Please Allow 5-7 Days for Justice

Cael Irix has never left his planet. Not because he fears the infinite vacuum of space - though statistically speaking, it is the second most efficient way to die in the known universe - but because he considers planet-leaving an entirely optional activity, and optional activities with mortality rates above 0.013% represent the sort of poor planning that evolution designed anxiety to prevent. Risk avoidance isn't just his philosophy. It's his personality, his hobby, and his most impressive professional skill. He maintains distance from risk the way other people maintain restraining orders - precisely, preemptively, and with supporting documentation filed in triplicate.

So when he takes a job at ARBITER, an interstellar bounty-hunting organization that disguises enforcement as operational excellence and wraps every act of violence in a wellness initiative, he assumes his role will involve spreadsheets, compliance reviews, and the quiet satisfaction of rejecting someone else's expense report. His coworkers include Rysa, who says exactly what she means and never more; Holt, who has never encountered a policy he wouldn't argue with on principle; and Jalen, who communicates entirely through hand gestures for reasons no one has thought to question.

Then a clause buried seventeen pages deep in his employment contract activates, and the analysts are dragged out of their ergonomic chairs and onto a ship alongside the field unit whose budgets they've been slashing for months. What was supposed to be a corporate pilot program becomes something far less predictable - and the only thing standing between Cael and total catastrophe is his talent for reading the fine print.

Please Allow 5-7 Days for Justice is a sci-fi comedy about what happens when the people who audit the heroes become the only ones available to do the job - a story about adequacy, corporate absurdity, and discovering that the most dangerous thing you'll ever do can start with a slide deck.