Book Two of the Rebel Ascendant sequence

Topology of Devotion

The war does not wait. Hold the line long enough for something to survive.

After first contact turns a covert extraction into a civilizational crisis, the Confederacy is forced into the kind of arithmetic no one wants to call strategy: which worlds to defend, which corridors to burn, and which people and knowledge can still be carried out before the map closes.

What Book Two Becomes

A war story about preservation, not victory.

Geometry of Grace opened the door: a hidden alien inheritance, a hunted intelligence, and a crew forced to decide whether something sacred can survive contact with human power.

Topology of Devotion moves into the consequences. Daymund Cain has the Rebel Ascendant now, and command has become less an honor than a posture he has to hold. Congress debates action while member worlds measure the cost of solidarity. Ruun's models narrow the future into ugly windows. Svarog becomes the place where courage, logistics, and grief are forced onto the same ledger.

Sample chapter

Chapter One: Borrowed Form

The second book opens with the Ascendant already adapted to a harder war: cleaner operations, narrower windows, and a captain still learning what his own authority costs.

Excerpt

The badge reader took three seconds. Daymund counted them.

One. The credentials Gel had built from six weeks of contractor filings and two borrowed compliance certifications sat inside a card the size of his thumbnail. Two. The reader's indicator light held amber. Three. Green.

He walked through.

Behind him, Zeke's footsteps came at the right interval—not too close, not hanging back the way a nervous man hung back. Daymund didn't look.

Overhead lighting at full spectrum, no shadows worth hiding in, floor panels that broadcast every footstep back up through the soles of your boots. Veyran administrative space was full of corridors like this. The Federation called it transparency architecture in the procurement documents. What they meant was: you are seen.

Get Book Two updates
01

Command

Daymund has a ship, a crew, and a war already moving faster than anyone's permission structure.

02

Continuity

People, children, medical cases, tooling, process seed: every lift carries less than the world needs.

03

Signal

Ruun's formation-read work turns uncertainty into a clock. The clock keeps tightening.

04

Devotion

What you preserve, what you abandon, and what you refuse to surrender become the same question.

Current crew

The Ascendant under new command.

The second book opens with a smaller, harder operating grammar: people who have survived enough to become useful, and useful enough to be spent.

Captain Daymund Cain portrait
Captain

Daymund Cain

Young, precise, and newly responsible for making command look more finished than it feels.

Gel Reyes portrait
Signals

Gel Reyes

The quiet systems mind behind clean windows, closed trails, and uncomfortable truths in the route data.

Ezekiel Zeke Montelongo portrait
Operator

Zeke Montelongo

Steady in tight spaces, dangerous when needed, and more domestic after an operation than anyone expects.

Gael Rodeo Quishpe portrait
Operator

Rodeo Quishpe

Field nerve, humor, and the kind of confidence that keeps moving because stopping would make it honest.

Grayson Cheater Meacham portrait
Pilot

Cheater Meacham

Charm, timing, and getaway math; a pilot who treats danger like a conversation he can win.

Alex Dakota-Kinsworth portrait
Engineering

Alex Dakota-Kinsworth

The ship's temperamental heart has an engineer to match: exacting, tired, and still keeping her alive.

Svarog Industrial Heart

The line cannot hold forever.

Svarog is not treated as spectacle. It is a member world with factories, districts, queues, children, medical cases, engineers, loaders, and people who still have names after the map stops being able to carry them.

Svarog industrial heart tactical map art

Interactive companion

The Losing Map

Play a short, turn-based teaser set inside the Svarog evacuation. You cannot win the war. You can only choose what survives long enough to matter.

  • Command limited ships and local assets.
  • Choose between survivors, industrial continuity, and risk reduction.
  • Receive a preliminary field report based on what you preserved.
Open The Losing Map

Launch visuals

Public-safe signals from the next front.

Hayekar emergency congress approach concept art
Hayekar emergency session
Covert relay maintenance operation concept art
Relay maintenance window
Svarog evacuation queue concept art
Svarog evacuation queue

Release notes

Get the Book Two launch notice.

Geometry of Grace launches May 27, 2026. Topology of Devotion is being prepared as the fast-follow second volume.

Join the list for release timing, sample chapters, production notes, and new launch material as it goes live.

Start with Book One

Geometry of Grace

A covert extraction becomes a first-contact crisis when Kaid Sidorov and the crew of the Rebel Ascendant uncover a surviving alien intelligence and trigger a war over what remains of its civilization.

View Book One on Amazon

Disclosure

This site and the interactive teaser were developed with AI-assisted tooling. The visual companion art, character portraits, map assets, interface sounds, and music used here include AI-generated or AI-assisted assets prepared for the Book 2 launch page and related promotional material.