Shakedown

A new captain. A first command. An unknown vessel that refuses every protocol.

The ISV Resolute is six months out of the Houston yards when Marcus Cole is field-promoted into the captain's chair. He did not ask for command. ISCA never quite trusted him with it. His crew is about to find out why his record is full of reprimands — and why every one of them was earned by being right too early.

Their assignment is a deep-frontier survey at Junction 44-K.

Then the array catches a signal from outside the mission envelope.

Then a vessel appears on the far side of the junction.

It will not identify itself. It will not answer diplomatic protocols. It will not depart.

Cole gives it time. His diplomatic officer gives it every opening in the library. His science officer proves the contact does not match the archive. His navigator starts plotting the chase before anyone says the word out loud.

When the survey becomes an engagement, the Resolute has no warship doctrine to hide behind. She has a captain, thirty-four crew, and a ship still learning what she can survive.

Shakedown is the first book of The Long Watch, a standalone hard science fiction command adventure set in the Fracture Cosmology universe.

No prior knowledge of the Fracture Cosmology is required.