The Black Lane

Mars burned. The infection escaped.

Major Asher Vance survives Mars only to find its alien infection spreading through the systems humanity trusts to keep it alive. Medical networks. Emergency orders. Earth calls the threat contained, but Asher hears his brother Declan's voice coming from a stranger's mouth.

With Leah Sutton and smuggler Nika Voss, Asher follows the contamination through lawless shipping lanes toward the Primary Node. The relay chain is waking faster than expected. Every stop for fuel or repairs risks another trap, and military kill orders turn the people who should protect them into hunters.

Declan's voice keeps finding Asher in the dark, pulling him toward the brother he could not save. The network knows how to make him hesitate. He needs the people beside him to stay alive, but the next signal could carry another familiar voice. Every delay gives the infection more time to spread. How far can he follow it before grief becomes the enemy's way in?

A cosmic horror science fiction adventure of infected stations, fugitive survival, and compromised command. Book 2 and the conclusion of The Extinction Vector.