Argus
In this inventive and heartfelt take on a dystopian space opera, humanity’s last hope comes complete with a space station, an attitude, and . . . whiskers? Civilization has fallen. The solar system is blanketed with the automated weapons of ancient wars, engineered plagues, hazardous waste, rogue AI, monsters from outside our dimension, artificial disasters, and nuclear climate change. Every moment of life on Earth is a brutal fight for survival. The people of Sol carry on, but hope is at a premium. They need something more. Someone with a plan, a savior, a hero. What they get is Lily. Owner of the last functional battle station for the last four hundred years by right of being the last living soul on it, Lily ad-Alice has spent all that time struggling to save lives, fend off loneliness, and operate human-made weapons controls with paws and meows. Four centuries of establishing protocols, figuring out how to utilize an irresponsibly large arsenal of orbital weaponry, and scraping by with what life support still functions. Lily doesn’t have a plan. She can’t even tell how haunted her home is. Every day is an endless stream of alarms and crises—it’s a lot for a lone desperate housecat to handle herself. But being the proprietor of the last piece of working orbital infrastructure in existence is a responsibility and duty she’s accepted anyway. Now things are changing again. Something big is looming, and everything Lily has scrambled for hundreds of years to achieve is at risk. But if she’s quick, maybe she can do some good. If she’s cunning, maybe she can adapt. If she’s smart, maybe she can build something that lasts this time. And if she’s very, very lucky, maybe she won’t have to do it alone.
