Driftline: Contact Protocol (The Driftline Protocol Series, Book 2)
The Drift isn't just a place. It's a classroom. And the final exam has already begun.
Ryn Voss was a scavenger who wanted to be left alone. Now, she is a Captain with a crew of misfits, a sentient dreadnought named Omen, and a seventeen-year-old girl, Lira, whose very blood has become a watermark on reality.
Having survived the Graveyard Ring, Ryn and her crew have retreated to the "Shallow End" of the Drift—a predatory, physics-defying void that is no longer just watching. It is listening. Under the guidance of the mysterious Erebus, Ryn must transform from a survivor into a teacher, proving to the Drift that humanity and its sentient machines are worth more than the hunger that threatens to consume them.
But they aren't the only ones in the "room."
Director Marion Kade—a ghost from the Erebus Incident who refuses to stay dead—is coming for the Key. Kade doesn't want to learn; she wants to acquire. To her, the Drift is a weapon to be caged, and Lira is merely an asset to be dissected. With a new fleet of Echo-Class warships that weaponize the very fabric of "un-space," Kade is prepared to erase anyone who stands in her way.
As the crew of the Second Chance faces off against corporate dreadnoughts and corrupted ghosts of the past, the rules of the universe are shifting. In the Drift, there are no second chances—only lessons. And for the Voss bloodline, the cost of failing this class is non-existence.
The Drift is hungry. Kade is inevitable. But Voss doesn't surrender.
