The Last Lance

Three hundred and forty people died at Harrow Station.

Cassian Vail watched it happen. He had the proof. He told everyone who would listen — his instructors, the chain of command, the press. The evidence disappeared. The investigation concluded tragic but unpreventable. And Cassian got expelled for "breaching operational security."

So. That went well.

Now he's at Resonance Protocol Academy — the galaxy's only military institution that accepts cadets nobody else wants — and he's about to be assigned to a squad. One hundred and forty-three names get called before his. The last spot in the last squad goes to him by default, alongside the only five people the other 143 cadets didn't want either:

A Vaskarr warrior exiled from his pack for refusing to murder someone. A Thal'kresh empath so overwhelmed by other people's feelings he can barely stand up. A Dravak forge-priest in the middle of a full spiritual crisis. A Seraphi shadow-walker who genuinely doesn't expect to survive the year. And an Avarin nobleman whose family disowned him for failing a ceremonial test.

Squad 7-Delta. The washouts. Twenty-fourth out of twenty-four in the rankings.

The instructors have already written them off. The corporate recruiters aren't even bothering to learn their names. The top squad calls them Last Lance — last to be chosen, last to matter, last place where they'll stay.

They're going to have to live with that nickname. They're also going to make it mean something entirely different.

The Last Lance is a military sci-fi series set in a galaxy where six major civilizations share an uneasy peace brokered by mercenary law — and where the line between corporate contract and quiet massacre has always been thin. It follows Cassian and his misfit squad through four years at the academy and beyond: learning to fight, learning to trust, and slowly, carefully building an airtight case against the most powerful private military company in the Constellation.

It's about found family. It's about the particular brand of stubbornness it takes to keep telling the truth when every institution you've ever trusted has told you to shut up. It's about six broken people from six different species figuring out how to become something neither the academy nor the galaxy has a name for yet.

It also has mechs. The mechs are very important.

Featuring: multi-species found family, slow-burn romance, military academy competition, political intrigue, corporate conspiracy, empathic warfare, forge-theology, and one human cadet who documents everything because he's been burned before.

"Until the prey sleeps. Until the last lance stands."