to death by the flying heavy object, Yiri touches it. The sarcophagus immediately regains its weight and drops to the floor. Yiri secures it again, seals the hold, and goes back to the cockpit, where he sees the Angel of Death again. Deciding to calm his nerves, Yiri takes a narcotic. Through the blackouts, he finds himself dancing on the sarcophagus, then resealing the cargo hold. He wakes up in the cockpit with the disk reader smashed to pieces. Unable to follow his employer's route, he decides to go to a nearby human system in order to purchase a replacement. Unwilling to let the humans take a closer look at the ship, he sends it away and makes his way to the orbital station in a spacesuit. At the station, he buys the device and discovers someone tailing him. He leaves the station and summons the ship with a recall device. The sensors pick up four ships rapidly closing in on him, so he performs a blind jump to get away. Afterwards, he installs the disk reader and sets the system to resume the original course. Unfortunately for him, the very first jump takes him back to the same system. The local military doesn't want to take the chance of it jumping away again and blasts the ship with a neutron beam. Yiri sees the Angel of Death one last time before dying.
The general in charge of the colony's military is furious at the unsanctioned weapons use and decides to send the light cruiser Vagrant away with the Swarm ship while he handles the fallout. A civilian xenotechnician named Pavel Neklyudov is awakened in the middle of the night and told to go to the cruiser as part of a research team tasked with studying the Swarm ship in order to unlock the secrets of its state-of-the-art x-drive. While aboard, the scientists manage to open up the ship's hatch and go inside. In the cockpit, Pavel notices the disk lying on the floor and sees the reflection of a shapeshifter doing the universal "be silent" gesture. Pavel covertly pockets the disk. After the scientists are sent back to their cabins, Pavel goes to sleep but ends up waking up at night and decides to check out the disk. He finds the instant comms program and contacts the Oaonsz who's been hiring everyone. The Colleague, as the alien prefers to be called, transfers Pavel a million pangals and offers forty-four more upon delivery of the scout ship and the sarcophagus. Pavel is hesitant but still ends up going to the Vagrant's hold to the guarded ship. Luckily, all three marine guards are outside the ship and let him come aboard. He checks to make sure the sarcophagus is fine, then goes to the cockpit and initiates jump calculations. After jumping away, Pavel contacts the Colleague and gets the same spiel as the others. But the alien feels a certain kinship towards a fellow scientist and gives Pavel a few pieces of advice, including not looking inside the sarcophagus and ignoring the strange things that will be happening. During the series of jumps, Pavel enters the cargo hold and gets a loose scale from the sarcophagus, putting it into his jacket pocket. The following night, he wakes up to find a strange woman in a jumpsuit rifling through his jacket. He recognizes the woman from an old photo his ancestor brought from the Volga. It's Julia Jurgenson. He also finds the letters "J J" marked on the hatch to the cargo hold in what appears to be raspberry-flavored lipstick (it was Julia's favorite). The next time Pavel goes to sleep, he wakes up to find himself floating in zero-g. After finally managing to get back to the seat, he is surprised to see that gravity is working fine, at which point he feels his weight returning. The next several days fly by in a blur, with Pavel remembering only bits and pieces, such as a strange vision of Julia inside an ancient-looking spacesuit grown into the sarcophagus. After finally arriving to the Swarm-72 cluster, Pavel contacts the Colleague, who tells him to wait an hour. A giant swarm station arrives and brings the scout ship aboard. Pavel comes out to see the Colleague and two other Oaonsz waiting for him. Swarm workers bring the sarcophagus out. The Colleague asks how Pavel would like to be paid, but all Pavel cares about is the contents of the box. He asks what or who is inside. One of the other Oaonsz is disappointed and shoots Pavel in the head with a concealed weapon. The Colleague is indignant, but his partner points out that there was no need to pay Pavel or leave him as a loose end. They finally open the box and...
The novel ends on a cliffhanger, with the afterword explaining that the author didn't want to cheapen the mystery with a reveal. But he did suggest that anyone who has read the first novel carefully would know the answer.
