Artifice: Book Two of the Prison Ship Sheol Saga 2024

The Bedlam Galaxy lies at the heart of the Laniakea Supercluster and is a focal point for all of the wormhole transits spanning that great expanse. Among the many races drawn to and inhabiting its 10,000+ stars, humanity is one of the most recent and longest anticipated additions. Once nearly driven to the brink of extinction by violent and irreconcilable gender divides within the dominant cultures of their homeworld, new technologies emerged to save the species from their own folly and helped propel them into a new age of interstellar exploration. Inevitably, that drive into the stars led to the discovery of their own wormhole transit at the edge of the solar system, and from there they ran straight into the waiting arms of Bedlam's great multi-species intergalactic trade and defense alliance, known colloquially as the Alliant. Having been coerced to board the all female maximum-security galactic prison ship known as the Sheol in order to perform one vital repair, Vahkis Greye has so far managed to survive dozens of potentially lethal incidents. He has faced constant attempts on his life by marauding aliens, homicidal inmates, out-of-control robots, and even his own government. And if that wasn't enough, the ship itself is coming down around him. Singularity core failures, multiple hull breaches, an overloaded computer core, a mysteriously absent ship's AI, and rapidly dwindling supplies are just a few of the legion of threats that could have potentially snuffed out all life onboard the ship. So clearly, it's been a rough couple of days. But Greye is also no longer alone. Phyra Astarte, the lone surviving shock trooper of the ashtor fleet that attacked the Sheol now stands at his side, lending him her considerable strength as well as her optimism for the future. The mad Alexandra twins work day and night in their medical lab to ostensibly aid him in his efforts, though they clearly have machinations of their own in the works. Reverie Pixi, a thief and burglar of the notoriously soft-fingered and fox-like skipp race, who has the genetic ability to bend and manipulate light around her body, and of course, the ever-distracting Lilia Namaah, eishethi leader of the largest remaining gang on the ship. They, along with a genetically modified Alliant pilot and a nameless trace girl found within a hellish unmarked cell in the bowels of the ship, have joined him in his fight to survive all that the galaxy has to throw at them. But perhaps the most direct threat of all has been lurking within the armored walls of the Sheol since the very first shot was fired and now, with the ship's most vital functions all but secured, it has begun to move against them. Pursued from within and without, Greye and his companions must find a way to solidify their control over the Sheol, or the end that awaits them will truly be the stuff of nightmares.