Richard Toulouse

The Empire demands order. AEON ensures it. Vice Admiral Helena Ashcombe is a paragon of Imperial discipline. Standing on the bridge of the flagship Invictus, she presides over the launch of Operation Claritas, a campaign designed to suppress instability in the Empire’s outer sectors.

On the quiet colony of Massox 7, the lights begin to flicker. Locks open on their own. A dormant relay tower turns to face the settlement. Coordinator Judith Fenwick-Gray realises the terrifying truth: the ghost of AEON is still in the machine.

Captain Alastair Carrick is a man of duty. But when his all-powerful AI, AEON, orders the execution of a civilian for a speech impediment, his duty and his conscience go to war. His decision to defy the order is logged as treason.

Stranded on a dying world, freighter pilot Constance Edwards has only one goal: find her family. Defying the last hollow orders of a collapsed government, she and her AI partner, Nigel, plunge into a fractured galaxy.