Stone to Space: Out of the Stone Age (The Tenets of the White Hat)

Big John has been reporting mining pirates to the UFP, the United Federation of Planets. When he and his family are en route to a new mining site, a bomb explodes on board, planted by corrupt space admirals who have been profiteering off the pirates' illicit activities. John's damaged ship spirals into the Graveyard, an unforgiving space cloud never before breached. They survive the cloud but are shipwrecked on the planet Home. There, they befriend its uplifted animal-like inhabitants and undertake the work of bringing them from a Stone Age culture to Bronze Age technology. Two of John's family members expand this undertaking, and eventually have to fight off land-grabbers from megacorp Amalgamated Mining. One race of Home's inhabitants guards the history of the races, and one lone being is receiving visions that their sun will soon explode. Can they modernize in time before their solar system implodes?