Editing Revelation Space

The book opens in the year 2551 on [[Resurgam]], a planet considered a backwater on the edge of colonized human space. [[Dan Sylveste]], an xenoarchaeologist, leader of the colony, and wealthy scion of a prominent scientific family, leads a team excavating the remains of the [[Amarantin]], a long-dead, 900,000-year-old civilization that once existed on Resurgam. As a violent dust storm threatens to temporarily shut down the excavation, Sylveste discovers new evidence that the entire Amarantin race achieved a much higher level of technological sophistication than was previously known, before they were wiped out in a single mysterious cataclysm.

Next, the book jumps back to 2540, where most of the crew of the starship ''[[Nostalgia for Infinity]]'' are frozen for the journey to [[Yellowstone]] (in the [[Epsilon Eridani]] system) in order to find Sylveste. Because information is often decades old by the time it reaches other human settlements in a universe without faster-than-light travel, the crew does not realize it has been more than 15 years since Sylveste left Yellowstone to pursue archaeological work on Resurgam.

The ''Nostalgia for Infinity'' is an ancient ship that once carried hundreds of thousands, but now its crew is only a handful of [[Ultras]]—highly modified humans adapted to the rigors of long interstellar spaceflight. And they're desperate to find Sylveste because their captain has been infected with the [[Melding Plague]], a virus that attacks human cells and machine [[nanotechnology]] in equal measure, perverting them into grotesque combinations. It's believed that only the technological expertise of the Sylveste family can help cure the captain.

Meanwhile, in 2524 in [[Chasm City]], Yellowstone, professional assassin [[Ana Khouri]] is hired by a mysterious figure known as [[The Mademoiselle]] to infiltrate the crew of the ''Nostalgia for Infinity'' as it reaches orbit around Yellowstone. Khouri's new employer knows the ship will follow Sylveste to the edge of human space in an attempt to find a cure for its captain, and gives Khouri explicit orders to kill Sylveste once the ''Nostalgia for Infinity'''s crew have found him. Using subterfuge, this new employer is able to arrange a meeting twenty years later between Khouri and one of the ship's triumvirs, [[Ilia Volyova]], making it appear as though the meeting happened by chance.

In 2566, after Khouri has successfully infiltrated the crew of the ''Nostalgia for Infinity'' as the ship's new gunnery officer, the ship arrives in orbit around Resurgam. Desperate to secure Sylveste's expertise to help cure their captain, triumvirs Volyova, [[Sajaki]] and [[Abdul Hegazi|Hegazi]] demand the fledgling Resurgam civilisation turn Sylveste over to them. When the government of the small human colony balks, Volyova reminds them of the power at the disposal of her massive ship by apparently wiping out one of the planet's settlements with a single discharge of the ''Infinity'''s weapons.

Once aboard, however, Sylveste turns the tables—he informs the triumvirs that he has [[Pin-head munitions|antimatter bombs]] hidden inside the implants in his artificial eyes. A detonation from one of those anti-matter bombs would be enough to destroy the ''Nostalgia for Infinity''. Emboldened, Sylveste makes a deal with the crew—he will attempt to cure their captain in exchange for them using their ship to take him closer to [[Cerberus]], a planet near Resurgam that carried particular significance for the Amarantin civilisation.

As Sylveste and the crew of the ''Nostalgia for Infinity'' approach Cerberus, Sylveste realizes the massive celestial body isn't a planet at all—but rather, a massive technological beacon, aimed at alerting machine sentience to the appearance of new star-faring cultures. It is this beacon, Sylveste belatedly realises, that alerted a machine intelligence known as the [[Inhibitors]] to the presence of the Amarantin, and ultimately caused the demise of that race. The beacon begins to activate and Sylveste detonates the bombs in his eyes to destroy the facility.