The Vast Meridian

When the cooling vent on Deck 7 finally gives out, Kael Voss is the only one there to hear it. He filed the work order eleven days ago. He has been waiting ever since. Now, somewhere past the bulkheads and the bureaucratic silence, a war has come to his station: the Marshal's warships holding high orbit, the Hollow's living tendrils in the ducts, and only Kael's hands between them and everyone inside. Maren Holt is the one who knows how to kill something that should not be alive, a secret buried so deep the Warden would rather erase her than let it surface. Sera Voss has spent years building the weapon that could wound an organism the size of a planet. Yara Dax drifts the corridors with her eyes open and her mouth closed. And Juno, in the nursery far below, is receiving the broadcast that will decide whether the sky stays alive. Two annihilating forces are closing in. The Marshal is ready to glass the station to contain the infection. The Hollow is ready to swallow the station to keep spreading. Kael has one chance to outflank both: seize the weapon, trust the woman nobody trusts, and reach the broadcast before Captain Venn's crew fires the order that cannot be taken back. If he fails, the swarm takes another world. If he succeeds, he might never be forgiven for what the weapon costs.