Four thousand conscripts drop onto Europa. Thirty-two survive the landing.
Felix Valda — Titan Zero — has acid scars that won't heal, a squad held together with dark humor and borrowed time, and a new piece of hardware bolted into the base of his spine. The governors were his call. Another choice made for people who didn't get to say no. Another thing keeping them alive that might kill them first.
The mission: restore power to a colony one kilometer through flooded ice tunnels crawling with things that didn't exist on Titan. The Hanbiri have adapted to Europa's oceans — webbed horrors that glide through black water, acid-spitters that dissolve pressure suits in seconds, and something ancient stirring in the thermal vents below. Something that knows they're here. Something Ghost can hear whispering.
The tunnels flood. The suits leak. The weapons jam. Every meter toward the reactor costs bodies Felix will carry for the rest of his life — however long that is. And when he encounters an abandoned group aboard a derelict spaceship, he doesn't know whose side he's really on.
The colony on the other side isn't salvation. It's a fortress run by a woman who evaluates conscripts the way engineers evaluate components — throw them at a problem and see what breaks. Her people don't want rescuing. They want proof you're worth the oxygen. And the price of their weapons, their medicine, and their shelter is a descent into crushing depths where the pressure alone can kill, to face the thing that's been dreaming beneath the ice since before humans learned to walk.
Remo's arc-throwers are running out of charge. Chen's lungs are filling with blood. Ghost is hearing voices that aren't the hive-scream — something older, something vast, something rising. And Felix is making the kind of choices that don't wash off.
Europa doesn't care what you survived before. It just wants to know how much you're willing to lose.
Gritty military sci-fi with permanent consequences and zero plot armor. The scars from Titan and Sagan were just the beginning. Continue the fight — read FREE with Kindle Unlimited.
Book 3 of 9 in the Conscript Zero series.
Genre: Science Fiction
Felix Valda — Titan Zero — has acid scars that won't heal, a squad held together with dark humor and borrowed time, and a new piece of hardware bolted into the base of his spine. The governors were his call. Another choice made for people who didn't get to say no. Another thing keeping them alive that might kill them first.
The mission: restore power to a colony one kilometer through flooded ice tunnels crawling with things that didn't exist on Titan. The Hanbiri have adapted to Europa's oceans — webbed horrors that glide through black water, acid-spitters that dissolve pressure suits in seconds, and something ancient stirring in the thermal vents below. Something that knows they're here. Something Ghost can hear whispering.
The tunnels flood. The suits leak. The weapons jam. Every meter toward the reactor costs bodies Felix will carry for the rest of his life — however long that is. And when he encounters an abandoned group aboard a derelict spaceship, he doesn't know whose side he's really on.
The colony on the other side isn't salvation. It's a fortress run by a woman who evaluates conscripts the way engineers evaluate components — throw them at a problem and see what breaks. Her people don't want rescuing. They want proof you're worth the oxygen. And the price of their weapons, their medicine, and their shelter is a descent into crushing depths where the pressure alone can kill, to face the thing that's been dreaming beneath the ice since before humans learned to walk.
Remo's arc-throwers are running out of charge. Chen's lungs are filling with blood. Ghost is hearing voices that aren't the hive-scream — something older, something vast, something rising. And Felix is making the kind of choices that don't wash off.
Europa doesn't care what you survived before. It just wants to know how much you're willing to lose.
Gritty military sci-fi with permanent consequences and zero plot armor. The scars from Titan and Sagan were just the beginning. Continue the fight — read FREE with Kindle Unlimited.
Book 3 of 9 in the Conscript Zero series.
Genre: Science Fiction
Used availability for Richard Vega's Abyss Zero