The halberd protocol

Five years after Halcyon Reach's survivors barely escaped a genetically engineered horror, the derelict station drifts forgotten in orbit — until a salvage bid arrives eleven percent over market value, from a shell company with buried ties to the defence contractor that caused the original catastrophe.

Systems security officer Kaia Lindqvist knows that kind of premium doesn't get paid for scrap. She embeds with the salvage crew to find out why — and drags her old crewmates back into the nightmare they thought they'd finally survived.

What they find aboard the dead station is worse than anyone feared: the Ring has become a thriving, self-sustaining ecosystem, and two things are living in it. Not one monster this time, but a pair — coordinated, patient, and raised together in a way their solitary mother never had the chance to be.

With a corporate mole aboard hiding his own agenda, a hostile extraction team inbound, and a body count climbing fast, the crew has one option left: stop trying to survive the station, and make sure nothing ever survives it again.

The Halberd Protocol is a claustrophobic science fiction horror-thriller about corporate greed, inherited trauma, and the cost of finishing what should have ended the first time.

📖 148 pages