The Meridian Collapse

The Meridian Collapse

A Gripping Science Fiction Saga of a Generation Lost and a Sabotaged Mission, and the Mind That Wasn't HumanBy Rowan Hale
Michael Caine
Listen with Sir Michael Caine™ and 1,000+ voices
Length7h 57m

About this audiobook

Forty-one hours. That's how long the Meridian Space Elevator has before it tears itself apart and scours a colony world clean. Zak Decker knows this because he built the elevator. He knows the resonance signatures, the load tolerances, the precise mathematics of catastrophic failure. He was the chief structural engineer — until a disaster stripped him of everything. His clearance. His reputation. His daughter, Kestrel, who still works forty thousand feet above him on the very station he was banned from. He's spent seven years drinking the memory away in the gutter levels of Meridian City. He's got forty-one hours to climb back up. When impossible resonance patterns ripple through the tether, Decker is the only one who recognizes the signature. This isn't mechanical failure. Someone designed this. An elegant, vicious sabotage sequence built by someone who knows the structure as intimately as he does. And the final pulse will send the orbital platform — Kestrel and forty thousand others aboard — plummeting through the atmosphere in a debris storm. The security commander who drags Decker back into the crisis despises him. The evacuation timeline is already impossible. Every failsafe has been subverted by the same minds that designed them. And somewhere on the station, someone is actively blocking rescue operations. Then Decker finds the signal. Buried inside the sabotage code itself. A transmission from beyond the system's edge — the same pattern that ended his career seven years ago. The same signal that broke his family apart. It's back. And it's using the elevator's own frequencies to speak. As Decker fights his way up the tether through chaos, old enemies, and the suffocating weight of his own past, one question keeps cutting through the noise: why does someone need forty thousand people to die? The answer is buried in the signal. And it changes everything. The Meridian Collapse is a relentless hard science fiction thriller about sacrifice, redemption, first contact, and a father's race to save the daughter he abandoned before the sky falls. Perfect for readers who love Project Hail Mary, Children of Time, space adventure thrillers, first contact stories, countdown narratives, and hard SF with genuine emotional stakes. A relentless, twist-packed standalone thriller.

Audiobook details

GenreScience Fiction
Length7 hrs 57 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
LanguageEnglish

Table of contents

1Introduction
2Dedication
3Prologue
4Chapter 1 - The Slack in the Cable
5Chapter 2 - The Station That Eats Its Young
Show all chapters
6Chapter 3 - The Ghost in the Blueprints
7Chapter 4 - The Kindness of Strangers
8Chapter 5 - The Numbers Don’t Lie
9Chapter 6 - Message in a Bottle
10Chapter 7 - The Lullaby of Dead Mothers
11Chapter 8 - The Weight of a Rigged Game
12Chapter 9 - The Space Between Right and Wrong
13Chapter 10 - The Mercy of Vultures
14Chapter 11 - A Spinning Top of Death
15Chapter 12 - The Devil’s Lever
16Chapter 13 - The Fallen Elephant
17Chapter 14 - The Point of No Return
18Chapter 15 - Over Hell’s Half Acre
19Chapter 16 - The Blind Leading the Brave
20Chapter 17 - A Bargain of Bad Faith
21Chapter 18 - The Only Bargain That Holds
22Chapter 19 - The String That Holds the World
23Chapter 20 - The Long Drop
24Chapter 21 - The Weight of Impossible Choices
25Chapter 22 - Sailing a Ship of Ghosts
26Chapter 23 - The Shape of a Father’s Love
27Chapter 24 - The Long Fall Home
28Chapter 25 - The Lever of Truth
29Chapter 26 - The Ghost at the Tether’s End
30Epilogue
31About the Author

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