Too Late the Pyre

A former soldier from a collapsing Rust Belt town, Kael Brennan, is lured aboard the illegal longliner *Brimstone Star* with the promise of high wages. Instead, he is enslaved in the lawless international waters off the fictional Carmont Trench. For four years, he endures sadistic discipline, starvation, and the murder of his closest friend, plotting a rebellion. When he finally seizes control of the ship in a brutal mutiny, he discovers that the life he hoped to reclaim has already disintegrated. His sister is dead, his home is foreclosed, and his body is broken. The revenge, once a sustaining inferno, has sputtered too late, leaving only a hollow void where reconstruction is impossible.