Ulysses has it's first glimpse on long-range sensors of space beyond Boyajian's Desert. But those moments of Zen are shattered by a heavily distorted distress signal. The signal is traced to a nearby subspace and temporal anomaly. When Ulysses moves in to investigate the distortions increase over 1600%: there is a black hole in the vicinity. An alien vessel is trapped near the singularity's event horizon. Though it's hard to tell by the temporal distortion, the ship will be irretrievable in eight hours. Further still, this ship- some kind of barge- appears to have been fired upon. Its engines and much of its life support have failed.
Ulysses' crew must brave the quantum and temporal distress of being so near a hyper-gravitational body, risking the hallucinations and radiation exposure, to help rescue the alien crew.