Geometry of Grace

When Kaid Sidorov is sent to extract a scientist from a newly annexed world, he expects another covert retrieval under pressure. Instead, Tavanda Ruun leads his crew to evidence of first contact: a surviving alien intelligence hidden inside the remains of a civilization humanity was never meant to find. What Kaid brings back aboard the Rebel Ascendant is not a weapon, not a relic, and not something the war can absorb without changing shape.
As Federation pressure closes in, safe havens fall, old loyalties strain, and worlds that thought themselves peripheral become battlegrounds. The closer the crew gets to understanding what they have found, the clearer it becomes that their enemies are hunting more than a person or a secret. They are hunting a way into an alien inheritance large enough to make human power look provincial. As the conflict widens from extraction to siege to pursuit, Kaid and his crew must decide what survival costs, what loyalty can bear, and whether grace means mercy, restraint, or simply refusing to become the thing the war most rewards.
Geometry of Grace is an adult science fiction novel of first contact, covert war, and the burden of carrying something sacred through a hostile world. It is the first volume in a larger series arc, while standing on its own.