Kaine's Rebellion

Hayden Kaine crash-lands on Oberon.
Scimitar is presumed destroyed.
Cora is dying.
The orbital battle is over. Kaine hits the desert in an escape pod with one thing intact: Cora's memory module. Fused with alien code, and damaged in the crash, she is failing.
She says she can still hear Scimitar calling. Across interdimensional space.
If she is right, the ship that could reconnect human space is still out there.
If she is wrong, he is following a ghost while his only friend dies in his hands.
Oberon is at war. Open rebellion against the planetary government, while Admiral Thomas's renewed Confederation moves in to own the winner. To save Cora, Kaine has to cross rebel territory and deal with the government that has the information he needs to find Scimitar.
That is when he learns what the Confederation his family served for generations did to worlds like Oberon.
Save his friend. Or act on what he now knows he can't unknow.
There are no good options, but he still has to choose.
If you liked The Expanse for competent people inside broken systems where choices stick, you will feel at home here.
Kaine's Rebellion is Book 4 of the Shattered Empire series.