The Firing Order

A ship runs a certified track and nearly tears itself apart. The instruments are clean. The arithmetic has been checked. The route authority did its job. And yet the track was not where the certificate said it would be.

Lieutenant Sarah Bishop can prove the discrepancy. She cannot explain it. When the evidence becomes too precise to dismiss, she is sent with an expedition to measure a region of fractured spacetime where maps, models and reference systems no longer agree.

Out there, navigation is not a line on a chart. It is a chain of measurements, procedures and assumptions, carried by people who have to decide when a number is good enough to trust with a ship.

The deeper the expedition goes, the harder that trust becomes.