Raiders

Captain Kael Vance started out as a disgraced officer scraping by on an abandoned scrap station. Now he commands the Marauder's Fang, a ship held together by grit and found family, bonded to an ancient alien Core that feeds on his pain and gives him power in return. Together with his crew — sharp-tongued XO Lyra, ex-Archon Eryx, and a growing coalition of humans and aliens who chose each other over empire — Kael has toppled a corporate death cult, freed a homeworld, and started something that looks dangerously like a revolution. But a signal has reached them from beyond the Abyss, older than any power they've fought so far, speaking four words in a dead language: children of thieves, come home. Before Kael can answer it, there's a heist to run, an alliance to hold together, and a galaxy's worth of enemies who haven't given up on ending them first. A found-family space opera about the crew that refuses to die and the empire that keeps underestimating them.