Wide Sky

The road has never been opened. A human voice is already waiting at the other end.

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 must make words work before weapons do. And Wells discovers 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.

Wide Sky is character-driven hard science fiction about first contact, scientific discovery, a civilian crew under pressure and the hidden cost of progress. It begins the complete Wide Sky Trilogy and tells a full story in its own right.