War Factory

Thorvald Spear, revived long after his death, continues chasing the rogue AI Penny Royal across dangerous deep space. The search pulls him through a lawless frontier and into a widening conflict involving AI powers, human forces, and hostile alien factions.

Elsewhere, several characters shaped by Penny Royal’s manipulation pursue their own tangled objectives. A Prador who has been altered toward humanity, rival Prador factions, a bounty-hunting crew, and powerful AIs all move toward the same hidden destination and the source of Penny Royal’s origin.

As the strands converge on a wartime factory station tied to the AI’s past, secrets about bodies, motives, loyalties, and old wars come to the surface. The story builds toward a confrontation in which alliances are unstable, memories matter, and no one fully understands what Penny Royal wants.