Missing, Presumed

Sarah Bishop comes home to empty her father's house and finds evidence of a life that continued while she was somewhere else.

Then the fleet calls her back. Her new lane is wound and topology at fleet scale: working out where the roads through fractured spacetime actually go while a war everyone expects gets closer. The job is measured in references, clocks, formations and the discipline to say exactly what a number does not prove.

When one element of the battle geometry shifts six hundred metres with no visible cause and a ship stops answering, the difference between missing and destroyed becomes more than language. Nobody has enough information. Nobody has enough time. The fleet still has to move.

Sarah has spent years learning not to fill gaps in the evidence with guesses. Now she has to command inside those gaps.