The Cargo: Container Zero (The Cargo Series Book 1)

The Cargo: Container Zero

Captain Leo hasn't spoken his own name to a stranger in six years. Haunted by a mistake that cost innocent lives, he now drifts the outer sectors in the Vanguard-9 — a derelict military hauler held together by rust, stubbornness, and his engineer Jax's endless soldering. No questions asked, no attachments made. Just cargo, from Point A to Point B.

Until a job at a dying mining station changes everything.

A corporate fixer named Elena offers more money than they've seen in months — for a single sealed container, no questions permitted, destination unknown. Jax smells trouble the moment it's loaded five meters above the reactor. Leo, drowning in debt, takes the deal anyway.

But miners have been disappearing in the outer belt. The corporations have stopped hiring humans. And whatever is sealed inside Container Zero didn't ask to be cargo.

As the Vanguard-9 burns toward a destination neither of them chose, Leo and Jax will have to decide what they're really willing to haul — and what it costs to finally stop looking away.

A gritty, character-driven science fiction thriller about guilt, survival, and the quiet horror of not asking what's in the box.