The Burning Lanes
The expedition was supposed to prove the roads could be shared.
Captain Daniel Cross and the crew of the ISV Lodestar have been sent to do something almost impossible: certify a contested route through the Reach, bring rival blocs into one convoy, and show the frontier that the golden age can still be governed by trust instead of guns.
For a while, it works.
A new lane opens at Brightfall. Traders cheer. Privateers race warship tenders through fresh-lit space. Old enemies fly in the same formation because Cross asks them to, and because everyone still wants to believe a road can belong to more than one flag.
Then the route becomes valuable.
Behind the ceremonies and survey certificates, someone has already done the arithmetic. Every opened lane is a claim. Every shared road is a future front. Every goodwill success makes the next betrayal easier to stage.
When the expedition is pulled into a crisis no one can admit was planned, Cross must face the most dangerous thing a good commander can do: hold the controls tighter, tell himself it is for peace, and discover too late who has been using his trust as leverage.
The road, once certified, belongs to whoever can hold it.
The Burning Lanes is Book 3 of The Reach, a hard science fiction frontier adventure set in the wider Fracture Cosmology. It can be read on its own, and continues the story of Captain Cross, the Lodestar, and the first open break in humanity's golden age.
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