The Way Out Closes

NV Kestrel leaves the Cairn unfinished: a converted survey hull, a new field crew, and more repairs than anyone has time to finish. Her first long-range job is already in trouble.

A distress call has pulled another working ship into Threap, a failing system beyond the last dependable boundary. The road home will no longer range. A stock house is still operating beneath a dimming sky, and the people stranded there have been living beyond the useful map longer than anyone back at the Cairn seems to understand.

Kestrel can reach them. Getting them out is another problem. Every flight costs time, capacity and margin. Every load changes what can come off next. The ship is unfinished, the window is closing, and nobody aboard gets to make the arithmetic easier by pretending the people are cargo.

The Way Out Closes is Book One of The Far Roads: expeditionary hard science fiction about a working crew beyond the last certified boundary. No previous Fracture Cosmology reading is required.