The Silt Runner's Secret
A Far-Future Space Opera Mystery

About this book:

The mud of Varis IV doesn't just cling to hulls—it swallows secrets whole. Silas Thorne knows every treacherous channel of the Low Delta, piloting the *Mud Wasp* through corporate blind spots to haul contraband and keep his crew fed. But when a dead Apex executive turns up in a derelict courier boat, clutching a military-grade data drive marked *Clearance Zero*, Silas picks up a cargo that doesn't just pay credits—it paints a target on his hull.

Now an orbital corvette runs grid searches overhead, Apex security locks down the entire delta, and three men in matte-grey armor just walked into the only bar within a hundred miles asking for a "recovery package" with voices that promise quick deaths. The drive in Marra's bag could buy them a new life—or it could be the key to a conspiracy that runs from the toxic silt flats to the corporate boardrooms orbiting above. In a world where the mud eats metal and the law is whatever Apex says it is, Silas has until the midnight tide to crack the encryption, outrun the hunters, and decide what a dead man's secret is worth.

*The Silt Runner's Secret* launches a far-future space opera mystery where the frontier isn't among the stars—it's in the choked canals and rusted hulls where the powerful fear to tread, and the smallest operators hold the biggest leverage.