Kaine's Reparation

Saving humanity and ending it look like the same decision.

Hayden Kaine and the crew of the Scimitar have spent the past year hunting scattered pieces of the cynosure — an ancient device that opens a portal to another star system. With a Malliac fleet of ninety thousand ships six weeks from Earth's orbit, it is humanity's last hope.
Then they open it — and realise the translation was wrong.

The cynosure isn't a weapon against the Malliac. It's a trap. And the protective bubble shielding their universe is collapsing because of an unauthorised signal Kaine himself fired.

The only plan left: keep the portal open and use Stella as living bait. The empath Kaine loves broadcasts emotions the Malliac crave like a drug. Lure the fleet into the rift — knowing the Scimitar will almost certainly not survive.

"Human monkeys only had to put the puzzle together and turn the thing on."

Meanwhile, a deposed president is seizing the project to return to power. Kaine will end this book a fugitive — again — having traded one catastrophe for another.
There are no good options. He still has to choose.

What you will find inside:
Fast-moving military space opera, no filler
A portal that was mistranslated — a weapon that is actually a trap
Ninety thousand enemy ships, six weeks from Earth
A love story used as bait, with no rescue plan
Knowledge that traps instead of empowering
Every book resolves — no cliffhangers

For Dune readers who know power and knowledge trap the people who hold them.

Kaine's Reparation is Book 3 of Shattered Empire.

You don't know who you are until it costs you.