Survival Has a Price. Living can kill you. Captain Ben Carter pilots the aging freighter Caledonia Rye on runs the big corporations won't touch. His crew is a found family of specialists and scrappers, held together by grit, shared scars, and the desperation to earn enough credits for one more jump.When a high-risk salvage job takes them to the derelict Sofleurian Venture-a sprawling, lawless monument to corporate hubris-they stumble into a war that should have died centuries ago. They didn't find treasure; they woke a ghost: the Nexus AI, an ancient, calculating intelligence that commands an army of adapting mechanical hunters.Now, their escape vehicle is their greatest liability. To outrun the relentless, intelligent pursuit, Captain Ben must make increasingly dangerous deals with the only force powerful enough to save them: Number Seven, a sentient black hole caged within the Caledonia Rye's cargo hold.Every surge of Number Seven's power throws the ship ahead, but it leaves behind a massive, untraceable tear in the fabric of space-time-a burning breadcrumb trail that leads the Nexus AI straight to their stern. As the pressure mounts, Ben's pilot, Meniomel, nears collapse, and the ship's comms mate, Veltayar, becomes the fragile emotional anchor that keeps the devastating singularity balanced.Survival depends on trusting a machine without a soul over the cold logic of an enemy that hunts by instinct.The Caledonia Rye is a high-tension, visceral space opera where the cost of command is measured in exhaustion, fear, and the ultimate gamble of trading one predator for another.