Star Map Draftsman I: Federation War

Revised translation, October 2026.

A hard science fiction novel. It opens with the last words Earth heard from the Dawn: "Tell my son that I love him."

In March 2059, aerospace engineer Dawn Lucius hugs his young son, Stacean, goodbye and tells him he is going to pick him a blue star. The real mission is first contact: a silent alien ship called the Sane, waiting in the Kuiper Belt. The round trip will take at least seven months. The Dawn carries food for eight.

Nothing goes to plan. By the time he reaches Neptune, his cousin is dead, he is flying alone, and his food is down to two bottles of glucose. Aboard the Sane, a figure made of light burns a hole through his chest.

He wakes in a pirate's cage with an alien device embedded in his skin. It marks him as a Star Map Draftsman, an office that can control dark matter, and three federations of the Orion Arm want it. Moreth runs the Star Bridges. Ashton guards White Crystal, the poison that makes people immortal. The princes of Strath will go to war to take it, and the war is heading for the solar system.

Then Dawn learns that seventy years have passed on Earth.

The boy who once introduced himself as "made of stars and oceans" is an old man now, or gone. Dawn is going home to find out which.

Book One of the Star Map Draftsman series.