NO CLEAN SIGNAL

NO CLEAN SIGNAL by Arthur Payne A dead ship is coming home. And it's bringing a choice no one is ready to make. For two centuries, the "Ashward" has been a ghost story the vessel that vanished into the edge of known space and never returned. Now it's back. And it isn't asking permission. Rian Voss is a nobody by choice: a station technician on the edge of civilized space, good with broken machines and allergic to anything resembling glory. That changes the moment he brushes against an alien relic pulled from a derelict scout ship and something ancient and impossible settles into his chest like a note that's been waiting his whole life to be struck. He didn't ask for power. He isn't sure he wants it. But he can't stop pulling at its edges and every time he pushes further, it costs him something he can't get back. On the other side of the coming storm is Kess Vantar: born aboard the *Ashward*, raised by the same alien intelligence that just changed Rian forever, and armed with the deepest, most dangerous version of its gift ever wielded by a human hand. She's not a monster. She's worse she's right about enough of it that you'll catch yourself agreeing with her, chapter after chapter, right up until you don't. As the Accord scrambles to weaponize Rian into its answer to Kess's fleet, he discovers a truth buried under thirty years of grief and certainty: the power now running through his veins was never meant to save anyone. It was meant to test whether they *deserved* saving. There will be no clean victory. No easy villain. Just two people who recognize the same hunger in each other and one impossible choice that will define what it means to be human when you're finally strong enough not to be. Some signals should never be answered.