Logistical Mandate [BOOK 1 COMPLETE] [GRIMDARK] [POLITICAL SCIFI] [HARD SCIFI]

One act of survival. An endless cascade of consequences. Over millennia of sublight expansion, the Human Directorate united much of inhabited space using a simple formula: identify and eliminate social entropy. Liu Yang is one soldier among the billions tasked with this grim but necessary duty. As an officer stationed on the battlecruiser Peacekeeper, he traded his old life in exchange for a meaningless rank, a depreciating payout and a claustrophobic stasis cell.  Nothing remains for him on the outside. The ship and his crew are all he has left. Then someone arrives to take away even that. The only way to survive is to commit an unforgivable crime and purge the logs. Liu Yang and the crew think they've gotten away with it. But the past refuses to remain buried. Instead, the logic of conspiracy slowly reemerges in the fires of a savage frontier war. The cost of silence compounds. And in pursuit of secrecy, they find they are becoming what they feared most. There is no escape from the state. There is only a choice in the nature of your cage. Novella:  Decades after being abandoned by her father, Liu Yang's estranged daughter Luo Xixi is suffocating. Trapped in a make-work welfare job and living off her father’s service payout, she sees only 1 hope for her future: the colonial frontier. But the frontier is not freedom. As Directorate rule fades with distance, tyranny is replaced not by freedom but by barbarism and cruelty. And she will witness some of the worst horrors the galaxy has to offer. Survival demands compromise. Every step towards salvation leads deeper into the darkness. There is no escape, only a change in the nature of your cage. If you want to support this work (or check out some art): https://ko-fi.com/jianzheng