Ashfall Protocol
Deep in the salvage locker of the derelict freighter Gilded Cessation, Della Merrow watches a red console light pulse once every three seconds, steady as a funeral drum. The ship is dead, the recyclers hum in a tone just below conversation, and somewhere in the filtered dark, something is still counting down. When the signal breaks through the static, the crew realizes the vessel was never abandoned. It was waiting. Della, a salvager with debts she cannot name, is joined by Cael Idris, whose calm masks a knowledge of the ship's true mission; Rook Vance, a pilot haunted by the flight that ended her career; Pip Kovacs, a young systems tech who hears things in the wiring; Sura Tench, the medic with too many secrets; Yev Kade, whose hands remember violence; Harrow Lorne, a corporate ghost; and Bel Korr, a passenger who was never supposed to exist. Together they trace the Ashfall Protocol, a failsafe buried in the Gilded Cessation's bones, designed to be activated only when the stars themselves begin to fall. The countdown is not a warning. It is a trigger. Each decision pulls them deeper into the ship's original purpose, and the boundary between rescue and ignition begins to blur. The protocol does not ask whether to fire. It asks who is willing to bear the answer. With eight lives suspended between silence and starfire, Della must choose what the quiet between stars is truly for, listening, or becoming the sound that ends everything.