Strike Range

Eight months. That's all the warning they got. David Wayne thought the math was wrong when Sigma-9 flagged two hundred forty-seven massive contacts inbound to Valis. The sensors don't lie-something vast and alien is coming, broadcasting a signal into the void that's been unanswered for years. Dr. Freedman has a theoretical weapon. Corporate titan Ionis Vael wants to weaponize the entity itself. Xenobiologist Elias Thorne has two million followers convinced humanity is about to start an interstellar war with a species that just wants to talk. Through his mech's neural interface, David makes contact with the entity's failing consciousness. It's desperate. Dying. When it accelerates, cutting their preparation time in half, David faces an impossible choice: finish the defensive array with thirty units instead of forty, or launch a strike mission to intercept the entity before it reaches Valis. One neural link. One dying alien intelligence. And four weeks to get it right. Can David bridge the gap between species before time runs out? Or will the wrong answer condemn thirty million people?