Red Lights

349 was trained to be exceptional. Vanguard Guide raised her in a crèche, educated her at the Academy, and sent her to Gandy Orbital with a Security badge, a pistol, and an understanding of regulations that left very little room for ambiguity. Her first year on patrol will teach her how much the regulations leave out.

Her training officer is Beth-Ann, a veteran of Gandy who knows the people of Red Lights as well as she knows its corridors. Beneath the neon are bars, workshops, gambling rooms, joy workers, homeless camps, corporate security forces, old neighborhoods, and thousands of people trying to live ordinary lives inside an orbital where every passage and storefront belongs to somebody. Beth-Ann teaches 349 when to enforce the rules, when to listen, when to wait, and why knowing a regulation is different from understanding the person standing in front of her.

As the rook year passes, 349 builds a life she was never trained to expect. She makes friends, learns to fly, discovers intimacy, and begins to understand why people become attached to places that are dirty, difficult, and theirs. Then an accidental drug exposure reveals that Vanguard Guide may have altered far more than her education. By the time her rookie year ends, 349 knows Red Lights better than she did when she arrived, but she has only begun to understand what the corporation that created her expects to own.