Iron Upon the Deep

Across the drowned moons of the outer void, colossal aqueducts of boiling brine connect five oceanic worlds along suspended troughs of surging water. Ta'ani is an illiterate ballast-trimmer and heavy steam-harpooner aboard an iron dredging barge, accustomed only to the scald of boiler grease and the butchery of deep-canal predators. When the militarized High Fire cartel burns his vessel and slaughters his harbor-kin to seize absolute monopoly over the celestial transit locks, Ta'ani salvages a deck gun and carries the hunt into the boiling deep. Wielding volatile sulfur-iron that leaches heat to flash-freeze hulls and vent lethal steam blasts, he pursues the cartel's predatory dreadnoughts across the freezing void. Yet vengeance carries a crippling cost: every shot drains the waterways keeping his people alive, and the dreadnoughts he hunts carry the only stolen heat cores keeping the five moons from freezing solid.