Ghost Orbit

When their orbital station collapses under sabotage, Captain Ren Voss of the Meridian Coalition and Lead Engineer Ira Sokol of the opposing Stellar Compact are the sole survivors. They escape in a damaged pod with no beacon, no rescue window, and a wound in Ren's side that Ira must cauterize with scavenged tools and shaking hands. For three years they have been enemies, bound by a failed joint mission that stranded a third crewmember whose ghost still haunts every clipped transmission between their rival coalitions. Trapped in the claustrophobic tomb of the pod with failing life support and dwindling power, the cold war between them fractures. Every shared ration, every fevered argument over burned circuit boards, strips away the political armor to reveal the obsession beneath — they have been chasing each other across void-rated contracts not out of hatred, but because no one else understands the cold, keening loneliness of deep-space survival. When the CO2 scrubbers fail and the only hope lies in a suicidal course correction through an unshielded maintenance crawlspace, one of them must make a choice that will carry the other's ghost home.