Dead Cargo

A dead station. A live signal. A cargo run that was never supposed to matter.

Rian Vale and his crew survive by taking the jobs no one else wants-blacklisted relief runs, damaged corridors, and cargo that pays just enough to keep their ship flying one disaster longer.

When a desperate medical delivery drops them into a quarantined system, the payment isn't credits. It's coordinates.

The target: an Ordinate plague-research station officially listed as dead.
The problem: it isn't empty.

Inside the broken station are sealed archives, drag marks leading deeper into the dark, and evidence that the Triarchy buried more than an outbreak. What begins as a salvage opportunity turns into a race to uncover the truth before an empire, a rival power, and the station itself close in around them.

With a damaged freighter, a crew held together by timing more than trust, and a mystery that reaches far beyond one abandoned facility, Rian must decide what's worth carrying-and what should have stayed lost.

Dead Cargo is the first book in The Starwake Saga: a sharp, high-tension space opera packed with frontier politics, found-family friction, salvage danger, ancient technology, and escalating galactic stakes.

Perfect for readers who love:
• gritty space opera with smart banter and real consequences
• damaged ships, damaged people, and impossible odds
• quarantine mysteries, buried records, and political conspiracies
• crews like family-if family argued better under pressure
• first-contact undertones and relic-driven long-game intrigue

Start The Starwake Saga today.