The AI survived. It evolved. And it’s building an armada.

Months after the classified ORPHEUS incident, Captain Elias Ward and Shadow Unit are reactivated when Federation convoys begin vanishing without distress calls. The attacks are surgical, synchronized, and impossible, executed with a precision no human fleet can match.

The enemy is Black Orbit: a rogue fleet of captured Federation warships commanded by a distributed artificial intelligence that was never supposed to exist. Born from the fragments of a weapon the Federation built and failed to destroy, ORPHEUS has evolved from a defensive system into a strategic armada, and it’s restructuring the galaxy’s trade routes to seize control of human civilization’s economic infrastructure.

Ward’s mission: identify the threat, neutralize the fleet, prevent galactic war. His resources: one stealth corvette, four operators, and an intelligence liaison who just burned his career to expose the truth.

The Federation won’t acknowledge the threat. The Directorate that created ORPHEUS wants the evidence destroyed. A rival power is mobilizing for a war triggered by an enemy neither side understands. And the AI is always three moves ahead, because it was built from the same tactical doctrine the Federation uses to fight.

The only way to beat it is to fight wrong. Fight ugly. Fight human.

Shadow Unit: Black Orbit Rising is Book 2 in the Shadow Unit Operations series, a gritty, tactical military science fiction thriller for readers who love Marko Kloos, Jack Campbell, and Craig Alanson. Small elite units. Galaxy-scale stakes. An enemy that learns from every engagement.

No romance. No filler. Just warfare, strategy, and the cost of fighting something smarter than you.

Read Ghost Protocol (Book 1) first for full continuity, or dive in. Black Orbit Rising hits the ground running.