In the near future, humanity has expanded across the stars by pilfering technology from long extinct civilizations: with every new discovery, something is taken, reverse engineered and integrated into our own designs. For Kevin Pattinson, there is an often ignored question: why does every civilization they encounter look as though they died in some great cataclysm of which there is no trace?

This expansion has come at costs, but one rule has always been consistent: in the event that a research outpost comes across something that makes it too dangerous to attempt a rescue or recovery, a Broken Quiver is declared and no help is sent. This time, however, the United Earth Government wants to make an exception.

Approached by his former wife, Master Chief Mary Curtis, Kevin is recruited for an operation to recover advanced technology from a backwater world; they have no idea why the base declared a Broken Quiver, but the objective is clear: recover the fallen, bring back their research, and learn what happened to the outpost. What none of the team realize, however, is that some questions are best left unanswered...

A fast paced short novel, Broken Quiver thrusts the characters into a mission into the unknown, where they will face something that humanity has never encountered; before long, the mission becomes a desperate struggle for survival, and hard choices must be made between completing the mission and protecting one another.