Orbital Decay

New Lagos station is losing altitude at fourteen meters per orbit. The TIAN-LONG research crew that could fix the problem stopped transmitting six hours ago. Zara Okonkwo runs the numbers aboard her ship DECAY-1 with AI partner CALCULUS and launches a rescue burn with enough delta-v for one attempt. Two hundred survivors. Seventy-two hours to atmospheric burn. The damage pattern is inconsistent with micrometeorite impact. Inside the station, Director Wei Liang guards a bio-adaptive seed that is still growing, adding mass, accelerating the decay. Wei does not want rescue. He wants transformation. Book seven introduces a new protagonist and a new era where the boundary between salvage and first contact dissolves in orbit.