Wide Sky

Jae Wells has earned her first berth aboard the NV Dawnward, a civilian survey ship bound for the blank edge of the map. To her it is the best job alive: a competent crew, an untouched reach, and the chance to make the first true marks in a sky no human expedition has charted. But the signal buried in the Dawnward's receiver is four years old. It speaks Earth's language. And it comes from beyond a road that does not yet exist.

Captain Aidan Locke takes the crew into the Sable Reach, where they find a scattered human people, a failing sun, armed descendants who do not trust Earth's good intentions, and a warning repeated across generations: do not open the road wider. Cartographer Nora Vale begins counting stars that should still be burning. First-contact specialist Ravi Sethi has to make words work before weapons do. And Wells learns that exploration is not the clean act she imagined — because the roads that made humanity's bright age possible may be taking something from the universe every time they open.