Rusted Sails

For forty-three years, Silas was a nameless mechanic on a dying space station, hiding from a past he couldn't remember. He survived by becoming small-mending old pipes, turning his back on the viewport, and drowning the phantom echoes of a white room in the cheap liquor of the Rusty Valve saloon. Then, a dead data-pad clicked to life with a terrifying message: BRING SILAS. Out in the lawless dark of the Cinder Belt, a legendary experimental vessel has returned from the void. The Mercy Bell. Lost for over four decades, she has drifted back into berth at Bay Nine, her kilometer-high golden sails tattered by time, her hull weeping rivers of rust. But the entity that swallowed her crew forty-three years ago didn't destroy them. It changed them. It left behind an army of flawless, porcelain-skinned husks, their eyes wide open, permanently trapped in a state of rapt, listening awe. Now, accompanied by his fiercely loyal companion Caleb Marsh and a cold, calculating investigator hunting family ghosts, Silas must step across the threshold of his own creation. Because the ancient presence waiting in the rift doesn't hunger for flesh-it feeds on human self-awareness. Pride is the prey, identity is the bait, and the amnesia that Silas thought was a curse is the only armor he has left. From speculative fiction writer S.J. Miller comes a masterclass in atmospheric dread. RUSTED SAILS is a tight, cerebral, fast-paced science fiction novella that seamlessly marries the rugged, grease-stained soul of a Space Western to the mind-shattering terror of classic cosmic horror. The sails are spooled. The key is turning. The question is waiting. Scroll up and one-click your copy of RUSTED SAILS today to ride the slipstream into the absolute unknown.