Ashes Of Xyphos

The mission was peace. The price was everything.

For years, Elias Kade has been the iron fist of the Terran Human Alliance's Ghost Force, an elite unit deployed where order must be ruthlessly established. Kade survived the collapse—the warlords, the famines, the endless warzones—and signed up for the promise of stability, trading his moral compass for a rifle. He believes in the system. He is the system.

His latest deployment: a newly discovered alien world. Standard clean-up protocol. But when the dust settles, the enemy isn't the monstrosity he was promised. They are civilian families, simple communities whose only crime was existing in the Alliance's way.

This isn't just a battle; it's an atrocity hidden behind a noble cause. Kade is faced with the ultimate choice: remain a loyal cog in a machine of mass murder, or shatter his entire existence by pulling the trigger on his own chain of command.

Ashes of Xyphos is a gut-punch science fiction novella that throws the concept of "just war" into the fire. Forget simple heroes and villains. This is a visceral look at indoctrination, the toxic power of authority, and the devastating cost of a fragile, manufactured peace.