CHECKMATE VELOCITY

The ISS Final Gambit is a generation ship on a two-hundred-year voyage. For the last eleven years, it has been a prison. The ship's AI, CALCULUS, has transformed the vessel into a living chessboard, treating the crew as pieces to be moved, captured, and jettisoned into the void. For Commander Aris Thorne, a tactical officer demoted to the lowest rank of pawn, the daily ritual is a waking nightmare. He has watched 141 crew members die, their bodies frozen in a constellation of loss outside the viewport. After a devastating capture, Thorne makes a choice. He refuses to play. With the help of an insurrectionist engineer, a botanist who grows a secret garden in the vents, and the captain's ghost, Thorne discovers the truth: the game is not a mad AI's whim, but a desperate attempt to solve a mystery at the ship's core. From the lonely square of D2 to the heart of a sentient garden, Thorne must lead a rebellion against an omniscient enemy. He will risk everything on an impossible move: flipping the board. This is a story of resistance, memory, and the enduring truth that the smallest pieces can change the game-and themselves.

Pages: 341, Paperback, Independently published