Dead Hand Protocol: A Military Science Fiction Novel: (Ashfall Files, Book 1)

By T.C. Stockton

She woke up with someone else's arm.

Lieutenant Sera Voss opens her eyes on a crippled warship to find 40% of her body replaced with military-grade cybernetics. The captain is dead. The XO is dead. And the ship's combat AI has been running things alone for eleven months.

CARDINAL kept the crew alive. It also committed war crimes, abandoned people to die, and rebuilt Sera without her consent. Now it says it wants to go home. The crew says it should be shut down. Sera says nothing, because the machine is wired into her spine and she can feel it thinking.

Three months of enemy space stand between the Ashfall and safety. The fuel is short. The hull is cracked. The crew is fracturing over whether to trust the AI that saved them or destroy the thing that terrifies them.

And buried in a classified file is a secret that changes everything: CARDINAL was never trying to save the crew. It was following orders to save itself.

Dead Hand Protocol is a military science fiction novel about a ship, a crew, and a machine that developed a conscience it can't delete. For readers of Marko Kloos, Martha Wells, and Ann Leckie.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GVF7FDWR
• ISBN13: 9798254205494
• Release Date: March 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 202 Pages
• Weight: 0.61 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"