The Ruins
by R. S. Breed
Two artefacts dated sixty years in the future. Same story. Different senders.
Marcus Cole returns to command aboard a new vessel: Resolute II, rebuilt from the wreckage of Book Three and incorporating Architect-residual technology. The mission takes the crew to a ruined homeworld at the far end of the corridor. Two artefacts are discovered, both dated 2264 — sixty years in the ship's future. Same story, told from two different perspectives. Marcus reads the institutional cost the Brief has been keeping from him.
Era
2204
Series
Book Four of The Long Watch
Price
Kindle Unlimited
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Book Four of The Long Watch. A complete story on its own.
Wondering about order? Where The Long Watch sits, and what to read first →
Listen free on YouTube
The complete novel, narrated — not a sample. 2 parts, in order below. If it holds you, the Kindle edition is one click up the page.
Who you’ll meet
Artefacts from this book
The archive →In-universe records, blueprints, and documents drawn from The Ruins — the institutional paper trail behind the story.
ISV Resolute II — Blueprint
Rebuilt from Resolute wreckage + Architect-residual derelict. Energy lance. Topology-modification shield. Asymmetric hull.
The Brief — Recovered Fragment
A heavily redacted page from the document chain that has carried the truth of the Wound since 2123. Most of it is black bars. What survives them is enough.
Boundary-Array Drift — Longitudinal Survey
ISCA-TI · Drift Register
Every time a boundary array fires, it leaves a small drift in the calibration afterward. For twelve years the fleet logged that drift as an engineering cost and moved on. This register is the same set of numbers, read for the first time as what they always were.