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Sliding Void · Universe Guide

A field guide to Sliding Void

The Sliding Void universe is post-Earth. Humanity has spread, founded colonies, lost some and federated others, and now operates inside a political volume called the Triple Alliance — alongside two founding alien species and a long tail of minor ones. Beyond that volume lies the Edge, where the writ runs thin and the Gravity Rose makes her living. Beyond the Edge: vanished civilisations, hostile alien powers, and structures older than the present recognises. This is a spoiler-light field guide.

Ships, stations & hardware

The Gravity Rose
Lana Fiveworlds' freighter — four thousand feet of cargo units, hyperspace vanes and self-healing armour welded together from a dozen shipyards with hope and whatever spare currency was going. Home, business and pressure-cooker, and overdue an overhaul in every book.
The Dark Viking
A Combined Fleet battleship, modified far past its original spec — the dominant naval setting through much of Hell Fleet.
The Ghost Fleet
A whole system of decommissioned naval hulks, mothballed and stripped — until war forces the Alliance to brush the cobwebs off ships like the Voidwolf and send them back out.
Minkowski Field & slip-drive
The bubble of contra-physics that lets a ship survive hyperspace — and, dialled differently, serves as defensive shielding. When the navigator says the Field is failing, the ship is in trouble.

Factions & powers

◈
The Triple Alliance
A republican federation of three founding species — humans, kaggens and skirls — governed by a Vice-President and a council of senators. Inside its volume, trade is orderly and ship registry runs through the Protocol.
Founding powersThe Protocol
✦
The Combined Fleet
The Alliance navy — colloquially “Hell-Fleet”. Destroyers to dreadnoughts under the TAS prefix, commanded by Admiral Bartosz Blackstar. In Hell Fleet, in open war.
NavyWar
❖
The Quazzie Imperium
An amphibious alien empire from beyond the Frontier stars. They don't share worlds — they replace them, reforming captured biospheres toward their own homeworld climate. The principal enemy of Hell Fleet.
Hostile power
⬢
The Heezy
A vanished precursor civilisation, long pre-human. Their works persist as ruins, weapon caches and smart-matter installations across the galaxy. Why they disappeared, nobody knows — and they are never seen.
PrecursorsThe long mystery
✺
The Unity
A covert power that reveals itself only at the close of Anomalous Thrust. Its agents are titled “Mr”, wear constructed bodies and back up their minds — and speak of killing with sincere, regretful politeness. The chill is in the register.
Covert empireSpoiler-light

Timeline & continuity

Deep past
The Heezy
A galaxy-spanning precursor civilisation flourishes and vanishes, long before humanity. Their works keep running with nobody left to mind them.
~700 years before
The Skein War
Humanity and its founding-Alliance partners fight and defeat the extinct Skein. The Triple Alliance may have been forged in that war.
Pre-series
The Alliance & the Protocol
Humans, kaggens and skirls form the Triple Alliance; the Protocol becomes the law of registry and star-travel. Hesperus loses its tech base and reverts to a medieval ice age.
Books 1–3
The novella trilogy
From a betrayed prince on Hesperus to a xenoarchaeology dig around a red giant, the crew assembles and the deep-time mystery quietly opens.
Books 4–6
The novels
A failing drive in a slaver tsardom, an interstellar war with the Quazzies, and finally the Great Filter — where the long mystery breaks open.

Characters

Captain
Lana Fiveworlds
Owner-skipper of the Gravity Rose. Looks twenty-five, doesn't remember the first half of her life, and carries a rail pistol dialled to grenade.
Crewman
Calder Dirk
An exiled prince from a medieval ice world, learning modern starship life with a brain implant installed far too late. The arc that runs through every book.
Negotiator
Skrat
A green-scaled skirl “dragon” and ex-executive turned gladiator turned trader. Edwardian-archaic manners, lethal at the bargaining table.
Navigator
Polter
A devout, crab-shaped kaggen who reads the will of the Lord into every cargo contract — and whose navigation keeps the ship alive.
First mate
Zeno
A deadpan, golden-skinned android with a quantum-substrate mind — the crewmate Granny Rose talks to first when a crisis hits.
Ship's AI
Granny Rose
The Gravity Rose's central intelligence, presenting as a shawled wise-woman — and quietly the most capable mind aboard.

Glossary

The Gravity Rose
Lana Fiveworlds' freighter — four thousand feet of mismatched shipyards, and the anchor location of the whole series.
Hyperspace / the sliding void
The subspace medium that makes faster-than-light travel possible; a ship survives it wrapped in a Minkowski Field.
The Edge
The frontier region of explored space, where the Triple Alliance's writ runs thin.
The Triple Alliance
The interstellar polity founded by humans, kaggens and skirls — the closest thing to law out among the lanes.
The Heezy
A vanished galactic precursor civilisation whose works still litter the void long after they themselves are gone.
The Great Filter
A literal barrier structure at the edge of known space — and the stage for the sixth novel.

Good to know

🛈Content & sensitivity notes

The Sliding Void books are space-opera adventure — not horror, grimdark or erotica. Violence is on-page but functional and consequential, and book five (Hell Fleet) is a sustained war setting. Book four depicts the Ryazarn tsardom's enslavement of the indigenous girrish critically, and includes specific medical and surgical detail. Profanity is mild; romance and sexual content are largely absent. The series handles difficult material the way mainstream adult SF does — flagged here so readers who want a heads-up have one.

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