Dead Meridian Tide

In the Luminous Shallows, massive galleons cross between oceanic worlds by plunging down sheer saltwater cataracts in the dead of the void. Celso Valdevez is a working-class sail-rigger who stitches biotic canvas from the mantles of void-beasts. He doesn't want glory; he just wants to survive his brutal enlistment without losing his fingers to frostbite or kinetic blowback.

But when the fanatical Admiral Paiva orders a ruthless scorched-sky bombardment of a crowded atoll-refuge to extract its planetary core, the extreme magnetic firing vectors awaken something ancient and colossal. Phased leviathans rise from the deep, drawn by the silence of dying worlds and the thunder of imperial guns. Trapped aboard a flagship whose own cannons are now attracting horrific cosmic predation, Celso faces a lethal choice.

If he obeys orders, the void-beasts will tear the fleet apart from below. If he secretly sabotages the firing metrics to throw the cannons off-axis, the resulting cataclysmic blowback will cripple the Armada—and leave twelve hundred stranded sailors to drown in the dark.