A deep-space survey vessel goes dark. Eight crew, no survivors, no explanation.

Perry Jacks is a skip tracer at a transit station at the edge of nowhere. When his estranged father summons him to the mining colony where he grew up, Jacks expects family guilt. What he finds is worse: his father’s military company has been taken from the inside, his brother is about to be executed in prison, and the most powerful man in the sector wants Jacks to walk away before he learns what connects the two. Jacks doesn’t walk away. What he uncovers is a program built on a simple equation — one the public will accept, the courts will feed, and no one alive can shut down.

Not because it’s secret.

Because it works.

Interested in how Lattice became novella-shaped? Here you go!