The Vance Protocol

When the prototype vessel Vance-One slides into Meridian Station's berth forty-seven, her composite hull still scarred by the superheated atmosphere of her maiden transit, Theron Beck's inspection should be the most routine protocol check of his career. Instead, it becomes the first move in a conspiracy that could unravel the entire sector. As the officer responsible for enforcing the Vance Protocol, Theron has spent years guarding the boundary between legitimate commerce and the smuggling networks bleeding the station dry. But the Vance-One's sealed manifest contains discrepancies no clerical error could explain. The deeper Theron digs, the more he uncovers a coordinated operation involving Yara Okonkwo's political leverage, Idris Voss's encryption keys, Mira Quan's falsified cargo logs, Sable Hsu's medical records, and Pavel Soren's off-books engineering work, each fragment pointing toward a single, devastating conclusion. The Vance Protocol was designed to protect Meridian Station. Now its own loopholes are being exploited by someone embedded in the very system Theron trusts. With the next scheduled convoy hours away and a sector-wide blackout threatening communications, Theron faces an impossible choice: trigger the protocol and risk destroying careers, lives, and the prototype vessel itself, or stay silent, and let a conspiracy rewrite the rules of deep-space commerce forever.