Six hundred conscripts. A corporate collar. A city that kills as fast as the aliens.
Felix Valda survived Titan, Europa, and Mars. Every moon left scars the Directorate doesn't count. Now he's been promoted to Conscript Commander—the first convict to lead a full deployment—and shipped to Venus with six hundred collared soldiers who are already dead on paper.
The transport tears apart on approach. Venus doesn't care about Mars-rated hull plating. Five hundred conscripts die before Felix sets foot on Cloudhaven—a three-million-person cloud city floating fifty kilometers above a surface that crushes steel. The Hanbiri here are different. No queens. No hives. These variants split themselves apart, three from one, evolving faster than anything the Corps has faced. And the thing running the station isn't military—it's corporate. Ali-Yoruba Ventures bought six hundred collars at bulk rates. The Overseer system detonates a man's collar for damaging a support pillar while saving his squad. Infrastructure is worth more than the people who protect it.
The squad is breaking down—bodies failing, parts being replaced with whatever their insurance tier authorizes. A veteran pulled from eighty years of cryo-suspension fights beside them with combat conditioning where his emotions used to be. And deep in Cloudhaven's classified levels, someone reveals a truth that rewrites everything Felix thought he knew about the ancient Hanbiri, and history itself.
Below the clouds, something massive is waking up. Corporate wants to harvest it. Felix's squad has to go down to stop it—into ninety-two atmospheres of pressure, in suits not rated for the job, on a surface that will take everything he has left.
Some debts can't be worked off. Some prices get paid in flesh.
Gritty military sci-fi where the enemy wears a corporate logo and the monsters might not be the real threat. If you've followed Felix from Titan's ice to Mars's burning pillars, Storm Zero is where the war changes forever.
Book 5 of 9 in the Conscript Zero series. The fight continues on Kindle Unlimited.
Genre: Science Fiction
Felix Valda survived Titan, Europa, and Mars. Every moon left scars the Directorate doesn't count. Now he's been promoted to Conscript Commander—the first convict to lead a full deployment—and shipped to Venus with six hundred collared soldiers who are already dead on paper.
The transport tears apart on approach. Venus doesn't care about Mars-rated hull plating. Five hundred conscripts die before Felix sets foot on Cloudhaven—a three-million-person cloud city floating fifty kilometers above a surface that crushes steel. The Hanbiri here are different. No queens. No hives. These variants split themselves apart, three from one, evolving faster than anything the Corps has faced. And the thing running the station isn't military—it's corporate. Ali-Yoruba Ventures bought six hundred collars at bulk rates. The Overseer system detonates a man's collar for damaging a support pillar while saving his squad. Infrastructure is worth more than the people who protect it.
The squad is breaking down—bodies failing, parts being replaced with whatever their insurance tier authorizes. A veteran pulled from eighty years of cryo-suspension fights beside them with combat conditioning where his emotions used to be. And deep in Cloudhaven's classified levels, someone reveals a truth that rewrites everything Felix thought he knew about the ancient Hanbiri, and history itself.
Below the clouds, something massive is waking up. Corporate wants to harvest it. Felix's squad has to go down to stop it—into ninety-two atmospheres of pressure, in suits not rated for the job, on a surface that will take everything he has left.
Some debts can't be worked off. Some prices get paid in flesh.
Gritty military sci-fi where the enemy wears a corporate logo and the monsters might not be the real threat. If you've followed Felix from Titan's ice to Mars's burning pillars, Storm Zero is where the war changes forever.
Book 5 of 9 in the Conscript Zero series. The fight continues on Kindle Unlimited.
Genre: Science Fiction
Used availability for Richard Vega's Storm Zero