Vixen2 — Bud Sparhawk

When the Covenant entered the Thetti star system after a two hundred-year frozen voyage, her crew awakened to find a new world ripe for colonization. Meridian was everything they could have hoped for—a ripe, virgin world more than capable of supporting Terrestrial life. Tam, the leader of the mission, suspects something is amiss when he glimpses a strange light over the planet...and a previously charted moon disappears. Sloppy work? Space anomalies? Or something new and sinister?Portions of this novel first appeared as HEAVEN'S COVENANT in the September 2017 issue of Analog Science Fiction/Fact and in December 2008 as VIXEN by Cosmos Books