Low-Orbit Lawn Service

In the troposphere above the poisoned tectonic badlands of Aithria, continental root-islands of iron-bark and rogue spore-jungles threaten to choke out the sun and drag entire floating cities into the abyss. Alkaios, an exhausted aerostat tugboat skipper whose proudest achievement is avoiding manual labor, wants nothing more than a quiet drink and an unbothered berth. That dream evaporates when his rusted sky-tug accidentally syncs with an ancient planetary geo-gardening System, designating his crew as the realm's sole Master Canopy Arborists.

Now armed with industrial plasma-clippers, atmospheric buzz-saws, and an infuriating interface that hands out municipal merit badges while warning of bio-electric overgrowth, Alkaios finds himself targeted by iron-fisted zeppelin barons who use the strangler-vines as sky-fortress anchors. Flanked by Berenikia, a disgraced cloud-harvester noblewoman forced onto the gun-deck, and Philotheos, an eccentric cartographer obsessed with sentient sky-moss, Alkaios must trim the runaway stratosphere before rival dreadnoughts shoot his floating weed-whacker out of the clouds.