dead freight

**Dead Freight — Synopsis** The mining ship *Kestrel Nine* answers a distress call from Penance Station, carrying water, medicine and hope. But the outpost’s inhabitants are already dead—and something has learned to call for help in their voices. When a deadly alien predator known as the Cantor gets aboard, a routine delivery becomes a desperate struggle for survival. Feeding on electrical power and mimicking its victims, the creature turns the ship’s own systems against its crew. After the destruction of *Kestrel Nine*, Captain Mara Voss and the survivors find themselves stranded on the hostile moon Vesper. With dwindling oxygen and a relentless hunter stalking them through abandoned mining facilities, Mara must draw on her former Marine training to find a way off the surface. But escaping means keeping the Cantor from reaching another inhabited world. **They came to deliver life. Something else came aboard.**