The mission was supposed to be simple. Cross the void. Build the colony. Make history.
Eighteen months into humanity's first interstellar voyage, a routine engine burn reveals an anomaly that shouldn't exist. A gravitational disturbance with no natural explanation. A structure in the void between stars, metallic, massive, and older than human civilisation.
Commander Isaac Rowe has four percent fuel margin and three hundred and twelve lives depending on his decisions. Astrophysicist Elara Mendez has data that defies every model she's built. Engineer Pavel Ionescu has a drive being disrupted by forces beyond his design specifications. And systems analyst Mei Okafor has numbers that say the mission is dying, eighteen percent survival probability and falling.
The lattice is not a trap. It may be a road.
But using it means trusting alien engineering with every life aboard. And the margin between salvation and oblivion is thinner than the space between stars.
Deep Space Expedition is a hard science fiction novel about the crew that discovered humanity is not alone in the universe, and had to bet everything on what that meant.
Book 1 of The Threshold Protocol