The Fall of Eos

Six months. It is the number chalked on the walls of Meridian, counted down one dawn at a time: six months until the Hunter fleet, eleven thousand hulls decelerating out of the dark, crosses the outer marker of the Eos system. Behind it lies a fallen Earth. Ahead of it waits a planet of refugees with one failing shield, two moons, and nowhere left to run.

Across the ancient gate, on a homeworld whose people died eleven thousand years ago, a last expedition walks the boulevards of a dead civilisation. The Builders' machines still work. Their archive still answers. At its heart waits the master node, and the one command which still drives every Hunter in the dark: protect the network, destroy its users.

The node offers three endings. Destroy the network, and every gate closes, stranding a thousand worlds to save one. Control it, and humanity inherits the empire which destroyed its makers. Or rewrite it, end the old command, and pay the price only a human key can pay. As the shield fails, the moons burn, and Meridian makes its last stand, the survivors of two worlds must decide what they are willing to lose in order to remain human.

The Fall of Eos concludes The Eos Chronicles, a science fiction series about the price of new beginnings and the cost of what came before. Come for the ending. Stay for the new sky which follows it.