An alien prisoner causes the spacecraft Prometheus to drop out of orbit and crash onto the surface of a harsh, desert planet. Two crew members and the officer escorting the prisoner have survived. While they are shaking off the effects of the impact, their prisoner has fled with a rifle in hand. The three Sedonians are under strict orders to capture their alien prisoner alive. He knows the coordinates of a rocket packed with bombs that, if launched, will wipe out their home planet. A game of cat-and-mouse ensues. The alien is Jericho, a human from Earth. He is cagey and systematically picks off the Sedonians one by one. At one point, to escape detection, he hides completely buried in the sand, leaving the tracking chip he has pulled out of his neck nearby. When the Sedonian comes upon the chip, Jericho bursts forth from cover. At another point, Jericho uses deception to get authorization to obtain information from the Sedonian's artificial intelligence computer persona, Clea. But an approaching extraction ship and a bounty hunter confuse the issues. Jericho has the bomb ship hidden beneath the sands, hence his need to crash on this particular planet.
—Garon Smith