Starquake

The closest magnetar ever discovered is sitting in our cosmic backyard. And there is no way to know if it has already fired.

Solar physicist James Chen's life is stable, if not exactly thrilling, teaching undergraduates, reviewing papers, sharing custody of his fifteen year old daughter Lily. Then a grad student walks into his office with X-ray data that doesn't make sense. A neutron star with a magnetic field a quadrillion times stronger than Earth's, an object capable of releasing more energy in a tenth of a second than the Sun emits in a quarter million years, has been found just twenty eight light-years away. Hidden in the dust of the galactic plane. Unnoticed until now.

If it quakes, the gamma radiation will shred the ozone layer. And the warning travels at the same speed as the weapon.

Starquake is a hard science fiction story about the collision between cosmic indifference and human love. Grounded in real magnetar physics, real atmospheric chemistry, and real neutrino detection science, it follows one man caught between the knowledge that the sky might already be falling and the ordinary, irreplaceable mornings he spends with his daughter.

A standalone novelette (approx. 18,000 words) in the Cosmic Thresholds collection, Volume I. Each story is a complete narrative, designed to be read in about two hours.