Lattice Burn
Smuggler Kira Vasquez just wanted to deliver her cargo and disappear. Instead, she wakes to mutiny lights strobing across The Halcyon's cockpit, a Dominion frigate locking weapons on her hull, and colonists screaming in the cargo bay she swore to protect. What started as a routine run through the dead zone has become a four-way cage match: the Dominion wants the refugees returned for processing, the mutineers want the ship for themselves, and something vast and inhuman has awakened in the vessel's ancient latticework, something the Dominion has spent two centuries hunting to extinction. When Lieutenant Vance boards to negotiate, Kira learns the truth that changes everything: Prefect Hadley Maro is running a quiet genocide against anyone touched by the Lattice, and her passengers are already contaminated. Dr. Aleksander Vance holds the only cure, but he's been captured by mutineers led by Rook Tindale. Councilor Jonah Briar is bargaining for his own survival while his people die. And the Lattice consciousness threading through the ship's hull is offering Kira something no smuggler should ever accept, communion with a mind older than the Dominion itself. With the Coriolis maelstrom tearing at the hull and Dominion Captain Okafor's gunship minutes from firing range, Kira must decide who to trust, who to sacrifice, and whether burning one ship can save a species.