Nucleation
(Book)

After being grounded to a desk job after botching a routine space-mining mission to establish an interstellar gate to a distant star, Helen discovers that someone intentionally wanted to terminate her project and if necessary, her.

We are live, we are live, we are live. . . Helen Vectorvich just botched first contact. And she did it in both virtual reality and outer space. Only the most elite Far Reaches deep-space pilots get to run waldos: robots controlled from thousands of lightyears away via neural integration and quantum entanglement. Helen and her navigator were heading the construction of a wormhole gate that would connect Earth to the stars . . . until a routine system check turned deadly. As nasty rumors swarm around her, and overeager junior pilots jockey to take her place, Helen makes a startling discovery: microscopic alien life is devouring their corporate equipment. Is the Scale just mindless, extra-terrestrial bacteria? Or is it workingand killingwith a purpose? While Helen struggles to get back into the pilots chair, and to communicate with the Scale, someoneor somethingis trying to sabotage the Far Reaches project once and for all. Theyll have to get through Helen first.