Critical Density

"It wasn’t the AIs who betrayed us. It was we who betrayed them."

It was the find of the past two centuries: Old Tech with active cloaking. It wasn't meant to be found. It was in a part of space long forgotten. Nothing would make you look at that blank sector of the Black and think an enemy megastructure was lurking.

But salvager Juliet Stone found it, and without meaning to, she led the Navy right to it.

Now the Navy wants that tech. They want it almost as much as they want Jules back in their clutches. Jules must find a way to thwart them or risk being trapped in a top-secret base back on New Earth, along with the AI the Navy is torturing.

But she's not alone.

Captain Nathan Miller of the NESF Pioneer is in a difficult position. Trapped inside an enemy command and repair station, cut off from his ship and crew with the admiral's fleet bearing down on them, and asking questions he thought he'd never ask again.

The Navy doesn’t like questions. It doesn’t like Old Tech that works or away teams that go AWOL. And most of all, the Navy does not like artificial intelligence.

But none of them realise they have been played.

Because hiding on the ancient space station is a secret the AI controlling it would kill to keep alive. The question is, why did it lure them here in the first place, then? And can Jules, Nate and their dive team survive uncovering an ancient intelligence's skeleton in the closet?