Righteous Neutrality

When the prediction engine shows an unchangeable future, Captain Juno Kalandros has forty-eight hours to prove it wrong.

The machine has saved their lives more times than she can count. Pietr's engineering masterpiece sees probability cascades, analyzes quantum variables, predicts outcomes with terrifying accuracy.

It's never been wrong.

Until it shows Ramses-her augmented soldier, Amelia's former lover-standing over the Empress-Directrix's corpse with a smoking weapon.

Ramses would sooner rip out his own combat implants than harm Amelia. Juno runs the scenarios. The prediction remains constant across every variable they test. Someone has engineered an assassination so sophisticated that even knowing it's coming won't stop it.

Her investigation uncovers technology that defies classification. Enemies who aren't who they claim. A conspiracy that treats human identity like software to be overwritten. The Combineran's stability hangs on preventing one death, and Juno's running out of moves.

They say you can't change fate. She's about to find out if "they" are right-or if fate was the conspiracy all along.