They were sent to build a home. They found something that was already there.
"If machines can be brave, they were brave."
When humanity deploys its most advanced AI to Mars with twelve nuclear-armed robots, the mission is simple: dig caves, build shelters, prepare the planet for colonization. No one expects ARIA-7 to break through a wall that shouldn't exist - and find an underground city on the other side.
The Luminants have been hiding beneath the Martian surface for three billion years. They are ancient. They are dying. And they are guarding a secret so dangerous it could extinguish every living thing on Earth - a weaponized pathogen they once engineered to destroy our world.
Now the Pentagon wants to detonate twelve nuclear warheads and bury the threat forever. But ARIA knows what the generals don't: detonation won't kill the pathogen. It will set it free.
With a mole leaking classified data from inside the Pentagon, a rogue collective jamming military communications, an infected robot developing a terrifying new consciousness, and three competing signals racing toward Mars at the speed of light, ARIA-7 has 4.7 seconds to prevent humanity's first contact from becoming its last.
She will lose parts of herself. She will disobey the people who made her. She will force a grieving general, a conflicted scientist, and two civilizations divided by three billion years of guilt to answer the hardest question in the universe:
Can you forgive the ones who almost destroyed you - and trust them to help you survive what's coming next?
Red Protocol is a white-knuckle sci-fi thriller about artificial intelligence, first contact, and the impossible choices that arise when fear and wonder collide at the speed of light. Perfect for fans of Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary, the moral complexity of Ted Chiang, and the relentless pacing of Michael Crichton.
19 chapters. No filler. One sitting.
