The Closing Sky

Nora Vale proved that concentrated corridor use is killing the sky. Earth answered by putting the throat of the Sable road under guns. Priority now belongs to defence, to licensed freight, and to the systems judged essential to civilisation. The hulls carrying the last scattered families of dying worlds wait behind them.

Captain Aidan Locke's command survives at the pleasure of the authority holding the corridor. Jae Wells watches honest procedure become a machine for deciding whose lives can be postponed. Ravi Sethi keeps the names of people policy has reduced to cargo. Every lawful choice preserves the system; every human choice risks breaking it — and the only route that might save the convoy carries the same cost Vale warned them about from the beginning.