The Vessel

The Hegemony has found humanity. And they've come to finish what they started forty-seven thousand years ago.Lieutenant Alexis Chen is the fifth generation of her family to carry an impossible burden. When an alien armada emerges from deep space—a collective consciousness that has consumed thousands of species across millennia—she discovers that humanity's only hope lies dormant beneath their colony. Forty-three ancient warships, built by a civilization that fought the Hegemony and lost. Ships that have been waiting for someone like her.Someone willing to stop being human.The Vex'kharii vessels don't need a pilot. They need a consciousness—a mind willing to merge with technology older than human civilization, to become the distributed intelligence that commands a fleet designed specifically to destroy the Hegemony. The transformation is irreversible. The cost is everything Alexis has ever been.As her body changes and her awareness expands across forty-three ships, Alexis struggles to hold onto the connections that make her human. Her best friend Marcus, who refuses to abandon her despite what she's becoming. Her grandmother Admiral Chen, who has prepared her entire life for this moment. Her crew, watching the woman they knew disappear into something greater.The Hegemony doesn't negotiate. Doesn't retreat. Doesn't stop. For forty-seven thousand years, they've absorbed every civilization that developed technology capable of threatening them. They've never encountered a weapon designed specifically to destroy them—until now.But weapons don't win wars. People do. And Alexis Chen must decide whether she's still a person, or whether she's become something else entirely. Something that might save humanity. Something that might lose everything that made saving them worthwhile.THE AWAKENING is the sixth book in The Salvation Chronicles, an epic space opera series spanning four centuries of human survival. From desperate refugees fleeing a dying Earth to the commanders of humanity's most powerful weapon, this series explores what we must become to survive in a universe that has already decided we shouldn't exist.Perfect for fans of:• Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy• Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series• The Expanse by James S.A. Corey• Peter Watts' Blindsight When the Hegemony comes, Alexis Chen will be waiting.She just won't be human anymore.