Milky Way Tango

The Belt Stories, #1

This four-volume story is a quest motivated by young romance. Tango kicks off the action. Near the end of high school, Sarah decides she and Jimmy - her best friend since childhood - should become lovers. They have waited too long, and Jimmy will soon go off-planet for college. On the Big Date, at a small blues bar, they are playing billiards when three armed men try to rob the bar and the crowd. One tries to rape Sarah. He ends up dead.

Jimmy is implicated in the murder and sentenced to ten years confinement at the far end of the Belt. He will be the only worker on a navigation array, his sole companion an AI. The array is located near a nebula, in an astounding, beautiful, explosive, turbulent environment. The mortality rate is thirty percent. Asteroid showers buzz through the area at sixty thousand kph.

Sarah is left behind, on Ambrosa. She attends a local college and studies hard. She goes to a few parties. She tries to adjust and live her life, but she cannot do it. 

All roads lead to Jimmy.