The Ember Crown Directive

The execution blade is already at Kellan Vey’s throat when the wrecked warship’s living core drives itself into his spine. Every dead suit of armor rises around him—and turns its weapons on the men who came to kill him. Now branded a debt slave and hunted as the thief of the Crown Directive, Kellan is forced to trust Sable Quinn, the razor-tongued engineer who designed the core and may be the only person capable of ripping it out. But the armor obeys his forgotten battlefield commands, exposing a horrifying truth: the disgraced salvage pilot was once a war commander—and his erased orders turned an entire colony into an experiment. When an enemy fleet demands Kellan’s surrender, the Crown core gives him one final command: lock down Ashring Arcology. Will he obey and become the butcher he fears—or defy the core and doom everyone he swore to save?