THE COMMONWEALTH COLLECTION
Written by a genuine Master Mariner with over a decade's experience commanding vessels off Australian shores, this intense duology explores an overcrowded post-WW3 civilisation, in which millions of people live in enormous self-contained city sea-rises, fed by acres of crop barges anchored offshore, and what might happen if the lessons of our own time have not been learned...
You will never read a nautical thriller more authentic, more blood-pounding, or more heart-wrenching than this.
1: ORION RISING
A.D. 2080
It has been sixty years since the Wars. Most of Earth is an uninhabitable wasteland. The remaining human population is crammed into Australia, New Zealand, and the ruins of the Indonesian archipelago.
In the Commonwealth, most believe the Wars to be long over. Technology has saved them from extinction. Colossal sea-rises clutter the coasts, housing entire cities. All food is supplied from vast fleets of floating farms moored at sea.
But tension is rising in the northern Fringes, where for many the Wars never ended.
Onboard the Cassiopeia, second officer Orion Trayfer enjoys his job battling the waves and weather to tend the crop barges in New Zealand’s eastern waters. But his world is soon shattered by the news of a friend’s supposed suicide. With the help of Sam, the new trainee, Orion embarks on his own investigation, uncovering secrets that someone will go to any lengths to keep buried.
All the while, a far greater threat is looming, one which threatens to fracture the fragile peace between the Commonwealth and the Fringes.
2: SCYLLA BURNING
The peace is broken.
Eighty years after the Wars, the northern hemisphere and most of the southern is a chemical wasteland. The long-dormant hatred between the two remaining superpowers – the Commonwealth and the Fringes – is reawakened in the struggle for survival, as their forces clash in the disputed waters of the Arafura Sea. Whole sea-rises are destroyed, their populations annihilated. It is only a matter of time before a full-scale invasion is triggered.
Lieutenant Bligh Caspersen of the Commonwealth Navy, disgraced for striking his superior officer, is being held for court martial on his ship when he learns of his brother’s disappearance in the latest sea-rise assault. Bligh believes him dead, but the stunning admissions from a mysterious northern prisoner offer a grain of hope.
With Cyn’s help, Bligh sets out to find his brother and uncover the truth about the syndicate responsible not only for the sea-rise attacks, but perhaps the entire state of warfare. The journey will take them beyond the Wall, into a toxic world where no one has supposedly been for half a century, and where no life exists.
Cyn, meanwhile, has her own motivation:
Revenge.