They made it out of Shaft 7 with the data and their lives. That’s it. No ship. No allies. No plan beyond don’t die today.
Hygeia Station is a refuge for people the belt forgot — off the maps, off the grid, off corporate radar. For now. Cade knows it won’t stay that way. The data they’re carrying names names, and those names have resources. What Cade needs is leverage: enough independent operators willing to stand together that the Terran Extraction Consortium can’t make the problem disappear quietly.
What he gets is a room full of people who’ve survived this long by trusting no one.
The belt’s independents have their own reasons to hate the corps. They also have mortgages on their ships, families on Ceres, and a clear-eyed understanding that martyrs don’t collect on their contracts. Seren thinks Cade’s asking too much of the wrong people. Tobias thinks the data alone should be enough — just release it and watch the system respond. They’re both wrong, and Cade is running out of time to prove it.
Then Hygeia burns. Two hundred people dead. And the financial trail the corps were trying to bury doesn’t end at a regional director.
It ends in the Federation Senate.
Pressure is Book 2 of the Belt Wars trilogy.