Lieutenant Year 5

A city is dying from forged paperwork. The fleet just sent the one officer whose whole career is forged paperwork.

Drenna's cities live under energy shields, because when its two suns line up, the open ground burns. Vaenlyn's shield is certified current - every component, every service date, stamped and sworn by Drennlen, who live and die by their records. Then the Providence arrives ahead of the solar alignment, a fleet audit puts eyes on the actual parts, and the record turns out to be a nineteen-year lie.

The shield is rotting. The parts and crews that should have maintained it were quietly shipped off-world. And there is no fix that fits in the days before the deadly solar alignment hits.

The only move left is one nobody has tried in three hundred years: wake the ancient machinery the city once roamed on, and move a quarter-million people across the badlands to shelter before the suns align.

Lieutenant Montgomery Hale is the pilot who has to make it work. Dying drives nursed past their ratings. A route-keeper who reads constantly changing ground the maps lie about. A flagship flown ten meters off a desert floor with a city in tow.

It's the job he was built for. It's also the worst place in the galaxy to be a man with a forged record.

No alien armadas. No galactic wars. Just a city that has to move, a shield that has to light, and a lie that has run out of road. This is the book where somebody finally checks the paperwork.