Exo-Atmosphere. Brooks Hammer, #9

Commander Zara Okonkwo watches the most dangerous chair on Earth from three hundred kilometers above it. From the hybrid command platform DECAY-1, she oversees twelve orbital weapons systems and one young officer sitting in the seat she designed twenty years ago - the seat that lets a human mind feel the physics of killing at orbital speed. When an unknown contact breaches the exo-atmosphere and station boarding becomes reality, Zara must decide how far she is willing to reach into the hybrid network to stop what is coming.
First contact was supposed to be a question. Instead it arrives as a tactical problem measured in tungsten and trajectory. Brooks Hammer pushes the series into interstellar territory with a thriller that asks what happens when the chain of command extends beyond the species that built it.