Twenty thousand passengers sleep aboard the colony ship Continuance. Only 4,000 can reach the surface—and fifteen randomly chosen jurors must decide who gets those places.

Ethics auditor Mara Venn knows that a survival calculation is not permission. Before the landing window closes, the jurors must write one rule, see the names it selects, and decide whether they have the right to make that choice irreversible.

Then a competing survival list—prepared before the disaster—surfaces. Its authority is doubtful, and Mara's own unfinished review is part of the evidence. As each new fact changes what the jury can justify, damage keeps shrinking what the ship can physically do. Principles become names. Every delay costs another option. And some of the people arguing hardest for fairness stand to benefit from the rules they defend.

No Valid Mandate is a closed-system science-fiction thriller and fair-play institutional mystery about survival, consent, and the terrifying question of whether anyone has the right to make such a choice.