FAULTLINES 847 Worlds. Two Species. One Chance to Survive the Dark. The Frontier is Moving. Over 4 billion miles from Earth, the Kuiper Belt is no longer a silent graveyard of ice and rock. It is a gold mine. For the Roman siblings, the survey mission to Tantalus was supposed to be a career-defining payday. Hope Roman, a commander driven by duty, and Harley, an ex-military engineer looking for an escape, expected isolation. They didn't expect a conspiracy that reaches back to the dawn of time. The Discovery of a Lifetime. Tantalus isn't a planet—it’s a construct. Deep beneath its eight-hundred-meter ice shell lies a subsurface ocean maintained by an ancient, alien intelligence. But as Hope and her crew break through the ice using high-frequency cavitation, they realize they aren't the only ones interested in the "Seed Worlds." The Cost of First Contact. The Helix Corporation didn't send the Persephone to explore; they sent them to provide legal cover for a planetary-scale strip-mining operation. When the ice cracks, so does the fragile peace between humanity and the Tantalans—a crystalline species that communicates through bioluminescence and quantum states. As the crew is caught between corporate assassins and an alien defense system that sees them as a virus, Hope and Harley must choose: obey the company that signs their paychecks, or protect a legacy that has waited four million years for a witness. The Clock is Ticking. Beyond the Oort Cloud, something is coming. The Builders called it the Stellar Darkness—a threat that feeds on centralized empires. To survive, humanity must learn to stop colonizing and start cooperating. But in the vacuum of space, where the light-time lag means help is always five days too late, "together" is the hardest thing to be. Perfect for fans of The Expanse and Project Hail Mary , Faultlines is a gripping hard science fiction epic that explores the technical grit of deep-space survival and the enduring power of the human spirit.