Last in Line

We crossed twelve light-years to find out we weren't first in line.

Humanity's first starship arrives at a living world, twelve light-years from Earth, and finds it fenced. A ring of ancient black blades circles the planet. Around it, 411 alien ships are waiting their turn. Some have been waiting for nine thousand years.

Nobody has ever gone through.

Drive engineer Eli Varga was supposed to fix star trackers, not lead a crew. But with the ship's engine sealed by alien technology, thirty-eight days of air, and a polite, terrifyingly patient new arrival that knows every word they've ever spoken, Eli has to figure out what the fence is really testing-before the window opens and the line claims its next victims.

His only allies: a crew he isn't sure he can trust, a million mouse-sized alien traders who pay for oxygen with new songs, and the oldest living thing in the line, which has spent nine millennia counting the dead.

The answer to first contact was never a bigger gun.

For readers who love hopeful, funny, high-stakes science fiction-clever aliens, real problem-solving, and an ending that will stay with you.

Last in Line is Book 1 of the First Contact Protocol series. Scroll up and take a number.