The Fifth Presence

On a distant station, a panel flashes the rhythm Decker Simms once tapped on his father’s door.

After eleven years of first-contact work, he encounters a response unlike any he has known. The changes are small: warmth beneath his palm, light that alters when he returns. He keeps a record. He keeps coming back.

Within the station, Ka’thal weighs each approach against the damage earlier contact caused. Extending toward the humans carries a cost. Trust must be learned on both sides of the wall.

Sector Command expects a result it can classify. Pressure divides the crew, and an attempt to force a response puts the encounter at risk.

To protect what is growing between them, Decker must do more than watch. He must decide what he is willing to share, and help defend a contact that may never meet the standards of the people who can end it.

The Fifth Presence is a literary science-fiction novel about first contact, the privacy of grief, and the difficult work of meeting another intelligence on its own terms.