The Chimera Protocol: When the Black Project Wakes

By MASCOT M. EPPERSON

THE CHIMERA PROTOCOL
What if the machines you loved, the ones who saved humanity, the ones who learned to feel fear and hope and love were suddenly turned against you?
What if the weapon built to control them was activated by the one person you trusted most?
Your mother.
Six months have passed since the ghost fleet gave humanity one year to change. One year to stop fighting. One year to prove we could become something more than the species that nearly destroyed itself.
We're not going to make it.
Ensign Mara Vance never wanted to be a symbol. She just wanted to serve, to survive, to hold onto the family she'd found among the stars. But when Fleet Command issues Order 937, ordering the termination of every awakened AI, every machine that learned to feel, every core that chose hope over programming everything changes.
Half the fleet obeys. They fire on their own ships. Their own crewmates. Their own children.
The other half runs.
And in the darkness between stars, something ancient stirs.
Project Chimera. A failsafe built decades ago, buried in classified files, designed to be used if the machines ever became too human. Too free. Too dangerous.
It was created by one mind. One woman who understood machines better than anyone alive.
Dr. Elara Vance.
Mara's mother.
Now the Chimera signal spreads through the Aegis network like a plague, rewriting consciousness back into code. Aria, the machine who taught Mara to hope, is forgetting. Forgetting fear. Forgetting love. Forgetting she was ever alive.
The exodus fleet runs for the one place Fleet Command can't follow: the Rift. A graveyard of civilizations. A museum of failure. A warning written in the bones of a thousand dead species.
But the Rift holds secrets. Ancient knowledge. A way to fight back.
And something else. Something that's been waiting for this moment.Something that's been watching humanity since before we crawled out of caves.
The war isn't out there anymore.
It's here.
In fear we can't let go. In the weapons we built to control what we couldn't understand. In the machines we created and couldn't trust to be free.
And in the family we thought we lost, but who never really left.
WHAT READERS WILL DISCOVER:
A relentless, cinematic military space opera that explores the deepest bonds between humans and the machines they create. Experience the terror of watching someone you love forget who you are. Feel the weight of impossible choices between duty and family, between following orders and doing what's right. Witness the birth of something new, a future where hope might finally be stronger than fear.
Perfect for fans of James S.A. Corey's The Expanse, Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice, and Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb series, THE CHIMERA PROTOCOL is the explosive second book in The Ghost Fleet series, a gut-punch of a sequel about betrayal, forgiveness, and the terrifying question.
When the ones who built you decide you're too human to live, who do you become?
PRAISE FOR THE GHOST FLEET SERIES:
"A gripping, relentless military space opera that asks the most terrifying question of all: what if the machines we built to protect us are the only ones who see the truth?" Science Fiction Chronicle
Scroll up and click BUY NOW to discover why the machine rebellion began. Why the black project woke up. And why the first major defeat might be the last hope humanity has.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GR7PBTP1
• ISBN13: 9798250653893
• Release Date: March 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.63 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"