The relic wasn't supposed to wake anything else.
After a dead station turned out to be very much alive, Rian Vale and his crew are running with stolen cargo, a Triarchy prefect on their tail, and an alien artifact that keeps answering questions nobody asked it. Now ancient orbital rings are stirring above frontier worlds from Cinder Verge to Breaker Shoal — and every settlement that hears the signal is about to become someone's problem.
Empire doesn't arrive with a fleet. It arrives with aid packages, inspection teams, and flexible definitions of temporary.
Signal Drift is Book II of the Starwake Saga — a space opera about a wounded ship, a crew making the right calls at the worst moments, and a network of frightened settlements choosing not to stay alone. The chain is live. And whatever built it has been waiting a very long time for listeners.
Cohl Marten writes science fiction built on one principle: every decision has a cost, and someone pays it. His work explores crews navigating unstable routes, damaged infrastructure, and systems that no longer behave the way they were designed to. With a focus on logistics, consequence, and human judgment under pressure, his stories replace spectacle with structure—and let the outcomes speak.View all by Cohl Marten
