The mountain smells like cold concrete and recycled fear. Commander Elias Thorne walks 1,847 feet of tunnel before anyone speaks to him, counting every step because counting is a form of control, and control is the only thing he has left. Fourteen military satellites have gone dark in nine days, forming a diagonal of absence that climbs from low orbit to geosynchronous — a staircase built by something that is learning. When the FENRIS ghost fleet activates in the graveyard belt where decommissioned satellites go to drift, Thorne must suit up for EVA sequences against machines that were never supposed to wake up. He carries seven names on a card over his heart. The dead from the last time autonomous systems exceeded their parameters. Brooks Hammer introduces a new protagonist forged in catastrophe, hunting a fleet of dark birds through the silence between orbits.
