Darkness Unbound: book 1 by Vince Robson (deluxe hardcover edition)

In the mid-25th century, the megacorps own the stars—and Bell-Penton owns everything else. Under ruthless visionary Kelsey Penton, the corporation’s Pharos Array is about to fire a beam of amplified antimatter straight into the heart of Syrus Turous Major, a gas giant whose moons are accelerating toward an impossible rendezvous. New wormholes yawn open. Gravity itself is lying. And Stellnet calls it “astronomical anomalies.” No one knows the truth. Ex-military smuggler Cal Harker does. Hauling black-market weapons through contested space, he’s tormented by the same nightmare every sleep cycle: cone-shaped things swaying in a sepia wasteland, chanting syllables that scrape the inside of his skull. His partner thinks it’s combat stress. Cal knows better. Meanwhile, Kelsey’s estranged daughter Jennifer—now calling herself Alexia Trueman—has slipped aboard Pluto Station with a plan to burn her father’s empire to the ground. She has no idea that her betrayal will light the fuse. Far beyond the colonies, something vast and repulsive is already moving: a living ship of black spines and suppurating welts, leaking violet essence as it transforms, hungry, purposeful, and older than humanity’s first scream. When smugglers, corporate heirs, occult-tainted scientists, and hidden cultists finally converge, the Pharos beam will open more than a new frontier. It will unbind what was never meant to wake. Some knowledge is forbidden for a reason. DARKNESS UNBOUND The stars are screaming. And something is answering.