Rating: 2.75 stars or 11/20 (but I won't enter that here because there are so few reviews overall.)

I enjoyed the characters and world-building, but the plot and character motivation made little sense to me.  There was a lot of "horror movie logic" -- Don't do the stupid thing ... oh he did the stupid thing. Well, okay but don't go in the dark place ... ah, he's gone into the dark place, etc.  Deeply frustrating because the writing itself was good, and this could have been a solid story, if people weren't weirdly idiotic.

Plot rants:

Michael is ordered off ship, and goes because "he has to follow orders" but then is reprimanded at the end for ... following orders.  The captain is caught committing fraud and working with pirates, but it's bad that he was mutinied against.  I can't believe anyone working in space maintenance would be so casual about opening their helmet in an unknown environment -- especially after taking a plasma rat to the face multiple times!  I didn't understand how the 'rats' spontaneously appeared, or why the plasma microbes would have been on the Padua too.  The most obvious explanation for a child being on a space ship initially is that the pirates stranded him there ... which should have led to very different behaviour from Michael.  How is the creepy pirate "hacking" a secure Comms frequency, and why is it one way? Why hadn't the pirates explored the ancient ship in "their" junkyard?  Where did the dead Ship's Heart come from and why was no-one missing that ship? Why do MC and Eizen continually hang up on each other like pissy teenagers? and so on.