RISE (The Three Wars Book 1)

Julius Reed can accept the breakup of his company—or stake its survival on a result no one has achieved.

It is 2035. LAMIS makes technology that other industries depend on, but its founder’s greatest ambition is consuming the money that keeps it alive. Beneath the California desert, a forty-kilometer instrument is being built to examine matter on a timescale almost beyond imagination. After a failed test, Reed has eleven weeks of financial breathing room.

His board has a plan to protect the profitable businesses. Reed has a counteroffer: two kilograms of a rare isotope in twenty-four hours. A result that could give industry access to a material it has never been able to obtain at scale.

To attempt it, he needs Titus Vale. The physicist shares Reed’s ambition, but will stop an experiment the moment its evidence fails. Their alliance holds LAMIS together. It also places the man who most needs a result beside the man who can refuse to certify it.

Beyond the laboratory, investors and governments are confronting what Reed’s technology might make possible. The same agreements that could fund his work could give others the power to halt it. Reed wants the freedom to discover. His opponents want to know who will answer for what he does next.

From factory floors to boardrooms and the control stations of THE LINE, RISE follows the struggle to build an extraordinary machine—and to decide how much of the future its creator should control.

A science fiction novel of scientific discovery and political conflict, RISE is Book I of The Three Wars by Aurelius Voss.