The Ferrum Gambit
Sera Vance knows how to disappear. On the orbital docks of Caelum Prime, silence is her currency and solitude her armor, until a ghost from her past detonates the careful life she's built. When Rax Calder, her former Iron Wolf scout commander, reappears with blood on his hands and a warning she can't ignore, Sera is dragged back into a war she thought she'd escaped. Beside Joss Tam and the brutal pragmatism of her crew, she is forced to run from HALCON's hunters, the bounty hunters closing like jaws on every station dock, and the cold reach of the Iron Synod enforcers. Mira Thane offers intelligence with a price attached. Dorian Kael offers alliances built on shifting ground. And the Cartographer, half-myth, half-machine, offers a trail that leads somewhere no one has returned from: the resting place of the Precursor Avatar, an ancient intelligence that could remake the galaxy, or unmake it. Archon Lysander Vale is already moving, his fleets tightening the noose around every lead Sera follows. Every choice costs. Every ally is a liability. To protect the secret she carries, Sera will have to betray the only people she trusts, or watch the Avatar rise and burn the stars.