The Stardust Grail

"Maya Hoshimoto is caught between cultures: She was raised on a space colony that wrested independence from Earth and then spent a decade as an alien-art thief, only to give up that life for the stability of Princeton’s graduate anthropology program. But when glitches in the Interstellar Web threaten to cut Earth off from the nodal network, Maya can’t resist returning to fieldwork. Reunited with tentacled alien pal Auncle, she must steal the mythical stardust grail before Earth can. But like Indiana Jones, Maya must choose: save Auncle’s endangered people or secure Earth’s node. Author Yume Kitasei keenly establishes humans as the relative newbies (and the cultural other) among more experienced extraterrestrials, while still showing how even advanced alien species can’t resist looting other cultures’ artifacts."