In a Flash — Arvin Loudermilk

From the year 2234, a Collective novel. After two decades on the moons of Kroma, the Collective colonies have begun to fracture and fray. Twenty-one-year-old Magistrate Tana Kucherov has held office only a few scant months, but already challenges test her leadership at every turn -- an untamable alien frontier, a renegade security service, a dissident religious sect. And then, hurtling in from the blind side, there is August the third, the day of days -- a split second where, just like that, a civilization is faced with loss and tragedy beyond all human imagining.