Corey J. White concludes her pulse-pounding space opera in Static Ruin . As the most wanted voidwitch in the galaxy has no place left to run―except back to those who created her. She killed the man who trained her. She killed the fleet that came for her. She killed the planet that caged her. Now she must confront her father. Mars Xi is on the run, a bounty on her head and a kill count on her conscience. All she has left are her mutant cat Ocho and her fellow human weapon Pale, a young boy wracked by seizures who can kill with a thought. She needs him treated, and she needs to escape, and the only thread left to pull is her frayed connection to her father, Marius Teo. That thread will take her to the outskirts of the galaxy, to grapple with witch-cults and privately-owned planets, and into the hands of the man who engineered her birth. The Voidwitch Saga #1 Killing Gravity #2 Void Black Shadow #3 Static Ruin Praise for Void Black Shadow “Mars is a great character… Readers will root for her and have fun following along on her adventures.” ― Booklist Praise for Killing Gravity “This novella feels like a blockbuster, full of imaginative worldbuilding and fight sequences.” ― Publishers Weekly “Rip-roaring space opera with a side of magic mushrooms! Fans of Firefly will love Killing Gravity .” ―Will McIntosh, Hugo Award-winning author of Love Minus Eighty . “You might think that giving us a protagonist who can crush spaceships with her mind would unbalance the story, but White does an excellent job of writing thrilling, kinetic action scenes with Mariam and her powers, while introducing real and sensible limits to those powers.” ― RT Book Reviews “Solidly fun space opera from start to finish.” ― Locus “ Killing Gravity , by Corey J. White, is an intense combination of rip-roaring pulp space opera action and cyberpunk noir sensibility.” ―James L. Cambias, Nebula Award-nominated author of Corsair . “If you’re hungering for a snark-soaked adventure with a side helping of fabulous space-craftery and densely packed adventure, Killing Gravity might be what you’re after.” ―Jeremy Szal Corey J. White is the author of Repo Virtual and The VoidWitch Saga – Killing Gravity , Void Black Shadow , and Static Ruin . She has also had short fiction published in Interzone and Analog magazines, and a number of sci-fi anthologies. She studied writing at Griffith University on the Gold Coast, and is now based in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia. Her novel Repo Virtual won the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Static Ruin By Corey J. White, Carl Engle-Laird Tom Doherty Associates Copyright © 2018 Corey J. White All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-250-19554-8 CHAPTER 1 On Joon-ho Station, drifting temple of some ancient religion, the pilgrims press in tight, smell of sweat and grime thick even through my rebreather. The procession moves slow, dry shuffling scrape of footsteps beneath the constant murmur of prayer. Surrounded by this many people my heart rate should spike, but I'm already soaked with adrenaline after Bianca Blanca sicced her subordinates on me to buy herself time to escape. Now they're strewn along the length of a maintenance tunnel, still breathing ... barely. I scan the crowd — hooded black robes, faded to various shades of gray and repaired with patches of darker fabric. Overhead the roof is a huge clear dome. The local star hangs large in the center of an endless field of black, close enough to fill the room with sunlight. Day and night united in a pane of glass. Ocho is a warm lump in my hood, purring between my shoulder blades. She grumbles when I take her out and stash her in my satchel, but soon settles. I pull the hood up over my head to blend in, and move with the current of bodies. A flash of color and motion catches my eye — people shoved aside, a sharp cry as someone is thrown to the ground. Got you now, fucko. Blanca knows she's being tailed, but she doesn't know it's by a pissed-off space witch. I push through the throng, dodging around knots of worshippers, trying to find a balance between gentle and fast. It's been almost a month since I left Aylett Station, fleeing Mookie, guilt, and the Emperor's Guard; the last thing I need is a commotion. The last thing I need is someone recognizing me. Drop a hollow-moon on a city and suddenly you're public enemy number one. I don't know the price on my head, but even at one credit for every person I killed on Seward, that'd still be a tempting bounty. I reach a gap, the crowd parting around an older woman sitting on the ground where she fell, another devotee stopping to help her up. The woman seems to hold my gaze as I push past, and my heart goes staccato. They show my face on every news report, and for a second I think she recognizes me even behind the rebreather, but then I notice the white cast to her pupils. She's blind. She moves off with the other pilgrim, the two speaking Mandarin, and they