Where Two Bonds Meet

They built a network to save their lives. Now something ancient is using it to reach inside their minds.

Former factory worker Ethan Cross never wanted a starship. Now he and Vesper, the sentient ship bonded to his mind, are attempting something no one has dared in a hundred thousand years: gathering the galaxy's scattered, hunted pilots into a single connected fleet. A song in the dark that promises no one has to fly alone again.

But a bright fire draws wolves.

Something patient and deathless beyond the frontier has heard the song. It doesn't want their hulls. It wants the bond itself. And when ships stop answering to their own pilots, the fleet can no longer tell friend from puppet.

Ethan built a refuge out of trust. Now trust is the one thing that can kill them all.

To survive what's coming, the fleet must do the one thing every survivor's instinct screams against. And Ethan must finally understand what the old man who handed him the key meant all along:

Go in wanting nothing you can't set down.