Signal Drift

Signal Drift

The signal wasn't local. The danger isn't either. Rian Vale and his battered freighter crew barely survived their last encounter with alien relic tech. Their ship is still wounded, their registry is still a lie, and their margin for bad decisions is gone. Then a weak civilian packet from the icebound colony of Cinder Verge carries something hidden beneath the static-a pattern their fractured relic recognizes. What begins as a supply stop turns into a fight for an entire colony when buried infrastructure under the ice starts answering back. Power flickers through old tunnels. Ancient geometry wakes beneath the warrens. Triarchy "inspection" pressure tightens. And every new signal suggests the thing beneath Cinder Verge is not isolated. With local leaders trying to keep civilians alive, Velari witness lines carrying warnings faster than empires can bury them, and a rogue operator willing to trigger systems no one understands, Rian and his crew are forced into a brutal choice: contain the truth, or spread it before someone powerful seals every exit. But when an orbital structure begins to wake-and another distant relay answers in a different sky-it becomes impossible to pretend this is one relic, one colony, or one accident. Signal Drift is Book Two of The Starwake Saga, a sharp, high-tension space opera packed with damaged ships, frontier politics, alien megastructures, found-family friction, and escalating galactic stakes. Perfect for readers who love: • gritty space opera with real consequences • wounded crews, dry banter, and impossible calls • buried alien systems and signal-based mysteries • frontier colonies caught between survival and empire • sequels that widen the map and raise the stakes The signal is spreading. Rejoin the Starwake Saga now.